There was nobody at the sheep-wagon, although Rawlins could hear the distant voice of the herder and the barking of his dogs, urging the flock along with the same lonesome, far-reaching cry that he had heard the drivers lift when scuttling a shrinking drove of sheep through the chutes to the slaughter-houses in Kansas City. He was to know this cry better still in the sheeplands, lonely and long-wailing; appealing, supplicating, the inheritance of the craft older than the memory of man.
Rawlins never had seen a sheep-wagon before, although he knew in a general way that such vehicles were the homes of those who follow the flocks year in and year out. This was an old one, its hubs were cracked by age and weather, the canvas of its top was patched. The body, or box, was deeper than that of an ordinary farm wagon, the bows high enough to give a man standing room beneath them. A stove-pipe projected through the front end of the canvas, surrounded by a broad piece of tin, a little door opened at the tail, where a step eased down to the ground.
A water keg was slung to one side of the wagon, an axe to the other. A little pile of fuel, cut from the scrub pines which grew sparsely on the hills around, lay under it, as if the herder expected a rain.
The shouting and barking drew closer; Rawlins saw the flock break over a hill close by, and come flowing like a dusty avalanche into the bowl below the wagon. This little valley, he noted, was trampled and hoofcut, evidently the bedding-ground of the flock while it grazed in that vicinity. The sheep poured into it like a stream of milky coffee into a grimy cup, as if they would fill it to the brim.
The flock had been shorn, the black brand of the owner, stamped on the animals' backs, was plainly seen, although dust was reclaiming the new coats with the sheepland grey. Knobby-legged lambs, in great numbers, were as white as daisies among the fathers and mothers of the flock. They tugged along wearily beside their dams, marvelously preserved in this billow of sheep that came rolling down to the bedding-ground.
There was a sound of tremulous complaint going up from the sheep, heartless, weary, forlorn, as if hope were departing from them with the day. The herder stood on the hilltop, watching the sheep down to the bedding-ground, shouting and scolding, his dogs marshaling them, hastening to bring in the stragglers which spread away from the main body and stopped now and then to nibble a last thin blade of grass.
Once in the little valley the clamor of the dependent creatures ceased. They became as suddenly quiet as a baby hushed to sleep in its mother's arms. The two dogs stood on the flanks of the flock, waiting as if they did not trust such irresponsible things to settle down and behave at once.
The gloom of night was on the hills, the flock a dun splotch in the bottom of the bowl, when the shepherd called off his dogs and came to the wagon, where his visitor had stood watching the bedding of the sheep, taking his first lesson of the many unlearned ones shut up in the grim book of that morose and sullen land.
The shepherd was a grimy, smoky, dirty old grub of a man, spare of frame, narrow in the shoulders. He looked as if he had been dried in smoke. His scrubby grey beard grew almost to his eyes, which were sharp and clear, drawn to a squint as from a habit of peering into great distances. He wore an old duck coat that flared at the skirt as if he had all his portable possessions concealed in its lining, as a hunter appears when he comes home with rabbits in his jacket. His fingers were fixed in a grasping position, and they were knotted and gnarled as if he had fought hard to retain the fortune that had been wrenched away from his hold at last, but had left his hands set in lasting memory of the fight.
He greeted Rawlins in a friendly way, no curiosity apparent in him, no concern whether the traveler meant to remain or pass on about his business. He took some whittlings out of his pocket and kindled a fire in a little sheet-iron camp stove that he brought from the wagon, while directing Rawlins to the spring down the ravine near the sheep.
When Rawlins came back from refreshing himself inwardly and outwardly at the spring, the old man was slicing bacon on a table made by propping up the broad end-gate of the wagon. He had lit his lantern, which was dirty, dim and smoky like himself, and he seemed a most self-contained and reticent person for one who must not have been crossed by a visitor for days at a time. Rawlins asked if he might prepare his slim supper at the fire, and was told that he could not.
"You can eat my grub or go empty," the old shepherd said.
He paused in his bacon-slicing as he spoke, looking sternly at his visitor, an unaccountable ring of lightness, almost white in contrast to the general grime of his face, around his eyes. Rawlins wondered if he had washed while he was away, or whether that was an area which the old fellow swept daily to keep the accretions from shutting off his view.
