Читать книгу The Untamed - George Pattullo - Страница 3

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“Git your nose out’n that pot. Hi, you flop-eared—I swan, that ol’ mule makes me mad sometimes. He’d jist as leave snake your whole batch right from under your nose as look at you. Git, you long-legged rascal! Whoopee!”

The cook dashed at the offender, swinging a bit of firewood. It struck the hybrid upon the hindquarter and he countered instantaneously by lashing out with his heels. Then he turned to smell of the projectile, but finding it unfit for consumption, trotted off up a neighboring rise and presently disappeared from view.

Certain coarse men of the Lazy L outfit called him Hell-on-Wheels, among other things, but his real name was Sam, and he made one of the four-mule team that hauled the chuck-wagon during round-up. Between him and Dave was a personal feud; they were most loving enemies. In the beginning the cook had pampered him by feeding bread to the big creature, taking no heed, and now this artificial appetite he had created made of Dave’s waking hours a perpetual vigil and conjured up nightmares in place of refreshing sleep.

For whenever Sam wasn’t doing the major share of hauling some four thousand odd pounds of wagon, bedding and provisions from one round-up ground to another, he was loafing on the confines of camp, awaiting a favorable opportunity to go in surreptitiously and nose among the pots or at the back of the wagon for the buns Dave made so cunningly. What time he lost this way from grazing he made up easily by his pillage; bread is very fattening, and then, of course, the chuck-wagon team received regular rations of corn.

Yet Dave was a watchful scoundrel, and day by day it was being borne in upon Sam that in these attempts at pilfering he received blows and abuse more often than huns. But at night, when the punchers lay asleep on the ground and he could hear the cook slumbering stertorously beneath the wagon-fly, it was different: then Sam would wander into camp and make his way on soundless feet to the dead fire. Beside its ashes he knew there would be scraps of bread, perhaps some of them sweetened with molasses, and for these his whole being craved. On one such excursion, as he munched happily on a wet crust, he inadvertently put his foot into Dave’s face, and, because Hell-on-Wheels weighed about thirteen hundred pounds, the cook awoke very peevish.

“If it wasn’t,” he remarked next morning as he hitched up—“if it wasn’t that you could haul more’n them other three put together, I’d skin you alive. Oh, you needn’t go for to pretend you didn’t do it a-purpose. You seen me there, all right. Look at that lip! Don’t it look as if I’d fell off’n a mountain?”

The cook always knew what to expect of Sam. When putting the mules in the wagon he was cognizant of the precise moment that Sam would kick, and could judge to a hair’s breadth at what angle the smashing blow would be delivered. On his part, Sam knew that the cook was prepared; otherwise it is doubtful whether he would have let go some of the vicious side-sweeps of his left leg that he did. On occasions when the attacks were especially wicked, or when Dave calculated the margin of safety with too fine nicety, he would possess himself of a stout club and hammer Hell-on-Wheels until he was weak. In this way were bred mutual respect and a thorough understanding.

It was when the wagon was miring down, or when they were climbing a rocky trail in the mountains, that Sam and the cook gloried one in the other. Once Dave’s judgment went wrong by three inches in fording a stream—he may have been careless with a splendid contempt, as was his habit—and one hind wheel sank oozily into quicksand. The cook stood up and whirled his long whip and adjured his team by all that was holy to pull, pull, pull.

“Now, you, Hell-on-Wheels! Good ol’ boy! You, Sam! You!”

He lashed three of the team with stinging force, but Sam he did not touch. The great mule laid his shoulders into the collar and heaved,—heaved again—and with a wrench and a sucking sound they floundered out to hard sand, to safety. Whenever Sam came to a realization that the job required something extra, and stretched himself out accordingly, either the wagon followed where he wanted to go or the mule went through his harness.

The wagon boss esteemed Sam and valued him at his worth, but it cannot be said that he was fond of the beast. There was much in his personality Uncle Henry did not like. Nor did the horse-wrangler. Had anybody requested Maclovio for a frank opinion of Sam, the Mexican would have spat with contempt and exhausted the resources of his patois. That nerveless limb of the devil? Don’t try to tell him the mule stampeded the staked horses by accident; Maclovio knew better; Sam had planned the whole turmoil from the start of the round-up. The wrangler had to herd the mules with the remuda, and the uncanny sagacity the drag-mule displayed in following out his own plans of grazing and enjoyment filled the Mexican with superstitious dread.

