Part 7

“Well, old girl,” he said, as he ambled away from headquarters three days later, with Shiela beside him, “here’s your one chance to wipe out your little slip. A lot of us humans don’t get that, my lady. So go to it and clear your name, Shee-la.”

There were twenty-five dogs on hand at the rendezvous, about thirteen more than were needed, and they ranged from bloodhounds and greyhounds to a wheezy water-spaniel, which thought he knew a scent when he struck it, and whose master fondled the same delusion of him. His presence led to a dispute at the outset, because the spaniel persisted in messing about and mugging a trail, and his owner pig-headedly abetted him. The owner was set in argument, and carried a long, smooth-bore rifle. However, both were persuaded to go home, quite convinced that spiteful jealousy was at the bottom of this attitude.

“So that’s Shiela?” queried a Gourd puncher. “I reckon you ought to kill her, O’Donnell. It’s her pup and his father what’s raising all the hell. She might run away ag’in and--”

“She’s my dog, Joe,” the boss cut in.

Hard upon his words, old Rags gave tongue and went away on a warm scent. Luck was with the hunters. Within two miles the dogs were running free, their noses in the air, making the ridges ring to their eager yelping; and a wolf, a tawny, limber-limbed wolf, smashed through a tangle of weeds and briars at the head of a gulch and streaked across the open country. The pack laid themselves out in pursuit, Shiela and the greyhounds running silently.

The wolfhound was well up with the leaders. A dozen strides would have brought the quarry to bay, when a speckled gray shape burst into view beneath her feet and departed at a tangent to her line of running, heading for a shallow draw. Shiela and one greyhound swerved and dashed after him. The others of the pack kept on behind the flagging fugitive.

Everything was against the gray. He was old, and the combats and the hunts of years had stiffened his muscles. He was full fed and heavy; slumbering, he had blundered into the chase when he could have lain low. The two silent things behind carried in their sinewy bodies the speed and stamina of generations of dogs whose special business in life it had been to run. A wall of earth faced them, the bank of a dried stream, and he must scale it in his flight. Well he knew that the race was over. He must fight, and as well here as elsewhere. When it comes to the last test of courage, the king of wolves is indeed a king.

A rapid glance over his shoulder showed him the greyhound almost at his flank. He reached the bank by a desperate spurt, whirled, and with one rending stroke, cast back the first pursuer, coughing in the throes of death. But the shock of the charge shook him for an instant and in that fraction of time he was unprepared to withstand the crushing velocity of Shiela’s onslaught. On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he received her. She went straight for his throat, and the grip being an eminently satisfactory one, she did not release it.

To and fro the big gray dragged her, over and over, tearing with his forefeet to pry her off, snapping his wide jaws in futile efforts to seize his enemy. His hind claws ripped unavailingly along the wolfhound’s sides; he writhed and twisted to gain an inch of freedom for his head--only an inch, and he could reach her shoulder. Once only Shiela growled, a deep, rumbling note of content. She knew what she had to do, and she felt this to be the right way. Slowly her jaws tightened and she hung to him soundlessly. The rasping snarls grew fainter; the tremendous heavings and lurchings slackened. The old lord of the cañon had made his last fight.

It was O’Donnell who drove her off. Blown but triumphant, he raced from the slaughter of the first quarry, and gave a long whistle of incredulity at sight of the slain.

“Father and son--father and son in one day,” he exclaimed. Then, “Poor Shee-la.”

As they trotted cheerily homeward, the wolfhound kept close to O’Donnell’s horse, and whenever she glanced up at him, frisking clumsily the while, he grinned down at her.

“You’ve wiped out your fault, Shee-la. You’ve done more than most,” he observed seriously, as they neared the ranch. “I thought once I’d have to send you away. Or--or send you out on the long trail.” Shiela leaped playfully at his horse’s bridle. “But we’ll stick together. Only,” he drew a deep breath, “we’ll take a holiday. We’ll go back--back home to County Mayo, old girl.”

