CHAPTER VII

A BULL FIGHT

Jack was slow to respond to the call the next morning, but after a minute or two he reluctantly rolled out of bed, and putting on his shoes--and his coat, for the morning seemed cold--he rolled up and roped his bed. When he reached his horse he could hear Joe not far off drawing the latigo of his saddle and whistling softly to himself, and in a few minutes the two were riding off toward the cattle. The night was black and the stars sparkled in the clear air, but off to the eastern horizon the light grew constantly stronger as they rode along.

"That can't be day coming, is it, Joe?" Jack remarked. "It seemed to me that I got up as soon as I was called, and if I did it won't be getting light for an hour yet."

"No," said Joe, "that's a little bit of the old moon left, and we'll see it before long."

And just before they reached the herd, the small moon, now a crescent, showed itself over the hill in the east, and for a moment the trees that crowned the hill were outlined sharply against the light.

The boys whom Jack and Joe were relieving said that the cattle had been quiet ever since they came on. The animals were tired from the drive that they had had during the day, and the night was clear, calm and still, so there was no reason for their being uneasy. Now followed a couple of hours of monotonous riding around the herd, while one boy or the other droned out a song, and occasionally spoke as they passed. Presently the east showed gray, and then yellow, changing to orange; and at length the sun, with a bound, as it seemed, cleared the hilltop that hid it and began its journey across the sky. By this time the cattle had risen to their feet and were beginning to feed, and the herders, instead of trying to keep them in a bunch, rode out on either side, merely to prevent their straying too far.

At length the boys who were to relieve them came out, and Jack and Joe raced their horses back to camp, caught up fresh horses, unsaddled those that they had been using, and presently sat down to breakfast. All the outfit had started to work, and Frank had his wagon packed, ready to roll as soon as these last two had finished breakfast.

"McIntyre told me to tell you," he said, "that you two had better go along and help move the herd to the next camp. That's what you get for going on night herd--an easy job for the rest of the day."

"That suits me well enough," laughed Joe. "We'll take it easy to-day, Jack, and I'll bet McIntyre will make it up to us in the next few days, and we'll have plenty of riding to do."

"I hope we will," replied Jack.

When they returned to the herd they found that the cattle had about finished feeding, and had been driven down to a little stream to drink. Now came the work of pushing them along over the ten or twelve miles to the next camp. It was a slow and more or less wearisome task; but, as Joe said, it was all in the day's work. The cattle were full and lazy and unwilling to move. Each one would go on just as long as it was being driven, but all the others stopped. It was constantly necessary to ride up behind the little groups and urge them on, and the time of two men was spent in riding backward and forward at the tail of the herd pushing on the laggards. One man rode ahead of the herd, at a slow walk; and there was one at either side, to keep the cattle from scattering.

After the herd had been moving along for two or three hours, Bill Duncan, the man in the lead, called back something to the others; but they did not hear what he said, and, as he went on, paid no particular attention to it. A few moments later there was quite an excitement among the leading cattle. They were lowing and clustering together in a thick bunch, and as the cow punchers pushed up toward them they could see that they were pawing the ground and some of them were kneeling and thrusting their horns into the soil, and there was much commotion. Quietly, but very steadily the boys urged the cattle along and at length broke up the gathering; but the animals were excited, and the yearlings and young stock ran ahead, kicking their heels in the air and striking at each other with their horns.

After they had passed the place, the explanation of the excitement was seen. Some animal had recently been killed there, and its blood and other remains smelled by the cattle had greatly excited them.

"That must have been what Bill was talking about when he called back to us," Joe said to the others. "We ought to have sent some one up to find out what he was saying."

"That's so," agreed Jack; "but, say, Joe, you know more about cattle than I do, what is it that makes stock stampede? Of course, it's easy enough to see why they might get frightened at the smell of blood, but I understand that sometimes they start off without any reason whatever--any reason we can see, at least."

"Well," Joe answered slowly, "you'll have to ask somebody who knows more than I do. I've seen cattle start off without any cause at all that I could see, and they 'most always start off without any reason. On a stormy night I've seen them stampede at a flash of lightning, and then again, one still night I saw a bunch start when one of the boys lighted a match for his cigarette. One fall I was helping drive a bunch of beef to the railroad; they went down into a little valley and when they got close to the stream a big flock of blackbirds flew up in a thick cloud, making, of course, some noise with their wings, and them fat beef just turned and ran for half a day. Some of the cattle we never did find, and those that we got I guess had lost fifty pounds to the head."

"I suppose," said Jack, "that it is just panic, and, of course, in a panic nothing ever stops to reason."

"I guess that's about the size of it. I've read in the papers stories about people getting scared and stampeding, just exactly the way cattle or horses do, and I reckon that all animals are a good deal alike in this, whether they go on two legs or on four."

