Following the Grass (10 page)

“Take him away,” Peter gasped. “He makes my flesh creep. Are you mad? Havin' such things about you!”

Joseph smiled at him.

“I understand you,” he said. “Here you see me, clad in rags, my companions the scavenger coyote and the carrion crow—outcasts of the desert—reviled, unloved—what a picture I And yet it is given even unto the lowest to reward kindness with faith.

“When you speak of me, speak of my companions, for we are three; and if the least of these shall love me, I will not fail.”

F
ROM
the day that he had returned to Buck-skin, Joseph had cast his eyes at its rocky crest. Throughout the years he had looked forward to the time when he should stand there and read the message his mother had left him. In fancy, he had done so a thousand times. And yet—now that he was there—he had found himself reluctant to face it.

As he had grown older, a fixed idea of what he would find had settled on him; but his return to the mountain had destroyed that assurance. He had expected to find his old home still standing, and in his bitterness at finding it destroyed he had told himself he dared not hope that any sign remained for him on Buckskin.

Peter Organ had explained many things to Joseph. For a day after the old man had left, the boy did not leave the coulee. With great patience he arranged in his mind what Peter had said. Of one thing he was certain—his mother's message was a secret no longer. He felt that he knew its contents in full. It was not what he had expected. But his way was clear before him now; and at sunrise, the following morning, he stood upon the mountain-top.

The world was still—hushed with the wonder of the coming day. Far below him, the desert floated in a lavender sea; to the east the distant Tuscarora Mountains were splashed with warm yellows and cold pinks.

Slippy-foot leaped to the topmost pinnacle and, lifting her head, she barked a greeting to the Thing of Light. The sun leaped clear of the far horizon and flooded mountain and plain with its vibrant rays. As if pursued, the gray shadows, lingering in cañon and draw, took to flight and were gone.

At this moment the glory of the universe was God's. Joseph raised his hands devoutly and lifting his eyes to Heaven, he gave thanks to his Creator.

How long he stood there or how many minutes passed before he realized that he was staring at a message carved on the enduring granite of the pinnacle upon which Slippy-foot stood, he could not have said. Slowly his brain began to function. His eyes grew wide, for the message they read was for him. Word by word, he said it aloud.

SACRED
To the Memory of
JOSEPH GAULT

The letters were uneven, graceless—carved upon the naked rock by his mother's feeble hands. Pride, love of her who had loved his father so well, consumed him. In comparison, all else seemed small and mean.

It was not his way to fall upon his knees in humility. Erect, militant, he addressed himself to his Maker—“talking to God,” as he would have said—and it well may be that Buckskin shall never again hear such a prayer.

In the end, his eyes sought the message once more—the lasting tribute of a woman's faith. He came close to it and touched the letters with his fingers. Although his eyes were dry, his lips were white as he turned away. Memories of his boyhood rushed to his mind, and with the haunting freshness with which one sees things in a dream, he saw himself a lad again.

Solemn-visaged Grimm came and perched beside him, his red-lidded, gold-rimmed eyes blinking questioningly; but Joseph gave no sign that he saw him. The boy had waited so long for this hour on the mountain-top that he was in no great hurry to bring his wandering thoughts back to the task of searching for the secret which he knew must be hidden there. When he did begin searching for it, he arose leisurely, his face almost devoid of any sign of eagerness.

In a tiny fissure directly beneath the inscription, he found a heap of small rocks. Something about the way in which they were piled seemed to say that human hands had once arranged them in a more exact formation. Indians often covered the graves of their dead with such cairns. Was this, then, the secret his mother had left him—Timoteo's grave?

Joseph bent down and began removing the rocks nearest the inscription. He had not gone far before he saw the neck of a bottle protruding from the cairn. Grimm cawed as Joseph grasped it.

The boy glanced at him apprehensively. From where he perched, the great bird could not have seen the bottle. It contained a paper—a letter!

Joseph shook his head as he broke off the neck of the bottle, believing, but far from understanding how Grimm had known that the quest was ended.

