Range Of Golden Hoofs Read online

Landcaster grunted. “So?” he prompted.

  “So we scouted and found ’em,” Dan reported succinctly. “I’ve got a Chiricahua boy along that thinks I’m a pretty good hombre, and he located them for us. They’d seen us, so we beat them to the jump.”

  A quizzical grin formed on Landcaster’s lips. “Git ’em all?” he drawled.

  “Thirteen,” Dan answered. “In a big arroyo about ten or twelve miles south of here. They were followin’ the arroyo.”

  Landcaster nodded. “I don’t see no particular reason for me to take Shirby there,” he said. “Likely he’d want to know what killed ’em, an’ I couldn’t just put it down to lightnin’. I’ll take him over along the river an’ let him get some exercise. It’ll do him good.” He grinned at Dan as one understanding friend to another. For a time the old scout sat staring into the dying embers of the fire, then suddenly he spoke. “Lucero was a half-breed an’ plumb bad. He’d worked for white men just long enough to get smart. I knowed there’d be trouble when he come back to the reservation last spring.”

  The name “Lucero” aroused a responsive chord in Dan’s memory. He searched his memory, trying to connect the name with some event and, failing, looked at Landcaster again. “Well?” he prompted.

  Landcaster uncoiled his great length and lumbered to his feet. “Well,” he drawled, “you saved me a lot of work an’ likely some soldier boy’s scalp. I’m goin’ to bed. Good night, Shea.”

  “Good night,” Dan answered.

  The scout disappeared into the darkness.

  The soldiers left the following morning, riding on toward the west. Dan watched them go, saw Land-caster turn to wave farewell and lifted his arm in reply. Then as the little line of troopers disappeared he turned to his herd.

  Day slid into day once more, blending into a whole. No march was very long; no march was very difficult. Dan Shea, his herders and his sheep, whittled at distance, and then with fall come upon him Dan Shea and his herd came abreast of Albuquerque. Dan left the flock and, taking Eusabio and two burros to pack supplies, rode to the town.

  While Eusabio made necessary purchases, Dan interviewed Gotlieb. Gotlieb had news and mail for Dan. There had been trouble in Bendición, the little lawyer informed, and worry showed in his words. Martin O’Connor and Ramon de la Luz had met upon the street and there had been an altercation. Only quick intervention had prevented a killing, for both Ramon and Don Martin had been armed. Too, Gotlieb had no encouraging word concerning the search for the title of El Puerto del Sol. He consulted with Dan, giving what information he had and asking advice. All that Dan could counsel was that the search be continued.

  At the lawyer’s office Dan read his letters, a note from Don Martin, a brief scrawl from Fitzpatrick and a long letter from Marillita. Don Martin’s note showed that he was worried. Fitzpatrick’s letter told of the meeting between O’Connor and Ramon de la Luz, and in it Fitzpatrick again assured Dan that he was watching things in Bendición. It was over Marillita’s letter that Dan spent time, reading and rereading its passages, warmed and strengthened by the love of the girl. Finished with his mail, he answered it and when he had written to Don Martin, to Fitzpatrick and to Marillita, he gave the letters to Gotleib to post.

  “I wish you’d go down there and talk to Don Martin,” Dan told Gotleib. “Cheer him up. Make him think that things are coming along all right. He’s worried and he’s anxious and he might do something that would upset the whole thing. I wish you’d go and visit him.”

  Gotleib nodded. “I’ll go down,” he promised, “just as soon as I can. I wish that you hadn’t had to leave.”

  “That’s what I wish,” Dan answered shortly. “But I did have to.”

  “Couldn’t you sell the sheep here and go back?” Gotleib ventured.

  Dan shook his head. “There’s no market for sheep here,” he said. “And, besides, Delaney and Ramon de la Luz might tie up the sale. I’d better go on.”

  Dan’s words were true. Reluctantly Gotleib agreed and Dan, bidding the lawyer good-by, left the office and went to the supply house where Eusabio had purchased the necessities for the crew. It was midnight before Dan Shea and his cook reached the camp. Eusabio, with the burros unpacked, went to bed and to sleep, but Dan Shea—huddled in his coat, for the night was cold—sat beside the dead fire and stared off into the darkness. He was worried. The news he had was not reassuring, but more than worry possessed him. Sitting there, the bedded sheep a gray mass out in the night, Dan Shea was filled with longing for the soft lips and warm arms of Marillita. It was a bad night, and Dan was glad when dawn streaked the east and the Sandias loomed black and the camp aroused.