"Why, yes," said Jack; "some of the stories I've read told about people getting scared in a theater when it took fire, and they all seemed to lose their senses, and sometimes the firemen would find the bodies all piled up in a corner or against the wall, the under ones dead from suffocation, just the way scared sheep will pile up sometimes in the corner of the shed, when you are catching them to dip them. The men are just as bad as the women and children, and seem to try to fight with them, trying to get out first."

"Down South I once saw a bunch of mules stampede. They didn't seem to have any idea where they were going, and a part of the bunch ran right slam into a freight-car, and, of course, killed themselves."

"Well, it surely is not easy to explain these things," declared Jack. "I would like mighty well to have some of these professors who are always studying about the way the mind works tell me how the mind of a horse or a cow acts when it is stampeding."

Joe laughed.

"Hold on there," he said. "You want to get straight on that, I reckon. I never heard, and I don't believe anybody else ever did, of a horse or a cow stampeding. To have a stampede you've got to have a lot of animals together, and they act on each other and make each other more and more scared all the time. You can frighten a single horse, or a single cow, and it will run away, but it won't run far; but you stampede a bunch of stock and it will run and run and keep on running, and for a while it keeps running harder and harder, all the time."

"I see what you mean; and I guess you're right about it," conceded Jack.

One of the other boys had come up while they were talking.

"Yes," he said, "Joe has got it straight, all right; and I never have been able to find out anything more about it than he has. I've heard old cow men talk about it, too, but I've never heard one of them say that he could understand it. Joe's telling about seeing a bunch of stock start when a boy lit a match, reminds me of a time when I saw a bunch run just because a fellow threw down his cigarette. If a bunch of cattle is ready to run, it seems as if 'most anything would start 'em. You talk to any old cow man about this and you'll get a whole lot of facts, but mighty few reasons."

All day long the cattle moved on over the rolling hills. Often the wagons and _cávaya_ could be seen at no very great distance; and at last, late in the afternoon, the camp was sighted and the boys took the stock down below it on the creek, let them drink, and then feed slowly back into the hills. They were kept pretty well together all the time, but would not, of course, be bedded down until near sunset. Jack and Joe stopped here with the herd, while the other boys went into camp to get their supper. They would then come out again to bed down the cattle, and be relieved a little later by the regular night herders. The cattle were hungry, and were feeding greedily. They needed little or no looking after; and the boys, riding to the top of a hill, got off their horses and, throwing down their reins and holding the ends of their ropes, let the saddle horses feed about them. As they sat there talking about various things, Joe happened to speak of southern California, and the way the Mexicans rode and handled cattle, and as they talked he told Jack something of his past life.

"My father," he said, "came out with one of the early emigrant trains with his brothers and sisters, his father and mother having a nice little outfit of their own. Somehow or other, when they were crossing through the mountains in the late fall, just before reaching California, they got separated from the main train, and got off in a little pocket by themselves, and didn't seem to be able to find their way out of it. I never rightly understood how it was, for my father died when I was a little fellow, but it seems that they got up there and the snow was so deep that they could not get out. Their stock was getting poor and they didn't have enough provisions to last them through the winter. I've heard my grandmother tell how grandfather worried about what he ought to do, and how at last he made up his mind that he had to go down to the main trail and get help, or else they would all starve to death. He made himself a pair of snowshoes, left his rifle with his wife, took one day's grub, and started to try to find the trail. My grandmother didn't want him to go a bit; she was afraid that he would get lost, and then they'd be worse off than ever. If they had to die, she wanted all of them to die together.

"He started off and did get lost, but, somehow or other, he managed to get down near to the trail, and was found by a man who was hunting deer for a little train that was coming along. That train was all right. It went into camp and the men started out and broke a way up into the little valley where my grandmother was, and brought down the whole outfit and took them on to California. There my grandfather got work and did pretty well, and when my father grew up he went down near Los Angeles, and took up a ranch there, and we have always been comfortably off. But I always wanted to ride a horse rather than go to school, and as soon as I was big enough I got work with one of the cattle companies down there, and I've been punching cows ever since. Of course I was a big fool not to go to school and get a good education instead of just being able to read and write, as I am now; but I've seen a lot of work with cows, and, I tell you, some of those greasers down there can stay with a horse and handle a rope better than any man you ever see in this country."

"I expect they're mighty fine riders, Joe; and in the old times, when there were cattle all over the country there, 'most all the men must have been great cow hands, just as I suppose they are now in Mexico. Every fellow was put on a horse as soon as he was able to toddle, and I suppose he stayed with it until he was an old man."

"Yes, if he didn't get killed before he grew old. Hold on, Jack! Watch those bulls down there!" Joe exclaimed. "I think we're going to have a scrap!"