Rawlins was glad enough to accept on the terms proposed, for his own material promised a slim repast. He had not been able to replenish his supplies along the way at ranch houses, as he had expected. The old man's supper was quite a banquet to one who had been living mainly on Bologna sausage and sardines for four days. There were biscuits and beans, bacon and canned tomatoes, even a tin of milk for the coffee and a little glass of preserves at the end.
"I don't always live high like this," the old-timer explained when he had scooped the last of the preserves out of the glass with his finger, which he licked clean, taking off more of the grime in the process than had been removed by any ablution in months. "I'm celebratin' this evening on account of you lookin' like a friend I used to have in my young days. They hung him down in Texas."
"I'd be proud to take his place in every particular but that," Rawlins said, with a droll way of humor that he had which made friends for him among old hardshells like the herder.
The old man chuckled; that pleased him very well. He made a cigarette, with admirable deftness considering his stiff fingers, dribbling a little stream of loose tobacco on his beard as he sat holding it unlit in his lips a while.
"Everybody knows old Al Clemmons, from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri," he said. "I never—stole but four horses in my life, and that was so long ago the heirs of the men that owned 'em's all dead, nobody left to prosecute."
Rawlins felt the satirical exaggeration in this old fellow's account of himself and his friend of long ago, but was at a loss, naturally, to understand the purpose of it. Perhaps he laughed at the world when he seemed to laugh at himself, like that other ancient gentleman whose neglect of sanitary details brought him down to an undignified end at last.
Clemmons had not taken his hat off since coming in from his labors with the flock. He wore it tilted back a little, pressed down to his ears, a high-crowned hat of medium broad brim, a look of newness about it rather out of keeping with the rest of his garb. He took it off now, suddenly, as if he had remembered something hidden in it that might melt, and scratched his head with great vigor and a rasping sound.
The old man's hair was shaggy, thick and straight, and grey as dusty cobwebs. There was so much of it, suddenly revealed by the removal of his hat, standing up so high in front, that it gave him the appearance of being most shockingly surprised.
"They know me," he went on with his biography; "they can tell you about Al Clemmons. I drove stages when they was stages, not job wagons like they run now, all over this mountain country for thirty years. Ive drove 'em where it was a hundred and seventeen in the shade, and I've drove 'em where it was forty below. I never froze my feet off, like some of the boys, but I've had my fingers froze to the lines so hard more than once I had to have help to let go of 'em. They can tell you about Al Clemmons. He's a man that ain't got nothing to hide."
Rawlins took this revelation as something more than a respectful bid, almost a demand, for news of himself and his intentions. He made short work of it, reserving nothing bearing on his expedition afoot from Jasper, which the old man told him was more than a hundred and twenty miles away.
"Rawlins, heh?" the old shepherd said, reflecting over it, turning the name as if he found something familiar in it, yet could not place it among the rusty accumulations of his memory. "What did you say the handle was?"
"Nathan, generally cut down to Ned."
"That's a good name for a feller," Clemmons approved. "Ned. Got a hard kind of a sound, like a wagon goin' over a rocky road. Yes, that's a good name for a feller—Ned. Strikin' out for Dry Wood, was you, Ned?"
"That was my aim. Have I missed it?"
Clemmons put his hat on, probably to indicate an end to the period of interrogation on his part. It seemed as if he had replaced some part of his anatomy, some member that he had removed with startling effect upon the beholder, and assumed his proper and familiar shape again.
"No, you ain't strayed off a mile. This is the Dry Wood country. You're at sheep limit right now."
"Sheep limit, did you say?"
"Them's the words I used," said Clemmons, as testily resentful, it seemed, as if his veracity had been challenged.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Clemmons. I couldn't understand what a sheep limit might be, or why there should be a sheep limit."
"Nobody else can, but in the morning I'll show you the deadline. If you want to satisfy yourself it is the deadline, all you've got to do is cut them wires and run a band of sheep over it."
Rawlins avowed he did not question Clemmons' exposition of the case at all, but that he was curious to know more about it: who had set the deadline, what force there was behind it, and what right.
"No more right than there's right to stop me breathin' air," Clemons declared. "But there's force enough, I guess, to satisfy most people. You know, if you're a United States senator, son, you can do a whole lot of things other folks can't."
"Yes, that's so; I've seen them do it."
"Well, if you've had experience with 'em you know the breed. If you're one of them senators you can turn many a trick that'd send men like me and you huntin' our holes, includin' fencin' in public land without no more lease on it than a rabbit, and hirin' a lot of horse-thieves to ride around it with guns on 'em to keep honest people out of their rights."