On drawing forth the letter, Joseph discovered a second message, in Basque, pinned to it. This second letter of only a few lines had been written with a pencil upon a leaf of paper torn from a note-book. The other letter was addressed to him. It read:

Joseph exhibited no surprise at what he read, for old Peter had prepared him for this very thing. Timoteo's message, however, was of absorbing interest. He studied it with puzzled brow, raking his mind for a word of two out of the past. Except for three or four simple expressions, he knew no Basque. The message was addressed to Angel. Joseph made out part of the first line. It began:

My brother, Andres—

Several lines lower, he caught Dorr's name. Allowing for the contractions of the language and the combinations of words which could be expressed by one word, he took it for granted that whatever the first line said about “My brother Andres” it had no reference to Dorr.

Andres's name was repeated in the line in which Dorr's name occurred. So the message must say two things: something about Andres and Dorr; and something about Andres and Timoteo. Joseph could only guess what the latter statement might be. And yet, it was vital to his plans that he know for a certainty what this message said.

He wished that Peter had not gone on. He was one of the few, outside of the Basques themselves, who even attempted to speak the tongue. Later, Joseph realized that it was unlikely that the old man could read or write a word of Basque, for his knowledge of the language was doubtless restricted to a matter of sounds.

During the succeeding days, the boy sat for hours with Timoteo's message in his hands. In all that time, he deciphered only one phrase: “
d-arrai-t
”—“It follows me.”

There was a ranger's cabin just beyond Coal Creek. Joseph thought of going there in the hope of meeting some of the Basque herders then in the Reserve. He soon argued himself out of the notion, however, for if Timoteo's message said that Andres had killed Dorr, then no one but old Angel himself must read it. It was, potentially, a powerful weapon, and not to be misused.

For five days after Peter had left the mountain, Joseph did nothing but study the letter. No one came to spy on him, for Peter talked but little in town and that little was received skeptically. Men laughed at his story of the lean years to come.

Joseph had convinced Peter that night in the dug-out, but even he found the tale fanciful now that he was back in his accustomed haunts. At times he wondered if the boy had not been touched by some strange malady of the brain. If he could have seen Joseph staring trance-like at the penciled note for hours at a time, Slippy-foot and Grimm at his feet, apparently as sorely perplexed as their master, he would have found it hard to have believed otherwise.

The deciphering of Timoteo's message had become an obsession. Just where it might have carried Joseph, it is impossible to say, but he was destined to have the note made plain to him in a most startling manner.

After reading his mother's letter, he had replaced it in the bottle and brought it to the dugout. Timoteo's note had so engaged his attention ever since that he had not touched the bottle. That he picked it up now was only because he was about to pin the two messages together again preparatory to putting them away. He had determined to go back to the mountain-top and search the cairn for some sign of the missing note-book.

Idly turning over his mother's letter, as he pinned the two papers together, he was rendered speechless at finding himself gazing at a translation of Timoteo's note. Perspiration dewed his brow as he stared at it. It was addressed to Timoteo's father, and said:

Grimm cawed as Joseph finished reading the note. The boy looked at him coldly.

“Grimm,” he muttered, “I wonder if it was you who followed Timoteo and cawed a requiem for his soul. And you, Slippy-foot—what would you have to say if you could speak? For once the eyes of both of you are veiled. But no matter. We have waited long enough. To-night the three of us shall attend one whose debt is heavy.”

A
LMOST
a week had passed since Joseph had left the coulee, and in that time, although his flock numbered only a score, the sweet grass had been grazed to the roots. So having made up his mind to go to the valley that night, he moved across the mountain in the early afternoon, driving his sheep to the timber-clover above the spring.

One would hardly have guessed from his placid face that the long-awaited fight was so near at hand. His present position afforded him even a better view of the valley than was to be had from the coulee, and leaning on his staff, he stood for many minutes gazing moodily at old Angel's
caserio
, a dazzling white in the afternoon sunlight.

It pleased him to know that he would find his grandfather alone. Not for another two weeks would Angel's sons or grandsons return from the Reserve for supplies. Joseph thought of the time when he had been turned away from the great man's door without even a sight of him.

It should be different this night. And yet, he deliberately kept himself from forming any definite plan of what he must do. This meeting tonight must be free to proceed as fate willed. At best, it could be but the beginning of his grandfather's retribution.

