Part 2

The flies were tickling Jack’s bare legs and creeping into the neck of his nightgown, where the button was off, as usually it is from a seven-year-old’s nightgown. He was restless, “like a dog that hunts in dreams,” for he was taking the old paths again that once he had known so well.

From the eastern hills came the mingled, far-off bleating, the ululation of a multitude of driven sheep. The sound had reached Jack’s dreaming ear. Suddenly his dream took shape, and for an instant he was a happy boy.

He was “at home” in the East. It was sheep-washing time, the last week in May; the apple orchards were a mass of bloom and the deep, old, winding lanes were sweet with their perfume. Jack was hurrying up the lane by the Long Pond to the sheep-washing place, where the water came down from the pond in a dark, old, leaky, wooden flume, and was held in a pool into which the sheep were plunged by twos and by threes, squeezed and tumbled about and lifted out to stagger away under the apple trees and dry their heavy fleeces in the sun. Jack was kicking in his sleep, when his name was called by a voice outside the window and he woke. Nothing was left of the dream, with all its sweets of sight and sound and smell, but the noise of the river’s continuous wrestle with the rocks of the upper bend, and that far-off multitudinous clamor from over the sun-baked hills.

“Jack, come out!” said the voice of Jack’s big cousin. “They are going to ‘sheep’ us. There’s a band of eight thousand coming!”

There was a great scattering of flies and of bedclothes, as Jack leaped out. He wasted no regrets upon the past,--one isn’t so foolish as that at seven years old,--but was ready for the joys of the present. Eight thousand sheep, or half that number (allowing for a big cousin’s liberal computation), were a sight worth seeing. As to being “sheeped,” what was there in an engineer’s camp to “sheep,” unless the eight thousand woolly range-trotters should trot over tents and house roofs and stovepipes and all, like Santa Claus’s team of reindeer!

Jack was out of bed and into his clothes in a hurry, and off over the hill with his cousin, buttoning the buttons of his “star” shirt waist on the way.

The “band” was pouring over the hill slopes in all directions, making at full speed for the river. The hills themselves seemed to be dizzily moving. The masses of distant small gray objects swarmed, they drifted, they swam, with a curious motionless motion. They looked like nothing more animated than a crop of gray stones, nearly of a size, spreading broadly over the hills and descending toward the river with an impulse which seemed scarcely more than the force of gravitation.

The dogs were barking, the shepherds were racing and shouting to head off the sheep and check their speed, lest the hundreds behind should press upon the hundreds in front and force them out into deep water. The hot air throbbed with the tumult.

When the thirst of every panting throat had been slaked and the band began to scatter along the hill slopes, the boys went forward to speak with the sheepmen.

A few moments afterward both lads were returning to the camp on a run, to ask permission to accept from the shepherds the gift of a lamb that couldn’t “keep up” with the band. It had run beside its mother as far as its strength would carry it, and then it had fallen and been trampled; and there it must lie unless help could revive it. A night on the hills, with the coyotes about, would finish it.

Permission was given, and breakfast was a perfunctory meal for the children by reason of the lamb lying on the strip of shade outside. After breakfast they sopped its mouth with warm milk, they sponged it with cold water, they tried to force a spoonful of mild stimulant between its teeth. They hovered and watched for signs of returning life. The lamb lay with its eyes closed; its sides, that were beginning to swell, rose and sank in long, heavy gasps. Once it moved an ear, and the children thought it must be “coming to.” Upon this hopeful sign they began at once to make plans for the lamb’s future life and joys with them in the cañon.

It should be led down to the river, night and morning, to drink; it should have bran soaked in milk; it should nibble the grass on the green strip; they would build it a house, for fear the coyotes should come prowling about at night; it should follow them up the gulch and over the hills, and race with them in the evenings on the river beach, as “Daisy,” the pet fawn, had done--until something happened to her (the children never knew what), and the lovely creature disappeared from the cañon and out of their lives forever.

When the strip of morning shadow was gone, they lifted the lamb tenderly and carried it to the strip of afternoon shadow on the other side of the house; and still it took no notice of the water or the milk, or of all the children’s care, nor seemed to hear that they were planning a happy life for it, if only it would get well.

When twilight came, and still it had not moved, the children held anxious consultation on the subject of their neighbors, the coyotes; but their father assured them there would be no danger, so near to the house; and it seemed a pity to disturb the poor lamb.

When the cool night wind began to blow down the cañon again, and the children were asleep, the lamb made its last effort. It is the instinct of all dumb creatures to keep upon their feet as long as they can stand; for when they have fallen the herd has no compassion,--or it may be that its comrades press around the sufferer out of curiosity or mistaken sympathy, and so trample it out of existence without meaning the least harm. The little nursling of the range obeyed this instinct in its last moments,--struggled to its feet and fell, a few steps farther on; and the lamb that couldn’t keep up was at rest.

