Trail Dust Read online

  The herd had spread out in its unmolested grazing, not realizing that it was being drifted slowly and gently up the slope and over the crest of the long rise north of the creek. Most of the cattle were already over the crest and out of sight of the camp. The two riders with it loafed in their saddles and exchanged long–distance grins as they recalled the incidents of the previous night. The contented animals grazed ever forward, rested and full of water and grass. Everything was lovely and the goose honked high.

  At the chuck wagon the grinning cook was preparing his important vehicle for the day’s journey. The two work horses, harnessed and ready to go, chafed their bits and impatiently switched their tails. There was a time when there were no flies on this great, elevated plateau; but the white man with his animals had brought them with him. Johnny Nelson, his face still red from laughter, pulled the cinch strap up to a plainly marked hole and made it fast. The hour was late for a trail herd to get under way, scandalously so; but the herd had clicked off double distance the day before and well merited this additional rest. Johnny pulled the kerchief around in front of his chest and swung up into the saddle.

  Red Connors hung the tin cup back on the water pail, drew a sleeve across his lips, and chuckled. He had missed most of his sleep the night before, but his temper was sweeter than usual.

  “Our friend, th’ trail cutter, will shore be sorry he missed this wagon last night,” he said. He turned and looked southward and laughed outright. “So them fellers figgered we was holdin’ th’ sack, huh?” he said, turning to face his friend and boss. “After tellin’ you to step th’ herd right along an’ get past ’em, an’ outa their way, they up an’ threw back onto th’ trail, so we’d be jammed in between them an’ that 3 TL outfit. Well, they got what was comin’ to ’em, an’ they got it good!”

  Hopalong Cassidy nodded and slowly got to his feet.

  “When that bunch of cattle thieves an’ bums from Waggoner’s store didn’t raid us that first night,” he slowly said, “I figgered that it made it a dead shore thing for th’ second night, because we was gettin’ farther away all th’ time. We was th’ last herd on th’ trail, an’ we was due to stay that way. When we passed them T Dot Circle coyotes in th’ dark last night, that made them th’ last herd on th’ trail. Waggoner’s crowd just nat’rally raided th’ wrong cattle. It was too dark for ’em to tell th’ difference. Well,” he said, slowly looking around, “I reckon it’s time to get started. We’re now ahead of both beef herds, with only fast–steppin’ range stockers ahead of us. Th’ cattle have had a good rest, they’ve been drifted gentle from th’ creek, an’ now we’ll step ’em right along.”

  He turned to the cook.

  “Th’ next creek is Elkhorn, an’ th’ second is Blacktail. You make camp a couple of miles north of th’ second creek an’ about a mile to th’ east. There ain’t much chance of stampedin’ cattle runnin’ back down th trail an’ pickin’ up ourn, not th’ way them mixed herds are movin’; but usually there’s better feed well off th’ trail. Get goin’ when you feel like it.”

  He swung toward his saddled horse and glanced at his grouped friends.

  “All right. Let’s hook onto th’ herd, shape it up, an’ get it movin’.”

  Johnny Nelson let out another notch of his grin, this time from hopeful anticipation. Youth craves excitement, and he was the youngest member of the outfit.

  “You figger that T Dot Circle outfit will mebby try to take it outa us?” he asked, his eyes glinting.

  “Mebby,” grunted Hopalong; “but not today. They’ll be too damn’ busy to take anythin’ outa anybody. It looked to me an’ Red that they lost their cavvy as well as their herd. There was plenty of shootin’ around their wagon, so they mebby lost their night hosses, too.”

  “Then that puts ’em afoot!” said Johnny eagerly. “Great mavericks!”

  “All but th’ two riders with th’ herd,” replied Hopalong. “Come on: let’s get goin’.”

  Pete and Billy had the herd strung out, and already it was swinging along at a fair pace when their friends joined them and took up their accustomed places with the cattle. Billy, grumbling a little, thereupon dropped back to take charge of the drag, which already had found its place at the rear of the herd. The dust was heavy, so he let the drag open up a bigger gap between it and the main herd and settled back in his saddle to face the passing of the miles and hours.

