CHAPTER XV—“WHAT WON’T BE LED MUST BE DRIVEN”
“Come along,” said Chet, after the Indians were gone. “Let’s pick up the pieces and get away. We won’t get anywhere on the trail to-day. But there’s one thing sure—we won’t stop at noon to eat.”
“Whew! I lose that meal, do I?” grumbled Dig.
“And you’ll lose supper, too, if we don’t shoot some game. Our guests pretty nearly ate us out of house and home. I calculated on your appetite when I made up our list of provisions; but I didn’t calculate on a plague of locusts. Amoshee, or John Peep, and his red friends had their appetites with them, and no mistake.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said his chum, with sarcasm. “We can’t starve when buffaloes roam the plains as plentifully as they do. We’ll soon be able to rope a buffalo calf, eh?”
“No, there’s no need of that,” said Chet calmly. “We’ve got your maverick to feed on. When are you going to butcher him, Dig?”
“I guess not!” cried Dig indignantly. “He’s a pet. See! he knows me now.”
He was just then approaching the yearling to unfasten the lariat. The little brute waited, with lowered head, watching Dig with what Chet was sure was a malevolent eye.
Dig stooped to untangle the rope, turning rearward to the captured calf. As though he had been waiting for the chance, the calf blatted and charged. The impact of his forehead against the seat of Dig’s pants was tremendous.
“Waugh! Take him off! Help!” roared Dig, after performing a complete somersault. Chet absolutely could not help him. The maverick leaped about his prostrate captor, stiff-legged. The rope became wound around Dig’s ankle and then, when he tried to get to his feet, he could not do so.
“Stop your laughing!” he called to his chum, “and come to help a fellow. He’s going to bat me again!”
“What do you want—a gun?” sputtered Chet. “That calf is just as dangerous as a tiger.” But he helped his chum out of his predicament, though continuing to make remarks regarding the maverick and its troubled owner.
“So you call this a pet, do you? I’d just as soon pet a Kansas cyclone. Whoa, boy! Easy! My goodness, Dig! he pulls like a bull elk. There’s something wrong with this maverick. He’s crossed with a traction engine, I know.”
“Oh, you behave!” complained Digby. “Why pick upon the innocent little thing? I believe you’ve been tantalizing him when my back was turned. That’s why he acts in such an ornery fashion.”
They got on their horses at length, and Dig attempted to lead his prize. Instantly the maverick set all four hoofs in the soft prairie and braced himself against the line. But Dig had his line fastened to the fork of the saddle and the yearling could not pull Poke over.
The mustang snorted and dragged the maverick over the torn sod. The latter animal could not blat, for its wind was shut off.
“Hi!” cried Chet. “You’ll stretch its neck until it will look like a giraffe. Then you’ll never sell it at Grub Stake for a pet or for anything else.”
“Get better money for it,” declared Dig grimly. “It would sell for a freak in a circus. And, by Jo! it’s got to come.”
Chet watched the tug of war for some minutes further before asking, seriously:
“You haven’t called it anything yet, have you, Dig?”
“Called it anything?” protested his chum. “I’ve called it everything I dared aloud, and a whole lot of names that don’t sound well to myself!”
“Oh, no—I mean a real name,” said Chet, chuckling. “You haven’t named it yet?”
“Haven’t had time,” returned Dig innocently enough. “I been too busy trying to make the darned thing behave.”
“Well, I’d like to suggest a name for it,” said Chet.
“Yes?” responded Dig, yanking again on the calf’s line.
“Call it Stone Fence. You can move it just as easily.”
“Waugh!” shouted Dig, as the calf hung back again and the rope became taut, burning the boy’s hand between rope and saddle. “Now you’ve said something, boy! Stone Fence let him be.”
Poke was dancing. He was no cow-pony and he objected to the dragging of the waif.
“We’ll never get anywhere,” said Chet impatiently. “Do something to that calf, Dig, please!”
It did seem as though after the little brute had been half choked to death he ought to be willing to trot along behind Poke; but not so. Stone Fence fell down on his knees, flopped over on his side, and allowed himself to be dragged in that position.
“Say!” gasped the sweating Dig, “he’ll be worn as thin as paper if he keeps that up. By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I’ll beat that little nuisance!”
He dismounted and cut two long willow sprouts. The maverick began to graze. Nothing seemed to disturb its appetite. In that possession it and Digby Fordham were brothers, and Chet, with gravity, pointed this fact out.