For some time Jack had heard low rumblings coming from the bunch of cattle but had paid no attention to them; but now he saw that a couple of big bulls seemed to be making preparations for a fight. One of them was a white-faced red and white animal which might be a grade Durham or Hereford, while the other, solid red in color, looked more like one of the old-fashioned long-horned Texans, or at least what they used to call out in that country a Cherokee.

Fifteen years earlier, as Jack had often been told, almost all the cattle in the country were Texas cattle driven up from the south to the plains, and there purchased by the northern cattlemen, taken out to their ranches, fed for a year or two, and then shipped to market. The excellent grazing and the cold winters seemed to make these cattle grow larger and fatter than the Texas cattle were, and they brought good prices in Chicago. Moreover, the calves raised on the northern range were bigger and better than those brought up from the south, and it was not long before the northern cattle owners got into the way of buying herds of Texas cows and grading them up with more or less well-bred bulls. This course made a very great change in the cattle. They grew larger in body, shorter in limb, lost their long horns and became far more like real beef steers than the old Texas long-horns ever were. It was now getting to be almost unusual to see an animal that looked like a Texas long-horn, or even like a Cherokee steer.

One of these bulls, however, was of the old type, while the other seemed to represent the new. The two stood facing each other, not very far apart, muttering, moaning, pawing up the dust and throwing it high in the air to fall on their broad backs and roll back to the ground. Presently the short-horned bull went down on his knees and thrust his horns into the earth, and then rose and shook the dirt from his head. The other bull did the same thing, his long horns tearing up a great mass of soil, and when he rose to his feet his shaggy face and head were covered with dirt and sticks picked up from the ground. Slowly the bulls drew nearer to each other, and at length, when but a few feet apart, the red bull sprang forward; the other bent down and lunged to meet him, and their horns came together with a sharp clash. The shock affected neither bull; neither gave back; and for some moments they pushed and pushed against each other, their feet plowing up the soil and the tense corded muscles standing out like ridges on their great hams.

The remainder of the herd had drawn off a little to one side. Most of the animals were still feeding or looking off over the prairie, heeding the battle not at all, but a little fringe of cows and young stock on the edge of the herd faced the fighting bulls and looked at them with mild interest.

Jack and Joe watched the fight eagerly.

"The chances are all in favor of the big bull," declared Joe. "He's got the weight and he'll win out."

"I don't know," said Jack. "It looks to me as if he were going to push the red bull all over the prairie; but, on the other hand, the little one is twice as quick and twice as active. What's more, I'll bet the red fellow has twice the wind of the other, and if he can tire out that big fat bull he'll make him run."

"Yes," agreed Joe, "there's no doubt that if he's got the wit to work the fight right, he'll be able to drive the big bull; but if the big bull is smart, he won't let himself be tired out."

"Well, let's see. Look at the way the big fellow is pushing back the little fellow now!"

And certainly it seemed as if weight were beginning to tell, for, little by little, the red bull moved backward, and appeared to be quite unable to hold his opponent. In the meantime, the horns of both bulls began to show red as if smeared with blood.

Farther and farther the red bull was pushed back. Presently he stopped resisting; by a nimble bound he sprang off to one side and, quickly circling, returned to the attack, as if trying to gore the big bull in the neck or shoulders. The big one had turned, however, and received the shock on his horns; and this time without much delay he pushed his enemy back. The red bull again jumped and again made a circle, and the big bull, seeing what was intended, faced to receive the charge on his horns. The two came together hard, and the sound of the shock was plainly heard. By this time both were weary and winded, and their long tongues hung out of their mouths and almost reached to the ground.

It seemed now as if the red bull were trying to do precisely what Jack had spoken of a little while before--to tire out his stronger opponent--and it soon began to look as if he were succeeding. The big bull turned more slowly to receive the charge; and, while he had not as yet received any noticeable wound, he looked as if he would like to stop fighting, and to call the battle a draw. He began to look from one side to the other, and at last it was evident that he was trying to get away.

"By gosh! the little fellow has got him whipped!" Joe cried.

A moment or two later the big bull, when he had the opportunity, turned tail and trotted heavily off over the prairie away from the herd. The little one followed him, of course, and butted him in the hips with great force but his wide-spread horns did not cut the flesh. Each time the red bull hit his opponent, the big bull roared with fear, and the sight greatly amused the cowboys.

"Come on," Joe said at last; "we mustn't let those fellows go too far. They've got to be brought back to the bunch."

Jumping on their horses they followed the two, first turning the red bull, which was loath to leave the pursuit. Joe hurried him back to the herd, while Jack rode on a little way, turned the big bull, and slowly drove him to the bunch.

Soon after this, and long before they had finished talking over the fight, the other men came back from camp, and Joe and Jack went in to get their supper.