Jefferson Creede glanced up at him, smoking luxuriously, holding the cigarette to his lips with his hand as if concealing a smile.
“Aw, rats,” snapped out Lightfoot at last, “why don’t you finish up and quit? What happened then?”
“Then?” drawled Creede, with a slow smile. “W’y, nothin’, Bill––I died!”
“Ah-hah-hah!” yelled the punchers, throwing up handfuls of dirt in the extravagance of their delight, and before Bill could realize the enormity of the sell one of his own partisans rose up and kicked the cracker box out from under him in token of utter defeat. For an hour after their precipitate retreat 256 the visitors could hear the whoops and gibes of the cowboys, the loud-mouthed and indignant retorts of Lightfoot, and the soothing remonstrances of Jefferson Creede––and from the house Kitty the irrepressible, added to their merriment a shriek of silvery laughter. But after it was all over and he had won, the round-up boss swore soberly at himself and sighed, for he discerned on the morrow’s horizon the Indian signs of trouble.
CHAPTER XIV
FOREBODINGS
To the Eastern eye, blinded by local color, the Four Peaks country looked like a large and pleasantly variegated cactus garden, sparsely populated with rollicking, fun-loving cowboys who wore their interesting six-shooters solely to keep their balance in the saddle. The new grass stood untrampled beneath the bushes on Bronco Mesa, there were buds and flowers everywhere, and the wind was as sweet and untainted as if it drew out of Eden. But somewhere, somewhere in that great wilderness of peaks which lay to the south and through which only the dogged sheepmen could fight their way, stealthily hidden, yet watching, lay Jasper Swope and his sheep. And not only Jasper with his pet man-killing Chihuahuano and all those low-browed compadres whom he called by circumlocution “brothers,” but Jim, sore with his defeat, and many others––and every man armed.
After the first rain they had disappeared from the desert absolutely, their tracks pointing toward the east. The drought had hit them hard, and the cold of Winter; yet the ewes had lambed in the springtime, 258 and as if by magic the tender grass shot up to feed their little ones. Surely, God was good to the sheep. They were ranging far, now that the shearing was over, but though they fed to the topmost peaks of the Superstitions, driving the crooked-horned mountain sheep from their pastures, their destiny lay to the north, in the cool valleys of the Sierra Blancas; and there in the end they would go, though they left havoc in their wake. Once before the sheep had vanished in this same way, mysteriously; and at last, travelling circuitous ways and dealing misery to many Tonto cowmen, they had poured over the very summit of the Four Peaks and down upon Bronco Mesa. And now, though they were hidden, every man on the round-up felt their presence and knew that the upper range was in jeopardy.