Bat Wing Bowles

He smacked his lips as he spoke, and made up a funny face.

"I got three months' pay comin' to me," he remarked, and went spurring up to the front.

"I never seen the time yet," observed Buck Buchanan, as he loafed philosophically along with the drag, "that I couldn't git another job somewhere. When I've got money comin' to me, I want to spend it, by Joe!"

"Sure!" agreed Happy Jack, who had been singing songs all day. "What's the use of workin', anyway?"

"That's me!" chimed in Poker Bill. "Let's quit and draw our pay!"

"Put these cows in the pen first," said Jack, snapping his fingers and waltzing airily in his saddle.

"Whoopee tee, yi, yo, git along, little dogies,It's all yore misfortune and none of my own.Whoopee tee, yi, yo, git along, little dogies,'Cause you know my whistle is dry as a bone."

It was a new experience to Bowles, this riding into a cow town, and he viewed with wide-eyed alarm the evidences of dissolution and revolt. Even Brigham was licking his lips and gazing at the town; and when the first bottle came out he took a long drink with the rest. Bowles excused himself, and wondered what would happen; but the half-drunken cowboy who brought out the life-saver never gave him a second look. It was not so hard to dispose of whisky in those parts.

As the herd neared town, the idle and curious came riding out to see it, and Bowles was pained to notice certain painted women, who seemed to know the boys by their first names. They rode along the herd, waving handkerchiefs and shouting greetings, and a sudden distrust of frontier morality came over him as he observed the shameless response. The shipping pens were below the town about a mile – a barren square of whitewashed fencing, backed up to a side-track full of empty stock-cars – and as the weary cattle dragged along across the flats Hardy Atkins and a bunch of punchers cut off the leaders and whooped them on ahead. There was a jam at the gates, a break or two, and then the first timid dogie stepped fearfully into the enclosure. The smell of water in the troughs lured him on, the rest followed, and when the main herd came up it was artfully tailed on to the drag.

At last! The high gate swung to on the harvest of the long round-up, and the punchers raced their horses to be first at the waiting chuck-wagon. In an angle of the fence Gloomy Gus had unpacked his ovens and set up his fire irons, and now as they flew at their supper he surveyed them with cynical calm.

"Whar's Henry Lee?" he inquired at length; and Hardy Atkins pointed back to town with his knife.

"He's over lookin' up his buyer," he said. "I'm the boss now, Cusi; what can I do fer you?"

"Oh, you're boss now, are you?" repeated Gus, with heavy scorn. "Well, then, why don't you send some one out to relieve thet hawse wrangler? He'll be turnin' the remuda loose pretty soon, from the way he's been makin' signs."

"Aw, he'll keep!" laughed the straw-boss. "Hey, fellers, who wants the first guard to-night?"

Nobody spoke.

"Somebody's got to stand guard," he observed, running his eyes over the crowd. "First guard's the best – eight to half-past ten. Bill? Jim? Hank? Well, I'll make it Jim and Hank, anyhow – only way to keep 'em in camp. You boys know Mr. Lee's orders – no drinkin' now – I don't want to find you downtown!"

"Aw-haw-haw!" roared the crowd. That was a good one – he didn't want to find them downtown! Well, what would he be doing down there?

"Well, who's goin' to relieve us?" inquired Hank plaintively. "Last time we was down I had to stand guard all night!"

The bronco-twister ran his eyes over the crowd again, as if searching for some one.

"Where's that feller that refused a drink this evenin'?" he demanded facetiously. "He's the boy fer second guard – good and reliable – and Hinglish, too. Hinglish, I'll ask you and yore Mormon friend, Mr. Clark, to kindly stand the second guard. Bud and Bill third, and Jack and Buck fourth. I'm boss now, and I don't stand guard."

"Oh, thunder!" grumbled Brig, as he threw himself down on his bed. "I wish the boss would come back. Them rounders will stay in town all night. Let's take a little flier ourselves," he urged as Bowles lay down beside him. "We can git back in time!"

But a sudden sense of responsibility had come over Bowles as he observed how the crowd faded away, and he held Brigham to his post. At ten-thirty, in response to a hurried summons, they took a spare blanket for warmth and rode out to stand their guard.

The stars wheeled round in their courses and sank down in the west; the horses shifted about on the barren plain and made their customary efforts to escape; and when the first cold light of dawn crept in, it showed "Hinglish" and his Mormon friend still standing their lonely vigil.