“Brothers?” sniffed Dig. “You can bet we are brothers in another way. That dogy is obstinate; but so am I. You watch me!”
He mounted into the saddle again. He stuck one willow wand into his bootleg for emergency, and then used the other to prod the maverick. The latter didn’t like this. He kept ahead of the point of the willow wand which, whenever he lagged, poked between his hind legs.
Chet almost fell out of his saddle from laughing at the performance; and Poke looked as disgusted as a mustang can look. That calf plunging along the trail just ahead of Poke’s nose disgruntled the spirited horse.
Chet led the march, the maverick came next, and Dig brought up an active rear. “What won’t be led must be driven,” quoth Dig, now quite himself again. “All aboard for Grub Stake again, Chet, my boy.”
“My goodness!” exclaimed his chum, rather exasperated. “When do you think we’ll ever get there at this rate?”
They made fair time, however, considering the obstacles during a part of the afternoon. Chet galloped away off the trail at sight of a small herd of deer, and managed to get near enough to shoot a young doe. He cut its throat, and let it bleed well, and then flung it over the saddle and cantered back to the trail.
Dig was rather disappointed because he had not had any of the fun of stalking the deer. Chet pointed out the fact that Dig had the maverick, saying:
“There is compensation in everything, my boy. You have that pet to play with; I don’t own any maverick. You don’t hear me kicking—”
“Oh, go on!” growled Dig.
There was one good thing about Digby Fordham: he never really held rancour; and he could take a joke as well as give one. Of course he knew that he had caught a Tartar in the yearling; but he would not give him up.
Before the afternoon was gone Stone Fence had learned that it was better to walk more or less sedately along the trail than to be poked with a sharp pole. Their pace was not rapid; but they got through the pass between the hills after a time.
It was just before they left the pass and as the wider plain beyond broke upon their view that Dig spied a grey animal sitting on a rock ahead of them, and some distance off the trail.
“What do you call that, Chet?” he cried. “Looks like an old woman with a nightcap on—only she’s got two tassels on the cap and they stick up straight.”
“Wolf!” responded his chum, the instant he saw the grey figure on the rock. “And the ‘old woman’ is all right. Bet she’s a big she-wolf with a litter somewhere near. Yes, by cracky! there they are, Dig.”
“I see ’em,” Dig returned.
There were several moving figures beside the big old wolf sitting on her haunches. Dig was anxious to try and get a shot.
“No more chance of hitting her than of hitting the moon,” returned Chet, restraining him. “But I’ll tell you something right now.”
“What’s that?”
“You keep this blamed calf tagging us around for long, and we’ll have a whole pack of wolves ringing our camp. Make up your mind to that, boy.”
“‘Tagging us around’? That sounds good,” snorted Dig. “Get up there, you pest! I’ve driven this pesky creature almost far enough now.”
“Turn him loose then.”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t be so cruel. Not with those wolves in sight,” said Dig, shaking his head.
“Make up your mind that he is going to attract night prowlers.”
“Good! I want to get a shot at something besides grouse.”
“Never mind. Deer liver for supper to-night,” said Chet.
“And the tongue. That’s a fat doe; there’ll be plenty of kidney suet to fry the meat in. Whew! I’m hungry now,” cried Digby.
“Never saw such a disgracefully hungry person in my life,” declared his chum. “Always thinking of your stomach.”
They did not see the wolves again as they came out upon the edge of the great prairie. Indeed, they saw no animal. The prairie rolled away before them as far as they could see. To the north and to the south were lines of hills; but a haze almost hid the higher Rockies toward which they were bound.
Chet stopped at a stream and they filled their canteens.
“Try to be careful with it,” he advised Digby. “We’re not sure that we shall reach another stream to camp beside. I’m not so sure of the trail from here on, anyway.”
“I’ll get a good drink right here, then,” said his chum, climbing carefully down.
With the maverick to take care of he had to be cautious as to his movements. It was not safe to leave the lead-rope tied to the fork of his saddle, for if the calf pulled when the saddle was empty, Poke immediately backed around preparatory to throwing his heels at the blatting young calf.
Now Dig kneeled down at the edge of the stream above where the horses were drinking. Stone Fence had dropped down on the grass, chewing a cud, but evidently tired. The run had been a hard one for him.
Poke lifted his head, “blew” softly, and felt the tug of the leash at his saddle. The black’s wicked ears shot backward and he turned his head to mark the place where Stone Fence contentedly chewed his cud.
