Following the Grass (8 page)

T
HERE
are two roads by which one may enter Paradise Valley from the north. The more traveled one cuts through the Santa Rosa Forest Reserve and, after swinging around the face of Hinkey Summit, drops into the valley in a series of easy grades. The other road curves to the east, skirting Buckskin, and does not turn north until it strikes Antelope Springs.

In May, when the herds and flocks are going into the Reserve for the summer, both roads are ground to powder beneath the hoofs of countless sheep and cattle. A saddle, or low hog-back, connects Buckskin with the Santa Rosa range. A trail traverses the saddle—a short cut with a saving of many miles for one traveling north or south.

In times past, Angel Irosabal's herders—his sons and his grandsons—had made use of that short cut across the mountain, but this particular spring, as if by common consent, they avoided it. For three weeks the Basque herders had been going north, driving not less than fourteen thousand sheep.

In the late afternoon of this day—the twenty-first of May, to be exact—a slowly moving dust cloud hovered above the yellow road. It marked the progress of the last flock of the year on its way to the high hills of the Reserve. This band was not a large one, and the two herders in charge of it wallowed along in the dust unconcernedly.·

One of the two was only a slip of a boy, the other a black-visaged man, heavy of jaw and narrow-eyed. When they spoke, which was seldom, they addressed each other in Basque.

“Is it far to the spring, Andres?” the boy asked. Getting no answer, he repeated his question.

The man grunted: “Thirsty?”

The boy nodded. “The dust,” he said tersely.

“We will reach it by sundown,” Andres said with his habitual gruffness. “Maybe it will be dry,” he went on, as much to himself as to the boy.

For all that the man was the lad's uncle, the boy half feared the surly Andres. Not for some time did he venture another question.

“What will we do if it is dry?” he asked at last.

Andres grinned as he glanced at the youth.

“You are afraid, eh, Felipe?” he demanded tauntingly. The boy winced, and Andres laughed.

“If it's dry, we'll dig it out!” he exclaimed. “A little mud will not hurt you.”

Felipe's throat was parched, and the prospect of having to quench his thirst with a cupful of riled water incensed him.

“Well do you say that we may find it dry,” he muttered petulantly. “We are the very last. If we had taken the short cut over Buckskin we would have had plenty of water.”

“You bleat now, eh?” Andres remarked hotly. “This morning you talked out of the other side of your mouth. It was to please you that we followed the road. I made no talk about ghosts.”

“No, but you were glad that I did,” Felipe replied with a show of truculence quite new in him. “You were none too anxious to cross Buckskin.”

“Are you saying that I was afraid?” Andres demanded angrily. “This talk of ghosts is the cackling of children.”

“I did not use the word,” Felipe retorted. “But something is living up there. All of this talk does not spring from nothing. Lope says that he saw him; says he was within a hundred yards of him.”

“I've heard his story. Why did he run away? Lope is a coward! I don't believe he saw any one. If he did, why didn't he go up and talk to him and find out his business. The Irosabals can't use the range up there, but a stranger in rags can, eh? Lope says that the man he saw had sheep.”

“Only fifteen or twenty head.”

“Even so; your grandfather has heard Lope's tale. Has he done anything about it? Of course not! He is not fooled.”

“No?” Felipe queried. “Perhaps grandfather sees ghosts up there that we know little about.”

Andres's eyes narrowed shrewdly as he glanced at the boy.

“It would not be well for you to let him hear you say that,” he warned.

Felipe shook his head slowly. “I am not afraid,” he declared. “He knows what I think. One day I caught him kneeling beside that grave on Buckskin. I asked him why he knelt there, and he snarled at me, but he would not answer—as if an answer were necessary. He has admitted to himself what he will not admit to us.

“What has the mad hatred that he has always preached gained for us? What happened in the past, belongs in the past. If our people were abused when they came here, it was partly their fault. But you are like your father, Andres.”

“Yes, and you would do well to think as I do. I hate these gringos, these
criollos!
Why do they give themselves the airs they do? Haven't we proved ourselves good citizens?”

