CHAPTER VII
With the keen and competent Phenie—arbiter of fashion for Two Moons' younger set—to play sponsor for her taste and buffer between her buckskin bag of gold pieces and the cupidity of the storekeepers, Woolly Annie shopped gorgeously. For her numerous tribe out on Poison Spider, that is to say, rather than in her own interests. The sheep queen's sartorial needs were strictly Spartan; overalls for the range, with a calico skirt to wear over that bifurcated utility when she rode to town; certain shrieking red flannel substantiate which had a way of glowing like a blind fire through whatever print stuff covered her huge torso; a bonnet—always the same bonnet—for town wear. That was about all. But for her brood, numbering nine and stepladdered down from twenty to the comparatively tender age of eight—the last a posthumous child serving as a memento of a father who had eloped with a burlesque queen in Cheyenne—for this brood of likely youngsters the sheep queen's buck-skin money bag would ever yawn its widest.
Woolly Annie preserved no vain illusions on the subject of personal adornment. She realized most sensibly that the task of landscaping her in terms of laces and organdies would be equivalent to planting Sleepy Ned Mountain to geraniums and myrtles. But for Cathay, her eldest, for Ravenna, Sophia, Christiania and Perugia—all born during the term of subscription to the World's Atlas and Book of Knowledge, dollar down and five ditto a year—for these fortunate ones Two Moons' best was little enough.
"I 've spent my life raisin' sheep an' children," was the lady's usual summary of her philosophy of work. "A sheep 's dressed by nature, but a kid 's like a painted picture—you gotta touch it up, an' the artisticer the better, I says."
Woolly Annie and Phenie were the center of a small maelstrom in the Boston Cash Store. The giantess from Poison Spider was standing, booted feet wide apart, bold eye ranging the stocked shelves and upon her broad cheeks a mantling flush of triumph. What she commanded a spidery little clerk made haste to display. A near-by counter was a welter of bolts of gingham, of boxes uncovered to display intimate treasures, knots of cerise and cherry-colored ribbon. The sheep queen, with a frank and free movement lifted one hem of her calico skirt and plunged a huge hand into a concealed pocket of her overalls. She brought out from the depths a length of string knotted at several places.
"An' now corsets, young man," she commanded grandly. "Phenie, lift up your arms an' let me see how you measure up with my Cathay, which she 's developed remarkable since I bought her that last pair."
The surprised Phenie demurred at so unconventional a comparison. But Woolly Annie simply went ahead with her domestic surveying, reassuring the girl in a hoarse whisper that could have been heard out on Main Street that "nobody should mind a poor little water spider like him." The clerk's fanlike ears registered mortification even while he discreetly turned his back in pretense of searching the shelves.
"Just what I told Cathay!" came the booming triumph from the lips of the sheep queen. "I says to my Cathay, when we was makin' mention of corsets, 'If you don't take the same measure as Phenie Logan I 'm a Chinaman,' I says. 'But she 's a perfec' thirty-four, ma,' Cathay comes back, she bein' read up from that flock of pattern magazines I bought her last Christmas.
"'Since when,' says I, 'have they begun to measure figgers like quarter sections? Perfec' thirty-four—huh! Me, I guess I know who 's got a figger an' who ain't without—now young man, if you 've got your stock of corsets laid out, this is what I want." She held up the knotted string taut between stretched hands. "This here farthest knot 's Cathay's measure round the bust; next one 's Sophia an' this shortest one belongs to my Peruggy, this bein' her first pair of stays an' the girl just all boiled up with excitement 'bout 'em."
Woolly Annie, hands on hips and countenance beaming unadulterated joy, awaited the joint conference between Phenie and the clerk over the practical interpretation of the knots. Finally the corresponding articles of web and steel were set aside. Then suddenly from the shepherdess of Poison Spider:
"Young fella, how big are you round the waist?" The skittish clerk admitted that was a point of information he did not carry round in his mind.