It may have been fancy, but Joseph felt that Grimm and Slippy-foot caught his mood. Both were plainly nervous, and when he gave the word to start back down the mountain they obeyed eagerly.

The sun had dropped below the horizon by the time Joseph reached the coulee, and while Slippy-foot worked the flock until it was ready to bed down, Joseph cooked his supper. A peculiar sadness rested upon his face now. To his ears came the sounds he had always associated with evening—the calling of the whippoorwill, the cheeping of the plover in the sage and, from some distant peak, the barking of a coyote. Unconsciously he threw back his head and gazed up at the crest of Buckskin.

He found it as he had ever found it at this hour—majestic in its rose-colored mantle, the gift of the sun which he could no longer see. Already the valley was bathed in opalescent twilight. So vividly did these sights and sounds bring back the past that he turned and gazed across the coulee at the spot where the cabin had once stood. All that was needed to complete the picture was his old home, a wisp of smoke curling lazily up from its wide chimney. Here he had stood a hundred times and more at this hour, the appetizing aroma of supper in his nostrils.

So poignant were his memories that he winced. . . . All these years! He wet his lips with his tongue as he stared about him in the deepening twilight. Soon night fell and the valley faded from view. The time to go had arrived. Without invitation, Grimm fluttered to his shoulder. Slippy-foot needed no word and she slunk away.

Joseph chose to follow the old trail which led into the valley by way of the Circle-Z fence—now just a fence, and no longer the barrier it once had been, for the West had changed. The boy communed with himself as he went along. The night had its effect on him, and his thoughts were grim.

In the days since he had roamed the mountain as a boy, old Thad Taylor, the owner of the Circle-Z, had built a new ranch-house at the mouth of the box cañon in which Eagan and Tiny Mears had weathered the great storm. Joseph caught the glow of its lighted windows as he reached the fence. He had known of it, and he went on without halting. Some minutes later the moon peeked over the shoulder of the mountain and bathed the valley with its mellow light.

Before long, Joseph came to an arroyo through which a well-worn trail led to Angel Irosabal's
caserio
. He turned into it, but he had proceeded only a little way when he saw Slippy-foot pause and raise her nose. He stopped short, and the bleating of a lamb reached his ears. It was off to his right in the tumbled
malpais
.

He started on, but the lamb bleated again. It was a pitiable cry, hopeless and entreating, and so out of key with his thoughts that Joseph trembled as he called Slippy-foot back and started across the arroyo in the direction from which the lamb had called.

Five minutes later Slippy-foot announced that she had found the lamb. The coyote's presence filled it with fear, and it bleated loudly until Joseph reached it. He saw that the lamb had stepped into an old, rusted coyote-trap. Using his staff as a pry, he opened the trap and picked up the lamb. Its right foreleg was torn, and it began to swell rapidly.

Joseph looked at the lamb wonderingly, seeing in it the symbol of helplessness and, as such, at variance with the spirit which motivated him this night. The lamb raised its head and with eyes heavy with suffering, gazed at him questioningly. Suddenly, Joseph saw himself mean—the business he was about less vital, less urgent than it had been.

Slippy-foot had gone on and she turned and eyed Joseph sullenly as she saw that he made no move to follow her. Grimm fluttered his wings as if impatient.

Joseph shook his head as he sensed their urging. To leave the lamb here was to let it die. He was quite aware of the tragodies that befall stock running wild on the range, and in a way he was hardened to it, recognizing it as inevitable. Nevertheless, he could not go on.

The Circle-Z ranch house was no great distance away, and although old Thad Taylor was reputed to have never overcome his hatred of sheep and all that sheepmen stood for, Joseph decided to take the stricken lamb to him.

Slippy-foot still stood her distance and she came back grudgingly when Joseph called to her. He smiled as he glanced from her to Grimm and found the crow shaking his head solemnly as if decrying this move.

“No—,” he said banteringly; “you cannot tempt me. We are going back. And if this lamb had half the wisdom of either of you, he would smile with me for, beyond doubt, he belongs to Angel Irosabal.”