VI MOLLY

It may be there are persons who will scoff at the assertion that there is more of sentiment in a cow than in any creature of four legs that walks the earth. Cavilers, these--hard-shelled individuals who look at the gentle bovine through the eye of commercialism, not gifted to see beyond her barnyard activities toward the nourishment of mankind. It is reasonably established that one may approach a horse in comradely security, confident of fair play. The rules as to hybrids are these: you walk up to a mule in a spirit of veneration and religious preparedness, wearing a sickly aspect of confidence. And you quaver soothing words and carry a club behind your back.

But toward a cow--ah, that is different. Here is a mainstay of life, a pillar and prop of civilization. Here is--well, a cow is a cow. Why, there was the time when three hundred furiously anxious, bawling mothers smashed out of a stout wooden corral on the Turkey Track range and laid a straight course across seven leagues of territory, in quest of their helpless progeny, mercilessly cooped in cars at a railroad siding, awaiting shipment to an Arizona butcher. They kept two well-grown men atop a water-tank for five hours, and--but to attempt a citation of cases would be idle. This is the simple tale of Molly.

She was not an especially pretty animal, Molly--just plain cow, dun in color, with a Jersey strain somewhere among her remote forebears. Yet, one could not gaze on Molly for long without a feeling of profound respect pervading his soul. It was not because one could see with half an eye that she gave large quantities of milk; that was merely the performance of her natural functions. Nor was it that her wistful regard suggested all the sorrows of her sex. Molly in some way made a subtle appeal to sympathy that cannot be voiced.

As a matter of fact, she ought to have been the pampered occupant of a clover field by day and of a stall by night. Instead, she was roaming the zacaton flats of the Tumbling K and losing herself among the blackbrush ridges, in vague wonder that the world was grown so large. Designed to be a respectable milch-cow on a dairy farm, here she was in the heart of a wilderness, and all because of a boy.

He came among us, pink and white and fearfully clean; and he was the owner’s son. There were eleven thousand cows in our domain, but milk had been a thing of rumor to the outfit, perhaps because it is inconvenient to milk on horseback. Now, however, Vance shoved his legs under the boards at the bunk-house and objected to clear, biting coffee. So, when he departed blacker than a Mexican, with a two months’ beard and overalls sustained by a strand of rope,--babbling wild things of a bath he would take, a bath that would endure for a day and a night,--we still had Molly.

“That cow’s got a mind, I tell you,” Uncle Henry assured the outfit at supper. “She’s got a mind jist like you or me, Dave, only better than yourn. Pass them frijoles.”

Perhaps Molly did have a mind. At any rate, she was humanly lonesome. To be the only one of her kind in a tract of five thousand acres--they kept her in the horse pasture--was depressing to a companionable disposition. The bronchos on the river flats and mesquite-clothed hills were shy, wild creatures, subject to alarms and foolish panic. With mild wonder she would watch them break into a run at a sound or a strange scent. They were masterful, too, always driving her away from the water-holes and the salt until they had had their fill. Instinctively she was afraid when one of them approached with careless confidence that she would give place. Yet, though unhappy, Molly never overlooked her duty, and each morning and each evening she stood quiet while Uncle Henry milked her, occasionally rumbling a note of satisfaction or sweeping at a fly with cautious backward swings of her head. Uncle Henry was becoming too stiff for hard riding, and now spent most of his time trying to persuade himself and others that the odd jobs he applied himself to were of his own choosing.

One morning Molly awoke to turmoil. Wondrous noises came to her on the west wind, and she arose and walked to the imprisoning fence. Truly the Tumbling K was become a Babel. In the wide, browned valleys, on the mesas, and far into the fastnesses of the Mules, bulls and cows and clumsy calves were on the march, with riders hanging in rear. Molly could hear the churning of the hosts on the round-up ground, and to her nostrils was wafted the taint of the dust belching heavenward in clouds. For the Tumbling K range was to be divided, and eight thousand head must be turned over to the retiring partner.

Where did all the cattle come from? Molly had never dreamed there were such hordes of her kind in the world. Armies of them filed by in long lines, the cowboys on flank and in rear shouting, whistling, spurring into the press in their efforts to urge the herds forward. Molly stood at the barb-wire fence most of the day, staring at this rally of her species. Sometimes she bawled a troubled greeting.

