“I’m going over there,” answered Hardy, throwing the saddle on his horse. He looked over his shoulder as he heaved on the cinch. “That’s where that dust was,” he said, and as the outfit stood gaping he swung up and was off into the darkness.
“Hey, take my gun!” yelled Jeff, but the clatter of hoofs never faltered––he was going it blind and unarmed. Late that night another horseman on a flea-bitten gray dashed madly after him over the Pocket trail. It was Old Bill Johnson, crazed with apprehension; and behind him straggled his hounds, worn from their long chase after the lion, but following dutifully on their master’s scent. The rest of the outfit rode over in the morning––the punchers with their pistols thrust into the legs of their shaps; Creede black and staring with anger; the judge asking a thousand unanswered questions and protesting against any resort to violence; the women tagging along helplessly, simply because they could not be left alone. And there, pouring forth from 292 the mouth of Hell’s Hip Pocket, came the sheep, a solid phalanx, urged on by plunging herders and spreading out over the broad mesa like an invading army. Upon the peaks and ridges round about stood groups of men, like skirmishers––camp rustlers with their packs and burros; herders, whose sheep had already passed through––every man with his gun in his hand. The solid earth of the trail was worn down and stamped to dust beneath the myriad feet, rising in a cloud above them as they scrambled through the pass; and above all other sounds there rose the high, sustained tremolo of the sheep:
“Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay!”
To the ears of the herders it was music, like the thunder of stamps to a miner or the rumble of a waterfall to a lonely fisher; the old, unlistened music of their calling, above which the clamor of the world must fight its way. But to the cowmen it was like all hell broken loose, a confusion, a madness, a babel which roused every passion in their being and filled them with a lust to kill.
Without looking to the right or to the left, Jefferson Creede fixed his eyes upon one man in that riot of workers and rode for him as a corral hand marks down a steer. It was Jasper Swope, hustling the last of a herd through the narrow defile, and as his Chihuahuanos caught sight of the burly figure bearing 293 down upon the padron they abandoned their work to help him. From the hill above, Jim Swope, his face set like iron for the conflict, rode in to back up his brother; and from far down the cañon Rufus Hardy came spurring like the wind to take his place by Creede.
In the elemental clangor of the sheep they faced each other, Creede towering on his horse, his face furious with rage; Swope gray with the dust of his driving but undaunted by the assault.
“Stop where you are!” shouted Swope, holding out a warning hand as the cowman showed no sign of halting. But Creede came straight on, never flinching, until he had almost ridden him down.
“You low-lived, sheep-eatin’ hound,” he hissed, piling in the wickedest of his range epithets, “you and me have had it comin’ fer quite a while, and now I’ve got you. I’ve never yet seen a sheepman that would fight in the open, but you’ve got to or take that!” He leaned over suddenly and slapped him with his open hand, laughing recklessly at the Mexicans as they brandished their guns and shouted.
“Quite se, cabrones,” he jeered, sorting out the worst of his fighting Spanish for their benefit, “you are all gutter pups––you are afraid to shoot!”
“Here,” rasped out Jim Swope, spurring his horse in between them, “what are you fellers tryin’ to do? 294 Git out of here, umbre––go on now! Never mind, Jasp, I’ll do the talkin’. You go on away, will ye! Now what’s the matter with you, Mr. Creede, and what can I do for you?”