No more toiling over hills and mountains and across hot valleys, packed in the midst of the band, breathing the dust, stunned with the noise, always hungry, almost always athirst, baked by the sun, chilled by the snow, driven by the wind,--drifting on, from mountain to river, from river to plain.

This one, out of eight thousand, could rest at last, on cool grass, with the peace and the silence and the room of a summer night around it.

The band slept upon the hills that night; the next morning they crossed the gulch above the camp, and drank up by the way _all_ the water of the little stream. Not another drop was seen for days. At length it gathered strength enough to trickle down again, but it was necessary to dip it up and let it stand in casks to settle before it was fit for use; and meanwhile the Chinamen carriers did double duty.

Those eastern hills in spring had been covered with wild flowers,--the moss pink, lupines both white and blue, wild phlox, the small yellow crocus, beds of tiny sweet-scented wild pansies, the camas flower, and a tall-stemmed, pale lilac lily,--the queen of the hill garden. But when spring came again, the old pathways were like an ash heap. The beautiful hill garden was a desert.

When these great sheep bands pass over the country, from range to range, from territory to territory, they devour not only the vegetation of one year, but the seeds, the roots, and, with these, the promise of the next.

It is the migration of the Hungry and the Thirsty; and a cry goes out against them, like the cry of Moab when the children of Israel camped within its borders:--

“Surely this multitude will lick up all that is round about us.”

DREAM-HORSES

There is a little girl who hangs upon her mother’s chair, getting her head between her mother’s work and the light, and begs for pictures.

She expects her mother to make these pictures on some bit of paper treasured for the purpose which she offers, with a book to rest it on, and a stubby pencil notched with small toothmarks, the record of moments of perplexity when Polly was making her own pictures.

It is generally after a bad failure of her own that she comes to her mother. The pang of disappointment with her own efforts is apt to sharpen her temper a little; it does not make Polly more patient with her mother’s mistakes that she makes mistakes herself. But between critic and artist, with such light as the dark lantern of a little girl’s head permits to fall upon the paper, the picture gets made somehow, and before it is finished Polly’s heart will be so full of sunshine that she will insist upon comparisons most flattering to the feelings of her artist, between their different essays at the same subject.

It is a subject they are both familiar with; and it is wonderful, considering the extent of Polly’s patronage, that her artist’s work does not better itself.

It is always a picture of a young person on horseback,--a young person about the age of Polly, but much handsomer and more grown-up looking. And the horse must be a pony with a flowing mane and tail, and his legs must be flung out, fore and aft, so that in action he resembles one of those “crazy-bugs” (so we children used to call them) that go scuttling like mad things across the still surface of a pond. In other respects he may be as like an ordinary pony as mamma and the stubby pencil can make him. But the young person on the pony must be drawn in profile, because Polly cannot make profiles, except horses’ profiles; her young persons always look straight out of the picture as they ride along, and the effect, at full speed, on a horse with his legs widely extended from his body, is extremely gay and nonchalant.

With the picture in her hand, the little girl will go away by herself and proceed to “dream and to dote.”

She lives in a horsey country. Horses in troops or “bands” go past by the trails, on the one side of the river or the other. Sometimes they ford where the water is breast-high over the bar. It is wild and delicious to hear the mares whinnying to their foals in midstream, and the echo of their voices, with the rushing of the loud water pent among the hills.

Often the riders who are in charge of the band encamp for the night on the upper bend of the river, and the red spark of their camp-fire glows brightly about the time the little girl must be going to bed; for it is in spring or fall the bands of horses go up into the hills or down into the valleys, or off, one does not know where,--to a “round up,” perhaps, where each stockman counts his own, and puts his brand on the young colts. Over the hills, where Polly and her big brother go wild-flower hunting, horses wander loose and look down from the summits, mere specks, like black mice, against the sky; they are plainly to be seen from miles away, for there is not a tree anywhere upon these hills. Sometimes a single horse, the chieftain of a troop, will stand alone on a hilltop and take a look all the wide country round, and call, in his splendid voice like “sounding brass,” to the mares and colts that have scattered in search of alkali mud to lick, or just to show, perhaps, that they are able to get on without his lordship. He will call, and if his troop do not answer, he will condescend to go a little way to meet them, halting and inquiring with short whinnies what they are about. Sometimes, in spite of discipline, they will compel him to go all the way to meet them; for even a horse soon tires of dignity on a hilltop all alone, with no one to see how it becomes him.

