Zane Grey (15 page)

The bleating of the sheep heralded another day. With the brightening
light began the drive over the sand. Under the cliff the shade was cool
and fresh; there was no wind; the sheep made good progress. But the
broken line of shade crept inward toward the flock, and passed it. The
sun beat down, and the wind arose. A red haze of fine sand eddied about
the toiling sheep and shepherds. Piute trudged ahead leading the
king-ram, old Socker, the leader of the flock; Mescal and Hare rode at
the right, turning their faces from the sand-filled puffs of wind; August
and Dave drove behind; Wolf, as always, took care of the stragglers. An
hour went by without signs of distress; and with half the five-mile trip
at his back August Naab's voice gathered cheer. The sun beat hotter.
Another hour told a different story—the sheep labored; they had to be
forced by urge of whip, by knees of horses, by Wolf's threatening bark.
They stopped altogether during the frequent hot sand-blasts, and could
not be driven. So time dragged. The flock straggled out to a long
irregular line; rams refused to budge till they were ready; sheep lay
down to rest; lambs fell. But there was an end to the belt of sand, and
August Naab at last drove the lagging trailers out upon the stony bench.

The sun was about two hours past the meridian; the red walls of the
desert were closing in; the V-shaped split where the Colorado cut through
was in sight. The trail now was wide and unobstructed and the distance
short, yet August Naab ever and anon turned to face the canyon and shook
his head in anxious foreboding.

It quickly dawned upon Hare that the sheep were behaving in a way new and
singular to him. They packed densely now, crowding forward, many raising
their heads over the haunches of others and bleating. They were not in
their usual calm pattering hurry, but nervous, excited, and continually
facing west toward the canyon, noses up.

On the top of the next little ridge Hare heard Silvermane snort as he did
when led to drink. There was a scent of water on the wind. Hare caught
it, a damp, muggy smell. The sheep had noticed it long before, and now
under its nearer, stronger influence began to bleat wildly, to run
faster, to crowd without aim.

"There's work ahead. Keep them packed and going. Turn the wheelers,"
ordered August.

What had been a drive became a flight. And it was well so long as the
sheep headed straight up the trail. Piute had to go to the right to
avoid being run down. Mescal rode up to fill his place. Hare took his
cue from Dave, and rode along the flank, crowding the sheep inward.
August cracked his whip behind. For half a mile the flock kept to the
trail, then, as if by common consent, they sheered off to the right.
With this move August and Dave were transformed from quiet almost to
frenzy. They galloped to the fore, and into the very faces of the
turning sheep, and drove them back. Then the rear-guard of the flock
curved outward.

"Drive them in!" roared August.

Hare sent Silvermane at the deflecting sheep and frightened them into
line.

Wolf no longer had power to chase the stragglers; they had to be turned
by a horse. All along the flank noses pointed outward; here and there
sheep wilder than the others leaped forward to lead a widening wave of
bobbing woolly backs. Mescal engaged one point, Hare another, Dave
another, and August Naab's roan thundered up and down the constantly
broken line. All this while as the shepherds fought back the sheep, the
flight continued faster eastward, farther canyonward. Each side gained,
but the flock gained more toward the canyon than the drivers gained
toward the oasis.

By August's hoarse yells, by Dave's stern face and ceaseless swift
action, by the increasing din, Hare knew terrible danger hung over the
flock; what it was he could not tell. He heard the roar of the river
rapids, and it seemed that the sheep heard it with him. They plunged
madly; they had gone wild from the scent and sound of water. Their eyes
gleamed red; their tongues flew out. There was no aim to the rush of the
great body of sheep, but they followed the leaders and the leaders
followed the scent. And the drivers headed them off, rode them down,
ceaselessly, riding forward to check one outbreak, wheeling backward to
check another.

The flight became a rout. Hare was in the thick of dust and din, of the
terror-stricken jumping mob, of the ever-starting, ever-widening streams
of sheep; he rode and yelled and fired his Colt. The dust choked him,
the sun burned him, the flying pebbles cut his cheek. Once he had a
glimpse of Black Bolly in a melee of dust and sheep; Dave's mustang
blurred in his sight; August's roan seemed to be double. Then
Silvermane, of his own accord, was out before them all.

