He stopped, shaking his head from side to side. Lispenard leaned across the fire. "Well?"
Quagmire spread his hands, palms upward. "The buckskin had ketched up with the barn while both was in the air. The cuss had walked inside to get a free ride. When I slides down to the manger there he was, munchin' oats."
Billy collapsed first, moaning. The crouching punchers swayed back and forth, arms flailing, like priests performing strange rites. Wild laughter ricochetted up and against the whirling air. Lispenard jumped to his feet. "I told you it'd be another cursed fish story!"
He had to shout to make himself heard above the shrilling tempest. Quagmire still sat cushioned on his heels, water pouring down his slicker and pooling at his feet; still a sober, bemused figure. Alone of the Circle G crew, San Saba had not joined the hilarity, and now he stepped into the waning arc of light, unfriendly, brittle-voiced.
"It's an old, stale yarn to tell a gent."
Laughter died. Quagmire looked up. "Old? What's new in this ancient universe? But seein' as yo' speak of old things, I reckon I could relate a few."
"Personal allusions, suh?"
Quagmire got to his feet, but the foreman's height made him tilt his wizened face; it was a face upon which solemnity loved to dwell, yet on occasion it could be as hard as granite, as bleak as death. So it was now. "Once upon a time, San Saba..."
Lispenard stepped ahead. "Thanks, San Saba, but this is my quarrel."
Quagmire snapped at him. "It only takes two oars to row a boat! Yo' ain't got no quarrel!"
The Blond Giant fell silent, full lips twitching. Quagmire's thin chest laboured to shove his words against the wind. "Once they was a bad night—like this one. Looked as if they might be trouble—like it does now. Boss comes up to the boys and says, 'Boys, we are apt to have a stampede. Somebody's like to get killed afo' mo'nin'. Now yo'-all better write yo' true names on a piece o' paper an' tuck in yo' shirts.' That's what he said. Mebbe we'll have trouble. But they's only one man here which needs to write his true name on a paper. An' that's yo'—San Saba!"
"Quagmire—yo' lie!"
"I pay no attention to a dawg when it barks at me," replied Quagmire somberly. "Yo' past history may be unf'miliar to others, But I know it!"
"Yo' lie!" droned San Saba. "Eat those words, hear me?"
Tom Gillette stepped between the men. "Drop it! There'll be no fights in this outfit. We're on the drive."
Quagmire turned away. But San Saba craned his nutshell head forward. "This ain't yo' affair. What yo' hornin' in for?"
"I'll make it my quarrel, San Saba." The wind swept Tom Gillette's words high up, and he had to throw all his power into them. "As for quarrels—you ought to know whether I've got one with you. Wait until the drive is finished if it's in your mind to settle."
The Major rode out of the dark pit, followed by the cavvy herder. "Saddle up! Everybody ride! Lightning striking half a mile off!"
The last flame guttered and was extinguished. Tom reached Lispenard shouting. "Stick with me! If there's trouble, keep away from the herd!"
He felt Lispenard's hand knock his arm away. "Don't worry about that. I'll look out for myself."
Confusion in the horse herd. Tom threw the dripping saddle on his pony, cinched it tight against the knowledge he might have to depend utterly on the solidity of those double bands, and swung out of the melee. A hundred yards off he struck the flank of the herd. The brutes were up, moving uneasily, heads tossing. The force of the wind was shifting them; they were turning spooky—in that frame of mind where any unaccountable sound or sight might set them running. Tom walked his pony along the rim of the straggling circle, rain driving against his slicker and pounding on his skin. He was in no humour to sing, but sing he must; anything to give those uneasy, forboding kine the reassurance of his presence.
"Oh, Buffalo girls, are you comin' out to-night
Comin' out to-night, comin' out to-night,
Oh, Buffalo girls, are you comin' out to-night..."
The drums and trumpets of the storm rolled out a prolonged fanfaronade. Thunder rocked the heavens, and an instant later a sinuous, wavering bolt of lightning cracked the pit-black sky and hung suspended one long second. In the pale blue twilight thus cast over the earth Tom saw the herd massed together, tails and horns and bony backs moving like the wind-whipped surface of the sea. Stray members of the crew were silhouetted ahead, bent against the lashing rain. Then it was dark, abysmally dark, with a phosphorescent glow running across the thousands of horn tips. Thunder again, coming closer; wind and rain struck down against the earth with tenfold force. Tom's pony stood still, bracing its feet on the slippery soil.
"Oh, Buffalo girls, are you comin' out to-night,
To dance by the light of the moon..."
College—law and order—elm trees shading green lawns. What was all that but a dream, a faint echo of life? Here on this tempest-torn prairie animate creatures struggled to survive. And some would not.
Lispenard had not left the chuck wagon, though he, like the others, had saddled his pony. The time might come when he would want to get away in a hurry. San Saba warned him of that after the rest had ridden off. The foreman had waited until he was alone with Lispenard, and even then he spoke as softly as he could manage.
"You stick here, amigo. If they should be a sound like hell bein' pulled up by the roots, skin out."
"Thanks."
And then San Saba grinned, though it was too dark for Lispenard to see this cheerless contraction of lips. "Ain't no call fo' thanks, friend. Mebbe I will be askin' yo' to return the favour some day."
He vanished, trampling the last dull ember of the fire. Nor did he fall into the usual drone as he skirted the herd. He went silently, with the picture of the herd as he had seen them at sunset in his mind. Judge Lynch, the one-eyed hermit, was over on the west side somewhat near the rear. Judge Lynch usually bedded down a little removed from his companions and seldom moved far from the original spot during the night. The critters were all up now, but the foreman was betting strongly that this morose and distrustful animal would be standing in his tracks. Barring earlier developments, he had business with Judge Lynch.
The first streamer of lightning found him half around the circle. Two riders were directly in front, but they were travelling in the same direction and thus didn't see San Saba. The foreman quickened his pace and on the ensuing flash looked behind him. Nobody within fifty yards. At the same time he located Judge Lynch, marking the spot in his mind as the darkness closed down. He bent forward, slipping his quirt; Judge Lynch's vague outline fell athwart his path. The quirt flailed out, struck the steer's rump. San Saba's voice teetered shrilly on the driving wind. "Hyaaaa!" Judge Lynch snorted, whirled from the blow, and lumbered off.
San Saba turned the pony and galloped recklessly into the open prairie. Through the wild beat and roar of the storm came the distinct echo of the herd breaking away. A rumble of those thousands of hoofs, a clamour of bawling and bellowing, a clicking of horns. The reverberation of all this trembled along the earth and up through his pony's pounding feet. San Saba grinned his humourless grin and aimed away from the path of the stampeding brutes. For that path was one of destruction.
Tom Gillette had rounded the windward side of the herd when he felt a shock pass across the darkness. Once experienced, it was a sensation never to be forgotten. He had often been told by old hands that the fright of a single steer could strike through five thousand cattle with all the speed of an electrical impulse. He never had quite believed it until this moment. It came from he knew not where, the cause was equally obscure. Nevertheless, he felt the impact of that surging, milling mass