CHAPTER XVIII

FLOTSAM

THE morning advanced. The riders had begun to reassert the dominance of man and horse over horned kine. Band joining band, converging, controlled, the approaching dust clouds seemed to show that ruin had not been complete; that the salvage was larger than an inexperienced man would have hoped.

“They got anyways a thousand head there,” said Dalhart to the cook. He swung into saddle and rode out, meeting Nabours, who came ahead, throwing up a hand.

“Stop there, Dalhart! We got to tally in the findings. Knot your rope. The boys’ll set ’em through.”

The two wheeled apart. Slowly the herd was dribbled through between them, while the crude but efficient art of handling cows went on. Each sat his horse, facing the other. At each hundred he advanced a knot under his thumb. When the last steer had passed the two did not vary five head in the tally of the crowding mob of cattle.

“Eleven forty-six!” Nabours called. Dalhart nodded.

“I can’t be sure. I made her eleven fifty.”

Nabours grumbled. “It’s a start, no more. Go back and help the other boys, Dalhart. There’s a big holding yon way, about five mile toward the hills, besides this one. Bring ’em in.”

Del Williams rode to the cook fire and had a tin cup of coffee before he roped a fresh horse and changed his saddle. Before leaving he turned to Nabours.

“Was any of our boys off north, about three mile, Jim?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The run was mostly east.”

“Well, I seen sever’l men riding over towards the hills where I was at, about sunup.”

Nabours growled his own suspicions.

“Well, it might of been worse,” went on Williams. “I seen fifty head piled in one arroyo. I don’t know how many more there may be, further on; but the boys are gethering a good many at the aidge of the pecan bottoms where the creek runs. Golly-hemlock! We ain’t half made the herd yet! The boys’ll be bringing ’em in.”

“Now, Sinker!” The foreman turned as the boy horse wrangler came up, grinning diffidently. “Reg’lar vaquero, eh, hide pants and all?”

“Del said I could have his leggins,” the boy replied, blushing vividly. “Now, my pants was tore, and that there point man has got on my necktie. But please kain’t I leave my horses and go help round up? My horses won’t go fur.”

“Huh! Want to break in and be a full cow hand, eh? Your job’s on the remuda. But you can go ef you don’t stay over a hour, like yore maw used to say.”

The boy sang very loud as he rode off. He hoped she had seen the sprouting down on his cheek.

“I shore know what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “After this, nights, I’ll spread down, her side the camp. I’ll sleep the neardest of anybody to her, so’s’t I kin keep watch.”

* * * * *

Dust and noise, harbingers of more cattle coming in, twice more called Nabours and Dalhart to their tally stands.

“Well, anyhow, we got over twenty-five hundred head right now, and more in sight. Wait till Sinker and Sanchez comes in with their drag. Ef we get over thirty-five hunderd, that’s big enough for a herd to drive good. What’s a few cows? We can comb the whole country by to-morrer. They was too full to run fur, but they fanned on us.”

Nabours, under the influence of rest and coffee, began to relax.

“I’ll go over to Miss Taisie’s camp afore long,” said he, “and tell her we ain’t broke yet.

“But say, Mr. Dalhart, tell me”—he cast a quizzical look at the other’s rather spick-and-span appearance in contrast to his own—“was you maybe going to church? And you might let me know ef you put bear’s grease on your whiskers too.”

Dalhart, unmoved, stroked his luxuriant beard.

“Nem-mind,” said he. “What’s a man withouten a good baird? Kain’t no woman git away from a baird. Now, I riz whiskers sence I was twenty, and I allus noticed, ever I swep’ my baird acrost a gal’s face she was shore mine.”

“You ain’t got no gall hardly, have you?” rejoined Jim Nabours. “Well, keep in mind there’s sever’l you ain’t swep’ yet, ner ain’t apt to. Laigs is better’n whiskers in the cow game. Keep yore eye on that Sinker kid! He’ll make a cow hand.”

As to this prophecy of the old foreman, events bade fair verification. All the remainder of the day the bed-ground holding increased, and late in the afternoon came a last drove of trotting longhorns, urged on by the ambitious Cinquo, who had relieved faithful Sanchez, found watching a considerable bunch grazing while he himself awaited help.

“You’re living up to them hair pants, son,” was the foreman’s comment.

The full complement of hands now was in camp. The cook’s fire was glowing in its trench. Men were eating three meals in one—beans, corn bread, molasses. They talked, mouths full, contented. Not a man lost; maybe not over ten per cent of the herd gone; they thought the scrape well over. Even Nabours began to talk. It was these last comers, however, who had brought the biggest news.

“It was Sanchez found him,” broke in Cinquo in his repeated explanation. “When I seen him, too, he was daid, plumb daid. He ain’t none of our hands. He got kotched in the run where they piled over the bank.”

“That so, Sanchez? _Quien es?_” demanded Nabours of the old Mexican.

“_Es verdad_,” replied Sanchez. “_Quien es? Yo no sais._ Me, I dunno.” He shrugged a thin shoulder indifferently.

“Now, he was a heavy-set man, with sort o’ red face, maybe—sandy, anyhow—an’ he didn’t look like no real cow hand.” Cinquo was more explicit.

“No, but I’ll bet he was a real cow thief,” growled Nabours. “I’ll bet they was all around our camp, outside the herd, last night. Fools for luck. Well, anyhow, that makes two. Leave him lay where he’s at, the damned thief! I only wish it was Sim Rudabaugh or Mr. Dan McMasters!”

* * * * *

The losses, thanks to good cow work, bade fair to be far less than the morning had promised. Nabours thought next day the main herd could be pushed on northward, slowly, while a few men were held back, detailed for a last combing of the broken ground where the run gradually had faded out. True, the herd might tally out two or three hundred short—probably less than that. But a cow was only a cow. Besides that, a number of cows had come in that did not show the Fishhook road brand, as Del Williams mentioned to Nabours.

“You mean they don’t show it yet,” remarked that veteran. “We’re working for a orphant. A cow is only a cow, and these men in here wouldn’t mind ef oncet they seen the orphant.”

“I gathered them strays, er some,” broke in Cinquo. “Er me an’ Sanchez did. We brung in Ol’ Alamo, that big dun lead steer, an’ he brung in a lot o’ strays follerin’ him.”

“I got a damn good lead steer,” said Jim Nabours solemnly, helping himself to coffee. “Sinker, you got the nacherl makings of a cowman in you.”

The tired men, taking without a murmur the added sleeplessness of a full-night watch, made every safeguard against a repetition of the late disaster. The whole camp was sleepless. The cook kept his fire going all the night and fed the men as now and then they straggled in after the reassembled herd seemed safely bedded.

Even at Taisie’s camp little sleep was known. Old Anita nodded at her fire, but Milly was openly bellicose.

“Ah got a load in my gun fer dat triflin’ nigger Jim, Miss Taisie,” she declared; “but Ah done put another load down on top o’ hit. Ef ary man come snoopin’ roun’ yere in de dark agin Ah’m gwine to bust him wide open—Ah suttenly will!”