"So, that's what you mean by a sheep limit?"
"Right ahead of us," the old man nodded. "I'm plumb up agin it."
"He's a United States senator, is he?"
"Senator Jim Galloway. He's held the job so long he owns the steps leadin' up to the Capitol in Washington. Rough estimatin', he's got fifty miles square of. Gover'ment land fenced under four wires. That fence cost sixty thousand dollars, they say, but that's cheaper than buyin' land, or even leasin' it from the Gover'ment, not to say nothing of the hired hands it saves runnin' them cattle. Yes, if I had a map I could show you where that chunk of gobbled-up land lays."
Rawlins produced a map without a word, a feeling as of some cold, disintegrated heavy thing in his vitals. It was as if he had rolled up and swallowed a section of the senator's barbed-wire fence.
They spread the map out between them, the lantern on a corner of it. Clemmons ran his bent finger over it in a seeking line, as a hound runs here and there picking up a scent, coming in his own way to the checked and charted place that Rawlins had fixed upon for exploitation. It was the map Rawlins had got from the land office at Jasper; what had been the white and sterile place on his own little map was shown here plotted in township and section lines, with creeks and timber indicated, localities designated, all as plain to Clemmons as the first lesson in a primer.
"That's a good map," he said; "them Gover'ment boys sure know how to git up their maps. Right here's about where we're at. Lost Cabin, you see, is off to the north-west about thirty miles from here, and right along here's where the fence runs. In the morning I'll show it to you."
"What's Senator Galloway got inside his fence?" Rawlins asked, knowing pretty well what the reply would be. The sickness of disappointment was depressing his spirits, the shadow of defeat for his confidently arranged plans was falling already at his feet.
"Cattle and sheep, mister," Clemmons replied. "That's what Senator Jim's got back of that fence, ten thousand head of cattle and eighty thousand head of sheep, they say. He runs 'em cheaper than any man or outfit on this range can do it, three or four horse-thieves ridin' fence and a few sheep-herders are all the hands he needs, 'cept at shearin' and when he goes to round up them cattle and cut out the ones he wants to ship."
"I don't suppose he's got all the range fenced up, even then," said Rawlins, drawing a breath that carried him a little relief of hope.
"He's got it blocked with his fence nearly from mountains to mountains, and back of him there's a gang of cowmen makin' their last stand on the open range in this part of the country. No, son, if you come here expectin' to take your pick out of that land you might as well go back where you come from. There ain't no land somebody ain't usin' on anywhere in the Dry Wood country. Outside of Galloway's fence sheepmen they've grabbed every foot of it and split it up between them."
"It don't look very bright," Rawlins admitted. "But that man Galloway has no right to fence up Government land he doesn't lease. The map shows every section of it open to entry back there for a hundred miles."
"He ain't got no more right to it than the King of Ireland," Clemmons declared. "There's land enough goin' to waste inside of that fence to make twenty sheepmen rich. If I could take my little band up there I'd be independent in five years."
"You're a flockmaster, then?" said Rawlins, in undisguised surprise.
"What did you take me for—one of them sap-headed herders? I never run sheep for no man but myself in my life, foolish as I look. I never aim to."
"You darned sheep magnates run around lookin' like you didn't have the price of ham and eggs on you, and fly up when somebody takes you for a hired hand. If you're underrated sometimes, it's your own fault."
"What do you expect us sheepmen to do, son, so folks can spot us from hired men? Put on knee pants and golf stockin's?" The flockmaster chuckled with the thought, more pleased than offended that his own importance had not been duly appraised.
"Or put a feather in your hat, or something," said Rawlins. "How many have you got in that band?"
"Seven hundred and fifty-two, countin' lambs. I'm just a little feller, but I could be a big one if I could go back there on one of them cricks where the question of water wouldn't bother me. There's a dozen or two other little fellers strung out along that fence in the same fix as me, all held down on account of water. We can water just so many, and no more; we have to sell our increase every year."
"It looks to me like there ought to be some way to break that man's hold on that country," Rawlins reflected.
"To a man from the outside it may look that way, but put it up to anybody that lives in this State and he'll understand the why and the wherefore of it, as the widder woman said."
"I don't say it's a one-man job, but if all you sheepmen would move together, wipe that fence out of the way and march in, what is there to stop you?"