Polly likes to meet stray horses on her walks, close enough to see their colors and tell which are the pretty ones, the ones she calls hers. They stare at her from under breezy forelocks, and no doubt think themselves much finer creatures than little girls who have only two feet to go upon. And the little girl thinks so, too,--or so it would seem; for every evening after sunset when she runs about the house bareheaded she plays she is a horse herself. And not satisfied with being a horse, she plays she is a rider, too. Such a complex ideal as that surely never came into the brain of a “cayuse,” for all his big eyes and his tangle of hair which Polly thinks so magnificent.

The head and the feet of Polly and her tossing locks are pure horse; that is evident at a glance as she prances past the window. But the clinched, controlling hands are the hands of the rider,--a thrilling combination on a western summer evening, when the brassy sunset in the gate of the cañon is like a trumpet-note, and the cold, pink light on the hills is as keen as a bugle-call, and the very spirit of “boots and saddles” is in the wind that gustily blows up from the plains, turning all the poplars white, and searching the quiet house from room to room for any laggard stay-indoors.

Within a mile of the house, in the cañon which Polly calls home, there is a horse ranch in a lovely valley opening toward the river. All around it are these treeless hills that look so barren and feed so many wild lives. The horses have a beautiful range, from the sheltered valley up the gulches to the summits of the hills and down again to the river to drink. The men live in a long, low cabin, attached to a corral much bigger than the cabin, and have an extremely horsey time of it.

I shouldn’t be surprised if it were among Polly’s dreams to be one of a picked company of little-girl riders, in charge of a band of long-tailed ponies, just the right size for little girls to manage; to follow the ponies over the hills all day, and at evening to fetch water from the river and cook their own little-girl suppers in the dingy cabin by the corral; to have envious visits from other little girls, and occasionally to go home and tell mother all about it.

Now, in this country of real horses there were not many play-horses, and these few not of the first quality. Hobby-horses in the shops of the town were most trivial in size, meant only for riders of a very tender age. Some of them were merely heads of horses, fastened to a seat upon rockers, with a shelf in front to keep the inexperienced rider in his place.

There were people in the town, no doubt, who had noble rocking-horses for their little six-year-olds, but they must have sent for them on purpose; the storekeepers did not “handle” this variety.

So Polly’s papa, assisted by John Brown, the children’s most delightful companion and slave and story-teller, concluded to build a hobby-horse that would outdo the hobby-horse of commerce. (Brown was a modest, tender-hearted man, who had been a sailor off the coast of Norway, among the islands and fiords, a miner where the Indians were “bad,” a cowboy, a ranchman; and he was now irrigating the garden and driving the team in the cañon.)

Children like best the things they invent and make themselves, and plenty of grown people are children in this respect; they like their own vain imaginings better than some of the world’s realities.

But Polly’s rocking-horse was no “vain thing,” although her father and John did have their own fun out of it before she had even heard of it.

His head wasn’t “made of pease-straw,” nor his tail “of hay,” but in his own way he was quite as successful a combination.

His eyes were two of Brother’s marbles. They were not mates, which was a pity, as they were set somewhat closely together so you couldn’t help seeing them both at once; but as one of them soon dropped out it didn’t so much matter. His mane was a strip of long leather fringe. His tail was made up of precious contributions extorted from the real tails of Billy and Blue Pete and the team-horses, and twined most lovingly together by John, the friend of all the parties to the transfer.

The saddle was a McClellan tree, which is the framework of a kind of man’s saddle; a wooden spike, fixed to the left side of it and covered with leather, made a horn, and the saddle-blanket was a Turkish towel.

It was rainy weather, and the cañon days were short, when this unique creation of love and friendship--which are things more precious, it is to be hoped, even than horseflesh--took its place among Polly’s idols, and was at once clothed on with all her dreams of life in action.

When she mounted the hobby-horse she mounted her dream-horse as well; they were as like as Don Quixote’s helmet and the barber’s basin.

She rode him by firelight in the last half-hour before bedtime. She rode him just after breakfast in the morning. She “took” to him when she was in trouble, as older dream-riders take to _their_ favorite “hobbies.” She rocked and she rode, from restlessness and wretchedness into peace, from unsatisfied longings into temporary content, from bad tempers into smiles and sunshine.

She rode out the winter, and she rode in the wild and windy spring. She got well of the measles pounding back and forth on that well-worn seat. She took cold afterward, before the winds grew soft, experimenting with draughts in a corner of the piazza.

Now that summer gives to her fancies and her footsteps a wider range, the hard-worked hobby gets an occasional rest. (Often he is to be seen with his wooden nose resting on the seat of a chair which is bestrewed with clover blossoms, withered wild-roses, and bits of grass; for Polly, like other worshipers of graven images, believes that her idol can eat and drink and appreciate substantial offerings.) But when the dream grows too strong, the picture too vivid,--not mamma’s picture, but the one in the child’s heart,--she takes to the saddle again, and the horsehair switch and the leather fringes float upon the wind, and her fancies mount, far above the lava bluffs that confine her vision.

