Old Dave, intent on his harnesses, did not see Carver jump the farther boundary of the corral. 279 Had he done so, he would have shouted a warning not to stray too far on foot across the range. The cattle were being driven farther down toward the ranch, and they were often averse to solitary persons on foot.
Carver, all unperceived, climbed the foot-hills, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes on the ground. It was all a bad mess, he thought, and how to get out of it, he didn’t know. Of one thing he was certain: the West was not the place for him. The dreams in which he had lived only three weeks ago—dreams of opening a branch of his father’s business in the West when he should have finished college—had vanished. He had now decided he was born to remain a New Englander. There were things about the West which he didn’t like—blunt, unpolished, new things. Of course these ranchers didn’t mind crudities. They could fraternize with ordinary cow-punchers. Even Donald could do that. But he had been reared differently. He struck his toe against a rock, which he kicked savagely out of his way. No, the Standishes were New Englanders, and there they would remain! 280
He reached the brow of the first foot-hills, crossed an open space, and climbed others to the open range above. When he again reached a level he stopped in surprise. Never had he seen so many cattle. There were literally hundreds of them. Where had they all come from? He stood still and stared at them, and they with one accord stopped browsing and stared at him. They were unaccustomed to persons strolling on foot across their preserves. For an instant Carver Standish felt a strange sense of fear. There was something portentous in the way a big red and white bull in the foreground was staring at him. Then he saw Donald on horseback off to the right, and waved his hand. But Donald, spying the white trousers and the red sweater in the same instant, did not stop to wave. Instead, he struck MacDuff with his spur, skirted the cattle nearest him, and rode madly down toward Carver and those ahead.
“He’s crazy,” he said to himself, “coming up here in that rig and afoot. Old Rex will never stand it for a moment.”
He was right. Old Rex had not the slightest 281 inention of standing it. He ate no more, but with lowered head gazed at this curiously clad intruder, who was hesitating, not knowing whether to advance or to turn back. Old Rex decided for him. He did the advancing. One shake of his heavy head, crowned with long, sharp horns, one cloud of dust as he pawed the ground, and one tremendous bellow warned Carver Standish III to do no tarrying in that locality.
A shout from Donald following Old Rex’s roar determined Carver’s direction. He fled toward MacDuff at a speed which would have won any twenty-five yard cup in New England! Old Rex followed. The other cattle, curiously enough and much to Donald’s relief, let their champion fight it out alone.
Donald, every moment drawing nearer, freed his left foot from the stirrup. Carver must somehow be made to jump behind the saddle, and jump quick! There was not an instant to lose. Old Rex was gaining, and Carver was growing tired. It was too hot up there for a red sweater. With the bull a scant thirty feet away Donald pulled in MacDuff, 282 and yelled to Carver to jump, which he did, aided by the stirrup, Donald’s arm, and the last bit of ancestral nerve he possessed. When Old Rex, baffled and defeated, saw his foe being championed by one whom he full well knew, it took but a yell from Donald and a mighty crack of his quirt to send him back among the herd.
There seemed little enough to say as MacDuff bore his double load down over the hills to the lower range, where white trousers and red sweaters might be countenanced. But something had returned to Carver, something which for two weeks had been on a vacation. As they neared the home foot-hills, he slid from MacDuff.
“If you’re not in a hurry, Don,” he said, “let’s rest here a minute. MacDuff is tired, I know, and there are some things I want to get straightened out before we go down home.”