At midnight the saddle-stock was incapable of moving farther. One horse had fallen and lay too weak to rise. The others, limping and foot-sore, no longer responded to quirt and rowel. The foreman ordered the herd thrown on the bed ground for the night. The herders for the first watch began to circle. The rest of the outfit took to its blankets to snatch a little rest for the double duty that awaited every man that night. Now it is a time-honored belief among cow-men that the herd must be sung to, particularly when it is restless, and to-night they tried all the old favorites, the “Cow-boy’s Lament” being chief among them. But the herd refused to be soothed, and round and round it circled; not once would it lie down.
The moon gleamed almost brazen, showing the cruel scars, the trenches torn by cloud-bursts, the lines wrought by the long, patient waiting of the earth for the lifting of the wrath of God. Imperishable grief was writ on the land as on a human face. The night wore on, the watches changed, the herd continued restless; not more than a third of it had bedded down. The third watch was from one o’clock to half-past three in the morning. Simpson and another “XXX” man, with two of the Wetmore outfit, made up a double watch, and rode, singing, about the herd, as the long, dreary watch wore away. The cattle’s lowing had taken on a gasping, cracked sound that was more frightful than the maddened bellow of the early evening. Simpson, who was past the age when men live the life of the saddle, felt the hardship keenly. He had ridden since sunrise, but for the respite at noon and the scant time at the dry camp while the evening meal was being eaten. He was more than half asleep now, as he lurched heavily in the saddle, crossing and recrossing his partner in the half-circle they completed about the herd. Suddenly the sharp yelp of a coyote rang out; it seemed to come from no farther than twenty yards away. The cattle heard it, too, and a wave of panic swept through them. Simpson stiffened in his saddle. The sound, which was repeated, was an exact reproduction of a coyote’s yelp, yet he knew that it was not a coyote.
The herd rose to its feet as a single steer, and for a second stood undetermined. From a clump of sage-brush not more than two feet high fluttered something long and white like a sheet. It waved in the wind as the cry was repeated. The herd crashed forward in a stampede, Simpson in the lead on a tired horse, but a scant length ahead of a thousand maddened steers bolting in a panic of thirst and fear.
“Hell’s loose!” yelled the men in their blankets, making for the temporary rope corral to secure horses. Simpson, tallow-colored with fear, clung like a cat to his horse, and dug the rowels in the beast’s flanks till they were bloody and dripping. He had seen Jim Rodney’s face above the white cloth as it fluttered in the face of the herd that came pounding behind him with the rumble of nearing thunder. He was too close to them to attempt to fire his revolver in the air in the hope of turning them, but the boys had evidently got into their saddles, to judge by the volley of shots that rang out and were answered. Simpson alone rode ahead of the herd that tore after him, ripping up the earth as it came, bellowing in its blind fury. His horse, a thoroughly seasoned cow-pony, sniffed the bedlam and responded to the goading spur. She had been in cattle stampedes before, and, though every fibre ached with fatigue, she flattened out her lean body and covered ground to the length of her stride at each gallop. The herd was so close that Simpson could smell the stench of their sweating bodies, taste their dust, and feel the scorch of their breath. The sound of their hoofs was like the pounding of a thousand propellers. From above looked the moon, round and serene; she had watched the passing of many peoples in the land of the red silence. The horse seemed to be gaining. A few more lengths ahead and Simpson could turn her to one side and let the maddened cattle race to their own destruction. All he asked of God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers.
Suddenly he felt himself sinking, horribly, irresistibly. “God! What is it?” as his horse went down with her foreleg in a gopher-hole. “Up, up, you damned brute!” but the mare’s leg had cracked like a pipe-stem. In his fury at the beast Simpson began kicking her, then started to run as the cattle swept forward like a black storm-cloud.
The next second the great sea of cattle had broken over horse and rider. When it had passed there was not enough left of either to warrant burial or to furnish a feast for the buzzards. A few shreds of clothes, that had once been a man, lay scattered there; a something that had been a horse.
XVII.
Mrs. Yellett Contends With A Cloudburst
The matriarch had delayed longer in moving camp than was consistent with her habitual watchfulness where the interests of the sheep were involved. Mary Carmichael, who had already become inured to the experience of moving, was even conscious of a certain impatience at the delay, and could only explain the apathy with which Mrs. Yellett received reports of the dearth of pasturage on the ground that she wished each fresh educational germ to take as deep root as possible before transplantation. So that when Mrs. Yellett, shortly after Leander Dax’s arrival at camp in the capacity of herder, announced that she and Leander were to make a trip to the dipping-vat that had kept Ben from his classes for the past ten days, and invited the “gov’ment” to join the expedition, Mary accepted with fervor.
The Yelletts’ “bunch” of sheep did not exceed three thousand head, and the matriarch had wisely decreed that it should be restricted to that number, as she wished always to give the flock her personal supervision.
“‘The hen that’s the surest of her chicks is the one that does her own settin’,’” was the adage from the Book of Hiram with which Mrs. Yellett succinctly summed up the case.