The sheep had almost gained the victory; their keen noses were pointed
toward the water; nothing could stop their flight; but still the drivers
dashed at them, ever fighting, never wearying, never ceasing.

At the last incline, where a gentle slope led down to a dark break in the
desert, the rout became a stampede. Left and right flanks swung round,
the line lengthened, and round the struggling horses, knee-deep in woolly
backs, split the streams to flow together beyond in one resistless river
of sheep. Mescal forced Bolly out of danger; Dave escaped the right
flank, August and Hare swept on with the flood, till the horses, sighting
the dark canyon, halted to stand like rocks.

"Will they run over the rim?" yelled Hare, horrified. His voice came to
him as a whisper. August Naab, sweat-stained in red dust, haggard, gray
locks streaming in the wind, raised his arms above his head, hopeless.

The long nodding line of woolly forms, lifting like the crest of a yellow
wave, plunged out and down in rounded billow over the canyon rim. With
din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the precipice,
and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like the spreading
thunderous crash of an avalanche.

How endless seemed that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing
close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of
life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by their own
momentum.

The sliding roar ceased; its echo, muffled and hollow, pealed from the
cliffs, then rumbled down the canyon to merge at length in the sullen,
dull, continuous sound of the rapids.

Hare turned at last from that narrow iron-walled cleft, the depth of
which he had not seen, and now had no wish to see; and his eyes fell upon
a little Navajo lamb limping in the trail of the flock, headed for the
canyon, as sure as its mother in purpose. He dismounted and seized it to
find, to his infinite wonder and gladness, that it wore a string and bell
round its neck. It was Mescal's pet.

THE shepherds were home in the oasis that evening, and next day the
tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past. No other circumstance of
Hare's four months with the Naabs had so affected him as this swift
inevitable sweeping away of the flock; nothing else had so vividly told
him the nature of this country of abrupt heights and depths. He
remembered August Naab's magnificent gesture of despair; and now the man
was cheerful again; he showed no sign of his great loss. His tasks were
many, and when one was done, he went on to the next. If Hare had not had
many proofs of this Mormon's feeling he would have thought him callous.
August Naab trusted God and men, loved animals, did what he had to do
with all his force, and accepted fate. The tragedy of the sheep had been
only an incident in a tragical life—that Hare divined with awe.

Mescal sorrowed, and Wolf mourned in sympathy with her, for their
occupation was gone, but both brightened when August made known his
intention to cross the river to the Navajo range, to trade with the
Indians for another flock. He began his preparations immediately. The
snow-freshets had long run out of the river, the water was low, and he
wanted to fetch the sheep down before the summer rains. He also wanted
to find out what kept his son Snap so long among the Navajos.

"I'll take Billy and go at once. Dave, you join George and Zeke out on
the Silver Cup range. Take Jack with you. Brand all the cattle you can
before the snow flies. Get out of Dene's way if he rides over, and avoid
Holderness's men. I'll have no fights. But keep your eyes sharp for
their doings."

It was a relief to Hare that Snap Naab had not yet returned to the oasis,
for he felt a sense of freedom which otherwise would have been lacking.
He spent the whole of a long calm summer day in the orchard and the
vineyard. The fruit season was at its height. Grapes, plums, pears,
melons were ripe and luscious. Midsummer was vacationtime for the
children, and they flocked into the trees like birds. The girls were
picking grapes; Mother Ruth enlisted Jack in her service at the
pear-trees; Mescal came, too, and caught the golden pears he threw down,
and smiled up at him; Wolf was there, and Noddle; Black Bolly pushed her
black nose over the fence, and whinnied for apples; the turkeys strutted,
the peafowls preened their beautiful plumage, the guinea-hens ran like
quail. Save for those frowning red cliffs Hare would have forgotten
where he was; the warm sun, the yellow fruit, the merry screams of
children, the joyous laughter of girls, were pleasant reminders of autumn
picnic days long gone. But, in the face of those dominating wind-scarred
walls, he could not forget.

