CHAPTER VIII
THE UPWARD TRAIL
Once across the Missouri the trail began to mount. "Here is the true buffalo country," thought Mose, as they came to the treeless hills of the Great Muddy Water. On these smooth buttes Indian sentinels had stood, morning and evening, through a thousand years, to signal the movement of the wild herds, and from other distant hills columns of smoke by day, or the flare of signal fires at night, had warned the chieftains of the approach of enemies. Down these grassy gulches, around these sugar-loaf mesas, the giant brown cattle of the plains had crawled in long, dark, knobby lines. On the green bottoms they had mated and fed and fought in thousands, roaring like lions, their huge hoofs flinging the alkaline earth in showers above their heads, their tongues curling, their tails waving like banners.
Mose was already deeply learned in all these dramas. All that he had ever heard or read of the wild country remained in his mind. He cared nothing about the towns or the fame of cities, but these deep-worn trails of shaggy beasts filled him with joy. Their histories were more to him than were the wars of Cyrus and Hannibal. He questioned all the men he met, and their wisdom became his.
Slowly the movers wound their way up the broad, sandy river which came from the wilder spaces of the West. The prairie was gone. The tiger lily, the sweet Williams, the pinks, together with the luxuriant meadows and the bobolinks, were left behind. In their stead, a limitless, upward shelving plain outspread, covered with a short, surly, hairlike grass and certain sturdy, resinous plants supporting flowers of an unpleasant odor, sticky and weedy. Bristling cacti bulged from the sod; small Quaker-gray sparrows and larks were the only birds. In the swales blue joint grew rank. The only trees were cottonwoods and cutleaf willow, scattered scantily along the elbows in the river.
At last they came to the home of the prairie dog and the antelope—the buffalo could not be far away! So wide was the earth, so all-embracing the sky, they seemed to blend at the horizon line, and lakes of water sprang into view, filling a swale in the sod—mystic and beautiful, only to vanish like cloud shadows.
The cattle country was soon at hand. Cowboys in sombreros and long-heeled boots, with kerchiefs knotted about their necks, careered on swift ponies in and out of the little towns or met the newcomers on the river road. They rode in a fashion new to Mose, with toes pointed straight down, the weight of their bodies a little on one side. They skimmed the ground like swallows, forcing their ponies mercilessly. Their saddles were very heavy, with high pommels and leather-covered stirrups, and Mose determined to have one at once. Some of them carried rifles under their legs in a long holster.
Realizing that those were the real "cow-punchers," the youth studied their outfits as keenly as a country girl scrutinizes the new gown of a visiting city cousin. He changed his manner of riding (which was more nearly that of the cavalry) to theirs. He slung a red kerchief around his neck, and bought a pair of "chaps," a sort of fringed leather leggings. He had been wearing his pistol at his side, he now slewed it around to his hip. He purchased also a pair of high-heeled boots and a "rope" (no one called it a "lariat"), and began to acquire the technicalities of the range. A horse that reared and leaped to fling its rider was said to "pitch." Any firearm was a "gun," and any bull, steer, or heifer, a "cow." In a few days all these distinctions had been mastered, and only the closest observer was able to "cut out" Mose as a "tenderfoot."
Pratt was bound for his brother's ranch on the Big Sandy River, and so pushed on steadily, although it was evident that he was not looked upon with favor. He had reached a section of country where the cattlemen eyed his small outfit with contempt and suspicion. He came under the head of a "nester," or "truck farmer," who was likely to fence in the river somewhere and homestead some land. He was another menace to the range, and was to be discouraged. The mutter of war was soon heard.
One day a couple of whisky-heated cowboys rode furiously up behind Mose and called out: