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THE foreman of Del Sol stood, hands in pockets, for some time, looking down the trace whither the late visitor had disappeared. His head was dropped forward, as one in studious distrust of his own judgment; a frown yet more wrinkled his forehead. At length he turned and found his way, not to the corrals, but to the house.

Blancocito still stood dozing in the sun. The mistress of Del Sol was not riding this morning. Jim knocked at the front door.

“Come!”

He entered. Taisie was sitting at the end of the rawhide settee, still in her bravest finery. Her hands lay in her lap; her eyes were somber, clouded; doubt, distrust appeared her portion also.

She had looked about her with appraising eye; had reflected also. All about, in every token, she saw evidences of lapse, of retrogression, of decay, indeed of poverty rapidly running to seed. The lack of a strong hand was not to be denied. Moreover, the conditions of this property were reflected all over a state, where not even the strongest hand or the clearest mind had been able to achieve solution. It was the hour of travail for a great, unknown, forgotten country. Taisie Lockhart might have known that the travail of a country is only the multiple of many individual pains.

She looked now at her faithful henchman, silent for a time.

“Now, ma’am——”

“Yes, Jim?”

Nabours dropped into a chair, gripping the legs with twining spurred feet.

“I was going to ast you how you liked this Gonzales man, ma’am. He’s went now.”

“Were you taking a shot at him for luck, Jim? I heard a shot.” She tried to smile.

“No’m. It was him. A rattler was by the gate. He shot its head off. I must say he done it quick and easy too.”

“Well, he can ride.”

“Uh-huh—and shoot. Yes, I reckon. Fact is, he’s got a reputation now, for a young man. He’s the youngest sher’f in Texas, like enough. He’s only in six months, and in that time his county has done shrunk more’n a thousand population. He ain’t killed that many, ma’am—no; but he has done killed four or five, and them bad. Then when the Rangers was pulled together again and him put in as a captain, a good many of them people taken the hint and moved. It was time. Down there and in Uvalde there was plenty of men that didn’t own a head or a acre, who’d agree to put you up a herd of five thousand head on a month’s notice.

“I tell you, ma’am, the times is bad. The cow business in this state is in one hell of a fix.... Well, it takes good shooting to be a sher’f, let alone a Ranger.”

“Four? Four men? He killed them?” A sort of horror was in her voice, her eyes.

“In duty, ma’am. It don’t hardly count.”

“He did not look—like that!”

“Huh! He didn’t? Well, I’d say he did! When he put on his guns they was two, and he wore his right-hand gun pointing back and his left-hand one pointing forward. I never seen no man do that before. If that don’t look perfessional killer I ain’t no jedge. Now, which gun he done use to kill the rattler I never could tell.

“He makes me study, ma’am. His eye is cold as ice. He don’t talk and he don’t laugh. He’s got something on his mind. Somehow——”

“You’d trust him, Jim?”

“Ef he was on my side. But how in hell can you tell by looking at him whose side he is on?”

“Four men! Yes”—her voice trailed off—“I thought he was—well, cold. He never did—start.”

“No; and most does, Miss Taisie. And you that was dressed up your best for him; and him a stranger you hadn’t saw sence he was a boy, and hadn’t spoke to now till he come in and seen you. And he didn’t start!

“Miss Taisie, I’ve set in some games, but I can’t read that feller’s game. He’s friendly, but he’s so damned mysterious I can’t get no line on him.”

“What brought him here, Jim?”

“You, Miss Taisie! You bring ’em all here. Trouble is, all that comes is dead broke; no more’n a saddle and a pair of spurs to their name. But the McMasters family ain’t broke.

“Now, one thing is shore, Miss Taisie: This here can’t go on forever. I ain’t no good at advice to womenfolks; all I can advise is cows and caballos. But it looks plain to me that before long, you being a orphant, you got to be married to some kind of a man. Peaceable ef we can, by force ef we must, it looks plain to me, which am both yore paw and maw, Miss Taisie, we got to get you-all married. It can’t no ways run on this way much furder’n what it has.”

A dimple came in each of Anastasie Lockhart’s brown cheeks.

“Well, Jim?”