  From Albuquerque the herd marched north, up that sheer mesa front called La Bajada, on and on, turning toward the west into the high country. And ever as they moved the days grew shorter and the nights lengthened and the weather became more threatening.

  At Arroyo Hondo, above Taos, they crossed the Rio Grande, the hoofs of the ewes drumming on the bridge, and Dan haggling with the bridgekeeper over the toll that he must pay. Beyond the bridge the flock climbed out of the black-lipped canyon of the Rio and out upon the sage-covered, wind-swept plain once more. It was west of the Rio Grande that the storm struck them.

  Day dawned, gray and formidable. By midmorning a piercing west wind swept across the sage and snow spat down viciously. The sheep, despite the efforts of the herders, turned tail to the wind and snow and drifted. Inexorable as a rising tide, the herd worked back toward the river, back toward the deep canyon with its sheer rock walls. There was no turning the flock, no handling them. By noon, all thought of food forgotten, the men could not see each other across the drifting herd. Snow rimed the backs of the sheep, turning them from gray to white. The men were white-plastered ghosts moving through the snow. Dan Shea, fighting the drifting sheep, fighting the growing panic of his herders, strove to keep the herd intact and, minute by minute, the snow deepened underfoot and thickened the air.

  The canyon was the danger. If the herd struck the rim the leaders would hold back and strive to turn, but under the pressure of their sisters behind the leaders must give way. Then they would go over the rim and down that sheer descent to plunge to death on the rocks below, first the leaders, then the followers until only a scant remnant remained on top. That was the picture; that the danger. Somehow, in some manner, Dan Shea must avoid it. He shouted to Hilario, the man nearest him, bidding him stay with the sheep, bidding him hold the other herders with the herd, and when Hilario’s inarticulate shout came back, whipped by the wind, Dan Shea left his flock and plunged into the storm, striking east.

  Within a hundred yards the herd was lost. When he looked back he could not see for the blinding snow. Dan tried that once and then turned his back to the storm and forged ahead. He was riding a mule, a tough, wiry little Spanish “mula” which carried him directly downwind.

  Two miles they went, Dan estimated, and then the mule hesitated and presently stopped abruptly. Dan urged his mount ahead, but the mule refused. Perforce he climbed down, stiffly because of the cold and his heavy clothing and, leading the mule, took three more steps. Then he stopped short. Beneath his feet was the black-lipped canyon edge, and below him, a thousand feet perhaps, the Rio Grande ran. To Dan’s left was a piñon, a single tree perched precariously amid the rocks. It was a marker. Tethering the mule to the piñon, Dan explored the rim on foot.

  First he went north, searching in vain for the thing he must have. Time was short. Dan turned back. The mule marked the piñon and Dan passed her by. Now he went south, continuing his search, and within three hundred yards found the thing he sought. Here a narrow crevasse cut the lip of the canyon and led down. Dan explored it hastily. He could not follow out the entire length of the little canyon. There was not time. But it was a slope, however rocky and steep, and as a slope, better than the sheer drop over the rim. Dan went down until the wind no longer struck him and, assured that here was shelter of a sort, fought his way back to the top.
/>   Again he plodded north until he reached the tethered mule. Untying the animal, he mounted and attempted to ride back to the flock against the wind. The wind was his only guide, his only landmark. To find his sheep again he must go squarely into the wind. The mule refused to face it, balking stubbornly.

  Once more Dan dismounted. Once more he tied the mule. Now, on foot, he took his last desperate gamble. Squarely into the wind he walked; head bent, shoulders bowed, strong legs surging, he leaned against the storm and fought it. If the herd had changed direction in the least, if the wind had swung, he was lost and walking to certain death. Dan Shea did not think of that. He thought only of the sheep and the men as he fought the wind, his compass and his only guide.

  Exhaustion came upon him, and he forced it back. His legs were leaden weights, ending in other weights that were his feet. These slipped on stones and tripped on sage. Twice he fell and forced himself up to go on into the wind-driven snow. Surely he had come far enough. Surely he had walked a great-enough distance to meet the herd. Panic swept over Dan Shea. Had he missed them? Were they to his right? To his left? Should he turn and circle, trying to find the herd? He fought the panic back. He must go on, straight into the wind. Straight into the wind. Straight into the…He tripped again, falling forward. The thing that had tripped him scrambled and kicked. His arms gripped a woolly, snow-wet back. With a shout Dan Shea hauled himself up, his exhaustion and his panic lost in sheer gladness.

