The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 7
DALE FINDLAY, superintendent of the Diamond Tail, came riding in with five of his men shortly after the arrival of Barrett and Nearing at the cow camp. Seven more cowboys came straggling along an hour or two later, keeping the cook rattling his pots to serve their famished demands.
Barrett looked for his friend, Dan Gustin, among each group of arrivals, to meet disappointment in every ease. The cook, a one-legged Mexican, Alvino by name, said Dan was working out of Eagle Rock camp. He supposed he was too far away to make it in that night.
Barrett regretted this, for in Dan he felt that he had a passport to the toleration, if nothing more, of these saddle-weary men, who accepted his presence in camp with supreme indifference. Nearing had not gone to the trouble to introduce his charge to anybody but Findlay.
Findlay had not granted him so much as the grace of a word; his friendly hand had been overlooked with a cold aloofness that was more than disdain. One glance the superintendent had spared him, as he might have looked casually at a rock. There was no acknowledgment of even the kinship of kind in his indifferent eyes.
The cowboys were little behind their boss. Barrett felt the barrier that stood between him and them as palpably as if it were a hedge. He caught some of them looking at him with curious contempt now and then, and one or two spoke casually to him, as if to find out what sort of a noise he would make.
Barrett thought that he understood the attitude of the men. His position among them was similar to that of a boy who has been led into the schoolroom by his mother, and formally presented to the teacher. He had felt all along that it was a mistake for Nearing to lead him out that way, and pass him on from hand to hand.
The more Barrett reflected on this, and looked back in review of Nearing's conduct of his case from the beginning, the more resentful of it he grew. It was a case of meditated coddling, a plan of Nearing's to belittle him and make life intolerable for him on the range. There was a reason, and a big one, somewhere in the secrets of that tottering enterprise, for Nearing's keenness to discourage him, sicken him with humiliation, drive him away. What was it? Was Nearing robbing the stockholders himself and pocketing the proceeds? Was all this plaint of rustlers but a pretense?
The outstanding event of the day would seem to answer this question with positive denial. There were rustlers, bold, contemptuous of the keepers of the herds, who came to the very door of this outpost and drove away cattle. Even now the horse wrangler was coming up the canyon with the body of the dead thief in his wagon. Nearing had dispatched this camp menial on the scavenging errand shortly after their arrival. The man had gone under protest, reluctantly, afraid, a lantern swung on the end of his wagon tongue.
On the arrival of the wrangler with his freight of death covered under a tentcloth, the cowboys left off their chaffing and chatter and small talk among themselves to stiffen up with a new interest in the greenhorn. Only then, indeed, the news went around that a man had been killed down in the canyon, and this kid was the one to credit for it.
They looked at Barrett with renewed curiosity, with something like approach to terms of, if not equality, recognition as a sort of man. It seemed incredible, their bearing said, that he should pop a man over that way; some strange freak of chance must have favored him, indeed. It was about the same as if a cat had whipped a bear.
Findlay, whose word in camp appeared to be supreme notwithstanding the presence of his employer, gave a few sharp directions on the arrival of the wagon, and stood watching while his men unloaded the melancholy freight and laid it under a tree some distance from the cabin.
The superintendent seemed to resent even this little part in the off-bearing of the wreckage of another hand. He walked about when the job was done, hands at his back, pipe in mouth, beyond the circle of the fire around which the men gathered presently for a cigarette before their blankets.
This Dale Findlay was a lean and sinewy man, thin of flanks, light-framed, tall. His countenance was dark and morose, as of a man whom cares had harassed and the laughter of life passed over. He was a severe, short-spoken man, thin-lipped, brown; a handsome man in a stern, cold-hearted way, inscrutable as a stone; a man such as women like for the romance they suggest, but seldom know. His voice was the most disagreeable attribute of the man, according to Barrett's appraisement of him, surly and insulting as his demeanor toward the greenhorn had been. It was a feline growl, delivered through lips scarcely open, a nasal note in it most jarring and disturbing.
At the first sound of Findlay's voice Barrett groped back in his memory for the chamber that stored a record of it, confident that he had seen this man before. Not until he heard his louder, sharper, more snarling tones when he directed the unloading of the body, could memory open the door to that long-locked compartment.
Not this man, but the mate of a South Seas trading achooner in the port of San Francisco. Barrett could see him again, warping his small vessel up to the dock, singing his orders in his high, feline voice through thin lips scarcely open; see the bare-shouldered Kanaka seamen leap to their labor with white-rolling eyes of fear. It was the same voice in two different men, both of them tigers at heart.
Nearing and Findlay went inside the long low cabin, built of cedar logs, where they sat at a table, a lamp between them, in deep conference. Nearing did most of the talking, Barrett could see, forceful talking at times, judged from his manual emphasis. Findlay wore his pistol strapped about his gaunt waist; Nearing was unarmed.
