THE STAMPEDE
Along the banks of the Yellowstone, where it wended its snakelike course to the Missouri, wandered the massive herds of the Star Circle, and around them rode the cow waddies, the few outriders, keeping their charges from straying, and ever watchful for the dreaded sheep, which had of late sprung up like buffalo grass, and, as Buck Milton expressed it, "in a country that God had made for cows."
And over the range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to the applause of thousands. They acted in the dark, if they could, and for hire, and yet they may have had hearts—but those who hired them surely had none.
And all unconscious of coming danger the boys rode with the few herders, or by themselves, near the wandering cattle. The storm had held off while twilight faded, but now the sky was cloud-curtained, and the night fell inky black and silent save for sounds from the herd. The soft thudding of hoofs, the occasional low-voiced note, possibly of a cow to its young, seemed to blend into a murmur, strange and fascinating to Whitey, commonplace and tiresome to the men of the range.
Then the storm began to send signals of its approach from air and sky. First the hushing of the wind, then the pale glares from the distant sky where the earth's edge joined it, then the rumble of thunder, growing in volume with the brighter, green flashes of the lightning—all familiar enough to Whitey, but now giving him a thrill because felt in strange surroundings. The nervous stirring of the mass of beasts near by added to the boy's thrill, for a coming storm was never to be taken calmly by the hulking, helpless brutes.
And when the rush of wind and the crashing of the coming tempest sounded, and the herders were renewing their watchfulness, another storm was breeding that they did not dream of. For over beyond, in a gully, the sheepmen were gathered. And each man carried a white garment, like those you may have seen pictured as worn by the old raiders of the South—the Ku-Klux Klan. They were waiting only for the lightning to become blinding, the thunder to become deafening.
And when the electrical storm was at its height, you will know what happened when those white-clad figures went among the thousands of range-bred beasts, guarded by a pitiful handful of men. For range cattle are accustomed to a man only when he is mounted; then he is a part of his horse. It is dangerous for him to go among them on foot; then he is a strange animal. Many a cowboy has dismounted, rescued a steer from the mire—and had to run for his life. Thus were those white-clad figures doubly monstrous and terrifying to the herd.
You may have thought that the cowboy wears his revolver for protection against his human enemies, but it is rather for a protection of the cattle against themselves in that strange panic known as a "stampede." Whitey and Injun, riding near the edge of the herd, and bowing against the fury of the storm, did not need Buck Milton's hoarse shouts of warning to make them swing aside. They were helpless to aid in diverting the mass of maddened animals that swung toward them, and galloping their horses to a point of safety, they turned in their saddles and viewed the strange sight.
Lighted by the almost continuous flashes of the lightning, the bellowing, thundering herd crashed by.... Far behind it, and in safety, were the white figures of the men who had caused the panic, sneaking off into the night. They had been seen by the Star Circle riders, but there was no time to think of them now. At the head of the herd, Whitey could see two men, their horses set at a mad run. Buck Milton was one, and the other a dare-devil young fellow named Tom, who was Buck's closest friend.
And as Buck and Tom rode, Whitey could see them firing their guns almost in the faces of the foremost maddened steers. They were trying to divert the leaders, and thus turn the herd until it would circle in its course, and finally the entire mass of beasts would be running round and round, in a course known as "milling." And there Whitey learned the real use the cowboy has for his gun.
What was going on beyond, Whitey could not see, and he could hear nothing above the uproar of the storm, and the clamor of the stampede, except the faint cracking of the guns of Tom and Buck. As Whitey held the almost fear-maddened Monty in check, the wild-eyed steers, with lowered heads and panting sides, sped by. At their head Whitey saw Tom swing nearer toward the leaders, then he saw Tom no more. There were two dangers to be feared in that mad race; if a steer fell, the others would trip over it, and many of them would die; if a man were caught in the rushing mass, it meant sure death.