  They turned the sheep a trifle. Working along the northern side of the drifting herd, whipping with sacks, rattling cans, aided and abetted by the dogs, they changed the course as Dan directed, Hilario and Nopomencenco and their companions. As they neared the canyon edge Dan led the way with Vicente. The leaders of the flock entered the narrow defile of the crevasse, and the herders plunged into the mass of sheep, breaking the pressure, thinning the herd from a marching mass into a thinner line. Vicente and Cercencio went down with the leaders, and endlessly the herd moved into the defile, driven by the storm, only partially controlled by the herders. Behind the herd came the camp burros, and Dan’s mule joined them. Dan was the last of the men. Down into the crevasse they went, not knowing what was happening at the farther end, not knowing if the leaders had found a sheer drop and gone off, certain of but one thing: that here was shelter from the storm.

  The sheep went on, the burros and the mule with them. Dan Shea and his herders followed them, endlessly it seemed, and the snow fell straight down, while above the canyon the wind howled its rage at being cheated. Then there was a disturbance, and a man broke through the sheep and, passing the camp animals, made his way to Dan Shea. Vicente it was, rimed with snow and grinning.

  The little side canyon they followed, entered on a bench, Vicente informed. He and Cercencio had turned the leaders—now no longer driven by the wind—and held them on the bench. Vicente’s grin was a beautiful thing to Dan Shea.

  They followed the smiling little native. The last of the sheep and the burros and the mule cleared the mouth of the crevasse, and truly, as Vicente had said, there was a bench below the canyon rim. It stretched to north and south below the black-rimmed lip above. On it the sheep, huddled together, stood and looked at their saviors with black-slotted, foolish yellow eyes. Dan Shea sat down upon a snow-covered rock and looked up at a leaden sky through which the snow fell straight down.

  By morning the storm was gone. The sky was a bright blue crease above the Rio Grande, and all the world was white. The crevasse that had offered them sanctuary was choked with snow, and the sheep, hungry, stirred restlessly.

  With Dan’s help the men broke through the drifts in the crevasse, driving the mules and burros back and forth until a trail was made. Then slowly, carefully, using all their knowledge and patience, they started the ewes up the trail that had been broken.

  Before the bench was cleared two sheep had fallen from the brink of the ledge, crowded off by their sisters. Dan Shea looked back along its trampled length. The bench had saved him. He thought of that and was thankful. Then, turning, he followed the last of his men and animals toward the top.

  For three, four, five weary days the herd crept over the drifted sage-dotted plain. Mountains towered above them on their left. Ahead was their destination: Colorado and the San Luis Valley. Three months behind them was El Puerto del Sol. This was the last stage, the finish of their journey.

  On the sixth day after the storm Dan left his herd and rode north alone, traveling rapidly. That night he stayed with a native family, sleeping on the dirt floor of an adobe house. The next day brought him to the little clump of buildings, the store and the long warehouse and shed that was San Luis. Clambering down from his mule, Dan Shea tied her to the hitch rail in front of the store. Bearded, dirty and disheveled, he entered the building and, walking along its length, came finally to the little office in the rear. He stood in the doorway of the office, and behind his desk Sol Haberman looked up at his unkempt visitor.

  “Remember me?” Dan Shea said to the swarthy, black-bearded man. “Do you remember me, Mr Haberman?”

  Haberman shook his head. Behind Dan the store stretched away, the clerks busy with customers, dry goods on the shelves, groceries and staples filling the counters. Against that setting Dan Shea was an anomaly, a paradox, a heathen in a church.

  “I’m Dan Shea. Last year in Denver you talked to me about bringing up a bunch of sheep from New Mexico to the valley. I’ve come and I’ve brought the sheep.”

  Haberman jumped up from behind the desk. “I remember,” he said as he advanced. “You’re Dan Shea. You had a freight outfit, and the panic wiped you out. I remember now.”

  The two shook hands. Haberman led Dan into the office and seated him beside the desk. He gave Dan a cigar. He jumped up again to put fresh wood on the fire in the stove and he asked questions. Dan relaxed in the chair and answered.

  “But it’s wintertime,” Haberman said when the first questioning was finished. “How do you expect to sell sheep in the winter?”

