IND out anything?” “Wool-Head” Dan Plack growled impatiently, in a voice that matched his shaggy, whiskery crown and huge weight of brawn.
“Yes,” Delos Conklin answered, as he swung down from his lank horse, stripping his saddle and bridle off, “Lop-Ear’s pack have been killing white-face babies up those draws of the Singing Birds. I counted eleven, since we were there last week, besides the old ones.”
Wool-Head grumbled, his heavy body twitching as if he had been tied. For the first time a problem of the range was too much for him. Wolves, big lobos, had become stock killers in the Bell Brand range while evading all efforts to destroy them. The rancher was wholly unaccustomed to the feeling of helplessness. Successfully he had held his own against cattle thieves and homesteaders, sheep flock diplomacy and other invaders. His utmost contempt was displayed when he called an enemy a coyote. He now abused coyotes in a low, thundering flow of language which resembled a storm over the Sparkling Dawn Mountains that stretched to the eastward of the buildings, corral, fenced alfalfa and enormous spaciousness of the Flats of the Dancing Sand Maidens, the miles on miles of sage, sand and alkali to the westward.
The whispering and almost metallic sounds of Noisy Waters Creek were reflected down over the outfit in echoes from the huge megaphone of the cañon. Sunset had passed and the tired cowboy dropped his saddle over a tie-rail. The music of the cascading stream grew louder and Wool-Head’s easy-flowing profanity mingled with the peaceful water melody as the cowboy, gem-blue eyed and handsome in weariness, even, paused to listen, caught by a novel sensation of satisfaction. Such contrasts of anger and peace were always surprizing him, delighting his longing for something different, strange and charming. At the same time he hid from Dan Plack his poetic appreciation of this situation. It would be quite useless to try to explain to the rancher why the predicament of the range was so pleasing.
Conklin leaned for a minute against his warm saddle, breathing slowly. He turned his head to sweep with his glances all the horizons of this enormous and colorful valley. From the rose crystal hue of the sky overhead to the dark blue of the huge mountain range in the twilight shadow beyond the Sparkling Dawns to the eastward—a patch visible through the Wagon Pass—around by the mirage of a sea approaching like a tidal wave out of the southward to the Needle Tops like golden topaz and ruby, where lusters of pearl and gleams of precious stone facets marked the passing of the sun, as far as the dark timber belt of the range at the northward there was not one dull patch the size of a hand. Weary with all that day’s riding, his eyes dimmed by the glarings of the cloudless hours, and fairly reeling with weakness, even as he mustered his remaining strength of endurance, the cowboy listened to the desert notes, gazed at the wilderness gleams, fairly gasping for his lungfuls and sighed with content. Such an experience was worth being staggering tired.
Still, he knew better than to say so. Other cowboys were around, a pretty Cherokee breed-widow was cooking for the outfit, and Wool Head Dan was in a mood to seize any least opportunity to burst into a cloudburst of rage, venting his general indignation upon any convenient mark. Conklin knew it was discreet not to talk of the beauty of scenery which hid miscreant disasters and heavy losses, difficult to meet. This was one of his own disappointments, making him quieter, less demonstrative and perhaps more competent than any of his fellows in the crew. He had been sent to look the north lines over. His report that Lop-Ear’s pack had jaw-wracked a lot of calves was, to all the minds but his own, the most important thing he had seen that day. He was sorry for the rancher—who would have knocked him down for an expression of pity. For himself the day had been full to overflowing. Even with the wolf tracks, the running prints of their paws in the sand, the dark patches where the calves had been torn to pieces, the magpies, jays and other meat-hawks perching on the torn, tender bodies of the animals, the cows pawing the ground and bellowing, the inestimable privileges of a hard and beautiful land had given the rider sixteen hours of compensation for what all who knew him must have called his folly and his crime of wasted opportunities.