Findlay sat low in his chair, sliding forward like a weary or indifferent man, one arm on the table, his straight-stemmed briar pipe in his close-clamped mouth. Now and again he nodded, shook his head, or said some stingy word around his pipestem. And through it all Barrett had the impression that power sat on the side of the table with the silent man.
Barrett made no attempt to mingle with the men around the fire, although the blaze would have been welcome, for the night wind is cold in those high altitudes where frost is not unknown in the latter days of August. He stretched with elbow on the saddle taken from his dead horse, smoking his pipe, its stem so short the warmth of its bowl was felt on his face. Around the fire they were talking of the dead man, but none came over to question Barrett on his part in the tragedy. Perhaps because they were not certain of his status in camp, whether guest and equal of the big boss, or greenhorn come to bungle and stall around on the range.
The horse wrangler, last man to supper, owing to his unwelcome task, came over to where Barrett stretched, and squatted near. Barrett could hear the rustle of his paper as he rolled a cigarette, and the full breathing of his repletion as he sat there in the dark on his heels.
"Got a match, pardner?" the wrangler requested presently, after feeling himself over with muttered curses of disappointment.
Barrett supplied the need silently, knowing nothing of the etiquette of cow camps. He did not know whether it was his turn to speak; he was not going to court the contempt of any other man in that bunch by being friendly out of his place.
"Ugly lookin' cuss, mean a mug as I ever seen on a man," the wrangler said.
Barrett supposed he referred to the husk of a man that he had hauled up the canyon. The wrangler had stated the fact very neatly; Barrett did not see where it called for comment or supporting testimony. He held his peace. There was a scuffing of bootheels as the wrangler adjusted himself more comfortably. Barrett could see that he was arranging himself upon his crossed legs.
"You took him square between the eyes," he said, not discouraged in the least by the other's silence. "Purty good shootin' for a man that's down with a horse on top of him, I'm here to tell you, kid! Come fur?"
"Saunders," Barrett replied.
"Sheriff's office?"
"No."
The wrangler smoked his cigarette out in a long inhalation, crumbled the stub between his hard fingers, showering down a little rain of sparks.
"Thought maybe you was," said he.
Barrett did not feel that the conversational wedge had opened a very great chink of communication between them yet. He waited for the wrangler to make the move.
"Friend of the old man's?"
"No."
"Thought maybe you was."
Silence again. The wrangler was rustling another paper; Barrett struck a match, offering the light without words.
"Much obliged, kid. Passin' through?"
"I've hired to Nearing."
"Hired out to him, heh?" the wrangler said, speculatively, his tone forecasting his next question. "What do you aim to do out here on the range, kid?"
"I had some thought of learning the cowpunchin' trade," Barrett replied, leaving it to be surmised that doubts had entered his mind on the wisdom of pursuing that ambition.
"Oh, cowpunchin'. I see. You shoot like a man that's had experience, but you don't ride like erry one. What you been workin' at, kid?"
"I followed the sea."
"Which?"
"Followed the sea."
"Where to, kid?" the wrangler asked, in kindly, rather consoling voice, as if he pitied a folly so ingenuously confessed.
"I was a sailor in the navy, at sea, on a ship, a battleship, with a flag on it, you know, and guns, cannon, torpedoes."
Barrett felt that the fellow was kidding him, and knew that a dozen pairs of ears at the fire were turned his way, listening to all they could catch.
"The—hell—you—was!" said the wrangler.
His amazement, his admiration, his altogether and unmistakable satisfaction, was so plain in the wrangler's voice that the compliment was greater than Barrett could have asked. The wrangler smoked a while, full of his sensation of surprise as he was of supper. Presently there was a sound of scuffing boots, and the wrangler rose to his feet. Barrett saw that he was offering his hand.
"Grubb is my name. Call me Fred," said the wrangler.
"Barrett is mine; call me Ed," the greenhorn returned, rising with alacrity to meet this friendly advance.
There was some turning and craning around the fire; two or three made a pretense of getting up for something else to see what was going forward between the wrangler and the greenhorn. The wrangler held to Barrett's hand with a paw as big, and almost as hard, as a horse's hoof. The glow of his cigarette showed that he was looking earnestly into the young stranger's face.
We'll pull together when you're all set.
I ain't much to see and I ain't much to hear,
But I stick to my friend like grease on a cheer,
And we'll pull together when you're all set,
Said Fred to Ed when they first met.
The wrangler delivered this in an earnest, low voice, giving Barrett's hand a mighty clamp at the end of his impromptu verse.
"Fine, old feller, fine!" Barrett praised him, forgetting for a moment the disquieting thing lying wrapped in tentcloth under the cedar tree.
"If you hear anybody speak of the poet of the Popo Agie, that's me. I'm the original and only cowboy, poet, even if I ain't nothing but a horse wrangler."