“But not to this man, no matter what he do, Miss Taisie! Not till I can clean up my own mind. I’m oncertain on him somehow. Friends and neighbors he ought to be—shore he ought. But Calvin McMasters, his dad, was agin slavery and secession, and your paw was with the South he was raised in. Them two was friends. I wouldn’t call the McMasterses damn Yankees. But I can’t place him yet.

“Now, how about Del Williams? You know he’s been waiting and hoping. He went to the war because you wouldn’t. He hung on with old Kirby Smith to the last, wondering ef you would. He’s come back after the surrender, hoping you would. He’s a good honest boy, that wears one gun one way and saves his money, when he gets any. He’s a good segundo and he knows cows.”

“Is that all I may ask?”

The girl’s voice was almost wistful. True, she was of the border. But she had seen the wider world. There were books on shelves in that very room. The portraits of her father and her mother were faces of aristocrats. Their lives had been those of adventurers. To know cows? Was that all the husband of the daughter of these two needed to possess?

“Miss Taisie, cows is all we got—and we ain’t got them.”

“I know it, Jim. I told you this morning, I’m broke. I was going to sell out, move out. I was going to try to teach school, or something, over East somewhere. Jim, it’s awful to be poor.”

“It’s awfuler when you ain’t been always, Miss Taisie.”

“But I’ll not be, now! We’re going to drive!”

“You say so, ma’am. It sounds so easy!”

“Why can’t we? Tell me? Haven’t I got cow hands working for me? Haven’t I got fifty thousand cows in the T. L.? You say sixty-five thousand. Isn’t the world full of grass and water north of here? Didn’t you hear what he told you—hasn’t my father told you—that there’s a whole other world waiting up north, not a man nor a cow nor a horse in it, hardly; just waiting? Jim, the time to make money is when times are bad. If we haven’t got cash we’ve got sand. This may be a time of despair or a time of opportunity. It’s always been that way, all over the world. When some despair others win—if they’ve sand to do it.”

“You talk like a book I read oncet, ma’am. It was full of maximuns.”

Taisie stamped her foot.

“We’ll put up a herd and trail it! I’ll go along! We’ll be utterly broke—or else we’ll win!”

“You can’t go along, Miss Taisie. No woman could.”

“But I will!”

“You make things right hard for yore segundo, Miss Taisie.”

“Jim! Jim! Don’t talk that way! Don’t you think I know? Isn’t all this hard for me too? But if we have luck I’ll make it easier for you-all.”

“You’re just a girl, Miss Taisie. Let’s get married first, huh? I don’t mean me. How about you and Del?”

The girl rose, a native imperiousness in her gesture.

“Leave those things to me!”

“Oh, all right, all right,” sighed Nabours. “But maybe you’ll leave some things to me?”

“What?”

The old range man rose and spread his hands.

“Miss Taisie,” said he, “fire me! I’m the damnedest liar in Texas!”

“What do you mean, Jim?”

“I am. I been lying to you. You ain’t got no cows left, hardly. Our range has been combed and skinned; for two years it’s been going on—I don’t know how long before. You ain’t got no sixty-five nor fifty thousand cows. You’re lucky if you can put up a herd of four thousand. We’ve all lied to you. We couldn’t tell you the truth. Ma’am, this outfit would all lay down and die for you. They’d do almost anything but tell you the truth. We couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the nerve.”

The girl sank back, her face pale.

“Why, Jim! I didn’t really know!”

“No, ma’am. Some gang’s at work in here, and north and west of here—far north as Palo Pinto. We’ve been away, enduring the war and after the war. We’re all broke, us Texans. But in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke none a-tall. We don’t know nothing, can’t prove nothing. All I say is, in Austin is plenty people ain’t broke a-tall.”

“You mean the Yankee treasurer?”

“I don’t say out loud what I do mean. All I know is, our range is skinned; and I know we’re up against a strong game. That’s why, ma’am, looking for the best of Del Sol and what yore paw meant for her, and looking for yore own good interests, too, I been advising you to get married. That’d simple up a lot of things.

“You see, then we could settle down and raise cows. We could build up the range again. They ain’t going to be so brash about things when they know they’s a real man in charge of Del Sol. But a orphant is easy picking for a man like Rudabaugh and his gang of carpetbagging thieves.”

