“They sure will eat most anything,” Dewey said.
Hank smiled. “Been feedin’ them good?”
“Plenty,” Dewey said disgustedly. “So they turn around and rifle camp.”
“Hell, that’s their nature,” Hank said. “Every time you leave camp, they’ll try to rob it. And they don’ miss a thing. It’s funny the way they seem to know. They can be way off grazing and maybe you sneak out to break broncs, and when you come back, there you’ll find ’em with flour in their ears. And when you finish eating, they’ll be around looking for that handout. Missed your dishrags yet?”
“Not yet,” Dewey said.
“You will.”
Dewey said, “The hell I will! Say, what size bunches do these wild burros run in?”
“Oh, eight to ten,” Hank said. “They’re like deer in many ways. When it comes time to have a colt the mare’ll go off by herself but the bunch won’t be too far away. Just as soon as she’s had the colt and it can wobble along, she’ll rejoin the bunch again. Dewey, you noticed how their ears stand up?”
“Sure,” Dewey said. “It appears they got mighty keen hearing.”
“You watch a burro’s ears,” Hank said. “He’ll tell you if anything is happening or somebody’s comin’. A burro can be standing out yonder asleep, let something happen way off on the hillside and he’ll point an ear like he’s looking that way, and it might be twenty seconds before he opens his eyes. I guess that’s because his hearing is best and it has to come on down into his brain before his eyes get the signal to take a look. An’ talking about dishrags, Dewey, you better watch everything. They don’t stop at nothin’ except anything rotten.”
“Dried fruit,” Thornhill said. “And grain. I remember one old burro on the Circle C that could open the granary door faster’n a man. They knew he was thirty-eight years old. He was out on pension, he just hung around, always in the way, sneaking grain.”
“Benstega’s pretty old,” Dewey said.
“Could be thirty,” Driver Gobet said. “I don’ know for sure. You can’t tell their age by their teeth. They got big teeth like a mule’s, but different from a horse.”
“Say, Hank,” George Spradley said sleepily. “How about that big red steer today. He sure was salty.”
“They’re all salty,” Hank said. “We just get luckier with some. That old black cow was a handful herself.”
Dewey lay back and drank his coffee, and listened while they discussed the red steer and went on to talk of others met and roped, or missed, during the day’s work. It went like that through the eight days of the Black Brush job, everybody talking slow and easy around the night fire, the burros in the trees nearby, horses outside the firelight circle in the grass, the raspy sounds from a tied cow rubbing against a tree deep in the brush. Indian Tom never talked. He’d come in for his food, go off by himself, and squat down like a coyote to eat. Hank very seldom gave Tom any orders. Tom savvied English and he’d catch the next day’s orders from general conversation, and about the only orders Hank ever gave him was in case somebody changed partners. Then Hank might say, “Tom, you work with so-and-so tomorrow.” But most of the time Tom worked by himself and got plenty done. He was all man, and Dewey liked and respected him. Near suppertime on the last day Dewey saw Tom come tearing through the brush, chasing a big brindle steer. Tom flipped that small loop and made the ketch and tied old bossy to a tree so fast it was like watching a speeded up moving picture scene of some joker riding a livery stable horse in a getaway.
That brindle steer was the last one roped during the eight days, and Hank told Dewey the tally at supper. They’d caught and sent in a hundred and twenty-one cattle, and Dewey didn’t need to be told it was a mighty high count for such country. Next morning when they topped off on Wild Horse Mesa, heading for the main ranch, the boys were far out on both flanks scouting the country for steers and burros that might have gotten hung up enroute. And to rope any cow that came along, Dewey knew, to raise that hundred and twenty-one total if possible.
About eleven o’clock Dewey and Squab, driving the kitchen burros, come up on Indian Tom’s horse where the trail wound near the edge of a big canyon.
“Hold up,” Dewey called. “Something wrong.”
Squab just pointed downward to a lower ledge. “Tom’s all right, Dewey.”
Dewey looked down and finally saw Tom standing on the ledge with a little square looking glass in one hand. Squab nudged Dewey and he looked on out across the country to the northwest and finally made out the rising dust.
“Indian roundup,” Squab said.
Tom was down there working that glass against the sun, up and down and sideways, and for a minute Dewey figured Tom was off his nut. Dewey watched him fifteen minutes, until Tom turned and climbed up beside them and shoved the looking glass into a front pocket.
“Three Flying A cows,” Tom said. “Two Flying A calves, Indian roundup.” Tom held up his fingers to show the count.
“That’s old R4,” Squab said. “Big Indian cowman roundup.”
Indian Tom grunted and rode away. Watching him go, Dewey began thinking about those looking glass signals that had come across ten or twelve miles of country to Tom, who must have signaled the roundup, asked a question, and got his answers the same way. Riding along, Dewey realized that those signals must have been learned during the days of Crook and Miles and Geronimo, when the army tried to catch the Apaches that way. Just a few years ago, Dewey thought, and now the Indians were like anybody else in this country, only it seemed they remembered everything they saw and got around to using it in one way or another. That was a pretty good way to judge the whole country, too, because men out here had a habit of using everything at hand. They had to, or they didn’t stick around long.
CHAPTER FOUR
THREE DAYS were spent at the main ranch, shoeing horses and sewing up jackets and chaps—in fact, there was a sight more sewing done than in most any Ladies’ Aid on a Tuesday afternoon. Dewey had no spare time either, cooking three meals a day and preparing for the Cherry Creek move.
“There’s about ninety thousand acres on this ranch,” Hank told him, “and Cherry Creek is the big job. It’s a two-day drive straight east through Hole-In-The-Ground Camp, twenty-two miles as the crow flies, but we ain’t flyin’. Make sure you get everything tied down tight, Dewey. She’s a rough ride.”
Hank didn’t lie. They started next morning, driving burros and saddle horses, Dewey and Squab bringing up the rear as usual. They made Hole-In-The-Ground Camp the first night, riding all day through brush and trees into rough country cut all to pieces with arroyos and canyons and crazy-angled ravines. The Hole was six sections of rough country three to eight hundred feet lower than the surrounding land; it was literally a hole in the ground, cut off by sheer cliffs except for the one pass in and out. Cattle drifted in but they rarely got out.
While Dewey cooked supper, George Spradley and Thornhill scouted around through the maze of canyons and arroyos, trying to get a fair tally on the cows. They got back just in time for supper with a good report, and Hank decided on staying two days. During that time the boys rode out every canyon and ravine, doing no roping or driving, just making a close count of the cattle. On the third morning they climbed from the Hole and headed east for Cherry Creek. It was a rough trail, but Squab knew a few short cuts and led Dewey down a long approach in late afternoon, around a big sandstone bluff, into permanent camp.
Dewey saw a clear stream of water, good corrals on the far slope, and rising above the slope a sheer six-hundred-foot