Barrett said he was certain that Fred graced whatever calling he laid his hand to, and that the profession of wrangling was ennobled by numbering him among its practitioners. Fred modestly admitted that he had felt his mind running to the same opinion many a time. The poet wrangler sucked in the last of his cigarette, standing in pose of self concentration while he ground the stump of it between finger and thumb, as many poets scatter the fire of their hearts to see it flicker for a brief moment and die away in the unresponsive dark.
The men began to leave the fire for the bunks in that part of the long cabin set apart for them. Fred Grubb inquired of his new friend what equipment he had, and, on learning that he was provided with blankets, took him to the plank lean-to at the cabin's end.
"Them saddle-gallded hyeners is liable to throw boots at a man if he don't wake up first in the morning," the wrangler explained, with the bitterness of a man who had unpleasant recollections. "I'll bunk you in here with Alvino and me—we're gentlemen, even if our pay is low."
Barrett passed an unrestful night, in a fever of excitement, harassed by a thousand demons which rose in his imagination to plague him for the thing necessity had forced upon him. Short as the night was, he had found it already too long when the camp began to stir before perceptible dawn.
Some subtly developed trait, some sense that stands watchful in his subconscious mind, tells the cowboy when to wake. He scents the oncoming dawn in his sleep as the humming bird scents honeysuckle miles beyond the range of its eye. No alarm clock is needed by the true ranger, no shouted summons to stir him from his bed while the stars are still brilliant and the "bowl of night" seems yet untroubled by the approach of day. But by the time he has his boots on, his first cigarette rolled, and stands to breathe the deep breath of another eighteen-hour day, there is a gray-fading on the edge of the eastern horizon, and presently the world is overspread with dawn.
Neither Nearing nor Findlay was present at breakfast; nothing had been said to Barrett concerning his duties. While vexed on this point, he was relieved to note that the thing rolled in tentcloth was gone from beneath the cedar tree. Fred Grubb had brought the horses in, but the rustler's animal upon which Barrett had completed his journey, was not among them.
There was a little more friendly spirit among the men this morning; several of them spoke to Barrett, two or three of the more decent looking ones introduced themselves and shook hands. This was cheering; the feeling of an outcast which had added to the gloom of his soul began to depart away from the sailor, who more than once during the night had regretted this long flight away from his sea. But none of them said anything about his riding away with them. As they finished breakfast they went' to the corral, roped the horse selected for the morning's work and, by pairs and fours, rode about their distant duties.
Grubb relieved the uncertainty when he came in for breakfast. He said the boss, meaning Findlay, had instructed him to take Barrett on as assistant day wrangler, and keep him at Eagle Rock camp until further notice. The boss and the big boss had ridden away together at the first streak of morning. It was Grubb's opinion that they were going to the ranch.
There it was, under Fred Grubb's kindly hand, that Barrett learned that steps of progression lead up to the calling of cowpuncher, as in almost any calling worthy the name. He learned that a greenhorn could not at once ride with the elect, except in cases of extraordinary favor from those in charge. His beginning must be in a menial capacity, a subject of humiliating orders, a butt of broad jokes, coarse, often cruel.
He further learned what he had begun to suspect already; that a horse wrangler was not one who held argument with a horse. He was nothing more dignified than a groom who herded the animals out at night, if he happened to be a night wrangler, some of them with hobbles on their legs to prevent them running off, and herded them back to the corral at early morning for the lords of the range to select their mounts. Being a day wrangler, such as Fred Grubb, was a somewhat easier, if no more dignified, job.
There were a large number of horses at Eagle Rock camp in proportion to the men, as there were, and probably continue to be, in every cow camp. Fred said this was because every man on the Diamond Tail had from six to eight horses at his command, one of his own, the rest supplied by the company. In the busy days of the branding and roundup, a cowboy often used up four horses a day, but in such quiet times as these, when there was nothing but straight riding to do, with a little dash after rustlers now and then, one horse a day was all a man needed.
Barrett gathered, also, not from direct revelation, but from Fred's manner of resentment, that the station of wrangler was a low one, that a man so engaged was scarcely counted a man, in truth. But one might rise from it, he was glad to learn; the best of them had traveled that road, although Fred himself never had been able to work upward to a saddle and a cowboy's pay.
It wasn't in him to do that kind of work, he said; the Poet Lariat, according to Fred's pronunciation, of the universe had designed him for nobler things. Temporarily he was engaged in this humble station—he had been filling it for more than twenty years, in fact—but it was only a makeshift. He'd walk on the heads of men who had jeered and despised him into his kingdom one of these days.
"Ain't much to do these days, not enough for half a man, let alone two able-bodied fellers like me and you," said Fred. "Just set around on the hills and think up poertry. I've thought up half a gunnysack of it this summer, I'm goin' to put it in a book some day. I don't see what the boss was aimin' at when he put you over here, but me and Alvino we're glad to have you, Ed. I tell you, boy, it ain't every horse wrangler that's killed a man!"