Frederick R. Bechdolt

“ THE plain had become an enormous round shadow upon which objects showed vague and mellow in the gathering dusk: the blurred herd off in the middle distance; a horse and rider moving thither in pastel silhouette; and here in the center the covered chuck-wagon, the forms of men, recumbent, merging with the earth; a trio of cowboys saddling up their ponies; the foreman with one foot upon the wagon-tongue, elbow on knee and chin on hand, his lean back curved.
The foreman frowned thoughtfully as he watched young Kansas and his two companions drawing up their latigos. ”

“ In their faint radiance the white tops of more than one hundred prairie-schooners gleamed at the base of the hillside which rose into the west. Here and there one of the canvas covers glowed incandescent from a candlelight within, where some mother was tucking her children into their beds. Out on the long slope the feeding oxen moved like shadows through the sage-brush, and beyond them coyotes shrieked incessantly.
Fairly in the middle of the camp a leaping flame shone on the faces of a crowd of men. ”

“ He caught the sound, opened his eyes, and saw the crown of a sombrero rising behind a rock. He leaped from his bed and flung himself among a clump of boulders just as the rifles began to talk.
Two or three cow-boys were lounging about the Cloverdale ranch-house on a blazing summer afternoon when a queer figure came into sight upon the palpitating plain. The spectacle of a man on foot was so uncommon in those days that they had a hard time making themselves believe that this form, which at times took distorted shapes in the wavering overheated air, was that of a human being. ”

“ Of the frontier cemeteries whose dead came to their ends, shod in accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the headboards and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which tell how death came to strong men in the full flush of youth. ”

“ Now men were hurrying along the brief wide street, and rawhide ropes were swinging under yellow dust-clouds in the corrals. Dogs barked: the rattle of hoofs mingled with the voices of the riders as the saddle-ponies dashed up the roadway to the hitching-rack. The pop-pop of a whiplash rose sharp above the clashing of iron-shod wheels, and the wagon came swinging round a corner with little Chilson, the crack skinner, holding the ribbons, and Santa Cruz beside him on the driver's seat. The mules broke from a brisk trot into a run, and vanished in a swirl of dust beyond the edge of town. ”

“ Johns staunched the blood from his wounds and crawled to the top of a pile of grain-sacks whence he could see over the unroofed wall. Here he stayed for three days and three nights. With every sunrise the magpies and buzzards came in great flocks, to sit upon the wall after they had sated themselves in the corral, and watch him. With every nightfall the wolves slunk down from the mountains and fought over the body outside the gate. Night and day the thirst-tortured mules kept up a pandemonium. ”

“ It occurred to Jack Flood that he had never beheld this light in Nelly Chandler's eyes.
Then he became conscious of the eyes into which hers were looking—bold eyes; and of the big young face, burned by the sun, alive with recklessness. For the first time he realized that he had met Lon Hudson here more than once; it came to him with the sudden shock of a discovery. Somehow he had never given a thought to it before, or to the other young riders who had been loping across the foothills to tie their ponies at Chandler's hitching rack. ”

“ Before he had gone a half-mile Uncle Billy saw that he was going to be overtaken. Already the savages were spreading out, and he could hear the yells of those who were drawing up on each side.
It was the proper time for a man to despair; but Uncle Billy was too busy looking about him for a point of vantage to indulge in any such emotion as that. He had an old-fashioned cap-and-ball revolver, all of whose chambers were loaded; and it was his intention to make those six bullets if possible account for six Apaches before he resigned himself to unkind fate. ”

“ She was in the long living-room renewing the dressings on the foreman's shoulder when he came in on them.
“Why,” she demanded, “didn't you take Rafe along with you instead of that coward?”
Bill Savage stood there for a moment watching her. There was a tenderness in her touch as she wrapped the bandages which did not escape him. His eyes lost some of their hardness.
“Becuz,” he told her, “I thought he was a coward.” He saw the bewilderment in their faces and his grim lips relaxed a little. At best a stingy man with words, he went on slowly as if he grudged every syllable. ”