The ropers hated him with an active, abiding hatred they made no effort to conceal. He was the only member of the wagon team that would not submit to be caught without roping. The other mules would trot in with the horses from pasture and walk quietly to the wagon to be bridled, under the lure of grain; but not so with the big fellow. Sam never crowded away among the horses in foolish panic when a roper walked through the remuda toward him: that was the way the cow-ponies did, struggling blindly to get beyond range, and so the noose fell about their necks with ridiculous ease. That was not Sam’s method, he being temperamentally opposed to panic. He waited until the roper approached, waited until the coil sped toward him; and then only did he dodge. As a result, he eluded the noose time after time. In fact, it always took longer to rope Sam than any five of the hundred horses.

One day the hawk-eyed autocrat of the Lazy L range spurred into camp in hot haste while the outfit was partaking of dinner. Heatedly he urged: “Watch your horses Uncle Henry.” Then he went to the fire, filled a tin plate with beef and beans, and a cup with coffee, and speared a bun.

“Shore. But what for special? They’re doing well and we ain’t lost one,” replied the wagon boss, making room for his chief on the shady spot where he squatted.

“Then you’re in luck. That band of mustangs has roamed down here from the Flying W. They passed within two miles of the ranch yesterday and, by Jupiter, if ol’ Pete didn’t join ’em. The ol’ fool! Eleven years that horse has been a cowhorse and now he runs off from the home pasture with a bunch of wild ones.”

“Where’re they heading?”

“You know as much as I do. I reckon the pasture is poor on the Flying W, don’t you? They ain’t had much rain and probably this bunch’ll make for the mountains. Better watch out,” the manager admonished.

Dave toiled with his team next afternoon through a waste of sand and mesquite. It was very hot—had there been such a thing as a thermometer on the wagon it would have registered better than 112—and he sat hunched on the seat, occasionally throwing an encouraging word to the straining mules. Behind came Al with the hoodlum wagon, which, being much lighter, made easy work for a pair of stout horses, so that Al dozed with his hat well down over his eyes and dreamed of a dress-maker in Doghole. It was growing towards sunset and they would pitch camp in the foothills and have supper ready for the boys before darkness fell.

Without warning the mule team stopped and stood at gaze, rousing Dave abruptly. A dense cloud of dust was bearing down on them from the right and out of that swirl came the muffled pounding of many hoofs.

“The remuda’s stompeded,” yelled Al.

“No, they ain’t. No, they ain’t. It’s them wild horses. Git your gun, Al, quick!”

By the time Al had reached behind him with one hand to fumble for the rifle, the band had swept by and was disappearing. Probably there were thirty horses in it, but that was only a guess, because Dave obtained nothing more than a glimpse of streaming manes and tails. They ran compactly, a noble buckskin in the lead, and tailing the band was a white horse; it was evident that he held the furious pace only by a supreme effort.

“There goes ol’ Pete. Blast him, if he ain’t hitting only the high spots,” Dave bawled.

At this moment his attention was called to Sam. The mule’s head was thrown high, the usually slouching ears were rigid and pricked forward, and he was sniffing the air restlessly. Once he made an abrupt lurch sideways as though to follow the free rovers, but the bit sawed his mouth, the collar and traces bound him and he could only champ impatiently. If a mule really knows how to tremble, Sam was trembling then—it was more a twitching of the muscles. The band was lost to sight and sound. Dave called a raucous command and once more they settled to work. Again Sam became listless and applied himself lethargically to pulling.

A cool breeze whipped among the scrub-cedar of the foothills and went whining down the valley. Above the black rim of El Toro rose a rich, golden disc. Its pale light softened the outlines of the forms asleep upon the ground; in that kindly radiance the chuck-wagon and the unsightly confusion of camp merged into blurs that harmonized with the giant shadow of the mountain. The night was full of murmurings, tense with the suggestion of strange other worlds. Surely the plaintive wailing the breeze bore to Sam from El Toro’s pines was a message.

