“I’ve made the break now and again,” Bart explained. “But they always turn up. Our family line-up is fashioned after that fabled joint snake. You can disrupt the critter but the pieces crawl back together again and all stand united.”
“If there’s any more midnight visits made at my cabin,” said Carver; “there’ll be one middle joint absent from the next family reunion.”
“I take it you’re referring to Noll,” said Bart. “If you’ll only accept my earnest advice you’ll decoy Noll off to some quiet spot and snap a cap at him. I promise it won’t upset me a bit.”
On the third day out from the ranch Carver rode with Nate Younger along a low ridge studded with a straggling stand of black-jack timber. The old man’s face was stern and set as he viewed the procession filing for two miles along the open bottoms below them.
A dozen round-up crews made up the picture, for this was a coöperative move by all the outfits ranging in the Strip, the great final combing of stock from the unowned lands.
Far up the valley, a mere speck in the distance, the Half Diamond H wagon led the way while the others trailed at intervals. Two hundred riders, the personnel probably including the most efficient body of cowhands in the world, straggled up the bottoms in irregular formation. The extra horses, if combined into one cavayado would number over two thousand head. A group of riders hovered near the last wagon, it having encountered difficulties in making the crossing of the Cimarron, resuming their way as the quick-sands relinquished their sucking hold upon the wheels and the floundering horses snaked the lumbering vehicle out upon the solid shore. A band of twenty Cherokees flanked the cavalcade and dashed from one outfit to the next, begging food from each wagon boss in turn. Midway of the procession a detachment of cavalry rode in double file while the officer in command conferred with the man in charge of that particular wagon. As Carver watched they dropped back abreast of the next in line and he knew the message delivered to each one in turn by the soldiery,—the instructions to make a thorough sweep and clear every head of stock from the Cherokee Strip.
The Indians, having gathered contributions sufficient for the moment, including a steer which was pointed out to them by the owner of the brand worn by the animal, hazed this moveable meat supply to the crest of an adjacent knoll and there dropped it with an accompaniment of rifle shots. Younger waved a hand toward the scene spread out before him.
“That’s the way I saw the Old West first,” he said. “The picture is mighty near identical; the wagons rolling along just like that, only drawn up in more tight formation; the cavayado trailing under guard, holding all the extra horses of the settlers; maybe a band of marauding reds clustered off to one side like them that are hacking up that steer; sometimes a little escort of troopers helping us at bad crossings where the Kiowas and Comanches was most liable to jump us while a part of the train was bogged down in the sand. The wagons was more likely dragged by bulls than horses then, and buffalo was scattered round the landscape in place of range cows, but on the whole the picture tallies close enough.” The old man turned his gaze away. “That’s the way we was first ushered into the Old West, son. Maybe it’s fitting that we’re being similarly ushered out of the last bit that’s left for us.”
They rode on in silence and regained the head of the line. The various wagons made camp at intervals sufficient to permit the remudas of different outfits to be held on good grass at widely separate points to prevent the possibility of their mixing. On this occasion the men rode from one night camp to the next to renew old friendships, fraternizing with the hands who rode for rival brands. Another crew of similar magnitude had assembled at another point in the Strip and during this same hour these men too were mingling from one outfit to the next. Perhaps among the entire three hundred odd gathered at these two points there was not one man who fully realized that this meeting was to be the last of its sort; not one who could even partly vision the circumstances of the next.
Never again in history were these men to gather as a whole on the open range. This night was the last. Many would meet in the future; others would never meet again. Some would be neighbors for a lifetime and it was slated that the trails of others should cross in far places. Perhaps it is well that it is not given to man to look far into the future. This last occasion was not marred by any thought that the summons for the next gathering would not go forth for more than a quarter of a century. There were many present who would heed that plea which would one day be issued for all the old-time peelers and bronc fighters of the Cherokee lands to assemble for a final rally. They would not then travel across the open range with chuck wagons and saddle horse. Some would be carried in luxuriously appointed coaches that roared along steel rails; others in glittering vehicles that purred swiftly along fenced and well-kept highways; some would arrive in strange craft that swept across the skies above thriving western cities situated on spots now widely known as ideal cow-camp sites. A few indeed, but very few, would come in buckboards or ride in on horses, their ropes coiled on ancient saddles; and it would be these latter ones who would then appear strange and out of place. But no such glimpse of future actualities troubled the men as they sought friends who worked with other wagons. There was a general disposition to scoff at the notion that there would be no more cows ranged on the Strip. Even if it were opened for entry it would be long before there were sufficient settlers to take up any great percentage of the range. The settlement of any country was a slow and tedious process. In any event there were long years of life in the open—the only sort of existence which they could endure with satisfaction—stretching forth ahead of them; so why concern themselves over vague possibilities of the future? That was the general attitude of them all, excepting old Nate and his contemporaries, men who, like himself, were being ushered out of their domain as they had been ushered in a generation past. Their day was passing and they knew it.