Will our little girl-riders be as happy on their real horses, when they get them, as they are upon their dream-horses? Is the actual possession of “back hair” and the wearing of long petticoats more blissful than the knot, hard-twisted, of the ends of a silk handkerchief, which the child-woman binds about her brows when she walks--like Troy’s proud dames whose garments sweep the ground--in the skirt of her mother’s “cast-off gown”?

It depends upon the direction these imperious dream-horses will take with our small women. Will the rider be in bondage to the steed? Heaven forbid! for dream-horses make good servants but very bad masters. Will they bear her fast and far, and will she keep a quiet eye ahead and a constant hand upon the rein? Will they flag and flounder down in the middle-ways, where so many of us have parted with our dream-steeds and taken the footpath, consoled to find that we have plenty of company and are not altogether dismayed? The dream-horses carry their child-riders beyond the mother’s following, so that the eyes and the heart ache with straining after the fleeting vision.

It is better she should not see too much nor too far along the way they go, since “to travel joyfully is better than to arrive.”

If only they could know their own “blessedness” while the way is long before them!

AN IDAHO PICNIC

At the camp in the cañon they had a cow. It is true she sometimes broke away and went off with the herds on the range and had to be chased on horseback and caught with a lasso. They had chickens,--all that were left them from night raids by the coyotes;[1] and a garden, the products of which they shared with the jack-rabbits and the gophers. But the supply wagon brought fresh fruit from the town, ten miles away, and new butter from the valley ranches. There were no mosquitoes, no peddlers, no tramps, no book agents, no undesirable neighbor’s children, whom one cannot scare away as one may the neighbor’s dogs and chickens when they creep through the fence, but must be civil to for the sake of peace and good-will,--which are good things in a neighborhood.

Jack Gilmour worked at his crude inventions in the shop, and was allowed to use grown-up tools under certain not too hard conditions; and Polly rode up and down the steep path to the river beach on the shoulders of the young assistant engineers--and assistant everything-elses. The mother was waited on and spoiled, as women are in camp; she was even invited to go fishing with her husband and Mr. Dane, one of the young assistants-in-general. It was a dull time for work in the camp, and there were good care-takers with whom Mrs. Gilmour could trust the children. The boy was the elder. He was learning those two most important elements of a boy’s education, up to nine years, according to Sir Walter Scott,--to ride and to speak the truth. But he was only eight, and perhaps was not quite perfect in either.

He watched the three happy ones ride away, and as they turned on the hilltop and waved good-by to the little figure on the trail below, he was longing, with all the strength of desire an eight-year-old heart can know, for the time to come when he too should climb the hills and wave his hand against the sky before turning the crest, where he had so often stood and felt so small, gazing up into those higher hills that locked the last bright bend of the river from sight.

They were to go up Charcoal Creek; they were to cross the “Divide;” they were to go down Grouse Creek on the other side and camp on some unknown bit of the river’s shore.

The boy went stumbling back down the dusty path to his unfinished work in the shop,--the engine for a toy elevated road he was making. But the painfully fashioned fragments of his plan had no meaning for eyes that still saw only the hills against the morning sky, and the three happy ones riding away.

This first trip led to a second and longer one, to the fishing-grounds up the river, by the trail on the opposite shore. Jack heard his father and Mr. Dane talking one morning at the breakfast-table about riding down to Turner’s and getting a pack-animal and some more riding animals,--and mamma was going again! What good times the grown-ups did have! And John Brown, Jack’s particular crony from the men’s camp, was going, to cook and take care of the animals. This word “animal” is used in the West to describe anything that is ridden or “packed,”--horse, mule, Indian pony, or “burro.” It is never applied to cattle or unbroken horses on the range; these are “stock.”

The party were to take a tent and stay perhaps a week, if no word came from the home camp to call them back.

Jack slipped away from the table and went out and hung upon the railing of a footbridge that crossed the brook. Beside learning how to ride and to speak the truth, Jack was learning to whistle. He was practicing this last more persistently, perhaps, than either of the more important branches of knowledge,--let us hope because there was more need of practice; for he was as yet very far from being a perfect whistler. It was but a melancholy, tuneless little note in which he gave vent to his feelings, as he watched the trickling water.

“I’d like to take the boy,” his father was that moment saying at the breakfast-table in the cook-tent, “if we had anything he could ride.” And then he added, smiling, “There’s Mrs. O’Dowd.” The smile went around the table.

Mrs. O’Dowd, or “Peggy,” as she was variously called, was a gray donkey of uncertain age and mild but inflexible disposition who sometimes consented to carry the children over the hills at a moderate pace, her usual equipment being a side-saddle, which did not fit her oval figure (the curves of which turned the wrong way for beauty); so the side-saddle was always slipping off, obliging the children to slide down and “cinch up.”