He stood with his nose up wind and drew in the scents of the wilds. His forelegs were hobbled, the rope twisted about them so tightly that he could barely shuffle when he grazed, and near at hand twelve horses were staked out. One of them, hopelessly entangled in his rope, was fighting it in terror; already he was on his knees unable to do aught but cut himself. In a draw a half-mile away the remuda cropped the grass under the eyes of a triple guard, for Uncle Henry was mindful of the manager’s warning, and upon Dave’s report he took no chances.

Out from the shadow cast by a mesquite bush a coyote skulked, and Sam snorted and shook his head in anger. The beast’s scent offended him, but he was not afraid. Somewhere in the dark a wildcat cried and the mule cocked his ears to listen. Next moment he jumped awkwardly aside as a polecat scurried by on a hunt for food.

The mule was growing restive. It was not nervousness—a mule is rarely nervous or frightened. When he runs away or pitches or balks, it is seldom because something has put fear into him; it is refined cussedness. Anyone who ever succeeded in owning a mule longer than a month will tell you that.

Of a sudden Sam sank his head and his powerful teeth met and rasped on the rope that chafed his legs. One of the strands parted and he strained to break the hobble, but too impatient to direct his gnawing to one spot, he was unsuccessful and finally desisted.

Was that the call of a horse? It did not come from the direction in which the remuda had been driven off, and his ears tingled for a repetition of the sound. Twice he humped himself and struck out with his heels in the fury of impotence, and paused breathlessly with his eyes fixed on the yellow ball above El Toro’s summit. He took one step forward and became immovable as his glance fell to the wide lane of light it cast.

Down this silver-shimmering path a horse came proudly. None but a free rover ever trod earth as he did. Sam could see the fiery eyes flashing suspicion, the regal head thrown back, the nostrils a-quiver to divine danger. He came like a phantom, lightly as one, silently as one, and a dozen yards away he halted, and there in the light of the moon surveyed the camp, the staked mounts, the sleeping men. It was the king of the wild horses. Far back of him a blotch on a hillside shifted with gleam of color.

A madness was come upon Sam. From out the night countless voices called to him appealingly; away out there in the illusive sheen must be liberty and delight. His sluggish blood was racing wildly, his body and limbs were a-quake with eagerness to respond to that appeal, to be gone into that alluring gloom. One of the staked animals whinnied and tugged fiercely on his rope.

At once the buckskin stallion blared a challenge, and he was away. The shadows swallowed him up. From over the hill came a rolling thunder, the noise of scores of flying hoofs, and Sam got the hobble between his teeth a second time, gave one ferocious upward rend, and the strands parted and dropped from him. He was free, and the wilderness was calling, calling.

“Ol’ Hell-on-Wheels has done gone,” observed Dave.

“Done gone?” the wagon boss echoed. “Gone where? He must be round somewheres. He cain’t git through the day without bread, Sam cain’t.”

“He done run off with them mustangs!” In Dave’s tone was depressed conviction. “You hearn ’em last night the same as me. Nobody seen him go, but look here. I jist found his hobble all bit in two.”

“And we’ve got to move camp this morning,” the wagon boss raved.

“P’raps he’ll come back. I shouldn’t think they’d want Sam with ’em, Uncle Henery. He’d smash ’em all up, that bunch, he would!”

“He shore would.” Uncle Henry could not suppress a snigger of satisfaction.

He dispatched two of the boys to scour the country for the fugitive, and Dave hitched a two-mule team, falling a prey to melancholy as he moved about them in absolute security. How he missed that ol’ son-of-a-gun with his sly nibbles and his kicking and sublime obstinacy. These creatures pull? The cook grew hot with disdain and had two men told off to help haul the wagon with ropes in bad spots. In the days that followed he would often stop in his work and wonder what sense there was in going through life, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sam flourished like unto the green bay tree. When the band sped away into the hills the night of his temptation and fall, the mule summoned up unguessed reserves of speed and trailed behind. The tumultuous joy of liberty fired him; his muscles responded to this new throbbing life like steel springs, so that Sam not only caught up with the mustangs, but ran well within himself in holding with them. The renegade Pete galloped in rear and, knowing Sam these many years, nickered him breathless welcome.