“ When you crossed the summits of the Dragoon Mountains you were beyond the pale. Hither the stage-robber came, riding hard when the list of his crimes had grown too long. The murderer, the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were traveling in formidable groups. ”

“ Captain Harry Love and his company of twenty rangers rode down the King's Highway into the little town of San Juan. In the plaza, where the California poppies bloom to-day before the cloistered arches of the mission as they bloomed on that July afternoon in 1853, the dusty horsemen drew rein outside the old adobe inn. Their captain dismounted and went inside and while he stayed the others lounged in their deep stock saddles smoking cigarettes or eased the cinches to rest their sweaty horses; a sunburned troop and silent as men who know they have large work ahead of them. ”

“ The procession is passing; trapper and Indian fighter; teamsters with dust in the deep lines of their faces—dust from the long dry trail to old Santa Fé; stage-drivers who have been sleeping the long sleep under waving wheat-fields where alkali flats once stretched away toward the vague blue mountains; and riders of the pony express. A tall form emerges from the past's dim background, and comes on among them. ”

“ Now every driver lashed his oxen to a lumbering run, and the women lifted the canvas tops of the prairie-schooners to show their children the pretty lake. The whole train turned away from its course and went rumbling across the plain, one mile, then a second; and another followed before they found themselves in the midst of a glaring expanse of snow-white alkali, baked by the sun to rock-like hardness. ”

“ When the Empress thrust her steep, black prow over the earth's bulge, the circle had widened about the pilot boat until its drab circumference inclosed the headlands to the northeast and racing crests far beyond the silent, red-hulled lightship. The bar's entire shape was projected upon the waters in a vivid horseshoe-shaped smear of white, to which the towering billows raced, whispering. As they reached it, blanching in the instant, they leaped, roaring, amid a myriad snarling predecessors. From the lurching deck MacKenzie sniffed the keen, primeval tang of seaweed uptorn from the depths ”

“ Bob West and Owl-head Johnson made no comment as they walked down the sidewalk toward the town’s edge, where their ponies were awaiting them. Hilarity had fallen from them, and in its place had come a silent alertness. He knew that they were biding his word, ready to do their part in what was to come.
For according to the unwritten code of those days, when men challenged one another to combat as in the age of chivalry, he had flung his gage to Scarborough; and everyone within reach of his voice had understood the import of his defiance. He was going to shoot up Horsehead before he left. ”

“ They come and fell straight down on us; they come and rose up from under our feet, and smothered us with dry snow that was as fine as flour; they shoved us back from dead ahead; they knocked us down from astern. Blow! It nigh to blowed the hair off of our heads. Cold! Our cheeks and noses was frost-bit half the time; our fingers would freeze the minute we took off our mittens to ontie a sled rope. And little Jefferey, with his whiskers a fringe of solid ice, stayed with it like a man in a fight that does not know he is licked. ”

“ It was the dignity of men who knew that they were leaders of their people; who felt themselves on entire equality with the leader of the white man's warriors; who felt the gravity of this occasion where they had been invited into conference with this blue-clad representative of a mighty government. Their head man was Cochise.
Like Lieutenant Bascom, he stood a pace ahead of his followers, a lean Apache, with a thinner face than most of his tribesmen and a remarkably high forehead. ”

“ Thousands of cattle were moving slowly in a great mass, obliterating miles of the landscape, trampling out clouds of dust which rose into the blue sky; the constant bellowing came down the wind as a deep, pulsating moan which was audible for miles.
The Man from Bitter Creek reined in his horse and turned in the saddle to look back upon that scene. He was a small man with hard, quick eyes; they grew harder as they rested on that wealth of beeves.
In the wild country farther up the Pecos the Man from Bitter Creek was known by the name of Gallagher. ”

“ Some one had buried both bodies but whoever had done this—possibly it was one of the self-styled miners at the Bruncknow house—had not enough interest in minerals to disturb the little heap of specimens. It lay there near the graves, just as the Apaches had left it, just as its original owners had piled it up before they sought their blankets; to dream perhaps of their big strike while death waited for the coming of the dawn, to cheat them out of their discovery. ”