"Find out," commanded Woolly Annie, and she bent a stern eye upon him while he sought a tape measure and cinctured himself with it. "You 're bowed some," was her blunt comment following a swift glance along the suffering clerk's extremities, "but I don't reckon sprung legs make any never mind with the length of pants. You seem to have the same gen'ral get-up for pants as my boy Dolphus so I 'll take two pairs of pants which 'd fit on to you." Then in confidence to the little biscuit shooter as the clerk hopped to the rear of the store where the gents' furnishings were kept: "That Dolphus of mine gets just a-rarin' and a-tearin' when I buys pants an' such for him. Says a boy eighteen oughta pick out his own pants.
" 'All right,' says I, 'any time you earn yourself five dollars you hop on a horse an' come into town an' blow yourself to some pants. Meantime your old woman 's got judgment enough to buy leg hobbles for a wuthless no-count son—more particular since she wears 'em herself!'" The lady finished this revelation of domestic economy with a raucous hoot such as passed with her for sprightly laughter.
The orgy in the Boston Cash Store was not completed until the lady in hidden overalls had cajoled and threatened Phenie to choose for herself something nifty in shirt waists, this being Woolly Annie's unvarying prerogative in the direction of reward for the girl's shopping instincts, always requisitioned. Then the sheep woman swung out into Main Street alone while Phenie hurried back to preside over whatever short orders might come to the Rhihoceros during the afternoon. The mother of the promising nine on the Poison Spider consciously made her peregrinations up the town's chief street a sort of unofficial triumph. Who would not if a trip to town was something repeated but three or four times on the year's calendar?
She stopped to roll and smoke a cigarette with Sheriff Red Agnew in front of the Homesteader bar. She hailed with trumpet voice old Dad Armbruster, owner of the Yellow and Black sheep outfit up on the headwaters of Crazy Squaw, and held him in a half-hour professional conversation on the outlook for the next shearing and what in deletion he was doing to keep down the pesky kiotes this season. The afternoon was far spent—and farther the golden double eagles in Woolly Annie's buckskin bag—when regretfully she turned into the Occidental Hotel to get what she termed a wash-up. It was her intention to spend the night in that hostelry; the home ranch on Poison Spider was thirty-three miles out over the tumbling divides, and its mistress had no inclination to wear herself to a shadow by making the distance to town and back between suns.
Meanwhile her presence in Two Moons set certain currents to swirling in quiet places.
It may be said that the ultimate resistant citadel of the cattle clan in Two Moons—so swiftly turning from a cow town into a camp of cowmen's enemies—was the Capitol Saloon, Dad Strayhorn, proprietor. And of that citadel the sacred inner chamber of the clan's elect, always most closely tiled, was a certain upstairs room of furnishings the simplest,—just a green baize covered table with a slot in its exact center, seven chairs, four cuspidors decorated with blue daisy chains about their flaring rims and a sideboard for the accommodation of cigars, strong waters and—on occasions of lengthy sessions—food. In this sacrosanct room usually could be found the stiffest game north of Denver. Not a paltry pastime of diddling away white chips on jacks or better, but a game with the hair on, wherein not infrequently the disposition of an entire shipment of fattened beef cattle depended solely on catching a flush filler or making a king-full stand up.
Here the lordly foremen of cow outfits numbering their thousands gathered around the green baize to have a hack at Fortune's trailing robe, even though a year's salary and bonuses might be the price of that lady's disfavor. Here, too, the occasional big director of one of the cattle companies up from Cheyenne or out from Washington played his yellows against a rival director's. It is legend with the Capitol that a titled young man representing a great English cattle concern and visiting the Big Country for the first time, "did n't know the game of draw", and after thirty-six hours steady in Dad Strayhorn's upper room took the stage out with a little more than $90,000 buttoned under his tweeds.