“We've proved ourselves able to do everything but forgive and forget an injustice!” Felipe answered boldly. “It was well enough to remember, when we were only a few, but we are many now; and we're here for all time. There's no more talk of Spain. I'm a man—”

“A man?” Andres cried with a fine sarcasm. “You're nothing but a boy, with your face as soft as a girl's! You'll do what you are told to do. Who cares what you think? Don't let me hear any more of your foolish mouthings. Do you understand?”

Andres glared menacingly at the boy, his neck muscles bulging with anger. Felipe knew that Andres was a bully, and previous experiences had taught him the wisdom of walking wide of the man's powerful hands, so he contented himself in the present instance by turning away with a scornful grunt.

Felipe's gesture stung Andres, and he continued to watch the boy as they went along, waiting expectantly for him to voice the hot words that trembled on his tongue. Felipe, however, was not to be goaded into battle with Andres, and it was not until they reached the spring that he spoke agam.

“Well, it's dry!” he exclaimed angrily.

Andres scowled as he surveyed the spring. Both of them cursed their luck in their own way.

“Don't stand there doing nothing,” Andres snapped. “Unpack the burro, and get me a shovel. The ground is still wet. I'll dig a hole. We'll have water in an hour.”

Felipe did as he was bidden to do and later, with the help of the dogs, he got the flock to bed down. On returning to the spring, he found Andres staring moodily at the hole which he had dug. An inch of water had seeped into it already, but it was heavy with silt and covered with an oily scum. Unpalatable as it looked, it was water, and the sight of it maddened the boy. He threw himself to the ground to drink, but Andres shouldered him away.

“You can't drink it yet,” he grumbled. “It will settle in a short while.”

Felipe's eyes flashed, and he longed to strike Andres, but he dropped back to wait in sullen silence for the. water to clear.

Twilight fell as they waited, but neither offered to build a fire. Some minutes later the dogs barked and, on getting to his knees, Felipe made out the figure of a man approaching the spring. In his hand the man held a lead rope, and behind him shuffled a decrepit pack horse.

Andres caught the query in Felipe's eyes, and he got up and stared at the figure approaching from the north.

“Old man Organ,” he muttered irritably on recognizing him. Without bothering to conceal his annoyance at being discovered camped beside the muddy spring when fresh water was only an hour's journey away, he sank back again to his former position.

Peter Organ was a very old man. He had tramped the Nevada hills years before the first Basque had set foot in the state. He was one of the few left of those who had seen the first Basques trek into the country of the Humboldt. From Angel down, they had no fault to find with old Peter.

But then, he was of the kind who find virtue in a Digger Indian with quite the same ease that most men find it in prince or bishop. Likewise, his ability at recognizing men's faults had become proverbial, and backed up with a sharp tongue it had given him a certain prominence which, otherwise, would have been denied to him.

Hair had long since ceased to adorn his bald pate, and even his stubby white beard seemed to have been nipped by the many adventurous years he had lived. His eyes, however, were keenly alive, and they twinkled mischievously as they beheld Andres and his nephew.

“Howdy-do, boys!” he exclaimed. “Had to dig her out, eh?” he inquired with provoking inflection. “I'm ashamed of you, Andres, coming here this late in the month lookin' fer water, especially since you knew all the others had gone up ahead of you.” Peter snorted as he viewed the water which had seeped into the freshly-dug hole.

“You ain't a-goin' to drink that mess, be yuh?” he asked.

Andres stirred uncomfortably.

“Eet's all right, by'm-by,” he argued.

“Sure!” Peter agreed. “I've drunk worse 'an that; an' sometimes I ain't drunk nuthin'; but not when there was good water three er four miles away.”

“Where ees that good water,
señor?”
Felipe asked eagerly.

“That big spring above the coulee on Buckskin,” Peter answered rather sharply.

Felipe's face fell, and Andres muttered something to himself.

“Buckskin?“ the old man queried. “What's wrong with it?—oh—!” And he grinned impudently. “I'd clean fergot that you boys was walkin' wide of the mountain.” He glanced at Andres.