But for once in a lifetime self-sacrificing virtue got its reward, for Henry Lee came riding out with his buyer at daylight and discovered them at their post. He did not say much – in fact he did not say anything – and Brigham and Bowles did the same; but there was a difference in the air. At last Bowles had justified his existence – he had stayed with his job to the end.

There was a hurried searching of the town for Bat Wing cowboys, a straggling return of drunken and mutinous punchers, and then, with barely men enough to man the gates, the work of shipping began. By twos and threes the dogies were driven down a lane; the cattle inspector read the brands and made his tally, and the buyer passed them on or cut them back. Then, as the cutting and re-cutting was finished, the cattle were punched up the chutes and crowded into the cars. As the day wore on, more and more of the hands returned and took up the prod pole; but Henry Lee made no remarks. Even when his trusted straw-boss showed up late, he made no comment; but once back in camp he pulled his book like a pistol, and began to write out checks.

"Well, boys," he said, "you were drunk last night; I'll have to give you your time. Hardy, you're a good cow-hand, but I'll have to let you go, too. So here's your time checks; and turn your horses out. I've got to have men I can trust."

There was a heavy silence at this, for all the outfits in the country were full-handed now, and no one was looking for men. And Henry Lee was a good man to work for – he treated his hands white, fed them well, and paid the top price to boot. He also kept the best of them over winter, while others were riding the chuck-line or hanging around livery-stables in town. But nobody said a word, for they knew it would do no good; and, after he had paid them off and gone back to town, the luckless ones who had been fired drew off by themselves and talked the matter over. To be sure, they had the price of a drunk in their clothes; but they were fired and put afoot now, and town has no allurements to a cowboy unless he can ride in on a horse. So Hardy Atkins and his Texas followers lolled sulkily around the camp, sleeping fitfully in their blankets and glowering at Brigham Clark and the few careful spirits who had escaped their employer's wrath. And in particular they glowered at Bowles, the virtuous and dutiful, and hated him above all the rest for his air of conscious rectitude.

Supper that evening offered no appeal to the drink-shaken carousers, but they stayed for it all the same, hoping against hope that the boss would come back and give them another chance. But they knew him too well to think it – Henry Lee would let his whole calf crop grow up to be mavericks before he would take back his word. Still they waited, and along toward sundown, as luck would have it, he came out; and with him, riding like a queen on her spirited horse, came Dixie May. She looked them over coldly, returning short answers to their shamefaced greetings and saving a smile for the cook.

"Good-evening, Mr. Mosby," she said, pouring out a little coffee for politeness' sake. "And so these boys had to go on a drunk and get fired, did they? Well, you won't have so many to cook for now – that'll be one consolation."

"Yes, Miss Dix," agreed the cook, "but mighty little, believe me! One cowboy is jest about as ornery an' no 'count as the other – and whisky gits 'em all. They're all alike – I been cookin' for 'em fer thirty years, off an' on, and they ain't one of 'em is worth the powder to blow 'im to – excuse me, Miss Dix. But, as I was sayin', take 'em as they come, and keep 'em out of town, and these boys is pretty fair – pretty fair; I'm sorry to see 'em go."

At this kindly word of intercession, a new light came into the eyes of the unemployed; but Dixie Lee had come on a mission, and it was not her policy to yield in a minute.

"Well, I'm not!" she declared. "If you'd listened to the amount of foolishness that I've suffered from these boys, Mr. Mosby; if you'd heard 'em say how they were going to save their wages and buy a little bunch of cows – and tell about the quarter-section of land they had their eye on – and swear, so help me God, they'd never take another drink of whisky as long as they lived – I believe you'd be glad to get rid of 'em!"

She turned and ran her eye over the crowd, and both the just and the unjust quailed before her.

"And so you were drunk, were you, Mr. Atkins?" she inquired, fixing her gaze upon the deposed straw-boss; and Hardy Atkins shot a look at her which was both confession and appeal.

"And you, Jack?" she continued severely.

"Yes, ma'am," spoke up Happy Jack, upon whom the severity of her manner was lost. "I was drunk, all right."

"Well, you don't need to be proud of it!" she observed cuttingly. "It's no distinction in this bunch. Brig, were you drunk, too?"

