"Whar's that feller that refused a drink this evenin'?" demanded Brigham, imitating with roguish accuracy the broad Texas accent of his predecessor. "He's the boy fer second guard—good and reliable—comes from Texas, too. Mr. Atkins, I'll ask you and yore cotton-picker friend, Happy Jack, to kindly stand second guard. Bud and Bill third, and Sam and Slim fourth. I'm boss now, and I don't stand no guard!"
CHAPTER XVII
AND HIS SQUIRREL STORY
The upper range of the Bat Wing was a country by itself. To reach it they rode due north from Chula Vista, following an old road that had been fenced so many times that Gloomy Gus became discouraged. Twisting and turning, driving around through new-made lanes, or jerking a world of staples and laying the wire on the ground, he toiled on in the wake of the outfit, which was rounding up spare corners of the unfenced range. Behind him came the horse wrangler and his helper, doing their best to keep the remuda out of the barbed-wire, and jerking up more fence with their ropes than Gus laid down with his nail-puller. Certainly in that wide, windmill-dotted valley, the open range was a thing of the past. It was only thirty feet to water, and the nesters were settling everywhere.
"One more day like that," observed Gloomy Gus as he threw together a late supper, "and I quit!"
"Me too!" chimed in the wrangler; and the punchers felt much the same.
"A few more years like this last," remarked Henry Lee, gazing gloomily out across his former estate, "and we'll all quit. But, thank God, they can't farm the Black Mesa."
On the second day they turned east, crossing the boggy river and mounting up on a great plateau, and then Bowles saw why Henry Lee's remark was true. The Black Mesa was high and level, with a wealth of coarse grass on the flats and wooded hills behind; but hills and flats alike were covered with a layer of loose rocks that made the land a wilderness. Even the wagon road on which they traveled was a mere rut across the rock patch, and from a distance it looked like a ruined stone wall where the rocks had been thrown to both sides. And the rocks were black, a scorched, volcanic black, with square corners and uneroded edges that gashed at the horses' ankles. Deep-cut cañons wound tortuously across the level mesa, their existence unsuspected until the rider stopped at their brink; and, hidden in their sullen depths, the scant supply of water was lost to all but the birds.
Yet to the cowboys the landscape was cheering, for there was bunch-grass between the rocks and not a house in sight. It is hard to please everybody in this world, but cowboys are easily pleased. All they want is a good horse and plenty of swing room, and a landscape gardener couldn't make it better. To Bowles the lower valley had been a wild and unsettled country, but he found that even the Black Mesa was tame to these seasoned nomads.