“I didn't think they'd scare
you
away,” he added.

Andres grumbled and got to his feet.

“I come theese way to please heem,” he asserted angrily, pointing to Felipe.

“Yeh?” Peter queried as if doubting the truth of Andres's words, and he turned his shrewd old eyes on the boy for confirmation or denial of the statement. Felipe winced as he felt the old man's questioning glance.

“Eet's always my fault eef something go wrong,” he muttered as he turned his face away.

“But what
is
all this talk?” Peter demanded. “What's this wild tale that young Lope's been tellin'?”

“Andres pretends to laugh at eet,
señor,”
Felipe announced with evident relish. “All spring long we know something ees on the mountain. Many time we see where the grass ees eaten off. We run no sheep up there, so we look around and try find what eet ees. Not once do we see any· theeng. Then Lope ees find where some one make many fires. Andres say maybe that's you make those fire.”

Peter shook his head. “I ain't crossed the mountain since the snow went off,” he declared.

Felipe paused to let Andres deny this, but Andres was silent for once.

“Then one day Benito ees coming down the mountain. Eet was almost dark, and sometheeng ees chase heem. He run very fast, but he say he hear somtheeng pant right behind heem. He ees afraid to look and see what eet ees, and then he heard a laugh. Eet make heem shiver, he say.

“After that no one go up the mountain for long time, until Lope and I go. You know where that grave ees in the cedars! Well, my grandfather have that fence and monument taken down many years ago; but for some reason, Lope and I look there, and
Virgen santisima!
—that monument ees back; that fence ees there!”

Old Peter's expression had changed as the boy went on.

“What did Angel say to that?” he asked.

“He was very angry, and he told us to keep off the mountain. But my brother, Tomas, he not believe that story about the monument, and he start up Buckskin. Before he get half way, he fall seeck, and everybody say some bad spirit on the mountain make heem seeck.”

“Fool talk—fool talk;” Andres growled.

“Si! Si!
—fool talk!” Felipe retorted. “But you never try to find out what ees up there. No one ees try until Lope goes. Lope saw heem. He'es a man, weeth long hair way down to hees shoulder. Lope say he look like the Christ. Hees shirt ees all open, and he ain't got no shoes. He carry beeg staff like old-time Basque shepherd. And hees eye— Lope say he tremble all over when that man look at heem.”

“Umm,” old Peter muttered as if weighing the boy's words. “What's he doin' up there? Did Lope find out?”

“He'es got maybe twenty head of sheep.”

Twenty head, in a land where sheep are counted by the thousand, gave no inkling of the man's real business.

“That don't explain nuthin',” Peter declared.

“Maybe eet explain somtheeng when I tell you he'es got a coyote to herd those sheep!” Felipe exclaimed this with the air of one who drops a verbal bombshell.

“Naw!— I ain't never heard tell of such a thing.” Peter was openly skeptical.

“Ain't no man ever trained a coyote so he wouldn't tech sheep.”

Andres added his doubting grunt to the old man's frank disbelief in the possibility of training a coyote.

“Well, he'es done eet,” Felipe answered. “I'm telling the truth.”

“Oh, callate!”
Andres exclaimed wearily. “The truth?—humph! You say only what that fool Lope says, fit cackle for old women and children. For me, I think eet's all damn foolishness.”

“So?”
Felipe queried mockingly. “What you make of that, then?” And he pointed to a flickering fire far up the side of Buckskin.

All three squinted their eyes as they focused them on the distant camp-fire. Peter saw Andres's face pale. Felipe's pointing hand trembled. The old man glanced at them· and then back at the tiny point of fire.

“It's jest about at the spring,”he muttered. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Felipe cross himself. An unintelligible oath escaped Andres. Peter rubbed his chin meditatively with the back of his hand.

“Come on, Snowball,” he snapped at last, addressing his horse, “ain't no ghosts or nuthin' scarin' us. We're a-goin' up thar!”

