The Arrow-Point Estate/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
Out on the open range the clean wind swept the grasses till each ripening blade bent double under its pressure, like those other far-famed steel blades of Damascus. Heat waves rioted upward between the gusts of it, shimmering so that distant objects showed distorted out of all semblance to reality. The wagons of the Arrow-Point danced uncertainly beside a creek fringed with erratically waving willows, until the wind came again to brush aside the curtain of unreality and showed the round-up camp commonplacely solid if not permanent. To Reid and another, coming in late from riding circle, it was like nearing home; for they had ridden far on high, waterless ridges where were no cattle, and their systems clamored for food and drink—and plenty of both.
“Uncle Howard may be a good business man, and I’m willing to believe he’s there with the goods when it comes to holding forth in prayer-meeting; but he sure doesn’t savvy cow brutes, or he wouldn’t have sent us riding the high lines for stock that’s sticking close to the creeks a day like this. It sure pains me to see such ignorance.” Reid let his hands drop to the saddle-horn and rest there languidly. Their horses were too tired from climbing high benches and loping fruitlessly upon the top of them, to do anything now but jog sedately to camp.
Reid’s companion, a pale-eyed youth with cream-colored hair and eyebrows and a complexion burnt crimson, hunched his drooping shoulders and grunted, too dejected to reply. He had lately left a snug Wisconsin farm to live on the range the life he had read of in breezy Western stories, and he was paying the penalty in bitterness and much longing for home. He was called Art—until Reid, struck with his blank innocence of range-wisdom or even the capacity for ever learning so much as a glimmering, began addressing him as Artless. After that the shorter name knew him no more.
Reid lifted his gray hat, let the wind dry his forehead and blow gratefully through his hair, which was stubbornly inclined to wave a bit when it got the chance; resettled the hat and regarded the other quizzically from the tail of his eye. “Ain’t it great to be out here riding over the wild, untamed prairies, when, in your blind ignorance, you might be pacing across a plowed field afoot, hoeing spuds?” he asked. “Can you appreciate your good luck, Artless?”
“Naw; I’m too gol-darned hot and dry,” Artless made feeble retort. “There’s worse things than hoein’ pertaters. When you git thirsty you can go to the well and draw up a bucket uh cold water and drink all you want to. You don’t have to lay down in the mud and drink out uh cow-tracks!”
There was a twitching at the corners of Reid’s lips. “It’s a plumb shame, the way those story-writers don’t dwell on the wrong side,” he sympathized. “I’ll gamble you never read about cow-punchers doing any little thing like that in a story. And yet,” he mused, “I’ve seen many a time when I was mighty glad to see water standing in a cow-track.”
“I’ll take mine in a tin dipper, right from the bucket, thank yuh,” sulked Artless. “Soon as I git enough money saved up I’m goin’ back home—and the folks can laugh all they gol-darn please. I ain’t had but one drink to-day, and that wasn’t fit for a dog. I’ve had all the cowboyin’ I want.”
Reid eyed him pityingly. “If you feel that way about it, why don’t you draw your time and drift?” he asked.
“Well, I promised Mr. Burkell I wouldn’t quit till cold weather,” Artless explained dismally. “He says good men are hard to git, and he’d like to have me stay till fall work’s done.”
“Suffering sinners!” ejaculated Reid under his breath. “Good men sure must be scarce, all right.”
It looked, for a few minutes, as if there would certainly be some shooting.
At camp they discovered that the morning’s gleaning of cattle had already been “worked,” and the Arrow-Point cattle counted and turned loose; for this was the round-up which the appraising of John Burkell’s estate made necessary. Howard himself had charge, and counted the cattle. Howard was not the man to leave important business to hirelings, and the two appraisers never got the same figures.
Reid, a bit disgusted on general principles, ate his dinner in absolute silence. In the three weeks they had been out, he had not made friends with a man of the crew, but held himself aloof from the lot whenever circumstances permitted.
After he had eaten, he stood out by the rope corral, loop in hand, ready to catch out his mount for the afternoon; and as he stood he watched the others. With the exception of three of Howard Burkell’s own men, not one could throw a loop and be sure of its destination. That they succeeded in ever catching their saddle-horses at all looked to Reid like pure luck. He eyed them disgustedly before going in after a horse for himself, and was widening his loop for a throw when a noose settled unexpectedly over his own shoulders and was yanked tight, so that he came near going over backward. Also, the rough manila rasped painfully his neck.
Reid threw off the loop and turned truculently toward the blunderer, swearing punishment swift and dire. The offender happened to be Artless, and he was gazing open-mouthed at what he had done. Reid got him by the collar and shook him vigorously, saying many scathing things about pilgrims and idiots and the like. He was sick of the whole green outfit, and he made use of the occasion to unburden his soul of much that had been simmering unhealthfully inside.
“Young man, I thought I had made it plain to you that I would not tolerate such language.” It was Uncle Howard at Reid’s elbow. He had a way of coming up quietly behind one; a way that Reid detested. It caused his hand to move instinctively to his belt, and the consciousness that he had made the movement never failed to put Reid out of temper. He felt that Uncle Howard had observed the motion, also, and its significance. He dropped his right hand and swung about facing the other.
“Strikes me you’d do well to remove the cause, then,” he snapped, and sent Artless spinning with a vicious push. “Get out uh here, you damned corn-husking, buttermilk-swilling granger. Next time, you watch where you throw your rope, or there’ll be a lot of things happen you.”
Howard Burkell was a tall man—as tall as Reid himself—and he was stern-eyed and thin-lipped. It was not often that any one faced him and spoke his mind. He looked at Reid sharply and long, and Reid gave back a glance quite as sharp.
“Kindly allow me the privilege of using my own judgment about that,” Burkell remarked sarcastically. “There’s another thing, Reid. You carry a gun, and you have a very unpleasant habit of reaching for it without occasion. Why?”
“Echo answers,” Reid returned shortly. “I don’t know that there’s any law against a man packing a gun on the range. What about it?”
Burkell chuckled dryly. “Nothing—only don’t make a mistake and shoot before you take a second look. A man with nerves is always—uncertain.” He chuckled again to himself and walked away, and Reid looked after him a bit uneasily.
“Uncle Howard isn’t scared to speak right up,” he said meditatively. “Now I wonder what the devil he meant by that? I wonder” He flipped his rope straight and went back into the corral. As he stepped over the rope he looked up and caught Burkell watching him closely and smiling to himself. Reid set his teeth sharply and plunged in among the circling horses.
After that Reid was more watchful and more wary than before. Often he caught Uncle Howard eying him queerly, speculatively. It might be good will or bad; it might be that he had dis- covered the mystery of Reid’s singular coming; it might be anything. It had one direct effect, however; Reid took to watching Uncle Howard quite as persistently.
So they rode the range and gathered the Arrow-Point cattle, and those raw and new to the life grew sadder and wearier of the work and the life they lived, and the appraisers took to lolling in the shade of the tents rather than sit on a horse in the blazing sunshine while the cattle were being counted. They stuck to the tents, copied the figures furnished by Howard Burkell, and drew their five dollars a day quite contentedly. All of which was natural and to be expected, though it looked fishy to Reid. When it was over at last, and the round-up headed homeward, he breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that~ Uncle Howard would put him back on the home ranch, where he would have some chance of redeeming his promise to Burns.