"No, ma'am," responded Brigham promptly.

"Oh, what's the use of talking?" scoffed Dixie, glancing at his swollen face and bloodshot eyes.

"All the same, I wasn't!" denied Brigham boldly. "I reckon you'd look kind of bug-eyed if you'd been standin' guard all night!"

"Well, what's the matter with your face then?" she demanded. "Did the ground rise up and hit you?"

"No, but an old cow did, over in the shippin' chute!" And Brigham drew himself up and grinned defiantly. It was not often that he had a chance to assume this high moral pose, and he decided to make the most of it.

"That's right," interposed Henry Lee, who so far had let his daughter do all the talking. "Brig and Bowles stood guard all night and brought up the remuda in the morning. I won't forget that, Brig," he added significantly. "I'm looking for men I can trust."

"Well, good for you, Brig!" commented Dixie May, smiling with sudden approval; and at that the other suitors fell into a black rage of jealousy and distrust. There was silence for a while, and then Happy Jack spoke up.

"Mr. Lee," he said, "I know I was drunk last night – my own fault, of course – but here's the proposition. You got to take on somebody to do yore work; what's the use of hirin' these town bums when you can git yore old hands back? That's the way we stand, and I hope you'll give us a chance."

This was a long speech for Jack, and he wiped the sweat from his brow as he waited for the answer. The rest of the unemployed rumbled their acquiescence to the statement and watched for some sign of weakening; but Henry Lee did not change his frown.

"I'm looking for men I can trust," he said at last. "These boys here stayed in camp and were on hand to help with the shipping. Maybe some of them ain't quite as good cowboys as you are, but I can depend on them not to turn my remuda loose the first night I leave 'em alone, and I'm going to make them top hands. You fellows get the top mounts and forty-five a month," he added, glancing briefly at Brig and the faithful few, most of whom were nesters boys, and married men working for a stake; "and I want some more just like you."

"But how about us?" inquired Happy Jack after a silence. "I'll take on for a green hand, myse'f – forty dollars – and ride bronks, too. And I know that upper range like a book!"

"Sure!" murmured the rest; and once more they waited on Henry Lee.

He sat for a while studying on the matter, and then he exchanged glances with his daughter.

"If he takes you back, are you going to run it over these other hands and make a lot of trouble?" she inquired shrewdly. "Because if you are – "

A chorus of indignant denials answered this unjust accusation, and Dixie Lee's face became clear.

"Then I'd take 'em back," she said.

"No, I won't do it," rapped out Henry Lee. "But I'll tell you what I will do," he went on, as the gang lopped down despondently. "You boys have got your time checks. All right, you go up town and cash them in, and if you can pay your saloon debts and get out of town sober, I'll take you on. But if any man takes a drink, or brings out a bottle, he'll never ride for Henry Lee again – I've lost enough horses through drunken punchers. Brig, I'll leave you in charge of the outfit."

He swung up on his horse as he spoke, and Dixie rode away after him, followed by the admiring gaze of all hands and the cook. Henry Lee was a good boss, but the average Texas cow-puncher is not weak-kneed enough to court the favor of any man. Once he is fired, he takes his money and spends it philosophically; but in this case Dixie May had intervened, and rather than lose their chance with her the whole gang had taken lessons in humility.

"She's all right," observed Happy Jack, wagging his head and smiling as he watched her off. "She wraps him around her little finger."

"Wonder how she come to be down here?" inquired a new hand; and Jack answered him, with a laugh.

"Ridin' herd on the old man, of course!" he said.

"Sure!" grumbled Hardy Atkins. "The old lady is up there, too. That's the one thing I got ag'inst Henry Lee – he's been a booze-fighter and quit. That's what makes him so doggoned onreasonable!"

"They say John B. Gough and Sam Jones was reformed drunks, too," commented Poker Bill sagely; but there was one member present who did not take even a philosophical interest in the discussion. It was Brigham Clark, the new straw-boss. Through a chain of circumstances a little hard to trace, he had refrained from his customary periodical, and, behold, of a sudden he was elevated above all his fellows, and placed in a position of authority.

"Well," he broke in sharply, "it's gittin' dark – who's goin' to relieve that horse wrangler? Bill? Buck? Well, I'll put you on the first guard, anyhow – only way to save you from yorese'ves!"