T
HE
lonely cañons and solitudes, which old Peter had plumbed, had left their mark on him, and in many ways he was more an Indian than a white man. He was not only superstitious, but he shared the red man's fear of the Unknown, and as he toiled up the hog-back which led toward the coulee his mind was busy with Felipe's tale. Just how much of it he was to believe was a question. For a month or more, at odd intervals, he had heard many strangely garbled stories about the man who lived on Buckskin.

At first he had laughed at them, but lately he had taken them seriously enough. Quite un-known to himself, a certain fixed idea regarding the identity of the mysterious stranger had crept into his mind.

“It must be him—come back after all these years,” he mused aloud as he went along. “I always reckoned he would come back if they didn't catch him. I guess I'll know him if anybody would. Yes, sir. Poor old Kit Dorr. Kit wa'n't a bad boy, in his way. Ten or twelve years he's been dead now.” Peter clucked his lips as he let his mind run over those lost days.

“Reckon no one hut me and old Angel, and one other, really knows who got Kit,” he mused on after a while. “And now
he's
come back to square things—Joe Gault! It must he him that's up thar—or shucks!—maybe it's just a ha'nt come to plague old Angel.”

Peter laughed immoderately at his own thought. He stopped abruptly, however, as the raucous cawing of a crow reached his ears. That call, coming after dark, was an ominous sign. Peter waited until the echoes which it awakeaed had died away before he went on.

Why, he could not have told (he had climbed this hog-back a hundred different nights), but a feeling of impending evil clutched him. As he reached the divide that dropped away to the draw to which the herder's cabin had once stood, he droned a dismal chant, half savage in its wild rhythm.

Now was that peculiar moment just before moonrise when the night is darkest, and Peter and his aged horse were only a grayish blur against the swaying sage. Ten minutes sufficed to bring them to the coulee.

Suddenly the warning yip-yip of a coyote shattered the stillness of the young night. Peter's lips became mute as he listened. A wild coyote always calls more than once, but no succeeding bark came now.

Snowball, the horse, was quite used to coyotes, and he continued to shuffle along, Peter at his side. Not until they were half way across the coulee did the old man catch sight of the tiny fire beside the spring. On the grassy plain before him, and dimly outlined by the distant fire, a small band of sheep munched the grass contentedly.

Peter's eyes, however, were focused on the fire, and in another step or two he made out a man standing beside it, his head turned in the old man's direction. It was evident from the pose of his body that the coyote's bark had warned him that some one was approaching, and that he waited now for whoever was on the coulee to come up to his fire.

Peter was still some yards away, hut his keen eyes saw that the man beside the fire was but a youth. He recalled Lope's description of him. Indeed, this boy might have stepped out of the Bible.

“But he's only a kid,” Peter muttered to himself, taken back. “Joe Gault would be nigh on fifty by now.”

As he came nearer he felt the spell of the youth's piercing black eyes. The reddish-brown hair which fell to his shoulders seemed to accentuate the thinness of his cheeks, still covered with the silken down of adolescence. And yet, for all its thinness, the boy's face—the set of his mouth, particularly—hinted of strength,—strength with the flexibility of finely tempered steel.

His clothes were old and toxn; but they were clean. His open shirt revealed a wind-tanned chest, the skin as smooth as velvet. His arms were almost bare and, man-fashion, Peter's eyes turned to them, watching the play of the rippling muscles as the boy straightened up.

“Howdy!” the old man exclaimed by way of greeting. “Seen your fire from below. Mind if I lay out here to-night?”

The other's face relaxed at old Peter's request.

“You are welcome,” he said simply, “not only to the spring, but to such food as I have to offer you.” His words were well turned and the tone of his voice was quite foreign to the desert-born. Peter noted the difference.

“I'm obleeged to you,” he declared as he led Snowball up to the spring. The boy had turned his attention to the pot simmering upon the fire. Peter's eyes took advantage of the movement to scan the crude dug-out which the youth had contrived.

