two or three cooks got busy about the fire which roared higher and higher as they piled on the ironwood to make coals, and before the sun had more than mounted the southern shoulder of the Four Peaks the long line of horsemen was well on the trail to Hell’s Hip Pocket.
The frontier imagination had in no wise overleaped itself in naming this abyss. Even the tribute which Facilis Descensus Vergil paid to the local Roman hell could hardly be said of the Pocket –– it is not even easy to get into it. From the top of the divide it looks like a valley submerged in a smoky haze through which the peaks and pinnacles of the lower parks rise up like cathedral spires, pointing solemnly to heaven. As the trail descends through washed-out gulches and “stone-patches,” now skating along the backbone of a ridge and now dropping as abruptly into some hollow waterway, the cliffs and pinnacles begin to loom up against the sky; then they seem to close in and block the way, and just as the cañon boxes in to nothing the trail slips into a gash in the face of the cliff where the soft sandstone has crumbled away between two harder strata, and climbs precariously along through the sombre gloom of the gorge to the bright light of the fair valley beyond.
It is a kind of fairy land, that hidden pocket in the hills, always covered by a mystic haze, for which the Mexicans give it the name Humada. Its steep cañon comes down from the breast of the most easterly of the Four Peaks, impassable except by the one trail; it passes through the box and there widens out into a beautiful valley, where the grass lies along the hillsides like the tawny mane of a lion, and tender flowers stand untrampled in the rich bottoms. For three miles or more it spreads out between striated cliffs where hawks and eagles make their nests; then once more it closes in, the creek plunges down a narrow gorge and disappears, writhing tortuously on its way to the Salagua whose fire-blasted walls rise in huge bulwarks against the south, dwarfing the near-by cliffs into nothingness by their majestic height.
In the presence of this unearthly beauty and grandeur old Bill Johnson –– ex-trapper, ex-soldier, ex-prospector, ex-everything –– had dwelt for twenty years, dating from the days when his house was his fortress, and his one desire was to stand off the Apaches until he could find the Lost Dutchman.
Where the valley narrowed down for its final plunge into the gorge the old trapper had built his cabin, its walls laid “square with the world” by sighting on the North Star. When the sun entered the threshold of the western door it was noon, and his watch never ran down. The cabin was built of shaly rocks, squared and laid in mud, like bricks; a tremendous stone chimney stood against the north end and a corral for his burros at the south. Three hounds with bleared eyes and flapping ears, their foreheads wrinkled with age and the anxieties of the hunt, bayed forth a welcome as the cavalcade strung in across the valley; and mild-eyed cattle, standing on the ridges to catch the wind, stared down at them in surprise. Never, even at San Carlos, where the Chiricahua cattle fatten on the best feed in Arizona, had Hardy seen such mountains of beef. Old steers with six and seven rings on their horns hung about the salting places, as if there were no such things as beef drives and slaughter houses in this cruel world, and even when the cowboys spread out like a fan and brought them all in to the cutting grounds there was hardly a calf that bawled.
As the three or four hundred head that made up his entire earthly possession drifted obediently in, the old man rode up to Creede and Hardy and waved his hand expansively.
“Thar, boys,” he said, “thar’s the results of peace and kindness. Nary a critter thar that I heven’t scratched between the horns since the day his maw brought him down to the salt lick. I even git Jeff and the boys to brand and earmark ’em fer me, so they won’t hev no hard feelin’ fer the Old Man. D’ye see that big white-faced steer?” he asked, pointing with pride to the monarch of the herd. “Waal, how much ye think he’ll weigh?” he demanded, turning to Creede. “Fifteen hundred?”
“Um, more ’n that,” responded Creede, squinting his eyes down judicially. “Them Herefords are awful solid when they git big. I reckon he’ll run nigh onto seventeen hundred, Bill.” He paused and winked furtively at Hardy. “I kin git fifty dollars fer that old boy, jest the way he stands,” he said, “and bein’ as he can’t carry no more weight nohow, I’ll jest cut him into the town herd right now, and –– ”
“Hyar!” shouted Johnson, grabbing the cowboy’s bridle, “who’s doin’ this, anyhow?”
“W’y you, Bill,” answered Creede innocently, “but –– ”
“That’s all right, then,” said the old man shortly, “you leave that steer alone. I’ll jest cut this herd to suit myself.”
Over at the branding pen the irons were on the fire and the marking was progressing rapidly, but out in the open Mr. Bill Johnson was making slow work of his cut.
“He gets stuck on them cows, like an Irishman with his pig,” observed Creede, as the old man turned back a prime four-year-old. “He’d rather be barbecued by the Apaches than part with that big white-faced boy. If I owned ’em I’d send down a lot of them big fat brutes and buy doggies; but Bill spends all the money he gits fer booze anyhow, so I reckon it’s all right. He generally sends out about twenty runts and roughs, and lets it go at that. Say! You’ll have to git a move on, Bill,” he shouted, “we want to send that beef cut on ahead!”
The old man reined in his mare and surveyed the big herd critically.
“Waal,” he drawled, “I reckon that’ll do fer this trip, then. Take ’em along. And the fust one of you punchers that hits one of them critters over the tail with his hondu,” he shouted, as the eager horsemen trotted over to start them, “will hev me to lick!”
He placed an order for provisions with Creede, asked him to keep the supplies at Hidden Water until he came over for them with the burros, and turned away contentedly as the cowboys went upon their way.
Down by the branding pen the mother cows licked the blood from their offsprings’ mangled ears and mooed resentfully, but the big white-faced steer stood in brutish content on the salting grounds and gazed after the town herd thoughtfully.
A bunch of burros gathered about the doorway of the cabin, snooping for bacon rinds; the hounds leaned their heavy jowls upon his knees and gazed up worshipfully into their master’s face; and as the sun dipped down toward the rim of the mighty cliffs that shut him in, the lord of Hell’s Hip Pocket broke into the chorus of an ancient song:
“Oh, o-ver the prairies, and o-ver the mountains, And o-ver the prairies, and o-ver the mountains, And o-ver the prairies, and o-ver the mountains, I’ll go till I find me a home.”
CHAPTER VIII
A YEAR’S MAIL
The beef herd was safely delivered at Bender, the feeders disposed of at Moroni, and the checks sent on to the absentee owner, who did not know a steer from a stag; the rodéo hands were paid off and successfully launched upon their big drunk; bills were paid and the Summer’s supplies ordered in, and then at last the superintendent and rodéo boss settled down to a little domesticity.
Since the day that Hardy had declined to drink with him Creede had quietly taken to water, and he planted a bag of his accumulated wages in a corner of the mud floor, to see, as he facetiously expressed it, if it would grow. Mr. Bill Johnson had also saved his “cow money” from Black Tex and banked it with Hardy, who had a little cache of his own, as well. With their finances thus nicely disposed of the two partners swept the floor, cleaned up the
