The Round-Up Page 3

  "Take over this bunch," ordered Nueces. "Th' Association's rules are to brand th' mavericks first, out of every gather. These didn't come out of this gather, an' we can't mix things up an' mebby chouse th' herd. You boys hold 'em here until we've cleaned th' main herd, an' then push 'em down to th' fires, an' we'll slap th' Association mark on 'em an' push 'em down th' river for somebody else to herd. Mebby th' Bar W wagon is holdin' a bunch of 'em. If they are, throw these in with 'em an' come back. Get a receipt for 'em."

  "Somebody shore is goin' to miss this little bunch some moonlight night," said the first rider, grinning.

  "Yes; except that th' news will spread, an' nobody come after 'em," said Corson. "I'm right sorry that we missed th' somebody that put 'em in there," he added, grimly.

  "How's that Baylor rider actin'?" asked the straw boss.

  "Just about as sweet as that cucumber pickle he speared at dinner," answered the first of the two riders.

  "Jed missed three throws in succession, an' th' Baylor rider has been bawlin' him out ever since," said the second man. "He's now askin' heaven an' hell for a roper that can rope. Somebody's shore goin' to tie a knot in his tail. He's a damn' trouble-maker."

  "First thing he needs is a little slack," growled Nueces. "Reckon I'll give him acme an' see how he uses it. You comin' with me, Bob?"

  Corson was. There was something in his companion's mind that he did not wish to miss, and he thought he knew just about what it was. Nueces was a bad man to prod, and anything that interfered with the smooth working of his outfit prodded him.

  They stopped not far from the nearest fire, where the Baylor rider was one of two flankers. Jed was doing the roping, and his cast fell short again, and the calf had to be chased back to him. He was seething with anger, but holding himself down remarkably well, so far as his tormentor was concerned.

  "I've seen some damn' rotten ropers in my life," growled the Baylor man, "but you shore win th' diamond-studded hoss-shoe. What th' hell's th' matter with you? Give me a real roper, an' I'll make him sweat!"

  His fellow flanker was about to take Jed's part, but chanced to glance at the straw boss, caught the motion of Nueces' head, and turned on his heel. He walked to the fire without a word and moved the irons about in it.

  "Where th' hell you goin'.?" snapped the Baylor man, and then found himself to be the focal point of the straw boss's eyes.

  "We're runnin' one rope, one flanker, an' one iron at this fire," said Nueces coldly. "I want to see an expert work. A man like you is too good a flanker to be pestered with a poor roper. One expert shore oughta have another."

  "What you mean?" asked the Baylor rider, suspiciously.

  "I mean that I'm goin' to give you a roper that don't miss three throws outa four: th' kind you been askin' for, an' a feller that don't miss his casts when he gits mad," answered the straw boss, smiling pleasantly. His face was friendly and sympathetic, and he kept it so as he turned to the discredited roper. "Jed, take that leaky rope of yourn an' go over there an' relieve Bludsoe. There ain't no cucumber pickles at that fire, an' there ain't no likelihood of some flanker gettin' shot. You tell Bludsoe I said for him to swap fires with you."

  Corson kept a straight face, but with some difficulty. George Bludsoe was the best calf roper he ever had seen, and he had seen some good ones. Bludsoe was the best one-man tier-down on the whole range. He could work and braid rawhide into the finest ropes and hackamores that a man ever saw. His gun was as good as his rope. He could handle green horses like soothing syrup, which was a distinct asset. He had been brought up in that old Texan school, where a dollar was a dollar, except that it was never around to be one; where sheer, undeserved poverty had turned out a breed of men, and women, who did things for themselves that but few others could do. Whenever Bludsoe missed a calf, they tolled the bells, down in Texas; and it was said that Texas bells had not been tolled since the Alamo.

  Bludsoe pulled up in front of his straw boss with a smile and a nod for Corson.

  "You wantin' me?" he asked.

  "Yeah," answered Nueces, one eyelid faintly flicking. "That there Baylor rider shore hates to work with a bungler, an' I don't blame him. He has put hisself on record, free an' voluntary, to hold up his own end if he gets a good roper. We got to use what we have, an' yo're a fair man with a rope. You'll have to do, anyhow. Go to it, Gawrge. Hi!" he shouted at the hard-working cutters-out in the herd. "Why don't you push out more on this side? Yo're holdin' up this fire." He faced the riders outside the herd and got their attention. "Shoot more of them calves this way! Our irons are gettin' too hot over here!"