The face of the mountain rose in an overhanging ledge and, by using it for back wall and roof, it had been necessary to construct only two sides and an entrance way. This had been so well done with sod and rock that the dug-out would have offered fair shelter against even the severe storms of winter.

An unhung door—to be put in place at the owner's will—leaned against the front wall. Glancing into the interior of the dug-out, Peter saw an old table and chair, salvaged doubtlessly from the cabin which had once stood on the mountain-side. Makeshifts served in lieu of other necess1t1es. Everything seemed to say that the place had been occupied for some time.

The boy had risen and entered the dug-out as Peter busied himself with his horse, and he came to the door now and spoke to the old man.

“We will eat, my friend,” he said briefly.

Friend was a word that old Peter used very cautiously and then only after careful observation. He raised his eyebrows at hearing it on this young stranger's lips. The boy saw the question that flashed in his eyes.

“I depend on other eyes and ears than mine for the use of the word,” he said frankly. “Had I not known that you came as a friend, I would have found means to prevent your coming.”

The quiet confidence with which this statement was made rather upset old Peter, and it was with a feeling almost of awe that he entered the dug-out.

“Well, I'm right glad to hear you say so, anyhow,” he mumbled as he took the chair offered him. “It may git to that some day, between us; your voice kinda gives me hope. Folks has been a-sayin' they was a ha'nt up here. You can't git those Basque boys to come up the mountain.”

For all of the apparent indirectness of his words they carried a question, and when he looked up he found the boy's eyes peering into his own. They did not waver as he waited to reply.

“It is well,” he said at last, and the flat finality of his words robbed Peter of any desire to pursue the matter further. In fact, not until he had finished his supper did the old man speak again.

“Ain't a bad place you've got here,” he drawled. “You can see a lot of country from this coulee—old Angel Irosabal's
caserio
and all those other Basque
ranchos
down in the valley.” Peter was still asking questions without appearing to, and he watched the boy's face as he ran on; but the young stranger gave no sign of being aware that the old man's words carried an intimation.

“You know, it kinda upset me meetin' you up here this-a-way,” Peter began again. “I'd had my mind all set on meetin' some one else.”

He pushed back his chair and, tilting it upon its hind legs, he teetered to and fro, pursing his lips idly as he tamped down the tobacco in his stubby old pipe. His air of ease, however, was studied and his eyes did not lose their alertness. He wanted to draw the boy out. Naturally, he had expected him to show some curiosity about the statement which he had just made; but in this he was disappointed, for the young stranger's face remained emotionless, and there was no note of eagerness in his voice as he said:

“Yes?”

Peter could not help but feel that even such mild inquisitiveness had been prompted only by politeness. He was not offended, however. In fact, quite the reverse was true for the boy was exhibiting those very qualities which the old man prized most. Hence, it was without guile that he said:

“Yep! Reckon you wouldn't know him. Just a whim of mine. But when Angel's boys began telling me they was some one up here, I figgered if they
was
there must be some reason for it. And I ain't got along this far without sizin' up one or two things in life. No, sir! If they's anything a man remembers it's hate and revenge—not sayin' it's right, but it just seems to eat in on some folks. I”ve seen a-plenty of what's gone on around here. Lord, man! I remember things”

Peter shook his head as he gazed back at the years. “Why, I knew Angel Irosabal when he wa'nt nuthin' more than a lad like you.” He paused and then, more to himself than to the boy, he murmured, “Reckon he ain't grcwn up, yet.”

Peter's rambling talk caught and held the youth's attention, and with his arms resting on the table before him he waited for the old man to continue, but some minutes passed in silence before Peter went on.

“Lookin' back that-a-way,” he mused aloud, “it wa'nt hard for me to recollect the name of a man who had somethin' to come back here for. He left this country in a hurry—between darkness and dawn—and he ain't never been heard of since. He used to live here on the mountain. His name was Joe Gault.”

“You—knew him?” the boy questioned. Peter thought his voice sounded strained.