“Look out, Dig!” cried Chet, who was just raising himself into his own saddle.
But his chum’s head was down for another drink. He did not hear.
The maverick scrambled up with a snort of fright as the black horse whirled upon him. Dig tried to get up just as quickly; but when he put his weight upon a turf at the brink of the stream, the sod broke away and down he plunged, with his right arm into the water to his arm-pit.
“Oh—ouch!” gurgled Dig. “What’s the matter now?”
“Trouble!” called Chet.
But, as Dig claimed afterward, that was no fit warning. He didn’t know whether he was being attacked from behind, before, on either flank, from the sky above, or whether trouble was rising out of the ground.
And it seemed as though it had come from all points when it reached him. Dig was trying to rise when the calf, escaping Poke’s vicious hoofs, collided with his young master. Ker-splash! they were both in the stream!
The calf was scared fully as much as Dig, if not more. Both bawled and splashed about, unable to obtain their footing at first, and had Chet not dismounted and run to the assistance of the pair, one or the other might have remained under water longer than would have been good for him.
The rope had become wound about Dig’s legs in some mysterious way, and the calf was tangled up in a regular “cat’s cradle.”
“I declare!” said Chet Havens, with disgust as well as laughter. “I never saw anybody do so much and to so little purpose with a rope in all my life. For goodness’ sake, Dig! come out of that water. You’re a sight!”
“I—I don’t f-feel much b-b-better than I—I look,” chattered his chum. “That water’s cold, lemme t-tell you.”
“I know it’s wet—from just looking at you,” proclaimed young Havens. “You’re in fine shape for riding. What are you going to do with that blamed calf now?”
“Take him to Grub Stake,” said Dig obstinately. “You can ride on without me, if you want to, Chet. But Stone Fence is going to be my companion if I spend the rest of the summer on the trail.”
He would not remount then, however, but made Poke trail on behind him while he urged the complaining Stone Fence with a willow wand. Besides, the sun would dry his garments better when he walked, and the exercise kept him from becoming chilled.
“Gee! Haw!” he was soon calling to the yearling, teaching him to turn from side to side as the case might be. “Never too young to learn,” Dig confided to his chum. “Mebbe somebody will want to work him with a bull-team.”
Chet rode ahead and scanned the prairie carefully. The trail they were supposed to follow was only a faint trace now. He knew the general direction to go, and he carried a compass. He did not think he could get lost; but he was watching the plain for signs of a water-hole. The sun was descending, and they must camp before dark.
Besides, Chet was looking for signs of disturbing animals now. Having seen the old she-wolf and her young, he expected to find other—and perhaps more dangerous—creatures on the plain.
An hour later he spied some low shrubs which seemed to follow a watercourse between two coulies. The shrubs were green and thrifty, although they did not mark a very extensive stream. It might be merely a water-hole which had not yet dried up. However, Chet was quite sure it would afford the party all the water they needed for one night.
So he led the way off the trail. Even Stone Fence seemed to know that the day’s journey was nearly over. He trotted on more placidly, and the horses quickened their pace.
They had made but small progress that day. However, with all the set-backs and delays it was fortunate that they had come this far.
The water was a narrow stream trickling between willows and other moisture-loving shrubs. They made camp and started a fire very quickly. They cut up the doe Chet had shot and all the dainty parts that Dig clamoured for were prepared for the skillet, while the flayed haunches and shoulders were hung high in the saplings, out of the way (as the boys thought) of any marauding beast.
“Tell you what,” Chet said, “if your calf doesn’t draw the wolves down here, the smell of that fresh venison will do the trick. Watch and watch tonight, boy.”
“Oh, Chet! what’s the use? I’m tired,” yawned his chum.
“I should think you would be paddling on after that fool calf! But expect no sympathy from me,” and Chet insisted upon tethering the horses near the camp instead of letting them roam, hobbled.
“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” Dig exclaimed, “why don’t you build a stockade and build a big bonfire? One would think you were expecting a whole drove of savage beasts down here.”
Just then a mournful wail came down the wind—a shuddering cry that made Dig start and hold suspended the piece of meat he had upon his fork.
“Wha—what’s that? A coyote?” demanded Dig.
“That’s one of your friends,” said Chet grimly. “It’s the call of a hungry wolf. You can expect him and his gang early.”
Stone Fence bawled where he was tethered nearby, instinctively knowing that there was danger near.