"Aw, listen to the big fat stiff!" commented Buck Buchanan, who felt the need of a nap; but Brig paid no attention to his remarks.

"You boys bring them in to the pen fer a drink," he ordered, with pompous circumstance, "and hold them out on yon flat. Who wants to stand second guard? Jim? Hank?" He craned his neck about as Hardy Atkins had done the night before; and Hardy, who had been thinking about other things, sat up with a sudden scowl.

"Whar's that feller that refused a drink this evenin'?" demanded Brigham, imitating with roguish accuracy the broad Texas accent of his predecessor. "He's the boy fer second guard – good and reliable – comes from Texas, too. Mr. Atkins, I'll ask you and yore cotton-picker friend, Happy Jack, to kindly stand second guard. Bud and Bill third, and Sam and Slim fourth. I'm boss now, and I don't stand no guard!"

CHAPTER XVII

AND HIS SQUIRREL STORY

The upper range of the Bat Wing was a country by itself. To reach it they rode due north from Chula Vista, following an old road that had been fenced so many times that Gloomy Gus became discouraged. Twisting and turning, driving around through new-made lanes, or jerking a world of staples and laying the wire on the ground, he toiled on in the wake of the outfit, which was rounding up spare corners of the unfenced range. Behind him came the horse wrangler and his helper, doing their best to keep the remuda out of the barbed-wire, and jerking up more fence with their ropes than Gus laid down with his nail-puller. Certainly in that wide, windmill-dotted valley, the open range was a thing of the past. It was only thirty feet to water, and the nesters were settling everywhere.

"One more day like that," observed Gloomy Gus as he threw together a late supper, "and I quit!"

"Me too!" chimed in the wrangler; and the punchers felt much the same.

"A few more years like this last," remarked Henry Lee, gazing gloomily out across his former estate, "and we'll all quit. But, thank God, they can't farm the Black Mesa."

On the second day they turned east, crossing the boggy river and mounting up on a great plateau, and then Bowles saw why Henry Lee's remark was true. The Black Mesa was high and level, with a wealth of coarse grass on the flats and wooded hills behind; but hills and flats alike were covered with a layer of loose rocks that made the land a wilderness. Even the wagon road on which they traveled was a mere rut across the rock patch, and from a distance it looked like a ruined stone wall where the rocks had been thrown to both sides. And the rocks were black, a scorched, volcanic black, with square corners and uneroded edges that gashed at the horses' ankles. Deep-cut cañons wound tortuously across the level mesa, their existence unsuspected until the rider stopped at their brink; and, hidden in their sullen depths, the scant supply of water was lost to all but the birds.

Yet to the cowboys the landscape was cheering, for there was bunch-grass between the rocks and not a house in sight. It is hard to please everybody in this world, but cowboys are easily pleased. All they want is a good horse and plenty of swing room, and a landscape gardener couldn't make it better. To Bowles the lower valley had been a wild and unsettled country, but he found that even the Black Mesa was tame to these seasoned nomads.

"Jest wait till I take you to the White Mountains," said Brig, as he rode by his side. "This country has all been fed off till they's nothin' much left but the rocks – no game nor nothin'. But the Sierra Blancas are different – that's them over that far ridge."

He pointed at a filmy point of white, half lost between the blue of the pine-clad mountains and the blue of the sky beyond, and Bowles' heart leaped up at the sight. At last he was in the Far West – that strange, elusive country of which so many speak and which is yet so hard to find – and the untrod wilderness lay before him. The Sierra Blancas, home of the deer and the bear and the wolf and the savage Apache Indians! Even in his age and time, there was still a wilderness to conquer and the terrors of the old frontier to stir the blood.

"How far is it?" he inquired, his eyes questing out the way; and when Brig told him he reached over and clutched his hand. "Brig," he cried, "I want to go there. I'd like to go right now!"

He looked across at his partner, but Brigham did not answer, and Bowles knew what was in his mind.

"Of course, now that you're made foreman – " he began; but Brig smiled a cynical smile.

"Don't you let that worry you none," he growled. "The way these Texicans is takin' on, I don't reckon I'll last very long. Hardy Atkins is the leader of this bunch, and he's bound to git his job back – I'm jest holdin' on fer spite."