And the little calves! Many a toddling new-born, strayed from its mother and solicitous of protection, staggered out to sniff at the kindly disposed creature that nosed it so tenderly from the other side of a four-strand barrier. All night the trampling of sleepless thousands and the bawling of steers and worried cows came to disturb Molly’s slumbers. The bed-ground for the herds was not four hundred yards distant from the pasture fence. She could see tiny intermittent lights move slowly about them in a wide circle, where the men on guard smoked as they rode their rounds.

Next day her heart was filled with forebodings and uneasiness. Hundreds of cattle were driven into an extensive corral within the confines of her pasture, and thence, in small groups, they went into a chute, propelled by the whoops and outcries of sundry reckless horsemen who crowded their rear. Molly watched and wondered. She saw these cattle forced singly into a narrow runway; she saw them caught fast in a squeezer, heard their bellows of consternation and fright; and then there reached her the stinging odor of burned hair, when the branding irons seared the flesh. Upon which Molly would flip her tail in the air and lope away. But she always returned; much as she feared it, she could not leave this anguished assemblage.

It was Uncle Henry who discovered that the arrival of the herds was demoralizing our faithful benefactor. She no longer grazed sedately; even the succulent grama-grass of the creek-bottom failed to hold her, and she walked the barb-wire ceaselessly day and night. Her weight fell off in alarming fashion, and when, on the third evening, Uncle Henry approached with outstretched hand and honeyed speech, and the milk-pail cunningly concealed, she shook her big, patient head and moved off. He followed, and she quickened her pace.

“Consarn your fat haid!” roared Uncle Henry, never a patient man. “Hold still or I’ll take the hide off’n you.”

He tore after Molly, threatening dire visitations. Now, it takes an extremely clever person to circumvent a determined cow, when he is on foot and she has five thousand acres in which to manœuver, and Uncle Henry returned to headquarters, howling for somebody to lend him a horse and he would drag that old fool clear to Texas. We went without milk that night, and grumbled and swore precisely as if we had had nothing else all our lives.

* * * * *

“Hi-yi! Bear down on him, cowboys. More frijoles here!”

With a yell, Big John sprang to the lever of the squeezer and threw all his strength on it, gripping a plunging steer about the middle as he strove to win through the chute.

“Hot iron! Hot iron!” the wagon boss shrieked. “Somebody build that fire up. All right. That’s got him, Cas.”

Molly hung about near the corral, gazing on these frenzied activities in consternation. It was early morning and low-hanging mists were shredding before the sun.

Some calves passed through the chute by inadvertence. Being too small for the squeezer to hold, they were noosed as they came out, and branded on the ground. One was so tiny that the men at work beside the runway, idly rolling cigarettes during a halt in the operations, failed altogether to perceive him above the heavy lower boarding. As a result, he sauntered into the open, and there was no noose ready to snare. His ears were twitching with curiosity, and he moved his legs as if they were stiff and his feet hurt, as indeed they did, because he had come many weary miles and he was not three days old.

“Hi-yi! There goes a calf!” yelled the punchers. “Go to him, John. He’s just your size.”

Big John grinned, spat on his hands, and made a dive for the fugitive. “The li’l’ rascal,” he chuckled, grabbing for its tail. Instead of taking to the open and falling a prey to a roper, the calf lunged sideways and went under the horse-pasture fence. He was so short that he easily bowed his back and slid beneath the wire. The outfit sent up a shout of laughter, and exhorted John to stay with him; but the giant remained where he was, gazing fixedly at the fugitive. Molly was on the other side of the fence.

To her side the white-face bolted, confident of sanctuary. For a cow, Molly was terribly agitated. She turned about and about, trying to obtain a really good look at this forward baby who greeted her as his mother. The calf, on his part, kept close in an endeavor to secure his supper, being very hungry and properly careless as to where he got it. Molly smelled and sniffed at him, and edged off in intense nervousness. Evidently quite positive in his own mind that he had found what he had been seeking, the calf gave over all useless fuss and set himself resolutely to obtain a meal.