  The Baylor man suspected that he was in for something, but he was too sore and too game to quit. He was a chesty person, and he had gone on record. He glared at Bludsoe.

  "If yo're all through cuttin' yo're fingernails, let's start!" he snapped.

  "Gosh!" exclaimed Bludsoe, contritely, "I plumb forgot all about you." And he went to work.

  He went to work with the neatest four-strand, braided rawhide lariat a man ever saw. It was thin, tight, and close, slick with tallow; and it had a wall-and-crown knot at one end and an eight-strand, flat-braided hondo at the other. You and I would have broken that rope with the first plunge of even a half-grown yearling; but Bludsoe let it slip around the saddlehorn with practised ease. It is doubtful if the rope ever had received a threatening strain in its existence. It was not a long rope. At a guess I'd say forty feet. George had three ropes, and one of them was a full sixty feet of six-strand braiding that was almost as strong as a fiber rope one size smaller. And he could throw it the full length, which took skill as well as strength. This rope was tied on the other side of his saddle. The third, an extra, was in his warbag at the wagon. It also was braided rawhide.

  George was not using a three-eighths-inch rope today; neither was he using the six-strander. The tool in his hand was hardly more than five sixteenths of an inch in diameter, light, beautifully flexible, and just right for him for the job on hand. He called it his calf rope, and when it left his hand it whistled through the air, smacked around a calf's neck with a remarkably small loop, and the flanker forthwith had a job to do.

  The calves began to come faster. Bludsoe's rope whistled more rapidly. The iron men came to life, and the Baylor man's helper generously let him do all the grab and knee work. Playing his part in the game, he took the flanker's bawling out with good grace, and winked at the straw boss.

  "Why don't you go down th' rope once in a while?" shouted the Baylor rep., angrily.

  "Never like to muss up no purty exhibition like yo're showin' us," panted the partner. "I never saw such flankin'. You'll wear that roper out. Look at him sweat! First time I ever saw a flanker flop 'em so fast that his roper fell behind. My money's on you."

  The Baylor man was exceedingly busy. He was entirely too busy to waste a glance at his roper, but he hoped that his partner had spoken truly. He'd show up the damned Texan! The calves came in a stream. Nueces left the saddle and took a hand in pinning them down after they flopped. The iron man was on the jump. Minutes passed, but the Baylor man began to reckon them as much longer intervals of time. He stood up, eased the crick in his back, and was about to speak his mind when the roper forestalled him.

  "Yo're turnin' my rope loose too fast," complained Bludsoe, with a straight and worried face. He had his eyes on two calves, coming up almost together, on an angle which would bring them together at just about the right place. He motioned to the following riders, and they nodded and laughed softly.

  Bludsoe carelessly loosed the other rope, threw the knot end over the horn with a clove hitch. His right arm rose, and the little rope whistled again. It fairly leaped over the head of the first calf, and was hardly set before the second rope whistled through the air like a blade, slapped swiftly around the neck of the second calf, and both ropes pulled tight.

  The Baylor man, reaching up to grab the first rope and run down it, had to grab the second to keep it from catching him under the chin. As his
left hand closed on it, the first calf suddenly decided that this was a most auspicious occasion to do something on its own hook. It darted sideways and then plunged forward. The slack of the swinging rope dropped below the flanker's knees, tangled with one spur, and then straightened out like an iron bar as the calf whirled and darted back again. The flanker's feet went out from under him and he found himself on his back in a little cloud of dust.

  He rolled swiftly on his side, twisted his foot until the spur was free from the rope, and then his right hand streaked toward his holster. It stopped there, motionless, for he found the roper's gun squarely on him. It was no secret on the range that George Bludsoe was a killer. If he had not been a killer he would not have been living at this moment. The flanker's hand forsook the holster and pressed against the ground to help him get to his knees. As he slowly stood erect, the roper's gun slipped back into its sheath.

  "What you reckon yo're doin', Bludsoe?" demanded the dust-covered stray man, ominously. Rage glinted in his narrowed eyes.

