Bobby nodded her head.
"He was down. He hurt his hand; got it shut under Webb's window. He.... He stayed a long time."
Her voice was quite changed; rather soft and reverent. "I'm glad he did. When he's there I feel like I ain't so different ... not so awful different from other folks...."
Alf did not reply. The wagon chucked heavily on, the brush scratched the wagon bed, the horses plodded listlessly. Dawn came....
Another thing:
Far out to the north and west of the Gap in Devil's Hole was a natural reservoir, Cathedral Tank. Winter floods were stored there and long after surrounding miles of quickly growing grasses had become useless as range because of the lack of drink, this tank afforded water for the HC cattle. Late in the Spring, of course, it became scum covered and fetid but until the caked silt commenced to show on the boulder basin the cattle would cling there, saving higher range for later use. Then, in other years, they would drift up toward the Hole, graze through the Gap and water in the creek until the round-up caught and carried them into still higher country.
This spring the desert tank was of far greater importance than ever before. The Hole was closed to the HC unless rain fell, and the days were uniformly clear, so it was wisdom to delay the round-up until the tank was emptied, then shove the cattle straight past the mouth of the Hole and start them up country from the lower waters of Coyote Creek. Beck rode to the tank himself and arranged his plans in accordance with the water he found.
But after Beck had been there another horseman made the ride, leaving the timber at dusk, shacking along across the waste country in a straight line for the tank. Cattle, bedded for the night about the water hole, stirred themselves as he approached and dismounted, then stood nearby and watched a strange proceeding. The man found a crevice in the rock basin, scraped deeply into it with a clasp knife. Then he wedged in five sticks of dynamite with stones and, finally, rolled boulders over them.
He led his horse far back after the fuse had been spit, but even where he stood, outside the circle of steers, rock fell. After the explosion had died into the night he pulled at his mustache and regained his saddle rather deliberately, chuckling to himself.
The fact that a steer with a broken leg was bawling loudly and that another, its life torn out of its side, moaned softly in helplessness, did not impress him. He rode back as he had come.