“They ain’t marked on the ground, man,” replied his leader gently; “it’s only on the paper. But what can I expect of a boy raised on squirrel and corn pone, like you was? Yes, sir; thirty-six is just in and around right here.”
He made on this soiled paper a little cross, using a gnawed stub of a pencil which in its time had tallied perhaps a hundred thousand cows.
“There ain’t no moss on the trees no more,” mused Len. “The grass ain’t the same here. My law! did you ever see so many greenhead flies in your borned days as we’ve had all the way from the Red River north? And as for mosquitoes, Miss Lockhart,” he added, “a feller don’t darst get his arms out of his blankets at night.”
He looked ruefully at his elbows, entirely visible through the sleeves of his only shirt.
“Like enough a man could make some corn up here,” mused Jim Nabours, sagely, looking around him over the rolling prairie. “He couldn’t raise no cows; it’d be too cold. No, nor of course he couldn’t raise no cotton. Well it’s a right purty country; but can’t never be settled, even if the Osages was gone.”
“I wonder how big a place is Aberlene, anyhow,” queried the ragged cowhand. “Me, I never seen a railroad. Down at Fort Worth several men been saying there’d be a railroad there some time. That’s all foolishness.”
“Shore it is,” said Nabours. “Well, we got no railroad here neither. Let’s move along.”
They were now, although they were not aware of it, to pass up the course of Turkey Creek towards the Salt Fork for two days’ march above the Cimarron. When they came to the heads of that stream and of Mulberry Creek, which ran thence southeast—also a stream unknown to any map at that time—they reached a pleasant rolling plain where it seemed as though the entire country was alive with moving game. It was a spectacle which awakened even their blasé souls, used to wild game all their lives.
Northward appeared a vast herd of buffalo, usually a most welcome sight to the plains traveler, but one always dreaded by the drover, who sometimes had to start a road through them at cost of much ammunition. Antelope, wild horses, all the great game of the unfrequented plains were visible also. But all this game was on the move and not feeding peacefully, as naturally it should be. Why was this?