"Galloway'd have the United States marshal down here with a hundred deputies before you could say scat. It ain't a question of law or who's got the right, but a question of who's got the power and pull. If the United States marshal couldn't handle it, Galloway'd bring the army in. Let me tell you, boy, these sheepmen around here ain't no babies, but they're drivin' thirty-five to fifty miles around that fence to git to the post office at Lost Cabin from this neighborhood, and they've been doin' it a long time, when it's only twelve miles straight acrost. And every section line's dedicated and set aside by law as a public road. Why don't they open a public road straight acrost that land, then? Why don't a iron dog chase a rabbit!"
"I don't question the nerve of you sheepmen in here," Rawlins said, but with mental reservation. "Only I wondered."
"I've shot at men in my time, "and I've been shot at—and maybe hit in a little no-'count place here and there—but I've always had some kind of a long chance on my side."
"The only hope seems to be in a new senator, then."
"Galloway's got a cast-iron cinch on the job. He'll be there till he dies, then I guess they'll put his son in after him. By that time they'll claim they've got a deed to that land, I reckon."
"You never can tell about politics. You sheepmen ought to be able to frame him—it would be worth trying, anyhow. Do you make your headquarters far from here, Mr. Clemmons?"
"This wagon's my house and home, has been for nine years. It looks older than that, but I bought it second-handed off of a sheepman that was quittin'. I guess it'll hold together to roll me out of here to the railroad when I decide I'm whipped."
"You don't depend on that little spring to furnish water for all those sheep, do you?"
"No; I've got me a couple of tanks up in the hills. Back in Newbrasky or Kansas you'd call 'em stock ponds. I can pull through this many sheep on the water I ketch in them tanks, but they wear down lean on account of the long drives I have to make."
"I was wondering how you watered them, grazing over the wide territory you must cover on the thin cropping there is around here. They'll not go more than two or three days without water, will they?"
"Back in the country where you come from they can't, but here they'll go five or six days easy enough, longer in a pinch if there's plenty of dew. They toughen to it. But it's a hard life, both for man and beast. I think sometimes the sheep must be glad when they're shipped out to be butchered at the packin' houses. I can't see why any man wants to leave a country where corn grows to come out here."
"It's pretty well crowded back in that country. A man wants to have a place to put his feet down somewhere, with room enough to turn round. Land's high back in Kansas, too high for a man starting out to try to buy."
"Yes, a man's got a achin' in him for a home of some kind. That's what drives so many of them wanderin' and searchin', I reckon. Them home-seekers come through here right along, drivin' their batty old wagons with kids bulgin' out the canvas, lookin' for a place to light and put a plow in the ground. They've been kep' on the move from Git-out to Go-on, as the widder woman said, kicked out by the cowmen first, hustled on by the sheepmen next. Nobody in this country wants 'em.
"They come up here to Dry Wood with maps from the land office down at Jasper, hopin' they've found a place to unload them kids at last. Where they go from here, Lord knows. Over the mountains into the desert, I reckon, and keep a-goin' till they wear their tires out."
"If you sheepmen would lease a block of that country inside Galloway's fence I believe you'd have the key to the situation. The Government would be back of you then."
"We're agin leasin', in the first place. We've seen too much country hogged by the big fellers that way. Open range; that's sheep gospel. It's gettin' harder for us sheepmen up in this country every year, with the Gover'ment settin' aside them mountains for forest reserves, some of 'em without a tree on 'em as high as your head for twenty miles. Second place, nobody's got pull enough to lease a single foot of that land Jim Galloway's got his fence around. It couldn't be done."
"It looks raw; it looks scandalously raw."
"You're right; it is. I'm just about edged off of the map, I tell you, mister. If some feller comes along here one of these days purty soon when the weather begins to dry up and wants a cheap job-lot of sheep, I'll be standin' on the top of the hill waitin' to grab his money."
"Maybe I'll take you up on that one of these days," Rawlins said, laughing a little, not to make it look too serious, or himself too foolish, in the dusty old flockmaster's eyes.
"Whenever you're in the notion," Clemmons replied.
It didn't seem so unreasonable, or such a remote possibility, to Rawlins as he sat with his back against the wagon wheel, looking out over the mysterious duskiness of the sheeplands, at peace under the near, bright stars. Somebody would break through that baronial fence one of these days. Perhaps fate, or fortune, or circumstance had plotted with him in all his building upon that mysterious white spot on the map, shaping and guiding his own hand to the task.