A recruit to the ranks was not a novelty, and though Sam was a mule, they accepted him readily enough, and for several days they roamed the cañons of El Toro. Rains had been frequent in this region and they obtained their fill of grass. As is the way of horses, the band paid scant attention to the mule; he grazed with them, and when any alarm or mere exuberance of spirits prompted a run, he could show his heels to all but the buckskin leader and a bay mare which seemed to carry wings on her feet.

And on the fifth day occasion arose for him to prove his prowess. In the band were a dozen mares, seven colts of various ages and fifteen horses, all under the leadership of the buckskin. Now, Sam was a mule of considerable common-sense; he never disputed the sovereignty of the stallion, but at the same time he was fully sensible of his own strength and fighting ability, having had occasion to test the same frequently, and he had not the remotest intention of allowing any horse on the range or other quadruped, to take undue liberties.

As they came up from watering at a mountain spring at high noon, the mustangs were compelled to thread a narrow defile, and much crowding resulted. A colt ricochetted from the mule and lost his feet, whereupon the mother made at Sam with her teeth. This attack he ignored dexterously by bursting through the press and imposing the bodies of several horses between him and the indignant mare; but when a youthful black took it into his head that Sam was a recreant and could be bullied with impunity, various things happened. By now, they were out in the open. Trumpeting defiance, the black ran at him.

The combat did not last three minutes. It is probable that the mule would have killed his assailant when he lay prone after the third onslaught, had not the leader trotted up in royal wrath to quell the disorder in his following. Should he go for him too, and reduce him to pulp? Sam’s eyes were glittering evilly, and the mulish, enduring rage was alive, but his habitual discretion cooled the impulse and he gave ground, his ears laid back, his retreat reluctant. The stallion wisely let him go.

Soon he attained to a species of leadership, a vice-royalty under the reigning buckskin. For one thing, his caution was tempered by almost human powers of discrimination; for another, he was never subject to the nervous tremors to which even the stallion fell victim and which were the inspiration of many stampedes. Sam could sense peril as far as any and was dubious, in a calm way, of everything he saw until he had investigated; but sudden noises, or a strange scent brought abruptly to his nostrils, did not send him flying over the country, shrilling warnings. He made reasonably sure of the possibility of danger before giving the alarm. Of his old masters, he was peculiarly wary, and twice at night, when they passed within a mile of the round-up camp, the mule’s nose acquainted him of its proximity, and he led them far to the west.

When the outfit had almost completed the round-up, Sam wandered off from the band on a morning’s jaunt and came unexpectedly upon the remuda in a draw. The wrangler espied that unmistakable gait from afar and spurred desperately to catch him, but the mule was fleet as a greyhound and could not be headed. Two of the horses followed the fallen one. They knew Sam and respected him, and what was good enough for him would suit them admirably. Maclovio did not see their departure; madly scurrying from point to point to herd the restless horses, he failed to perceive the flight toward the gap, and it was only when the roping began after dinner that the loss was discovered. The Mexican prayed inwardly that Sam would break a leg and die by inches; if he would only break his neck, he would buy a dozen candles for the altar at Tucalari.

Old Pete McVey, the manager, sat on the stoop of the bunkhouse at headquarters and made a solemn vow to the skies.

“I’ll hunt down every last one of that bunch and hang Sam’s hide to the saddle-shed. We’ve had two breakdowns with the wagon since he left—that ol’ mule we got from Doghole ain’t no good, Mit—and now two horses have run off.”

“I done told Uncle Henery and Dave that I felt shore it was Sam or some of them mustangs that stompeded those steers last week.”

“When I get him, the ol’ fool!” burst out the manager.

He organized a hunt, and with three men and four staghounds set out cheerily to wipe the wild horses from the face of the earth. The band winded them two miles away and carried the hunt to another range, but at last they crept within striking distance, and the chase was on.

Sam knew the dogs and had seen them run in sport about headquarters. Therefore, he let himself out and led the band beside the buckskin stallion, and for mile after mile they raced. A laggard was pulled down, the ancient sinner Pete—a hound leaped for his nose and Pete turned a somersault. McVey himself shot the injured animal, and they camped in the neighborhood and took up the pursuit next morning.

It was a famous hunt. The dogs brought down four animals, and the Lazy L men, tiring in the chase, fired after the fugitives, killing three; but Sam remained ever in the van, unhurt. McVey led his men back, satisfied that the mustangs would seek new haunts, swearing vengefully at Sam and rejoicing in his heart that the giant mule had won to safety.