  "Just seein' if I could get th' rest of th' wind outa you before you used it all up for grouchin'," retorted Bludsoe, evenly. "I might say it was th' calf that done it; but I ain't slippin' outa nothin'. You sweeten up, an' you'll find this outfit's th' best you ever worked with; stay sour, an' you'll wish you was never borned. It's yore deal."

  The Baylor man faced the straw boss, his face flaming. Then it went white, as white as dirt and tan would permit.

  "Is this th' way you run yore wagon?" he demanded, almost in a whisper.

  Nueces carelessly shoved his Stetson hat up the fraction of an inch and looked the enraged man squarely and calmly in the eye.

  "I've allus found th' best way to run an outfit, if you've got a good one, is to let it shake itself down an' run itself," he slowly answered. "I got a good one, a damn' good one. It works as slick as tallow on rawhide. You been askin' for trouble th' last couple days. You been like a burr under my saddle. You been ridin' th' cook. You got Jed so riled up that he missed his throws. Well, you got what you looked for: some of it. There's more left if you want to look for it. Now you can get sweet, or you can pull yore drag. Th' next man that talks to you will be me. I'm lettin' you write my speech for me."

  "All right!" snapped the stray man. "I figger I've been mistaken. I kinda reckoned this was a real cow outfit. I'm pullin' my drag, an' I'm doin' it now. Next time some of you fellers see me you mebby won't be so damn' cocky. So-long, th' lot of you: an' go to hell!"

  "I'll go to hell with you as far as th' wagon," said Nueces, stepping swiftly toward his horse. "Good cooks are right scarce, an' we ain't figgerin' on buryin' ourn, or even huntin' up a new one. Cook ain't as young as he used to be, but his temper's got worse steady right along. He might answer you sassy. Come on: get yore hoss an' start. Th' sooner you cut yore string, th' sooner I can get back here."

  Bludsoe's long rope was again fastened to the saddle. He hung the pet calf rope over the pommel and grinned at Corson. The four men holding down the double catch were calling for the irons. Corson grinned, and then turned to scrutinize speculatively the back of the departing stray man. He groaned, shook his head, and rode slowly toward the wagon.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE cook's clock, the curse of a round-up camp, awakened Corson and he saw blankets squirm or heave, according to the nature or present feelings of the men under them. Somebody swore softly, another muttered, and both went to sleep again to steal a few more minutes of oblivion. The cook turned off the alarm as the Appleton representative threw off his blankets and matched his yawn with his stretch. This was his morning to pamper the cook.

  Corson chuckled and, because he was wide awake, watched what was going on around him. Old George Appleton owned the GA brand and was not nearly as old as the cognomen suggested. The GA stray man, drawing on his boots, moved over to the Dutch ovens, scraped the ashes from them, found live coals beneath, by some favor of Providence, and began to pare splinters of tinder from the cook's much prized pitch pine. The cook, himself, observing these activities, turned over for another precious forty winks. No one could say that he did not know how to train stray men, and the strange part of it was that most of these stray men rather liked it.

  The GA rider fanned the coals with his hat and was soon rewarded by a little blaze, which he fed sparingly and judiciously with bits of wood. Every fire going to his satisfaction, he picked up the buckets and headed for the spring, gently kicking the pitch-pine chunk against a rear wheel of the wagon. This was a mild declaration: if the cook wanted that hunk of resinous wood in the wagon, let him put it there himself!

  Nueces had been turning loose the JC animals, since the outfit was on its own range, as fast as they had been worked. This meant that the stray herd was greatly reduced in size; but it took two men, just the same, to night-herd it. In it were the cattle belonging to the ranches represented by the various stray men with the wagon. The Baylor gather had been cut out and started for home, together with the Baylor remuda, by the angry representative from that ranch.

  The cattle would come fast and thick from here on to Horsethief Creek. The JC beef cut had been sent home to the ranch the day before, and was now out of the way. There would be no more beef cuts until the fall round-up, which was strictly a beef affair. The maverick herd had been marked with the Association brand and thrown in with the like gathers of the Bar W, down on the Kiowa. The cavvy, over a hundred and fifty head, grazed along the far slope of the draw, hobbled but contented.