“Let him go, John,” the boss called. “We lost his mother over on the Magayan. Molly’ll look after him. Look out! Bear down on him, cowboys! It’s that big ol’ bull.”

Molly was thrilling to long-pent yearnings, and the vapors of self-delusion welled up to befog her instincts. After five minutes of nosing, the Jersey came to the conclusion that this must be her son, and yielded to his hungry importunities. With a deep murmur of content, she walked away, followed by her adopted baby. And behind a sage-brush, safe from interference, she fed him. The outfit watched them go in amazement, prophesying many things.

One of the few things they did not foretell came to pass next morning. Molly had hidden the calf behind some soapweed while she went to graze a few rods off, and, the dawn being still gray and the air stinging cold, we picked that particular bunch of weed for a bonfire to provide warmth while the wrangler was bringing up the horses. When the match flared, the calf on the other side of the shooting sparks staggered to his feet.

Ba-a-a-a-aw!

“It’s the little ’un,” John whooped.

He said no more, because at that moment came the dull pounding of hoofs on grass, and there was Molly, her head held high, turning her gaze jerkily from one to another, after the manner of cows when preparing to charge. We forgot about the fire for the moment and headed for the corral fence, streaming across country twenty strong, with Molly in hot pursuit. Big John eluded her by dodging dexterously behind a bush, leaving a portion of his overalls with the cow, and she abandoned the chase at once, returning to her charge. Him she licked and caressed with many mumbled endearments, making sure that he was unhurt. The calf took all this stoically and as a matter of course, considering it his due, and fell to breakfast. Molly gazed across at her late friends sitting spectrally astride the fence, and all the anger was gone from her eyes. They were large and melting with tenderness.

A crippled horse was shot that day,--the broncho-buster threw him too hard, breaking a leg,--and to the carcass a coyote skulked when night shut down. About eleven o’clock Molly got to her knees, in which position she remained a few seconds, meditating; then rose to walk about, nibbling at the grass. All cattle get up in this manner between eleven o’clock and midnight to graze for a few minutes and then lie down on the other side. This may be the basis of an old superstition that “good cows say their prayers.”

Molly, with the warmth of the snuggling calf still on her side, wandered farther than she intended. Abruptly she thrust her nose into the wind and sniffed. It was a stale, penetrating stench, and inherited knowledge warned her there was danger. Back ran Molly in a tremor of anxiety, her head wagging from side to side in her efforts to glimpse the marauder. Behind a clump of bear-grass crouched a coyote, his foxlike nose pointed toward the spot where snoozed her unprotected son. Inch by inch he slunk forward; now his muscles grew taut for the leap.

Whoo-oo-oo-huh! snorted Molly, smashing down upon him.

The wolf straightened and wheeled with a flash of gray, and sprang, all in one movement. So marvelously quick was he that escape would have been certain ninety-nine times in a hundred. A bull would have borne down on him with lowered head and eyes shut, like a runaway freight train; a cow charges with eyes open, and Molly, consumed with mother-wrath, ripped sideways with her sharp horns as the hunter swerved. A shapeless bundle of brown-gray fur was tossed into the air, and when it struck the ground and rebounded, Molly went at it again. This time she caught him full with her horns, and, quite by chance, followed stumblingly on his ribs with her forefeet. The coyote squirmed away from this terrible avenger, snapping futilely at her muzzle, and a cry from the calf distracted the Jersey from a burning desire to complete the good work. When she abandoned him to run to her adopted son, the wolf made as if to flee; but he was hurt unto death, and sank down miserably under a mesquite, his glinting eyes searching the brush for foes. And through the long night he panted out his life, until at dawn the last spark flickered.

“It’s a big ol’ ki-yote”--John stirred the carcass with his boot--“A bull done ripped him.”

“There aren’t any bulls in the horse pasture,” the boss retorted. “Only Molly.”

By one impulse the outfit turned in their saddles to look for her. There stood the Jersey a hundred paces off, feeding tranquilly on mesquite pods. Toddling at her heels was a red, white-faced calf of sturdy frame and curly coat. Molly was behaving as if she had never done anything more exciting in her life than eat bran mash.