That night Hare endeavored to see Mescal alone for a few moments, to see
her once more with unguarded eyes, to whisper a few words, to say
good-bye; but it was impossible.

On the morrow he rode out of the red cliff gate with Dave and the pack-
horses, a dull ache in his heart; for amid the cheering crowd of children
and women who bade them good-bye he had caught the wave of Mescal's hand
and a look of her eyes that would be with him always. What might happen
before he returned, if he ever did return! For he knew now, as well as he
could feel Silvermane's easy stride, that out there under the white glare
of desert, the white gleam of the slopes of Coconina, was wild life
awaiting him. And he shut his teeth, and narrowed his eyes, and faced it
with an eager joy that was in strange contrast to the pang in his breast.

That morning the wind dipped down off the Vermillion Cliffs and whipped
west; there was no scent of river-water, and Hare thought of the fatality
of the sheep-drive, when, for one day out of the year, a moistened dank
breeze had met the flock on the narrow bench. Soon the bench lay far
behind them, and the strip of treacherous sand, and the maze of
sculptured cliff under the Blue Star, and the hummocky low ridges beyond,
with their dry white washes. Silvermane kept on in front. Already Hare
had learned that the gray would have no horse before him. His pace was
swift, steady, tireless. Dave was astride his Navajo mount, an
Indian-bred horse, half mustang, which had to be held in with a firm
rein. The pack train strung out far behind, trotting faithfully along,
with the white packs, like the humps of camels, nodding up and down.
Jack and Dave slackened their gait at the foot of the stony divide. It
was an ascent of miles, so long that it did not appear steep. Here the
pack-train caught up, and thereafter hung at the heels of the riders.

From the broad bare summit Jack saw the Silver Cup valley - range with
eyes which seemed to magnify the winding trail, the long red wall, the
green slopes, the dots of sage and cattle. Then he made allowance for
months of unobstructed vision; he had learned to see; his eyes had
adjusted themselves to distance and dimensions.

Silver Cup Spring lay in a bright green spot close under a break in the
rocky slope that soon lost its gray cliff in the shaggy cedared side of
Coconina.

The camp of the brothers was situated upon this cliff in a split between
two sections of wall. Well sheltered from the north and west winds was a
grassy plot which afforded a good survey of the valley and the trails.
Dave and Jack received glad greetings from Zeke and George, and
Silvermane was an object of wonder and admiration. Zeke, who had often
seen the gray and chased him too, walked round and round him, stroking
the silver mane, feeling the great chest muscles, slapping his flanks.

"Well, well, Silvermane, to think I'd live to see you wearing a saddle
and bridle! He's even bigger than I thought. There's a horse, Hare!
Never will be another like him in this desert. If Dene ever sees that
horse he'll chase him to the Great Salt Basin. Dene's crazy about fast
horses. He's from Kentucky, somebody said, and knows a horse when he
sees one."

"How are things?" queried Dave.

"We can't complain much," replied Zeke, "though we've wasted some time on
old Whitefoot. He's been chasing our horses. It's been pretty hot and
dry. Most of the cattle are on the slopes; fair browse yet. There's a
bunch of steers gone up on the mountain, and some more round toward the
Saddle or the canyon."

"Been over Seeping Springs way?"

"Yes. No change since your trip. Holderness's cattle are ranging in the
upper valley. George found tracks near the spring. We believe somebody
was watching there and made off when we came up."

"We'll see Holderness's men when we get to riding out," put in George.
"And some of Dene's too. Zeke met Two-Spot Chance and Culver below at the
spring one day, sort of surprised them."

"What day was that?"

"Let's see, this's Friday. It was last Monday."

"What were they doing over here?"

"Said they were tracking a horse that had broken his hobbles. But they
seemed uneasy, and soon rode off."

"Did either of them ride a horse with one shoe shy?"

"Now I think of it, yes. Zeke noticed the track at the spring."