With Hoops of Steel

by Florence Finch Kelly

“Emerson, you’re in big luck that that confounded thug in the kitchen hasn’t cut your throat yet.”

“Oh, he won’t do anything to me,” Mead replied, smiling. “I reckon likely he is a thug, or a crook of some sort, but he won’t do me any harm.”

“Don’t you be too sure, Emerson,” said Tuttle, looking concerned. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, but I don’t think I’d like to have him around me on dark nights.”

“He is a good cook and he keeps the house as neat and clean as a woman would. He won’t try to do anything to me because I’m not big enough game. He knows I never keep money at the ranch, and that I haven’t got very much, any way. Besides, he’s seen me shoot, and I don’t think he wants to run up against my gun.”

They were hurrying to Alamo Springs, a watering place which Mead controlled farther up in the Fernandez mountains, where they arrived just in time to stop a pistol fight between the cow-boys of the opposing interests, half-a-dozen on each side, who had quarreled themselves into such anger that they were ready to end the whole matter by mutual annihilation.

Mead found that the round-up had progressed slowly during his absence. There had been constant quarreling, occasional exchange of shots, and unceasing effort on each side to retard the interests of the other. The Fillmore Company had routed the cow-boys of the small cattlemen, Mead’s included, and for the last two days had prevented them from joining in the round-up. Mead found his neighbors and their and his employees disorganized, angry, and determined on revenge. Accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, he galloped over the hills all that day and the next, visiting the camps on his own range and on the ranges of his neighbors who were leagued with him in the fight against the Fillmore Cattle Company. He smoothed down ruffled tempers, inquired into the justice of claims, gave advice, issued orders, and organized all the interests opposed to the cattle company into a compact, determined body.

After those two days there was a change in the way affairs were going, and the allied cattlemen began to win the disputes which were constantly coming up. There were not many more attempts to prevent the round-up from being carried on in concert, but there was no lessening of the bad temper and the bad words with which the work was done. Each side constantly harassed and defied the other, and each constantly accused the other of all the cattle-crimes known to the raisers of hoofed beasts. The mavericks were an unfailing source of quarrels. According to the Law of the Herds, as it is held in the southwest, each cattleman is entitled to whatever mavericks he finds on his own range, and none may say him nay. But the leagued cattle growers and the Fillmore people struggled valiantly over every unbranded calf they found scurrying over the hillsides. Each side accused the other of driving the mavericks off the ranges on which they belonged, and the vaqueros belonging to each force declared that they recognized as their own every calf which they found, no matter where or on whose range it chanced to be, and they branded it at once with small saddle irons if the other side did not prevent the operation.

Mead was the leader of his side, and, guarded always by his two friends, rode constantly over the ranges, helping in the bunching, cutting-out and branding of the cattle, giving orders, directing the movements of the herds and deciding quarrels. Colonel Whittaker came out from Las Plumas, and was as active in the management of the Fillmore Company’s interests as was Emerson Mead for those of his faction. Ellhorn and Tuttle would not allow Mead to go out of their sight. They rode with him every day and at night slept by his side. If he protested that he was in no danger, Ellhorn would reply:

“You-all may not need us, but I reckon you’re a whole heap less likely to need us if we’re right with you in plain view.”

And so they saw to it that they and their guns were never out of “plain view.” And, possibly in consequence, for the reputation of the three as men of dare-devil audacity and unequalled skill with rifle and revolver was supreme throughout that region, wherever the three tall Texans appeared the battle was won. The maverick was given up, the quarrel was dropped, the brand was allowed, and the accusation died on its maker’s lips if Emerson Mead, Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn were present or came galloping to the scene.