“Good ol’ Molly,” they called back, as they rode to the bunk-house for dinner. Molly, hearing the familiar name, lifted her head to regard the cavalcade soberly.

We went without milk cheerfully enough now and speculated at every meal as to the probable course Molly would pursue as the calf grew. There was little else to talk about. Some vowed she would get over her hallucination quickly and abandon the youngster. Uncle Henry thought differently.

“She’s a better mother to him than his own would have been. I never done saw a range cow look after her calf like Molly does that rascal. And ain’t he fat!” he exclaimed.

The wagon boss conceived it to be in the line of his duty to brand the calf. A man was despatched to rope him. He returned presently to say that Molly would not permit him to get near. “She went on the peck and gored my horse.” He exhibited a red wale along his mount’s flank.

“You can’t rope a calf away from its mother?” the boss exclaimed, dumbfounded. “Pshaw! You’d better go back to cotton-pickin’, Cas.”

He spurred away to bring in the culprit himself. What were cowboys coming to nowadays? He would show them! We mounted the corral fence the better to view proceedings, and waxed merry of spirit when Molly chased the boss six separate times. Molly would not be frightened or enticed away from her son, but turned to confront this unexpected enemy when he galloped at her. As for the calf, he glued himself to Molly’s side and would not budge therefrom.

“Will we stretch her out, Pink?” we shouted.

“No,” the boss roared.

He made another try and almost got his rope over the calf; but the Jersey went at him just then and gave him something else to do. So the boss ambled back, grinning sheepishly behind his sandy mustache.

“I reckon”--he cleared his throat--“I reckon that’s one on me, boys. Let him go just now. We’ll get him in the spring.”

Uncle Henry was the only human being that the Jersey would permit within five yards of her baby. He entertained a sort of proprietary affection for the cow, and she reciprocated save when such cordial relationship clashed with her love for the adopted one. At such moments Uncle Henry was not to be considered, of course, and she was as ready to put him on the fence or speed him round a bush as any other member of the Tumbling K outfit.

Upon a day in September, he was on his way back from patching the line fence, when he espied Molly trotting distractedly about a narrow draw. She stopped to stare as he approached, then resumed her agitated run. From time to time she dashed to the brink of an arroyo to gaze down. Uncle Henry watched her, surmising from the stores of his experience what had happened.

“She’ll jist about go on the prod and rip me if I try to git him out.”

Molly took a few steps toward him, lowed pitifully, and returned to look down at the unfortunate calf. He advanced with caution, anticipating a rush; but Molly only lowed again and made way for him.

“I swan, she wants me to pull him out,” said Uncle Henry in a reverent tone. “If that don’t beat every--”

He alighted and walked to the arroyo’s rim. Ten feet below, on the sandy bottom of a hole whose precipitous sides prevented him climbing out, lay the white-face. Uncle Henry deftly dropped a noose over its head, and dragged the kicking youngster to safety. When he went to remove the rope, Molly suffered him to handle her son, though she glared in swift suspicion when Uncle Henry threw him to the ground and knelt on his body to free the loop from his neck.

“Boys,” said the boss at supper one night, “Molly has got to go.”

“Oh-ho! Ho, indeed!” Uncle Henry retorted with fine sarcasm. “Oh, yes,” he added, unable to think of anything better to say.

The boss shook his head sadly over the clamor that ensued. He spoke of the matter as a man of feeling would acquaint a wife of her husband’s taking-off; but it had to be. An order had come to deliver Molly to Bockus, the butcher at Blackwater.

What! Lose Molly? The boss was locoed, or worse. Had he by any chance secured a bottle, of whose whereabouts we were in ignorance? We would buy the cow ourselves first.

It was an off-day. The branding was done, and the Tumbling K outfit was awaiting the arrival of a purchase of four thousand steers from the South. Thus it came about that twelve of us rode into Blackwater, and Big John was spokesman. John was not much of a speaker, being given to profanity when a congestion of language threatened, but he had a grand theme, and talked about Molly in a way that made us cough.

“Bless my heart,” cried the owner of the Tumbling K, when the nub of the matter was revealed. “Bless my heart!”