Morning came, with the sun graying the low clouds, from which fell a cold drizzle; a setting drear enough for the scene the boys were to witness. A handful of gaunt men, sad but determined, their spent, drooping horses near by, stood facing a shallow grave scooped out of the prairie. Near it lay a blanket-covered figure that the dreaded stampede had crushed into a shape of which Whitey feared to think.
As the cowboys lowered the shape into the grave, Buck Milton turned his head away for a moment. Then he said simply, "Tom was my pardner for nine years." And again, after a pause, "And who's goin' t' tell his gal over on the Little Divide?"
There seemed no need for words just then, for after their grief for their friend the men's faces showed the turn of thought to his murderers, the sheepmen. Whitey never had seen the intent to kill come into men's faces before. It was grim, but not repulsive, for in a way there was justice in it. And poor Tom, who yesterday had been less than a name to Whitey, had now become the central figure in a tragedy.
But no one could have told what Injun thought. He, who came of a race that held vengeance above most things, looked on, seemingly unmoved.
Followed busy days on the Star Circle, during which Walt Lampson probably forgot the existence of Whitey and Injun. It was doubtful to the boys that he even noticed them when they rode back to the ranch house, after the funeral of Buck's friend Tom. Whatever thoughts of revenge were cherished by Walt and Buck had to be held in check while the stampeded herds were rounded up from the many-mile radius of prairie over which they had strayed.
To do this the entire force of the Star Circle was needed. Divided into parties the men rode north, east, south, and west for a distance of about twenty miles. Then they trailed round and round, in a great, narrowing circle that took in that wide radius, and as the cattle were met, in bunches or small herds, they were gathered and driven into a common center until they formed one great herd.
Whitey and Injun managed to go with Buck Milton's men, as Whitey liked Buck better than any of the other punchers, but the death of Tom had left Buck in a gloomy mood, and he spoke but little, either to the men or to the boys. The others were loud in their oaths and threats of vengeance; Buck was silent—and somehow, Whitey could not help feeling that Buck was the most dangerous enemy the sheepmen would have to deal with.
This round-up lasted a full week. During it Walt Lampson had found time to consider his course of action against the stampeders of his herd. So when Whitey and Injun returned, they found that the Star Circle was to be involved in one of the scourges of the time—a range war.
If you had been there would you have wanted to stay and see the thing out? The answer is so simple that you know what Whitey and Injun wanted to do. But Whitey knew that hardened as Walt Lampson was, he would not allow the boys to accompany the coming expedition against the sheepmen, so Injun and Whitey did what you probably would have done, and what Br'er Rabbit did—they lay low. And Walt either forgot to send them home, or thought that they would stay at the Star Circle while the war was on.
For two days after the round-up nothing was done at the ranch, beyond the oiling of guns, and consultations among the men. Walt Lampson seemed to be waiting for something. On the third night there was a meeting in the ranch-house living-room. A meeting which Whitey and Injun attended unseen, by the simple method of hiding. It may have been wrong to listen, but it was worse to die, and Whitey felt that he surely would expire if he didn't know what was going on. Injun had no scruples at all.
A traveler might have thought that all trails led to the Star Circle Ranch, that gloomy night, for from every point of the compass came riders, alone, by twos, and by threes. Desperate, hard men, who had used their bodily strength to conquer the elements and to build up their herds, as mine-owners use machinery to crush the gold out of the ore. For this war of the sheep against the cattle was a common war, and it was to be fought to a finish in that country.
So that was what Walt was waiting for, thought Whitey as he looked into the living-room from a crack in the office door, held slightly ajar. Had Whitey been in a criminal court during the last appeal of opposing counsel, he would have seen in the jury box no more thoughtful, set, and determined faces than those assembled in that ranch-house room.
The decision this court reached was: to catch the culprits and hang them; to drive their sheep over the hills into the deepest canyons to die by thousands; to hunt out the hiding owners, and let Colt guns be both judge and jury. Merciless and hard it seems, doesn't it? But those were merciless and hard days, when "only the strong survived."
"There's just one man I ever knowed who could do this work right," Walt Lampson said. "The greatest two-handed man with a gun that ever was born, an' a fool jury sent him to the pen, five years ago, for brandin' a few calves."