  The sun was at the meridian, blazing down through a cloudless sky; the heated air quivered and danced close to the ground, and mirage ponds began to hold out false hopes to the foolish. The shuffling, dust–kicking hoofs of a thousand steers filled the air with a yellow–white fog, and the miles dragged past reluctantly. Mid–afternoon found the first creek in sight—Elkhorn. The cattle watered, soaked themselves, and milled around. It took a little time and effort to get them going again, notwithstanding the fact that they had been well watered only a few hours before; but go on again they did, and as they passed over the top of the gentle slope the trail boss rode up to Johnny’s side.

  “I’ll take yore place, Kid,” he said. “Go up th’ trail an’ see how close to us that last mixed herd is. If you don’t sight ’em in two, three hours, come back ag’in. Watch both sides of th’ trail in case they’ve throwed off to graze an’ rest. I don’t want to get too close to anythin’ ahead of us.”

  Johnny nodded, swung away from the herd, and then pushed ahead. He rode in close to Red, who was riding at right point, stuck a thumb in an armhole of his vest, and threw out his chest.

  “I’ve been given a special job,” he said importantly.

  “That so?” asked Red, not visibly impressed.

  “Yeah,” replied Johnny expectantly.

  “You figger you can do it?” asked Red, yawning slightly.

  “Shore!”

  “All right, Kid. Better get about it, then.”

  “I’m goin’ up to locate th’ next herd ahead,” said Johnny, with a trace of importance.

  “Well, I reckon you can do that, all right, unless——” said Red, and broke off to yawn again, and this time not slightly.

  “Unless what?” demanded Johnny, somewhat belligerently.

  “Unless you fall off yore cayuse,” said Red.

  “Some day,” retorted Johnny, his face redder under its tan, “I’m goin’ to take you apart just to see what makes you tick!”

  “That’s been tried two, three times already,” replied Red. “You know, Kid, that herd’s shore gettin’ farther away every minute you hang around here.” He looked at the indignant set of the Kid’s back, growing smaller up the trail, and then threw back his head and laughed.

  The dust climbed, flattened, and slowly spread out on all sides of the herd, but the animals kept on moving, clack, shuffle, clack, all that hot and wearisome afternoon. The weary drag, grown but little larger, lay behind it like the dot of an exclamation point. Then, as the fierceness of the sun’s heat began to lessen, twin lines of greenery came into view far ahead.

  The cattle approached the creek with more restraint than they had shown over any water so far on the long journey. The creeks were closer together along this section of the trail. They hardly quickened their stride, but they went into the water and stood in it while they nosed it contentedly. They showed less reluctance, too, to get going again, and soon were plodding up the sharp slope on the farther side. Not long thereafter the cook’s chuck wagon could be made out, a dark spot on another gray–green slope. Half a mile farther east grazed the cavvy. Hopalong sighed unconsciously and sat up a little more erect in the saddle. The long and tiresome trail journey had been cut down by one more day. The herd was checked and allowed to spread out, and twilight found the animals grazing along the upper slope of the rise, gradually working toward the bed ground on its crest.

  Hopalong rode in to the wagon, got out his war bag, and took from it his spare shirt.

  “Where’s th’ dance?” asked the cook, grinning.

  “Up th’ creek,” answ
ered Hopalong, smiling like a boy, “if I can find a hole deep enough to get into all over.”

  “Well, you could wet one side, an’ then th’ other,” said the cook, and suddenly had a thought. “Hey! You want to look out for cottonmouths!” he warned, his experience with reptiles based on territory much farther south.

  “There ain’t no moccasins up in this country,” replied the trail boss. For a moment he reflected upon the cook’s manifest ignorance. “You better keep yore eyes skinned for prairie rattlers. They ain’t very big, but they’re damn mean.”

  “How big are they?” asked the cook, his gaze slowly passing over the ground in his immediate vicinity. He missed the twinkle in his companion’s blue eyes.

  “I ain’t never seen none more’n fifteen feet long,” confessed the trail boss with a straight and sober face. “Most usually they come smaller—say mebbe a dozen feet; but they shore make up for that by travelin’ in threes.”

  “Great —— ——!” said the startled cook, his eyes wide as saucers. “Rattlers a dozen feet long, an’ three to th’ pair! Great land of cows!”

  “Three to a pair,” muttered Hopalong, experimentally. Somehow it didn’t sound right. “Huh. All you got to do is sleep with a hair rope around you,” he stated, closing the war bag and pushing it from him and farther up in the wagon.

