The Cow Puncher

by Robert J. C. Stead

The ranch buildings lay a little to the rear, as though the trees stood sentinel between them and the prairies. The house was of round straight logs; the shingles of the squat roof were cupped and blistered with the suns of many summers. Refuse loitered about the open door; many empty tins; a leaky barrel, with missing hoops; boxes, harness, tangled bits of wire. Once there had been a fence; a sort of picket fence of little saplings, but wild bronchos had kicked it to pieces and range steers had straggled unscarred across its scattered remnants.

Forward, and to the left, was the corral; mill slabs on end, or fences of lodge-pole pine; a corner somewhat covered in, offering vague protection from the weather. The upper poles were worn thin with the cribbing of many horses.

The sunlight bathed the scene; nursed it in a soft, warm silence. The desertion seemed absolute; the silence was the silence of the unspoken places. But suddenly it was broken by a stamping in the covered part of the corral, and a man's voice saying, "Hip, there; whoa, you cayuse; get under your saddle! Sleepin' against a post all day, you sloppy-eye. Hip, come to it!"

Horse and rider dashed into the sunlight. The boy—for he was no more than a boy—sat the beast as though born to it, his lithe frame taking every motion of his mount as softly as a good boat rides the sea. His red shirt and thick hairy schaps could not disguise the lean muscularity of his figure; the broad felt hat, and the revolver at his belt, gave just the touch of romance. With a yell at his horse he snatched the hat from his head, turning to the sun a smooth, brown face and a mane of dark hair, and slapped the horse across the flank with his crumpled headgear. At the signal the animal sprang into the air, then dashed at a gallop down the roadway, bearing the boy as unconcerned as a flower on its stem.

Suddenly he brought his horse to a stop; swung about, and rode back at a gentle canter. A few yards from the house he again spurred him to a gallop, and, leaning far down by the animal's side, deftly picked a bottle from among the grass. Then he circled about, repeating this operation as often as his eye fell on a bottle, until he had half-a-dozen; then down the road again, carefully setting a bottle on each post of the fence that skirted it to the right.

Again he came back to the house, but, when he turned, his eye was on the row of posts, and his right hand lay on the grip of his revolver. Again his sharp yell broke the silence and the horse dashed forward as though shot from a gun. Down the road they went until within a rod of the first bottle; then there was a flash in the sunlight, and to the clatter of the horse's hoofs came the crack-crack of the revolver. Two bottles shivered to fragments, but four remained intact, and the boy rode back, muttering and disappointed.

He reasoned with his horse as he rode. "'Taint no use, you ol' slop-eye; a fellow can't get the bede if he ain't got the fillin'; cooked meals an' decent chuck. I could plug 'em six out o' six—you know that, you ol' flop-ears; don't you argue about it, neither—when I'm right inside my belt I smash 'em six out o' six, but I ain't right, an' you know it. You don't know nothin' about it; you never had a father, leastways, you never had to be responsible for one.… Well, it's comin' to a finish—a damn lame finish, you know that. You know—"

But he had reloaded his revolver and set up two more bottles. This time he broke four, and was better pleased with himself. As he rode back his soliloquy was broken by a strange sound from beyond the belt of trees. The horse pricked up his ears, and the boy turned in the saddle to listen.

"Jumpin' crickets, what's loose?" he ejaculated. He knew every sound of the foothill country, but this was strange to him. A kind of snort, a sort of hiss; mechanical in its regularity, startling in its strangeness, it came across the valley with the unbroken rhythm of a watch-tick.

"Well, I guess it won't eat us," he ventured at last. "We'll just run it down and perhaps poke a hole in it." So saying, he cantered along the road which skirted the spruce trees, crossed the little stream and swung up the hill on the farther side.