The band wintered in the mountains, and more than once during those terrible months the emaciated Hell-on-Wheels had to paw down through three inches of snow to get at the grass, and he obtained little more than enough to sustain life. Several of the colts succumbed to a three-days’ storm, and when spring was ushered in, with a soft wind that whispered tender promises to a stricken land, at least a dozen of the horses and mares were sickly. As for Sam, he was only hungry. A mule seems immune from disease, and hunger and thirst cannot wreak the havoc on his iron constitution that they create among the more sensitive horses. The mustangs ranged widely in a quest for good pasture and at last worked down to the Lazy L.

Dave had put in the cold months in dispirited fashion, there being little to do. He moped around headquarters, and whenever the wagon boss ventured to consult him on preparations for the spring round-up, the cook maintained a glum silence. It would be a bad year, he was sure of that; they needn’t expect much of the calf crop. Far be it from him to discourage any man, least of all McVey and Uncle Henery, but he felt in his bones that ill luck would attend them. What could be expected of a wagon team that would let him mire down in Coyote Creek? The round-up would be a farce.

“Them mustangs is back,” Reb announced, riding in from a winter camp. “I seen ’em topping a mesa over near Lone Pine Spring.”

“I’ll give twenty dollars a head for ’em,” declared the manager, slowly removing the pipe from his lips.

Nearly a score of punchers equipped themselves to earn the reward. Some failed even to get trace of the band; others trailed them for days, but never came in sight; Dick, Bob Saunders and Maclovio got within half a mile and with relays of horses applied themselves to capture in a scientific way. They would run those mustangs off their legs. In four days they were back, with their mounts used up and McVey to welcome them.

“That ol’ mule kin smell us a mile,” Dick reported. “He always gives the alarm first. And run? Jim-in-ee, the way that rascal kin run!”

Dave listened and gloomed and finally took a great resolution. He might just as well be honest with himself—the round-up would never be the same without Sam. The cook had been a cowhand in his time and he hadn’t trailed cattle up through the Panhandle for nothing. Therefore he would not match his speed against the wild horses.

“Say, Mister McVey, I want to git a month off.”

“Where’re you going now? This isn’t another trip to Doghole?”

“I hoped you’d done forgot that,” Dave answered severely. “No, sir, I want to go and git Hell-on-Wheels.”

“How could you catch him? I’ve tried; all the boys have tried. And you haven’t ridden in ten years.”

“You let me try and you’ll see.” Dave tried to draw in his waist and appear athletic as the manager ran his eye over his two hundred and fourteen pounds.

“You couldn’t get that mule in a thousand years. Unless”—as an afterthought—“you spread breadpans all over the range and set traps.”

“There’s where you’re wrong, Mister McVey, sir. I ain’t rode much since I took to cookin’, but I’m pretty active. You gimme that month and you’ll see.”

“Go ahead. I’d just as soon pay the reward to you as to anybody else—sooner.”

Sam was the first of the band to sight the enemy trudging through the sand of the plain toward them. Far behind a burro followed, led by another man on foot. This truly was interesting. The mule advanced for a closer inspection and the others awaited his verdict, having implicit confidence in him as a sentinel. Thus it happened that Dave gained to within three hundred yards before Sam flagged his tail and departed. The horses massed swiftly into a compact body and followed, but they did not run as they would have run from mounted men. Instinctively they knew that this thing on two legs could not catch them, so it was at a swinging trot that they breasted a hill.

On its crest the mustangs slowed down; they dropped to a walk and turned to look back at what pursued. There plodded old Dave, apparently paying them no special attention, but nevertheless coming in their direction. Once more Sam waited until the cook came within shouting distance, then, the buckskin raising the alarm, they cantered off.

So it went all the afternoon. Dave made no attempt to get close up with them; he did not conceal his approach; he did not stalk them; and he was especially cautious not to alarm to an extent that would send them fleeing for miles. Instead, he was satisfied merely to keep them in sight. Sometimes he paused to wipe the sweat from his face and neck, but he betrayed no impatience. Far behind a burro followed, led by another man on foot, and when the cook changed his course so did the burro, still maintaining its distance.