  “Hey! You shore want to copper that hair–rope idear!” said the cook hastily and with great earnestness. “One time I went to sleep with a hair rope round me, an’ I woke up with a rattler layin’ right smack ag’in my side!”

  “Mebby these here prairie snakes have got better taste,” said the trail boss, swinging into the saddle.

  “That so?” snorted the cook with a trace of belligerence. “I hope yore swimmin’ hole’s full of quicksand!”

  “See you later,” called the trail boss, making dust.

  “That’s my hard luck,” growled the cook, turning to feed his fire. He had placed the coffee pot handy to the fire and was blowing the dust from the tin plates when Red Connors rode up and stopped. He glanced from the cook toward the departing horseman.

  “Where’s Hoppy goin’?” asked Red. “Up to meet th’ Kid?”

  “He’s figgerin’ to dance with that redhead at Traynor’s honkytonk!” snapped the cook.

  “Oh, that so?” snapped Red, strange glints in his eyes. “Where’s Hoppy goin’? Up to meet th’ Kid?”

  The cook raised his head, saw the glints and changed his mind.

  “Naw. Huntin’ up a swimmin’ hole with a change of clothes,” he growled.

  “Never saw one like that before,” replied Red, urging the horse against the wagon. He stuck his head under the cover and reached out a long arm, dragging his own war bag toward him.

  “Never saw one like what?” asked the cook, his red face growing redder.

  “Where’n hell is my other shirt?” demanded Red, glaring at the cook.

  “I never knowed you had two shirts!” retorted the cook, with a gleam in his eye. “Mebby it’s under that one you got on,” he jibed.

  “That so?” growled the owner of two shirts, one of which was missing. “Hey! What kinda shirt did Hoppy take?”

  The cook searched his memory hastily, and his memory came through in the pinch.

  “Red–an’–white check,” he answered hopefully. “I remember it because I thought that nobody but a halfbreed or an Injun would wear a shirt like that. It reminded me of a nightmare I once had.”

  His hopes were justified by the way Red’s horse got into motion. And then the cook’s grin slowly faded while he scratched his head in deep cogitation of serious matters. He made up his mind quickly and ran to the wagon. He dragged out his war bag and, taking a clean and vivid red–and–white checked shirt from it, hastily crammed it into the bag nearest his hand. He felt that he might have started something which would take a deal of stopping. Having done this good deed, he sighed with resignation. He thought the bag belonged to Pete, and Pete was big enough to handle any man in the crowd, unless he should run up against that double–barrel left–and–right of the trail boss. There was no need for him to bathe now, since he had no change of shirt, which might have been an attitude of mind peculiar to trail cooks. He looked up at the sound of hoofs and saw Pete Wilson and Lanky Smith nearing the wagon, and his expression became bland and innocent.

  The two riders pulled up and looked quickly and curiously around. It was getting on to meal time, and the camp was deserted.

  “Didn’t Hoppy an’ Red ride in here?” asked Lanky in some surprise.

  “They shore didn’t walk in,” growled the cook, watching Pete out of the corner of his eye.

  “Smart Aleck, huh?” grunted Pete, wiping the dust paste from his grimy forehead.

  “Where’d they go?” persisted Lanky with quick suspicion. He was looking down the trail, in the general direction whence trouble would appear if it came at all.

  “Swimmin’,” growled the cook, fussing at the tailboard.

  “Swimmin’!” barked Lanky eagerly. “Where at?”

  “Up th’ crick,” answered the cook grouchily. “You want to look out for these damn prairie rattlers,” he warned. “Sixteen feet long an’ they gang up in threes!”

  Lanky’s mouth was still open when Pete, after studying the cook’s face for an instant, gravely made reply. Pete shoved his head and shoulders in under the wagon cover as he spoke, and his voice sounded a little muffled.

  “That’s right, they——What th’ hell!” he grunted in surprise as Red’s pet shirt confronted him. He carelessly shoved it into the nearest bag and pulled out his own blue–and–white, a shirt approaching a tent in size.

  “What you mean, ‘what th’ hell’?” barked the cook.

  “I never knowed you’d seen any of them snakes,” said Lanky, talking to the cook, but crowding Pete. “You musta been drunk as all hell.”