Not for the lowly or the casual cowpunch was this quiet upper room. Dad himself was perpetual tiler over the door leading thereto. To Dad came Timberline Todd and Andy Dorson shortly after their encounter with Woolly Annie; each man still carried about his person the faintly reminiscent perfume of Minervy-brand can peaches. While Dad himself poured out their liquor—an honor the Capitol's proprietor reserved only for old trail mates—Timberline asked in a lowered voice if "they" were upstairs. In these days of crisis and the rumbling portents of a storm in the Big Country one of Timberline's tested loyalty could ask concerning the occupants of the sacred chamber without violation of precedent; Dad Strayhorn knew nothing less than emergency could prompt an invasion of the mysteries above. He gravely nodded.
"When you go up with the next round," Timberline earnestly whispered, "tell 'em" He bent his lips close to Strayhorn's ear to finish the sentence. The wind wrinkles in Dad's countenance did not flicker a betrayal of any interest over the intelligence Timberline communicated. The two cronies from the Hashknife outfit sipped their drink. Strayhorn disappeared through the mystic door. A few minutes later he emerged from the guarded stairway and, catching Timberline's eye, gave his head a perceptible jerk in the direction whence he had come. Timberline moved casually through the crowd of the Capitol's patrons, studied for a minute the latest stock quotations from South Omaha Market, which were pinned on the wall near the door. Then he was not. He simply had vanished.
What passed upon Timberline's arrival in the room above, who were there about the green table,—these things may develop as circumstance wills. Sufficient to indicate that a board of strategy of the cattle clan received certain information from the lanky cowman, made a quick and unanimous decision affecting the next move in the deadly struggle for the range and gave Timberline terse instructions. The latter humble retainer partook of a drink of ceremony—a survival of the feudal dispensation of salt in the elder day of knight and villain—then faded. A word to Andy Dorson back in the Capitol's bar and both men drifted out on to the street, there to separate.
The remainder of that afternoon they loafed around, visited certain bars where hardy riders in from the range congregated, dropped into this and that feed stable where newcomers were uncinching their mounts. But as Timberline and Andy Dorson loafed so inconspicuously they passed a word,—just a word casually spoken into the ear of this man known to be true and that one counted daring. The word was carried with lengthening shadows out and out across purpling prairies to where cooks' fires gleamed in the falling darkness, signaling riders in from the ranges. And this was its substance—a moving; there would be a sheep moving on Poison Spider that night.
Night in Two Moons was joyous for Woolly Annie, the sheep queen. After dining gorgeously at the Rhinoceros Eating House, where Phenie, the grateful recipient of favors, paid in kind with an extra helping of saleratus biscuit and wild honey, the mistress of the Poison Spider domain hied her to a fair given by the Ladies' Loyal Aid of the First Church in Firemen's Hall. There the last of her double eagles took prodigal wings over the fishpond, the wheel of fortune and the whatnot booth. Woolly Annie's booming laughter shook the festoons of starred bunting on the rafters; she steered elderly gentlemen of her acquaintance into corners to retail to them behind a screening hand and in piercing whispers certain "hosses"—a hoss being a Rabelaisian anecdote scarcely meet for a church affair; at stated intervals she withdrew outside the doors to have a chummy smoke with herself. A great night following a great day!
Far out and away from Two Moons five horsemen waited under the starlight at a convergence of two roads. Two others came racking down a long slope from the north and joined them. The seven set their mounts to that long velvety gallop which only the tough cutting horse of the Big Country knows how to sustain over unending miles. Where the road dropped to a ford of the Poison Spider five more mounted men who had waited in the alder thickets spurred out and took their places in the solid core of moving horseflesh and human hate that skimmed the billowing divides. No word was passed. No man sought to recognize the one at his right nor the one at his left elbow. From leather boots hung on saddle horns the blunt butts of rifles protruded.
Here was the beginning of fulfillment of the word that had passed that day. There was to be a moving; sheep were to be moved that night.