"But how can he get it back?" protested Bowles. "Mr. Lee told me you were one of the best cowmen he ever knew, and you certainly know the range all right – "

"Yes, but that ain't it," put in Brig. "Here's the proposition. Henry Lee is gittin' old – he can't be his own wagon-boss forever, and he's lookin' round for a man. The man that gits the job will git more than that – he'll marry Dixie Lee."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Bowles. "Why should he?"

"Don't know why," answered Brigham doggedly. "Only that's the way it always goes – and Hardy, he wants Dixie."

"But surely, after the way he conducted himself down at Chula Vista – "

"Oh, that's nothin'," asserted Brigham.

"You think she would marry him?"

"Don't know," grumbled Brig. "She's got us all a-guessin'. All I know is, I won't last long as a straw-boss. You wait till we git up in the mountains where old Henry can't git no more hands, and then watch the fur begin to fly. Didn't they all eat dirt to git took back fer green hands? Didn't you see 'em talkin' it over? All they got to do now is to git us fired, and then they'll be the top hands. Huh! That's easy!"

The second-in-command would say no more, but a few days gave token of the coming storm. As they pulled in at the upper ranch, where cowboys and "station-men" did duty all the year, the stray men from other outfits threw in with them again and increased their number to a scant twenty. Bar Seven was there, after a return to his own headquarters, and several of the other men; but the men who dwelt in the hills were of a different breed, with hair long and beards scrubby, and overalls greasy from lonely cooking; and they looked at Bowles askance.

"Who's that feller?" they asked; and the answer was always the same, if they asked it of a Texan.

"Oh, that's a young English dude," they said. "He's got his eye on Dixie."

Strange how these men of the frontier were so quick to read his heart – Bowles had talked with Dixie Lee only twice in a month but they had read him like a book. Or perhaps it was just plain jealousy, since they, too, had their eyes on Dixie – jealousy and a sneaking knowledge that he had a chance to win. They cast appraising glances at his expensive saddle, his silver-mounted spurs and eleven-dollar Stetson, and hated him for his prosperity; they watched him work in the corral, and scoffed at him for his horsemanship; and when he talked, they listened to his broad "a's," his soft "r's" and his purling "er's" with wonder and contempt. Not that they listened very much, for they took pains to break in on him as grown folks do when a child is speaking; but they curled their lips at his coming, and exchanged glances behind his back, and finally, as the work progressed, their hostility began to take form.

For three days the outfit lay at headquarters while fresh horses were caught and shod; and here Hardy Atkins and his followers suffered the humiliation of losing their mounts. As top hands they had taken the pick of the remuda, the fleetest runners, the gentlest night horses, the best-reined cutting horses; but now in the reapportionment they found themselves reduced to "skates and bronks." Three days of shoeing the skates, and especially the bronks, did not tend to sweeten their tempers any, and as they moved up to Warm Springs and began to rake the range the spirit of rebellion broke loose.

Warm Springs lies at the bottom of a gash in the face of the mesa, and the cow-trails lead to it for miles. Above there is no water, below it is shut in by the rim of the cañon, and the cattle file down the long trail day and night. Consequently the nearby grass is fed down to the roots, and the remuda had to be held up on the high mesa. All day the horse wrangler grazed his charges in distant swales, bringing them in for water and the horse-changing morning and noon; and at night the cowboys watched them beneath the cold stars – that is, when they kept awake.

On the second morning three horses were missing, the next day two more, and on the next eight horses more were gone and several men were practically afoot.

"Who let those horses get away?" demanded Henry Lee, as he rounded up his night herders by the corral.

"Not me!" said the members of the first guard.

"We never stopped ridin'," said the second guard.

"They was gone when we come on," said the third guard.

And the fourth guard swore they were innocent.

"Well, somebody's been asleep – that's all I know!" said Henry Lee; and he sent off two mountain men on their best mounts to trail the runaways down and bring them back. Then he listened to the mutual recriminations of the night herders, and guessed shrewdly at who was at fault. For when the night herders get to quarreling among themselves, waking each other up ahead of time, and sleeping on one hand till it slips and wakes them up, that is a sure sign and precursor of greater troubles to come, and it calls for an iron hand. Even as he was listening, a row broke out in the round corral, where the cowboys were roping their mounts.

"Turn that hawse loose!" roared Brigham, suddenly mounting up on the fence.

"I will not!" retorted the voice of Hardy Atkins from within.

"He belongs to my mount!" protested Brigham with appropriate oaths.