  “Drunk nothin’!” retorted the cook, flushing at this bald and careless mention of a very touchy subject. Couldn’t a man ever live anything down? “I ain’t seen one, yet,” he confessed; “but Hoppy was tellin’ me about ’em.”

  “Oh,” said Lanky, still crowding.

  Pete, tying the arm of the clean shirt around his thick neck, got out of Lanky’s elbowing way.

  “He was, huh?” asked Pete, speculatively. “Did he tell you how they bulldog growed cattle? No? Didn’t have time to, mebby; or th’ presence of mind. Why, th’ number one snake just throws a runnin’ loop over th’ cow’s head an’ flops it quick as a wink. Th’ number two snake turns a hitch around one front laig, pullin’ it back; an’ th’ number three rep–tile rolls a loop around th’ other front laig, pullin’ it frontwards. That’s why they travel in threes. Let me tell you that these snakes are smart; an’ they’re dangerous, but most dangerous at night. Reckon I’ll be sleepin’ in th’ wagon tonight.”

  “Yeah?” snapped the cook. “I’m boss of th’ wagon, an’ you know it’ll only sleep one!” His voice was rising. “Why don’t you lay a hair rope round you? You’ll be plenty safe that way.”

  “I don’t take much stock in hair ropes,” growled Pete.

  Lanky backed from the wagon, looked curiously at the excited cook, and then, holding a change of clothes high over his head, yelled shrilly and led Pete by a length as they passed the fire.

  The cook watched them go, studied his fire for a moment, and decided to let it die down a little. Supper would be late tonight, thanks to the swimming mania. He looked at the distant herd, where Skinny and Billy were on duty, and he grinned: those two would have plenty to say about the tardiness of their relief. Suddenly he thought about Pete’s war bag and the red–and–white checkered shirt. Pete certainly had found it, and he would be quite certain to pass it on. The cook sauntered to the wagon, found his own bag, and examined its contents. The shirt was not in it. As he turned from the wagon he saw a little cloud of dust roll over the crest of the rise and head straight for camp. Something about the rider made him grunt and n
od his head. It was Johnny, back from his trip up the trail, and Johnny was singing:

  “I’m through trailin’ cattle,” said Big Foot Sam,

  “I won’t trail cattle for no damn man.

  “When I draw my pay I’ll strap my roll,

  An’ pull my freight, dod gast my soul.

  “I won’t nurse th’ cavvy, an’ I won’t flank th’ herd,

  For I aim to be free as any damn bird.

  “I’m plumb sick of beans, an’ sow–belly, too;

  An’ I’m tired of th’ boss an’ th’ whole damn crew.

  “I’ve swum th’ last river an’ rode my last trick,

  An’ I’m goin’ back to Texas, an’ goin’ back quick.

  “I’ve rid all night long in a pourin’ rain,

  An’ I’ll shore be damned if I do it again.”

  Then th’ boss come a–ridin’: “Hi–yuh, Sam!

  We’re drivin’ these steers to th’ Promised Lan’;

  “We’re goin’ past Dodge, an’ goin’ ’crost the Platte—

  Fust thing we know we won’t know where we’re at!

  “We’re goin’ down th’ Powder, an’ ’crost th’ Yallerstone,

  Headin’ for them Canucks like a dog with a bone!”

  “I’ve never been to Canady,” said Big Foot Sam;

  “I’ve never seen th’ Powder, nor airy Promise’ Lan’;

  “But if they’re goin’ to Canady, then I’m a–goin’ too:

  Me an’ my roll with th’ whole damn’ crew!”

  In a few minutes the rider pulled up at the wagon, his eyes sweeping the camp and the plain.

  “Where’s Hoppy? Where’re all th’ boys?” he asked, curiously.

  “Off swimmin’!” snapped the cook, who had begun to acknowledge the wish to feel water sliding over his hot and sticky skin.

  “Where?” quickly demanded the Kid.

  “Up th’ crick. They’re gettin’ into clean clothes. What you find, up th’ trail?”

  “Gettin’ into clean clothes, huh? They won’t have nothin’ on me!” chuckled the Kid, crowding the wagon and reaching inside of it. His energetic pawing was followed by a muttered exclamation and then more pawing. It looked like Red’s shirt, but whomever it belonged to, he did not want it. He jammed it into the first bag at hand.