  The GA rider returned with two buckets of water and with sufficient data to stage a dispute. The spring was neither eighty-one nor seventy-eight paces from the wagon; it was eighty-three. He put the buckets down handy to the tailboard, hurriedly added more fuel to the fires, and then went to the wagon and pulled a hindquarter of beef out of it, stripping off the protecting flour-sack covering.

  The cook's blankets stirred again, and that worthy monarch of the open range deigned to throw them off and to sit up. The tinny clatter of the washbasin told that the stray man had taken it from its nail on the wagon box and was performing his morning ablutions. He puffed and slobbered like a grampus, if a grampus puffs and slobbers. He wiped his manly countenance, carefully slicked his hair, and turned to face the rising cook.

  "There, —— —— you: do th' rest yoreself," he said to the dough expert, with a grin.

  "Thanks, Curley," grunted the cook, heading for that same washbasin. "Yo're daddy's good little boy."

  "Go to hell," said Curley.

  Nueces sat up and threw off the blankets. He was the skipper of this ship on wheels, and he liked to be on deck early. He glanced at the cook, at the tarpaulin-covered figures, and out over the range. The stray herd was already on its feet, placidly grazing, the two riders with it loafing in their saddles, their eager eyes on the signs of life at the distant wagon. His gaze flicked to the grazing saddle horses and passed on. The night horses near the wagon were searching for feed at the ends of their picket ropes. He looked at the figure at his side and grinned as he found Corson's wide-awake eyes on him.

  "Mornin'," grunted the straw boss. "Find th' ground soft?"

  "It would have been, only th' stuffing in this damn' tick got worked all out of one place," replied the owner of the JC. He glanced at the picketed night horses, idly reading the brands. "Hey! Nueces!" he said suddenly. "You ever hear of th' JM?"

  "Yeah. They run a few head over Packers Gap way. Two-by-nothin' outfit. They did some ridin' for th' Baylor outfit, too. Why?"

  "Nothin'. How come you heard of 'em?"

  "Range gossip, I reckon," answered the straw boss. "I hear lots of useless things."

  "I know you do, you long-headed old maverick," replied Corson with a grin, "only there's a lot of it that ain't useless. You ain't figgerin' on cleanin' up that whole Horsethief Creek section today?"

  "No. We work from here to th' wagon this mornin'," said Nueces, stretching his long arms. "This afternoon we go on north to th' trail fork, an' then work ba
ck to th' wagon. Can't go chousin' up that section an' throwin' back branded calves to be rounded up ag'in. Tomorrow we cut th' herd in two an' clean up one half after th' other. Don't know any better way to handle it."

  Blanket after blanket heaved, erupted, and shelled out its inmate. Tantalizing odors filled the air. The cook knew his business down to the last brass tack; and he should have, for he drew down heavy pay. Sizzling steaks, strong coffee. The sliced-bread edifice on the tailboard grew story by story, a little white monument against the darker background of the hills. There was brisk activity around the washbasin, and a sudden burst of talk.

  "That red-an'-white bounced plumb into th' air, turned in my holt, an' lit back on all four laigs," laughed a flanker of the day before. "He butted me so damn' hard I was cross-eyed for a minute."

  "He's goin' to be th' boss of th' range when he grows up," said a companion, chuckling.

  "Hey, Gawrge! What'll you take for that calf rope of yourn?"

  "More'n you'll ever have," replied Bludsoe.

  "… so I took three cards, an' slid th' last of two months' pay plumb in th' middle of th' table. 'There,' says I. 'How you like th' looks of that?' "

  "We oughta save out some old cows for a bait herd, when we work that chaparral country, up north."

  "Grup PILE!" shouted the cook with unnecessary loudness, and easily had the last word.

  Another good meal had joined the pleasant things in the yesterdays, and tobacco and papers put a period after it. The big dishpans were filled, and a softly whistling stray man, who would rather wash than wipe, was helping the cook get rid of their messy contents.

  "Is there anythin' better'n a good steak, fried brown in batter?" asked a chuckwagon worshiper.

  "Hell, yes! Ham'n aigs!"

  "You fellers ever hear tell of th' two Texans that dropped in on old Judge Bean, th' old moss-head that claimed he was th' law an' order west of th' Pecos? They—"

  "There's two hungry boys out there with th' herd," said Nueces, abruptly. "An' it's gettin' later every minute. First thing we know it'll be noon an' nothin' done. Let's get th' hosses an' roll along."