on and on, the stars vanished, and from out the black void below the plain emerged, gray-green and grim, spreading itself out, miles and miles into the distance, to the rimming mass of mountains in the west. Still the hoof-beats rang out as the sky blushed with the dawn and the cloud-flecks flamed crimson and the peaks of the distant mountain range glittered with the first golden rays.
Neck to neck and heel to heel they galloped on over the faint track of the road, which now they could see, winding over the hills in front of them. The men spoke cheerily to the horses and patted their wet sides, and the spirited beasts still bent willingly to their task. The three riders sat erect, straight-shouldered, graceful in their saddles and the gentle morning breeze bathed their faces as on they rode over the hills, while the sun mounted above the Fernandez range and flooded all the plain with its soft, early light.
They swept around the curving bend in the road, where it half-circled the corrals, and Ellhorn’s lusty “Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee” rang out as they drew rein at Mead’s door; Las Plumas, the night and ninety miles behind them. Ellhorn’s yell brought the cook to the door, coffee-pot in hand, with two vaqueros following close behind. One of these took the horses to the stables and the three friends stood up against the wall in the sunshine, stretching themselves. Mead took out his pocket-knife and began cutting the cactus spines from his swollen hands.
“I’m glad to have a chance to get rid of these things,” he said. “They’ve been stinging like hornets all night.”
CHAPTER VII
Emerson Mead’s ranch house was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. There were also some colored posters and prints from weekly papers. A banjo stood in one corner of the dining room, while guns and revolvers of various kinds and patterns and belts heavy with cartridges hung against the walls or sprawled in corners.
The cook and housekeeper was a stockily built, round-faced Englishman, whom Mead had found stranded in Las Plumas. He had been put off the overland train at that place because the conductor had discovered that he was riding on a scalper’s ticket. Mead had taken a liking to the man’s jovial manner, and, being in need of a cook, had offered him the place. The Englishman, who said his name was Bill Haney, had accepted it gladly and had since earned his wage twice over by the care he took of the house and by the entertainment he afforded his employer. For he told many tales of his life in many lands, enough, had they all been true, to have filled the years of a Methuselah to overflowing. Mead did not believe any of his stories, and, indeed, strongly suspected that they were told for the purpose of throwing doubt upon any clue to his past life which he might inadvertently give. Good-natured and jovial though he was in face and talk and manner, there was a look at times in his small, keen, dark eyes which Mead did not like.
As Haney bustled about getting a fresh breakfast for the three men he said to Mead, “It’s mighty lucky you’ve come ’ome, sir. There’s been merry ’ell ’erself between our boys and the Fillmore boys, and they’re likely to be killin’ each other off at Alamo Springs to-day. They ’ad shots over a maverick yesterday, and the swearin’ they’ve been doin’ ’ad enough fire and brimstone in it to swamp ’ell ’erself.”
Haney’s conversation contained frequent reference to the abode of lost spirits, and always in the feminine gender. Mead asked him once why he always spoke of “hell” as “her,” and he replied:
“Well, sir, accordin’ to my reckonings, ’ell is a woman, or two women, or a thousand of ’em, accordin’ as a man ’as made it, and bein’ female it ’as to be called ’er.”
As the three men mounted fresh horses after a hasty breakfast, Nick Ellhorn said to Mead:
“Emerson, you’re in big luck that that confounded thug in the kitchen hasn’t cut your throat yet.”
“Oh, he won’t do anything to me,” Mead replied, smiling. “I reckon likely he is a thug, or a crook of some sort, but he won’t do me any harm.”
“Don’t you be too sure, Emerson,” said Tuttle, looking concerned. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, but I don’t think I’d like to have him around me on dark nights.”
“He is a good cook and he keeps the house as neat and clean as a woman would. He won’t try to do anything to me because I’m not big enough game. He knows I never keep money at the ranch, and that I haven’t got very much, any way. Besides, he’s seen me shoot, and I don’t think he wants to run up against my gun.”
They were hurrying to Alamo Springs, a watering place which Mead controlled farther up in the Fernandez mountains, where they arrived just in time to stop a pistol fight between the cow-boys of the opposing interests, half-a-dozen on each side, who had quarreled themselves into such anger that they were ready to end the whole matter by mutual annihilation.
Mead found that the round-up had progressed slowly during his absence. There had been constant quarreling, occasional exchange of shots, and unceasing effort on each side to retard the interests of the other. The Fillmore Company had routed the cow-boys of the small cattlemen, Mead’s included, and for the last two days had prevented them from joining in the round-up. Mead found his neighbors and their and his employees disorganized, angry, and determined on revenge. Accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, he galloped over the hills all that day and the next, visiting the camps on his own range and on the ranges of his neighbors who were leagued with him in the fight against the Fillmore Cattle Company. He smoothed down ruffled tempers, inquired into the justice of claims, gave advice, issued orders, and organized all the interests opposed to the cattle company into a compact, determined body.
After those two days there was a change in the way affairs were going, and the allied cattlemen began to win the disputes which were constantly coming up. There were not many more attempts to prevent the round-up from being carried on in concert, but there was no lessening of the bad temper and the bad words with which the work was done. Each side constantly harassed and defied the other, and each constantly accused the other of all the cattle-crimes known to the raisers of hoofed beasts. The mavericks were an unfailing source of quarrels. According to the Law of the Herds, as it is held in the southwest, each cattleman is entitled to whatever mavericks he finds on his own range, and none may say him nay. But the leagued cattle growers and the Fillmore people struggled valiantly over every unbranded calf they found scurrying over the hillsides. Each side accused the other of driving the mavericks off the ranges on which they belonged, and the vaqueros belonging to each force declared that they recognized as their own every calf which they found, no matter where or on whose range it chanced to be, and they branded it at once with small saddle irons if the other side did not prevent the operation.
Mead was the leader of his side, and, guarded always by his two friends, rode constantly over the ranges, helping in the bunching, cutting-out and branding of the cattle, giving orders, directing the movements of the herds and deciding quarrels. Colonel Whittaker came out from Las Plumas, and was as active in the management of the Fillmore Company’s interests as was Emerson Mead for those of his faction. Ellhorn and Tuttle would not allow Mead to go out of their sight. They rode with him every day and at night slept by his side. If he protested that he was in no danger, Ellhorn would reply:
“You-all may not need us, but I reckon you’re a whole heap less likely to need us if we’re right with you in plain view.”
And so they saw to it that they and their guns were never out of “plain view.” And, possibly in consequence, for the reputation of the three as men of dare-devil audacity and unequalled skill with rifle and revolver was supreme throughout that region, wherever the