“Y-e-s-s-s,” he drawled. “I reckon I began traipsin' over this mountain soon after it was built. Leastwise, I was here long before he came. Many's the night I stopped at his cabin. Used to stand right over thar in the draw.” Peter lifted his hand and indicated the spot.

“Ain't nuthin' left of it now,” he continued. “Old Angel had it torn down long ago so it wouldn't remind him of things he's been a-tryin' to fergit for nigh on twenty-five years.” Peter stopped abruptly and brought his chair down upon all four legs. “Listen to me run on!” he exclaimed. “Am I a-wearyin' yuh?”

The boy shook his head solemnly.

“No, my friend,” he said, “I pray you, go on.”

And so, in colorful fashion, old Peter told him the story of Joseph and Margarida Gault. Before he had finished, he found the boy hanging on his words.

“But five or six months before Kit Dorr was killed, Gault and me fell out,” Peter was saying, “and when I went north that spring I passed here in the night so nobody'd be embarrassed none. I'd always got along pretty well with Angel, and Gault thought I was tryin' to patch things up—which I was; meddlin' like old fools do where they ain't got no business to—and it set him dead ag'in me.

“I was rammin' around the Jacksons, way up in Idaho, all that summer. Didn't find nuthin' up thar, so I started back along in August, and it jest so happened that I camped along that hog-back the very night Dorr was killed. The storm soon drove me down below.

“Maybe you recollect seein' that pocket jest this side of that old deer run?—well, I curled up thar, and didn't move until the posse combed me out the next mornin'. Joe hadn't lit out none too soon, for they wa'nt askin' if he was guilty.”

Peter's pipe had long been out, but he paused now to waste another match on the ashes it held.

“You know,” he said, thoughtfully, “I couldn't go to that cabin the next day and face his wife, her knowing that Joe and me had fallen out—and her needin' some one, too. But I got a man up here in a hurry to look after 'em. He was a true friend. He couldn't do much, though.

“Margarida just faded away and died. Folks said it was consumption, hut just between you and me it was a broken heart that killed her. And there was that boy of hers left all alone. My friend Tabor took him; packed him off to school, back East. God did a good job when he made Tabor Kincaid. And now, he's gone, too.”

Peter glanced up to find the stranger's face hard, unlovely, his mouth cruel.

“And the boy?” he prompted huskily.

“Why, according to Tabor, the lad took sick and died years ago. The Basques were always pesterin' Kincaid about him, and I used to think Tabor had given out that story jest to git rid of 'em. But I reckon a man can't rightly question him now; it's been too long ago.”

The old man was silent for a long time after he had finished. The boy had got up, and he stood in the doorway now looking out across the coulee. After some minutes, he said, without turning to face Peter:

“And the boy's father—you have never had any word of him?”

“Nary a word. I always figgered he got down to the
Rio Colorado
some way, and followed it clear into Sonora.”

“And yet,” said the youth at the door, “you expected to meet him here to-night?”

“Well, if ever a man had anythin' to square, it's Joe Gault. I ain't never believed for a minute but what he'd come back. He's got that stubborn Kaintucky blood in him—it never fergits. And he knows what I know—he didn't kill Kit Dorr.”

With savage swiftness the stranger whirled on Peter. The old man met his eyes squarely.

“Can you prove that statement?” the boy demanded, his voice charged with emotion.

Peter chuckled softly to himself.

“I thought that would surprise you,” he replied deliberately.

“Yes?” the youth questioned, and the old man found his eyes as cold as snow-capped mountains. “You have not answered me,” he insisted.

“No. But what I said is easily proved.”

“And yet you refuse to speak,” the stranger said bitterly. “You call yourself his friend—you have allowed these many years to pass without raising your voice to clear his name? You shame the word friend.”

It was a cry of despair. The boy's voice hung on in the little room, ominous and dreadful. Peter drew back in spite of himself. As he did so he saw a tawny shape bound into the dugout.

In a daze, he saw the slavering white fangs, and felt the hot breath of the crouching, bristling thing on the floor before him. Instinctively, he reached for his gun.

“Down!” the boy commanded. “Down, Slippy-foot !”