Sam was sorely puzzled. That stout figure possessed a peculiar attraction for him. When he had put a considerable tract between himself and it, he could not forbear to stop and watch what it would do. Still it came on—yet it was not threatening. The mule’s sense of danger was lulled. And he was not the only perplexed member of the band: curiosity had the stallion in its grip, too. There was not a horse among the free rovers but would slacken gait to ascertain where the foolish pursuer walked now.

By the time the sun died behind a fringe of hills, Sam and the others were horribly thirsty. They swung around in a wide semicircle and struck for a lake six miles distant. Dave followed. Hardly had they drunk half their fill, standing waist-deep in the cooling water, when the expectant mule warned them of the approach of that shadowing figure. They waded out and made off reluctantly.

The cook arrived two minutes later and stretched out on his back on the edge of the lake and thought with sweet sorrow of the days when he weighed one hundred and sixty. Presently the man with the burro joined him, and they took down their bedding, staked out the tireless pack-animal, built a fire of dried broomweed, and ate.

“They won’t go far from here to-night. It jist happens there ain’t any water nearer than twenty miles. No-oo, I reckon they’ll hang round somewheres near,” Dave observed, rolling a cigarette.

He divined correctly. Sam and his companions discovered that they were hungry, very hungry. While they did not realize it, they had eaten little that afternoon, for no sooner would they shake off the pursuer and fall to nibbling nervously at the dried grass than he would reappear, persistent as their own shadows, and they would continue their flight. Now he followed no more, and they must eat. Eat they did to some extent, but a burning curiosity and a vague uneasiness had seized upon them. They felt irresistibly attracted by the campfire that sparkled in the darkness down by the water they craved; time after time they would near it fearfully. Without turning his head Dave knew that dozens of wondering eyes surveyed him from the outer rim of dark fifty yards away.

Before dawn the cook and his assistant had made fast the burro’s burden with the “diamond hitch,” and hard upon the coming of light Dave started out alone. In an hour he was in sight of the mustangs. Sam shook his head in irritation and the band moved off slowly. Dave followed. Far behind came a burro, led by a man on foot.

He camped at noon in a stretch of alkali, and because there was no water near they partook sparingly of some the cook carried in tins slung over the burro’s load. As for the beast, he must wait till nightfall, which did not worry the burro in the least. Well Dave knew that the mustangs must make for water.

A dozen times in a day the cook would be out of view of the fugitives and a dozen times he would catch up with them, disturbing their intermittent grazing. It is doubtful if he averaged more than twenty miles in twenty-four hours; it is certain that the wild horses covered nearly three times that distance in their outbursts of panic and their doublings back on the pursuer. The chase led in a triangle that took in all the water-holes within a radius of ninety miles, and almost always Dave contrived to arrive before the band had got quite their fill.

Sam had lost at least a hundred pounds by the end of a week and was become gaunt and savage. Several of the colts, only a few months old, gave up the flight and their mothers forsook the band in safety, the pursuers ignoring them. The others kept on. Sam’s contempt for the slow crawling thing behind them was changing to a haunting dread, and he became subject to petty fits of irritation. Why couldn’t the enemy come on boldly? Why couldn’t he match his speed with theirs in one grand rush? But no, there he was, patiently legging it through the sand, through grass, over foothills, up mountain trails, through gorges, down into valleys. A horrible fascination took possession of the mule. Had Dave turned about to retrace his steps, it is probable that Sam would have followed out of curiosity to see where he was going; but Dave still came on.

About this time, too, they got a taste of real summer. From an empty sky the sun smote the land, browning the hills, crisping the grass in the valleys until it crackled into dust. First one mountain stream ceased to run, then another; a creek that used to sweep down in a torrent after the spring rains now dribbled among scorching boulders. Thus came about the beginning of the end.

“They cain’t stand more’n another week of this, Charlie,” Dave remarked, as they camped beside a hatful of water in the foothills.

“I reckon not. Did you notice some of them mares? They’s all in. You got within fifty yards of ’em once to-day, Dave. The burro here has kep’ up well. Ain’t you, you greedy devil? She’s looking fine. I’m giving her corn.”

