CHAPTER IX.

ANIMAS VALLEY.--III.

It was still dark when Murray rose and looked outside, letting an eager rush of frosty air into the room that brought me back from heaven knows where I had strayed in dozing. Without--

"The dawn in russet mantle clad, Peeped o'er the brow of yonder distant hill,"

--old Animas Peak, which loomed up indistinct and colourless in the distance. Everything was ghostly and still, even the breath of chill wind that crept almost noiselessly up the valley. Presently, like a great trumpet's blare, the calling of a far-off cow to its calf rang through the hollow silence. Swiftly the red ripples of sunrise broke on the gray sea of dawn. The spectral Animas issued from obscurity, clad regally in purple and a few plumes of silver mist;

"The fair star that gems the glittering coronet of morn,"

in these latitudes, shrank back and paled out of sight.

"And like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn."

"Whist! it is cold!" we gasped, as we broke the ice in the pails of water that stood on a bench under the wall, and proceeded to wash as we might.

While breakfast was being prepared, I walked out on to the cienega to look for ducks. But one shot cleared the swamp, and returning to the house with a mallard, I fell in with Squito and Joe driving the band of cow-ponies into the corral. With a broad-brimmed, leather-banded cow-boy hat on, an old pair of cow-boy, high-heeled[27] Wellington boots, a red canvas overcoat of old man Murray's, buckled in round her waist by her cartridge-belt (to which was now attached a genuine six-shooter), and her vivid little face nestled in its deep collar, the child was a quaint picture.

"Oh, pshaw!" she exclaimed, with a merry little laugh of malice, for she utterly refused to believe in a "Britisher," "you've 'done' got up, then! Joe, the man's up a'ready!" (She always called me "the man.")

"Why not?" rejoined Joe, with a smile of greeting. "You ain't the on'y one that can get up mornings."

"Why, no! do you suppose that you have a monopoly of early hours?"

"Yes, yes, yes! That's what I do, exactly. The Colonel said th' other day, when I was wanting to be 'a capitalist,' that he'd give me all the gold that I could see in the valley at sunrise. You ain't got no sort o' right to come prospecting around now. I've 'denounced' it all--it's all mine, all mine." And she threw an arm out, and grasped at the sunny skies, laughingly. "'Sides" (mischievously), "ain't you one of these dudes as the Colonel brings down sometimes from El Paso and Silver, that wants kettles o' hot water to twelve o'clock? Oh, pshaw! we ain't got to joshing you yet! You wait till the boys and me puts up a job on you."

"Shucks! you think nobody ain't got no sagass but you," ejaculated Joe, as, launching her sauciest grimace at me, with a seat so sure and finished, that it was a treat to watch her, Squito shot off at a tangent on the broncho she was riding, with only a _hackamore_ or headstall, to bring back a couple of ponies that were straying from the bunch.

"Well, now, you boys," said Murray one morning after breakfast, "we want to keep on picking up the calves that ain't branded. Joe, you'd best ride in back of Cunningham's. Jake, you make a bend out towards the Peak, and the Double Adobes. I'll go in towards the Baker Place and Skeleton Cañon, there's two big calves runs in there somewhere that we missed at the round up. We've got to get up that band of mares that's running with Charles Dickens, and count 'em, one day this week, too."

"That's so," chimed in Squito; "I ain't got a colt at all in the corrals to 'gentle' now."

Squito, who was perfectly fearless, and unerring with the _lariat_, used to amuse herself during the day with 'halter-breaking' and 'gentling' the young colts as soon as they were weaned. In doing this she required but little assistance, and displayed judgment and patience only less remarkable than her skill.

"Well, we'll get you up one," said the old man. "What are you going to do to-day, Mr. Francis?"

"I'll ride with you, Murray," I said.

Out in the horse corral there was a busy scene for the next few minutes, as each man lassoed his half-broken mount, and brought him to a standstill, snorting with fear, a quivering statue of flesh and streaming hair, and then led him to the saddling bench by the house. With a horse-hair _lariat_ on her arm, the loop trailing from her shoulder, Squito looked on watchfully. But presently, taking compassion on my unskilful efforts, she whirled the rope twice round her head, enlarging the noose at the same time, and with the most perfect ease dropped it over the head of the "clay-bank" nag that I was endeavouring to catch. Almost simultaneously, she bent the other end of the lasso round one of the "snubbing" posts that stood about in the enclosure, and the "clay-bank" suddenly found himself captured. The Colonel, a martyr to rheumatism at the time, limped round meanwhile, chewing the end of a long cigar savagely, and swearing, not inaudibly, at the affliction which enforced his inaction.

Leaving the Gray Place, and turning our backs to the Peak, we headed for the Baker Place--some springs, about nine miles from the ranch, in the foot-hills of the San Simon range.

"Wild music makes the wind on silver strings."

A fresh breeze blew, not forcibly, but coolly and merrily, forming, one could almost fancy, the song of the world, as it grappled light-heartedly with its day's work. In the pale blue, far-off sky the sun shone brightly, and translucent cloud formations, of delicate texture, floated out like woman's hair on the sea of light, crossed and recrossed by one another as they lay in transverse currents of air at different altitudes. In the clear sunny atmosphere of the New Mexican winter, everything looked near and shone vividly; distance seemed to magnify rather than reduce in size the well-conditioned cattle that our quick-stepping ponies bore us past. And as we rode, keeping a sharp look-out for unbranded calves, that had been dropped since the fall "round up," or had then been overlooked, Murray (a one-idea man, whose heart and soul were wrapped up in cattle, and whose gods were the cattle-kings of California, "Dan Murphy, Haggin, Lux, and Miller, and them fellows,") held forth, as usual, on his favourite subject.

"There's lots of things to look to in choosing a range," he said. "There's some ranges that you couldn't hold cattle on, not if you had a man to every head of stock. They won't stay there; they'll keep on straying away. The grass don't suit 'em, or the water don't taste right, or there ain't 'nough shelter, or something--you can't always tell what _is_ the matter exactly. Fact is, you want good grass, and good water, and good shelter too, if you can get 'em. And you don't want your water all in one place either, or you'll soon find your grass at one end of the ranch and your water at the other; and when cattle have to travel eight or ten miles back and forth, they're going to be in pretty poor fix[28] all the time. You want the water well distributed--a spring here, and a spring there, and a creek or a cienega somewheres else. When you've got that kind of a range, you won't have no trouble holding your stock, they'll stay right there. I could handle 20,000 head of cattle in this valley with eight men. To be sure, our stock is pretty well corralled here by the hills, but all the same they don't want to quit. There's ways out of the valley, and they'd find 'em sure 'nough if they