"You mean Mart Cooley," said another ranchman. "There was only one of him. But he done two years at Deer Lodge, an' nobody's ever seen him since."
"Guess again," Walt replied. "I heard o' him. He's been down in the Chinook Country. An' what's more I've got word o' Mart, an' he's comin' here t'night."
Walt's words caused a sensation, and while it is subsiding I may as well explain that in those frontier days there was a vast stretch of mesa or prairie known as the Chinook Country, because of the unseasonable, warm, and soothing winds that blew there. You may have read Bill Jordan's tale about these winds, in the first Injun and Whitey story. They would melt the snow, and cause the cowmen to start out their feeding herds, only to be caught by the northers, that brought the bitter, perishing cold, and killed the stock by thousands. On account of this uncertain condition the Chinook Country was avoided in the early days, save by those who located there for reasons—which no one was ever known to question. And in this desolate place Walt Lampson had heard of Mart Cooley, and from there he had lured him to the Star Circle Ranch.
Whitey waited, almost breathless, for the thrill that was to come at his first sight of the "bad man" of the West; the "two-gun man" who has long since passed into history, but was then a factor of the troublous times.
And you might like to hear a word or two about the ways he handled his gun, for he had more than one way. But first, the way he didn't handle it. Ordinarily, when you are shooting at a mark with a pistol, you cock the weapon, close one eye, and gaze along the barrel with the other until the sight is in line with the mark, and, holding the pistol steady, pull the trigger. That was what the gunman didn't do.
He sighted his weapon much as you throw a stone—by judging with his eye. He filed off the sight, so it wouldn't catch in the holster And he didn't use the trigger at all. That, too, could be taken off. Let us say that he was using both guns. He drew them from their holsters with marvelous speed. As he did so, he flipped back the hammers with his thumbs, and allowed them to fall on the cartridges, thus firing the first shots. The remaining shots were fired by working the hammers in the same way, and the actions caused an up-and-down movement of the guns. Seems a funny way to fire a revolver, doesn't it? But it wasn't funny for the man who was in front of the bad man.
He had another way of not leveling the gun at all, but firing from his hip, the revolver being held there, and the hammer worked with the thumb. Another and very expert way was to fire from the holster, not taking the gun out at all. This was remarkably quick and deadly.
But the strangest way of all, that was sometimes used at close quarters, was called "fanning." The gun was held at the hip, the first shot fired with the thumb-hammer movement. The gunman spread out the thumb and fingers of his other hand, and quickly drawing them across the hammer, one after another, they fired the shots with lightning rapidity. You would be surprised at the speed with which shots can be fired in this way. Try it sometime—with an empty gun.
Whitey, waiting behind the living-room door, had heard in bunk-house talk of these various ways in which the bad man proved himself an artist with his gun—had to prove himself one, if he wanted to remain alive. But when Mart Cooley, the most deadly man of that kind in the West, entered the living-room and faced the ranchmen, Whitey did not get his thrill—at first. For Mart was not a very large, nor a very fierce-looking person, as he stood sidewise to Whitey, and talked to the others.
Not often does crime fail to leave its mark on a man. The mouth, the chin, the forehead; some feature usually shows traces of it. And when Mart Cooley turned and Whitey saw his eyes, he got his thrill. They were a hard, light, steely gray, and they looked out from lowered lids, oh, so steadily. Months of brooding in the prison had helped to harden Mart's eyes, that had needed no help in that way; brooding over imaginary wrongs, for he thought his arrest an injustice. Other men had stolen a few cows, and got away with them, but Mart was made to suffer, and came to think himself a victim.
Out in the barren waste of the Chinook Country, lonely and gloomy, Mart had planned vengeance. But against whom? No one man could fight the Government. Failure was sure to come, and it meant death or worse—further imprisonment. In time Mart had come to regard all humanity as his enemy. Thus does crime and solitude twist the mind of man. Mart was ripe for a killing. And these men were offering him a chance.