The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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down to a bar below. Scattered animals came drifting down stream and took the shore as they had done. Many dead cattle floated past the bar, and at the foot of the bank a heap of dead and crippled ones lay tangled. Not till morning, of course, could the task of roping and pulling out the cattle from the water and from under the banks begin. These cow-punchers as well as they were able rode back to the path of the "split," and so found the main mill and joined their companions.
"I shore thought I was a angel when we took the bank," says Curley, wiping his face with his wet neckerchief.
"Where's the Kid?" asks Jim gruffly.
"Dunno," is the answer. "I ain't seen him no-wheres near me."
It is hard to tell where any one may be at this time, past midnight, with the storm just muttering itself away. Some of the cattle may be running yet, and some of the cowboys may be with them. It may be twenty miles away that the last cowpuncher will pull up. The cattle will be scattered over miles and miles of country, and it will take days to get them together, less the losses which are sure to ensue upon the stampede. Nothing remains to be done now by those who are assembled but to hold their remnant of the herd till morning. And morning finds the men still holding the herd, their eyes now heavy and red, their faces haggard, their clothing covered with the mud of the mad ride in the night. A detail is made to keep watch here, while the rest of the men go back to camp to bring on the cook wagon and pick up the frayed ends of the rout. As these men ride in they see occasional scattered groups of cattle, which are turned back toward the main body. No one says much, for all are tired. As they pass on toward camp, or rather toward where camp was, a draggled figure rides up from out a little gully — one of the boys who has followed off a bunch of cattle by himself, and so been widely separated from the others.
"Hello, Cherokee!" says Jim. "Where's the Kid? We can't none of us find him nowhere."
"I ain't seen him neither," says Cherokee. "There ain't nobody at all been with me."
But as they ride on along the torn and trampled trail left by the cattle in their flight of the night before, they all see the Kid — see him, every one of them, before any one of them dares to say a word. They know what is this dark mass lying on the ground on ahead. Something strange chokes every throat, and each man adds an oath to the heap of pity as they draw up by the body. The boy's face, washed white and clean by the drenching rain which has taken away the grime of the ride, lies upturned in the morning sunlight, which kisses it gently. His hair, sodden with the flood, trails off into the miry earth, of which he was a part, and into which he is now to return. His pony, with its fore legs broken, lifts its head as high as it can and whinnies.
"Kill the horse, Bud!" says Jim at last, as they stand about the straightened figure of the boy. A shot is given the pony, and the saddle stripped from its back. Jim mounts his horse, and reaches down to the burden which Springtime hands up to him from the ground. He takes the dead boy in his arms, riding with his reins loose over the horn of his saddle and holding up his burden carefully across his lap. He says nothing till he gets near camp, muttering then only, "If a too d — d bad!"
When they get to camp the cook has breakfast ready, such as it is. The flour and sugar and everything else is wetted to the point of dissolution by the rain. More talkative than his fellows of the saddle, the cook breaks into loud exclamations of lamentation when he sees what is this strange burden the foreman is carrying.
"Shut up, d — n you!" says Jim to the cook. He knows that it was not the fault of the cook that all this trouble occurred, but he feels that he has to blame somebody for something, in order to relieve his own overburdened heart. "It's yore own fault," he says to the cook, "lettin' that wagon cover blow off. You do it again, an', d — n you, I'll kill you!"
It is primitive, crude, and hard enough, this little group here on the muddy plains this morning. For them there is not a voice of comfort, not a sign of help, not a token of hope. The tired, worn faces show hard and grim in the unflattering light of morning as they stand about, some holding the bridles of their horses, some leaning against the wagon or sitting on the wagon tongue. There is no house nor home here nor anywhere near here. It is a hundred miles to a ranch, two hundred to a town. There is no church nor minister. Not one hypocrite is to be found in this knot of rude men, and as none has professed any religion before, so none does so now. Jim, who is the leader, straightens out the boy's limbs as he lays him upon the ground and spreads a blanket over him.
"Git breakfast over!" he says grimly. And after breakfast the shovel of the cook which dug the trench for the fire digs the grave for the boy. There is no funeral service. He is buried in his blankets, with his hat over his face and his boots and spurs in place, as he slept when he was alive. A soldier of the plains, he dared the risks of his calling, and met them like a man. Such is another picture of the plains.
CHAPTER XI
A DAY AT THE RANCH
During days, or perhaps weeks,, of the busy season, when most of the men are absent on the round-ups, the door of the home ranch may be closed. It may be closed, but it is not locked, for on the frontier locks and bars are unknown. The necessities of a country make its customs, and in the remote parts of the plains and mountains hospitality is practically a necessity. The traveller is perhaps far from home, and is hungry or athirst when he falls upon the cabin of some man to whom he is a stranger. When that occurs the stranger goes into the unlocked house, helps himself to the bacon and flour, cooks his meal, and departs as he came. In time he may repay the courtesy himself at his own cabin and perhaps in the same way. There was a touch of feudal largeness and liberality in some of the customs of the earlier cattle days, and the fact that they were necessary rendered them none the less beautiful. Perhaps the state of the social relations among the cattle men of the early range was approached most closely by the life of the great Southern plantations in ante bellum days, from which, indeed, it may in part have had its origin. The ways of the South always flavoured the life of the cattle country, whether in Texas or Wyoming, far more than the ways of the North and East. Perhaps the zest which many Eastern men found in ranch life was the zest of novelty, and this a novelty to be measured by degrees of latitude and not of longitude. We must credit the South with the origin and establishment of the cattle trade, and with many of its most interesting, its broadest, and most beautiful features. The more exact methods, the better system, the perfection of detail, and utilization of things once neglected came from the North, and came, alas! with a shock fatal to some of the customs of the good old days. In the past the lock of the ranch door was nothing but a rude wooden latch, as easily opened from without as from within. To-day there may be iron padlocks upon some of the doors of the houses on the range.
There is no lock upon the door of our ranch house, whether it be empty or occupied. Such as it is, it constitutes the only home the cowboy has. Hither he returns from the more active duties of the round-up or the drive, and takes up the less exacting routine of everyday ranch life. Of work proper, as a farm labourer would consider it, the cowboy has little real conception. He is a horseman and nothing more, and has little inclination for any work that can not be done in the saddle. Thus, if he feels obliged to go out for wood, he goes out on horseback, and his idea of the correct way to get a log of wood to camp is to drag it at the end of his lariat. If a wagon is mired down in the quicksands of a soft crossing, the cowboy who comes to the aid of the driver does not dismount and get himself muddy in the labour of getting the wagon out, but makes fast his rope to some holding place on the wagon and trusts to his saddle girths for the rest, knowing that his plucky little pony will in this way pull a considerable load, though it would break its neck in rebellion if hitched up to the wagon. The cowboy has a mild contempt for all walking and driving men. In his own line of work he can be a miracle of tireless energy. Out of that line he is a prodigy of more or less good-natured laziness.
We may suppose, then, that a day of ordinary ranch life is not one of great activity or haste. The chores which the cowpuncher considers within his province are very few and simple. If in the winter some horses are kept up under feed in the ranch stables, he may feed his own horse, but no other man's. In the later days of ranch life