The old man lashed fast the gate to the corral and turned back toward the house.
“Ah, yes,” he said musingly, “the Americanos say continually that we Mexicanos are foolish –– but look at me! Here is my good home, the same as before. I have always plenty beans, plenty meat, plenty flour, plenty coffee. I welcome every one to my house, to eat and sleep –– yet I have plenty left. I am muy contento, Señor Hardy –– yes, I am always happy. But the Americanos? No! When the sheep come, they fight; when their cattle are gone, they move; fight, fight; move, move; all the time.” He sighed and gazed wearily at the barren hills.
“Señor Hardy,” he said at last, “you are young, yet you have seen the great world –– perhaps you will understand. Jeff tells me you come to take charge of the Dos S Rancho, where the sheep come through by thousands, even as they did here when there was grass. I am an old man now; I have lived on this spot twenty-four years and seen much of the sheep; let me advise you.
“When the sheepmen come across the river do not fight, as Don Jeff does continually, but let them pass. They are many and the cowmen are few; they are rich and we are very poor; how then can a few men whip many, and those armed with the best? And look –– if a sheepman is killed there is the law, you know, and lawyers –– yes, and money!” He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, peeping ruefully through the fingers to symbolize prison bars.
“Is it not so?” he asked, and for the first time an Americano agreed with him.
“One thing more, then,” said Don Pablo, lowering his voice and glancing toward the house, where Creede was conversing with the Señora. “The papá of Don Jeff yonder was a good man, but he was a fighting Texano –– and Jeff is of the same blood. Each year as the sheep come through I have fear for him, lest he should kill some saucy borreguero and be sent to prison; for he has angry fits, like his father, and there are many bad men among the sheep-herders, –– escaped criminals from Old Mexico, ladrones, and creatures of low blood, fathered by evil Americanos and the nameless women of towns.
“In Sonora we would whip them from our door, but the sheepmen make much of their herders, calling them brothers and cuñados and what not, to make them stay, since the work is hard and dangerous. And to every one of them, whether herder or camp rustler, the owners give a rifle with ammunition, and a revolver to carry always. So they are drunk with valor. But our Jeff here has no fear of them, no, nor decent respect. He overrides them when the fit is on him, as if they were unfanged serpents –– and so far he has escaped.”
The old man leaned closer, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, acting out his words dramatically.
“But some day –– ” he clasped his heart, closed his eyes, and seemed to lurch before a bullet. “No?” he inquired, softly. “Ah, well, then, you must watch over him, for he is a good man, doing many friendships, and his father was a buen hombre, too, in the days when we all were rich. So look after him –– for an old man,” he added, and trudged wearily back to the house.
CHAPTER V
HIDDEN WATER
The trail to Hidden Water leads up the Salagua, alternately climbing the hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the river bottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box cañon, it swings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purling brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the Salagua is a Rio, broad and swift, with a current that clutches treacherously at a horse’s legs and roars over the brink of stony reefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad mill race, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they took their plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.
“Swim?” he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse into the water. “Keep your head upstream, then,” he said, “we’ll try it a whirl, anyhow.”
Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feeling their way among the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below them the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim, sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede looked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.
“How’s that for high?” he inquired, slapping his wet legs. “I tell you, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. I wouldn’t cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She’s away up since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you’ll hear her talk –– snow’s meltin’ on the mountains. I wish to God she’d stay up!” he added fervently, as he poured the water out of his boots.
“Why?” asked Hardy innocently. “Won’t it interfere with your bringing in supplies?”
“Sure thing,” said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. “But when you’ve been up here a while,” he observed, “you’ll savvy a lot of things that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on its hind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f’r a month, we cowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don’t give a dam’ for supplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.
“Begin to see light, eh?” he queried, as he pushed on up the river. “Well, that’s the only thing in God’s world that wasn’t made to order for these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the country east and west without consultin’ nobody, not even Jim Swope, and the sheep move north and south.
“How’d you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand borregos and half of ’em with lambs, when the rio was on a bender? I’ve seen some of these sheepmen wadin’ around up to their chins for two weeks, tryin’ to float twenty-five hundred head across the river –– and there wasn’t turkey buzzards enough in the country when they got through.
“Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined with carcasses two deep where they’d jest naturally crowded ’em into the river and let ’em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy. After they’d wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin’ they got tired and shoved ’em in, regardless. Well, if this warm weather holds we’ll be able to git our rodér good and started before the sheep come in. That’s one reason why I never was able to do much with these sheepmen,” he added. “They hit me right square in the middle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I’m too busy gatherin’ cattle to pay much attention to ’em. I did plan a little surprise party last year –– but that was somethin’ special. But now you’re on the job, Rufe,” he continued reassuringly, “I’m goin’ to leave all sheep and sheepmen strictly alone –– you can bank on that. Bein’ as we are goin’ to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never made a cent fightin’ ’em, that’s a cinch, and if you can appeal to their better natures, w’y, go to it! I’d help you if I could, but bein’ as I can’t I’ll git out of the road and give you a chanst.
“Now I’ll tell you how it’ll be,” he continued, turning in his