“You mean Rudabaugh?”

“I shore do. In Austin, we don’t know what’s going on. In office and out, there’s a new gang in there. They’re organized fer to steal this here whole state, lock, stock and barrel. They don’t stop at nothing. They allow the war ain’t never done; that us Texans ain’t never surrendered; that Lee’s still a enemy; and that all this state is fair picking fer men that wasn’t never borned nor raised in Texas, orphants and all. They got wide idees, yes. But they ain’t idees that was borned in Texas, ma’am.”

“And are we helpless, Jim?”

“Damn nigh it, ma’am.”

“But surely we could raise two or three thousand head, of some sort, to drive north this spring. Leave them the empty house, Jim! Leave them the Del Sol round pen without a horse in it! Leave them our range—empty! But by the Lord——”

She smote fist in palm, walked. Her foreman’s fighting blood kindled at the flame of the old courage that had brought families into this wilderness.

“Yes, by the Lord! Taisie, child, ef ever we do get on our feet, us Texans, we’ll line up against them people and we’ll see it through!”

“Then we’ll drive, Jim?”

“Yes, we’ll drive! Ef it takes the last hoof, we’ll drive this spring, come grass. I don’t know nothing about the country; I never driv a herd so fur, and no one else never has. But ef you’ll let us do our very best, we’ll bust north inside of thirty days!”

He caught both her long brown hands in his own gnarled and crooked ones, his stubbled face grave, his gray eyes troubled; a figure not impressive in his broken boots, his torn checked trousers, but with a sincerity proved these years since his boyhood under this girl’s father.

“You’ll take it fair, child, ef we do the best we can fer you! You’ll never holler?”

“You know I never will, Jim. And you know I’ll go along and I’ll go through.”

“Lord help you, Miss Taisie! And Lord help us too! There’s been times when my job seemed a heap easier than what it does right now!”

Author’s Note.—There is no Gregg, no Parkman, no Chittenden for the lost and forgotten cattle trail. Although almost as important as the east-and-west railroads in the early development of the trans-Missouri, it has no map, no monument, no history, almost no formulated condition. There is a comprehensive literature covering our westbound expansion, but of the great north-and-south pastoral road almost the contrary must be said, such is the paucity of titles.

The classic of the cattle trade of the West is a crude book, now rare, by Joseph G. McCoy, called Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest. It is upon this book that the author has rested most largely in endeavoring to restore the feel of the early cattle drives. It was printed in 1874.

Within the past two years Mr. George W. Saunders, of San Antonio, Texas, has printed a book, The Trail Drivers of Texas, containing brief life stories from the pens of more than a hundred men who trailed cattle before and after the railroad days. These sketches are human documents. The author wishes to acknowledge obligations to this work, which he has used almost literally in many passages for the sake of known accuracy.

The books of Andy Adams—The Log of a Cowboy; Wayne Anthony, Cow Man; Wells Brothers; A Texas Matchmaker; The Outlet—make the most authentic fiction or quasi fiction of the trail days. Mr. Adams made trips on northern drives, his experience beginning in 1882. His books are storehouses of later trail data. The author makes acknowledgment to that source of information. Records of army exploration also have been useful.

The quasi biography of Chas. A. Siringo, A Lone Star Cowboy, is still another, and very useful record of life in the early Southwest. It abounds in facts as well as in thrilling incidents. The author can personally testify to its accuracy in many details of the bloody history of New Mexico. Mr. Siringo’s boyhood dates back into the Texas that existed before the northern trails began.

The author himself went to the Southwest in 1881; has lived and traveled in the West all his life; and has followed or crossed the old cattle trail at perhaps fifty points between the Gulf and Northern boundary lines. The term of years thus indicated covers many changes. The future will bring yet swifter change. As to the great pastoral days of the West, it is high time for a fiction that may claim to be faithful and reverent.

Fiction cannot be exact, else it would be history and not fiction. That it should fairly reflect the spirit of its chosen day goes without saying. To lurid writers who never could have known the West, the author has found himself unable to contract any debt, but would make full acknowledgment to all who have aided from a wider information or experience.