  Dan grinned. “You’ve hay,” he answered. “I saw plenty of hay as I came in to town. I’ve got a band of ewes, Mr Haberman. I’ll sell them cheap enough.”

  “How many an’ how cheap?”

  “About forty-eight hundred, and I’ll let them go at six dollars.”

  Haberman threw up his hands. “Six dollars! Do you want to ruin me? I’ll give you three.”

  Dan Shea grinned beneath his matted beard. Haberman wanted the sheep. Dan had been right. “I’ll take five seventy-five,” Dan said.

  “But it’s wintertime. I haven’t got the hay. I can’t do that.”

  Dan stirred in his chair as though to arise. “I’ve come so far with the sheep,” he said carefully, “I can take them on. I can peddle them a little bunch at a time to the settlers north of here. If I have to I can take them clear to Denver. Five dollars and a half a head, Mr Haberman. Take it or leave it.” Dan Shea got up.

  “Sit down!” Haberman exclaimed. “Sit down, Mr Shea. Let’s talk business. Five dollars and a half a head is too much. Think of the risk I take.”

  “Think of the risk I’ve taken,” Dan Shea retorted. “Forty-eight hundred young ewes. Not a broken mouth in the bunch. They’re thin but they’re strong. And there’s all that hay to feed them. What will you offer, Mr Haberman?”

  “We’ll go and see the sheep,” Haberman said. “How far from town are they, Mr Shea?”

  “They’re this side of Costilla Plaza,” Dan Shea answered. “We can see them tomorrow.”

  “You come to my house,” Haberman invited. “You spend the night with me, Mr Shea. Mamma will feed you good and you’ll sleep in a good bed. Tomorrow we’ll see the sheep, an’ maybe I’ll give you three dollars and a half.”

  The following morning Dan Shea and Sol Haberman drove out of San Luis in Haberman’s buggy, Dan’s mule hitched to the hames of the off horse of the team and trotting along. There was no snow in the valley as yet, but clouds hung over the mountains above Costilla Peak and o
ver San Antonio Mountain. Late that afternoon they reached the sheep and sat in the buggy while the ewes came slowly past. And that night at the sheep camp they renewed their bargaining. All next day as the two returned to San Luis the bargaining continued, and that evening in Haberman’s office an agreement was concluded. Dan Shea sold his sheep to Sol Haberman at four dollars and seventy-five cents a head, Haberman to take a ten-percent cut of the flock and buy the cuts at three dollars and a half. Well content, the two men crossed from the store to Haberman’s house where Mrs Haberman and a hot meal awaited them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  OUT OF THE STORM

  George Delaney was a pleasant man and cunning. When in 1865 he received his discharge from the Union army he looked about him and then decided that wealth and opportunity lay to the south. One of a myriad of carpetbaggers, he descended upon the unfortunate remnants of the Confederacy and for a time grew fat. But Texas, as a dwelling place, was hot for carpetbaggers. Hooded men rode at night with whips and weapons. Delaney saw the handwriting on the wall and migrated. Bendición was his stopping place.

  The pickings in Bendición were lean, but Delaney readily made acquaintances and friends. A small case, a matter of a mining claim west of the river, fell into his hands, and he did much with it. Other cases followed. Then, searching among the archives in Santa Fe for a land title, he came upon the record of adjudication of El Puerto del Sol. Intrigued, Delaney read the old Spanish record through.

  At first it offered no particular significance to him, then when he had returned to Bendición he fell to thinking. Delaney was acquainted with Ramon de la Luz. Idly, an idea stirring in his mind, he cultivated that acquaintanceship. From Ramon he had the story of the quarrel between the De la Luz family and the Alarids. Delaney pondered that tale. Gradually, because his mind was warped and twisted and shrewd, he evolved a plan. When the time was ripe he put that plan in motion.

  The clan of De la Luz had pursued a course directly opposite to that Martin O’Connor followed. Where by strength, by ruthlessness, by purchase and by fear O’Connor had consolidated El Puerto del Sol, the De la Luzes, by procrastination, weakness and lack of foresight, squandered their heritage and split it into many small parts. Ramon de la Luz, the youngest, smartest and therefore the most discontented of all the clan, was the leader of his people. Heredity and ability made him so. When in the spring, just prior to Dan Shea’s advent in Bendición, George Delaney, smooth and suave, spoke to Ramon concerning the possibility of regaining the northern portion of El Puerto del Sol, Ramon rose to the bait like a trout to a fly.