At the crest they looked out across the plain.
“Nothing but dust and heat and mosquitoes,” said Bill Sewall.
His sour tone made Pierce Bolan laugh.
“Not to mention blisters and bad food,” said Deacon Osterhaut; but no one laughed this time. Uncle Bill’s complaints were amusing; Osterhaut’s were not. Evidently he never heard the offensiveness of his own disagreeably whining voice.
As for Uncle Bill Sewall—all he wanted, he kept insisting, was to return to his home back East in the States. But it had not escaped anyone’s attention that he had made no effort to accomplish that goal. His threats were funny because they were empty.
The buffalo grass was yellow. Patches of it had been grazed to the ground by Merino sheep. The few cattle that had wandered up this far were easy to spot and easy to collect; they’d been fattening on what was left of the plateau’s little blue-stem grasses. Two of the Huidekoper men rode out to gather them while Pierce Bolan said, “Rest of us may as well split up by twos. Each take a coulee and follow it down. Any cattle you find, push ’em ahead of you.”
Wil Dow said, “What about sheep?”
Dutch Reuter said immediately, “Shoot them.”
Pierce Bolan was entertained. “That’s the right idea. Anybody care for a mutton dinner?”
It brought a scowl from Osterhaut and a flash of sun from Mr. Roosevelt’s sunglasses. “Let’s have it clear. If we come across sheep we’ll leave them alone.”
Bolan said nothing to that. He adjusted the reins in his grip. “We’ll join up at the creek five miles down. All right?”
“It’s a practical plan,” Roosevelt commented. “Who’ll ride with me?”
There was a moment’s awkward silence. Then Sewall said, “I will.”
Pierce Bolan pointed quickly to Wil Dow. “You come with me.” It was pre-emptive—Bolan didn’t want to end up paired with Osterhaut. Neither did anyone else and it might have been quite awkward but Dutch Reuter generously offered to accompany the Deacon.
Wil Dow ran along the rim of the escarpment with Pierce Bolan. A mile south of their starting place they dropped down into the notch of a coulee where there were cow pies that appeared to be reasonably fresh.
Over the western horizon appeared the slanted grey shadow-streaks of falling rain: an isolated squall moving away north. Otherwise the sky was bright and deep. The glare of sun on the malpais beat against Wil’s eyes. Red clay caps on the occasional formation were evidence of lignite fires that had fused the clay.
They worked their way down, switchbacking when the pitch turned steep; they skirted sharp cuts and gullies, picked up a few scattered cattle and made their way into the treacherous windings of the eroded bottoms.
The earth was dense with heat down here. They picked up another dozen head in a black tangled mass of trees, waved their hats and whooped and drove the little herd on.
Pierce Bolan said, “Been west before?”
“No. My first summer,” Wil said. “You been here long?”
“Few years. Came north to build the railroad. Ten spikes the rail, four hundred rails the mile—thirsty work. Built up a stake, bought a little seed herd, got myself a cabin on Wannigan Creek. It’ll work out now. I had hard luck in Texas the last two times I tried. Lost one herd to Comanches and the other outfit to drought. But I can feel it’s going to be different here. Thinking about sending east for a mail-order bride next year. You got a girl?”
“I have.”
“Now you’re a lucky man. Fixin’ to bring her out here?”
“Expect I will marry her and bring her out here if this turns out to be permanent.”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
“My uncle thinks the cattle business will go bust soon as there’s a hard winter or a drought.”
“Your uncle don’t know much, then. The Little Missouri ain’t never dried up, and there’s plenty shelter in the Bad Lands no matter how hard the winter. Finest place on earth to be in the cattle business.” Pierce Bolan was young and heavy-chested. He had freckles and yellow hair that hung long enough to be bleached lighter at the tips where the sun had reached it, and wrinkles of easy laughter around his eyes. A likeable man.
Bolan said, “Tell me about little Four Eyes, then. What’s he think he’s doin’ out here?”
“Why, same as you, Pierce. Running a cattle outfit.”
“I seen him coughing and throwing up half the night. I hear he’s rich. If he’s so sick why ain’t he back East in some big mansion lying on a davenport and being waited on by sixteen nurses?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Wil took dinner off the chuck wagon at ten in the morning and was back on his horse by ten-fifteen. Drovers kept coming in for the next two hours with cattle.
The second half of the day consisted of identifying and sorting cattle—separating them by age, gender and ownership—and of wrestling and marking and castrating the unbranded calves and yearlings. Cutting such beasts out of the herd was no easy task. “Tell you something about these critters of the bovine species,” said Pierce Bolan. “Cattle are like buffalo. Gregarious. Hard to separate them, for branding or anything else.”
Round-up to Wil Dow was a wondrous kaleidoscope of impressions. First it was a matter of prodding each animal out to the rim of the herd and then chasing it away. The calves had an especial talent for veering back into the herd; it wasn’t unusual for three or four horsemen to be thundering about with a great deal of commotion and sinuous galloping convolutions—all in pursuit of one hapless half-grown calf that wanted nothing more than to rejoin its bawling mother.
“Look at old Four Eyes go!”
It was Pierce Bolan’s shout; it snapped Wil Dow’s head around. He saw Mr. Roosevelt dashing across the edge of the herd at a dead run in pursuit of a comically recalcitrant calf. A cowboy—one of Huidekoper’s men—loped toward them to intercept the calf; Roosevelt skidded his horse to one side, the calf bolted past the Huidekoper hand, and Roosevelt shouted at the man:
“Hasten forward quickly there!”
There was a sudden silence, as if pails of cold water had been thrown over every man in earshot.
The cow hand spun his lass rope expertly, dropped its billowing noose over the calf’s neck and pulled it tight.
Someone giggled.
The calf ran out to the limit of the riata, came up against taut rope and flipped over on its back.
The giggle provoked someone else’s bark of laughter.
Chastised, the calf lurched to its feet and came obediently along on its rope-leash behind the cow hand, who rode away with his head slowly turning while he kept his dumfounded stare on Roosevelt.
Half a dozen men were laughing now—at Mr. Roosevelt.
Pierce Bolan came riding past Wil Dow. He said, “Hasten forward quickly there,” and erupted in an outburst of laughter so ferocious it nearly unhorsed him.
There was a standing-wave pattern of chaos as cowboys ran from one bunch to the next, passing the word. A half hour later, far away at the most distant edge of the herd Wil Dow saw a tiny horseman throw his arms in the air; he could nearly hear the man’s explosion of laughter.
Roosevelt took it all in good spirit, smiling a bit sheepishly, joining halfheartedly in the laughter until one cow puncher came out of the herd prodding a maverick heifer. “This one’s up for grabs.” He spied Roosevelt riding by. “Hey Teddy. Hasten forward quickly there!”
Roosevelt wheeled his horse. There was no smile. “I expect to be called Mr. Roosevelt.”
The cow puncher was ready to retort but something—perhaps the set of Roosevelt’s shoulders or the glint behind the glasses—changed his mind. Wil saw him swallow. “Yes sir.”
With relentless inevitability the truant calves were driven to join the rest of the cut, and once the cut had itself become a herd the job was easier, for the animals quit trying to escape.