Never did the mustangs get enough to eat. Another sort of madness than the madness for liberty was laying hold of Sam. His days consisted of timid attempts at grazing, from which he would start at the lightest sound; of enforced pilgrimages from one pasture to another; and it must have been four hundred hours since he had had his fill of water. More than once, in a frenzy of revolt, he put five miles between him and his clinging disturber; but after two hours of uneasy nibbling he would be interrupted once again—and again must move on. What food he got failed to nourish as it should, and the rest he snatched was not rest. In the night, when he might have lost his foe, the mule knew well that he was near, for there in the blackness his fire sent up its sparks and it drew him and his companions like a magnet. No matter where they roamed, the cook managed to spend the dark hours near water, and the band could not tear themselves from the vicinity.

There came a day when Sam’s ribs showed pitifully through his rough coat and he shuffled along in desperate dejection, his ears flopping. A heavy fatigue numbed his limbs, made cruel weights of them, and he was thirsty, deliriously thirsty; but if his plight was bad, that of the mustangs was worse. They stumbled coughing through the dust, too tired to lift their feet. Occasionally one broke into a half-hearted trot which survived only a few steps. The race was run.

Within six hours the band began to break up. First the mares and colts dropped out, careless of what might befall. The mothers went weakly to feeding on the burnt grass, their offspring hovering near in the last stages of exhaustion; but to these Dave paid no attention. He was after Hell-on-Wheels, and he did not intend to inject new life into the jaded survivors by the slaughter of their beaten companions. By his orders Charlie, too, ignored them, though his fingers itched as his mind dwelt on the reward.

Four of the horses lagged, staggered forward a few paces and fell behind, spent, swaying dizzily as they moved aside to let Dave pass. They were oblivious to everything now, insensible to peril, scarcely able to discern objects through their glazed eyes; but Sam and the stallion and some few kept on. Dave followed.

Hot rebellion surged up in the mule more than once, sapping his last ounce of spirit. Up would go his head in defiance and he would increase his lead; but the strength was ebbing from the wonderful muscles of him; he was sick at heart and wanted to lie down. Ahead, perhaps an hour’s walk, he knew there was water. He must reach that. Would this thing that hung to their rear never give them respite?

Dave trudged now only twenty yards back. He was footsore, a fearful weariness was upon him and the heat was awful. Yet no thought of giving up occurred to his mind; his patience was unfailing. Not once did he do a hurried thing to alarm the quarry.

“What you mean by running off this a-way?”

It was the twenty-fourth day. All around them stretched a desert of alkali broken by patches of tree-cactus and clumps of bear-grass, and through the white, chalky dust Sam toiled dispiritedly a dozen yards in front of the stallion. Behind the faltering buckskin limped five skeletons of horses, and ten yards behind the hindermost walked Dave. There was no need that Charlie remain far in rear. The mustangs did not notice him, and he followed close with the burro.

The rovers had drunk deep that morning at a spring on the edge of the desert—this being as Dave would have it—and now all vigor of body and spirit had departed. Sam’s head swung low to the ground, his knees were shaking and he saw nothing of what he passed. To his bloodshot eyes these scorched wastes were a wavering mist, and he knew only that he must go on.

Suddenly, as though by telepathic agreement, the weird procession halted. Sam turned. He faced the cook as he came up without hesitation, rope in hand. Dave slipped the noose about his neck and rubbed the dusty muzzle sunk against his hip.

“You ol’ fool, you!” he mouthed at him. “What you mean by running off this a-way? Didn’t you know that team weren’t no good without you? What did you reckon I was going to do, you pore ol’ son-of-a-gun?”

He ran his eye over the emaciated body; then his glance fell to his own shrunken outline.

“I reckon we’re both some thinner, Sam. And my feet’s awful sore. What you need is corn. Here, Charlie, gimme that ‘morale’!”

Staked out with the nosebag over his head, the mule munched dully on the life-giving grain, while Dave prepared dinner and Charlie moved from point to point on the plain with a rifle, earning half a month’s pay every time he got near a horse. Charlie began to figure he would be a rich cowman some day.

Two hours later the men were smoking in the peace and content of hard work well done, when Sam walked stiffly to the end of his rope. By straining on it he could just reach the edge of the campfire. Dave rose up on his elbow.

“Hi, there! Git your nose out’n that pan, you rascal! I swan, he’s hunting for bread.”