Now the narrow ribbon of dust that was a road lay far behind the silent riders and their horses' hoofs drummed softly on the unbroken turf. Steadily, steadily the land mounted upward toward the dim rampart of the Broken Horns, a high black dike raised against the lesser blackness of the sky, jagged of edge, seeming to menace the whole star-sprinkled firmament with imprisonment. Now and again a gurgling and chuttering of waters in flight gave tempo to the monotone of the thudding hoofs; that would be the Poison Spider purling down from its box canon in the mountains ahead. A coyote's tremulous bawling, the rare tom-tom beat of some owl calling out of the alders; these were the only other noises.
Mile after mile through the night.
A rise was topped, and far ahead two red spots glowed against the bulwark of the mountains like rubies dropped on black velvet; perhaps five miles separated the two spots of color. At sight of them the cavalcade came to a halt. A leader's voice sounded.
"We split here. Six of you cross the creek and make for that fire to the north. Don't start the circus 'til you hear us tune up down at the south camp. If anythin' on two legs puts up a fight kill it, but don't go outa your way to invite any indictments. Remember, nobody knows nobody else if it comes to a court case. Now"
The band split; one half splashed across the ford and bore away from the stream; the other segment followed on up the course of the hidden water.
Miguez, the Basque herder, and Tony, a thirteen-year-old waif of the sheep range, had long since finished their suppers before the fire and the man had gone to his bunk in the sheep wagon, leaving the boy with the sheep dog to keep watch over the band of eight hundred bedded down in a cup of the hills below the wagon. The boy was nodding, head on knees; the dog, curled at his feet, twitched and whimpered over the high places in a doggy dream.
Suddenly the dog's head jerked up and he gave a single short bark. Somewhere out in the darkness there was a swift spit of red flame, and the dog sank, twitching and slavering blood. The boy, in a folly of terror, turned and was climbing the short flight of steps giving on to the rear door in the bulky-sided sheep wagon when there was a swift patter of hoofs behind him; a hand bore down and snatched him up to a saddle.
"Keep your mouth shut or you 'll be croaked," commanded a harsh voice. Just as a handkerchief was fumbled across his eyes he saw a ring of horsemen surround the sheep wagon and start shooting through its canvas sides; saw the door flung open and Miguez stagger out, hands high above his head and blood on his shirt. In another minute he was lying, hogtied from neck to heels and blindfolded, and he knew from the feeble sound of cursing in the Basque tongue that Miguez, still alive, was lying beside him.
The riders dismounted and threw a handful of brush on to the dying embers of the cook fire; then as red arrows began to flicker upward, they seized the tongue of the sheep wagon and drew that cumbersome house on wheels directly over the blaze. The fire played along the bottom of the wagon floor, licked round the sides and finally caught the canvas housing. A wide fiery pillar leaped upward, lighting all the little cup of the hills where lay the sheep; their huddled gray shapes were cut out of the blackness by the red glow; the clutter of woolly backs in the cup of the hills stirred restlessly like moving scum on a bubbling pot.
The mounting pillar of flame put the whole band of eight hundred at the mercy of the riders. Swiftly they coursed round the rim of the cup, stationing themselves at wide intervals. Then, at an opening shot from their leader, the six rode slowly down on to the sheep band, each emptying the magazine of his rifle into the clotted mass as he descended.
It was slaughter. The scum of woolly bodies tossed and boiled wildly, rushing from side to side to seek escape from the whiplashes of fire all about. Individuals leaped upon the backs of their fellows and hobbled across a moving pavement to death. A few scuttered between horses' legs and ran bleating into the circle of the dark. The silence of the wide places under the stars was shattered by a horrid hubbub of blatting and bawling. Inexorably the circle of slaughterers drew smaller and the piles of bodies in the bottom of the depression waxed higher. Finally it became dangerous to horse and rider for any man to shoot longer, and the remnant of the band was ridden out of the charnel pit and scattered through the night with wild yip-yip-yips.
Away to the north a second pillar of fire was mounting toward the stars, and volleys of rifle shots came faintly on the wind.
Dawn came marching like an armed man out of the bad lands over across from the Broken Horns, all shell pink and peach flush in its glory. The new sun fell upon smoldering cinders and slaughter shambles there in the Big Country's pure sweep.
The sheep had been moved.