“ROLL OUT!”
A stentorian voice was calling it over and over. I opened my eyes on black darkness; it was raw and cold and my blankets felt damp to my hands as I drew them up around me. I closed my eyes again and went to sleep.
Sometime later Dorothy spoke to me in a strong firm voice. I opened one eye and looked at her. It was gray outside by that time, and I could see that she had brushed her hair and her teeth and was looking smugly virtuous.
“What time is it?”
“A quarter to four. Hurry up!”
So I sat up in bed, pulled on my boots, shoved on my hat and was dressed. I did crawl around on my hands and knees looking for my toothbrush, but my efforts were half-hearted and I did not find it. Who ever heard of brushing teeth at a quarter to four in the morning anyhow?
“I’m coming,” I said querulously. “But I haven’t been up so early since the last time I was up so late.”
I stood up. My boots were damp and shrunken from the dew; unreal shadowy figures were standing around the cook tent, morose and dreary, and drinking hot coffee; and running in with the cavvy was Pink, undoubtedly rested after his sleep of from eleven-thirty to two, and ready at any minute to turn on a dime and have me left over.
Four o’clock. The horses had been driven into the rope corral, and the work of catching and saddling began. The wrangler held the gate, that loose end of the rope before referred to; under his direction only two men worked inside, and they worked quietly and cautiously. No wild throwing of the ropes now, but an easy cast from the ground. The noose rose and settled on the neck of the animal wanted. The horses milled, first this way and then that, and out of the mist and dust the captured bay, or roan, or buck, came mildly enough to be saddled just outside.
The first pink of the dawn touched Poker Jim; the old gambler had drawn a flush at last. The line of saddled horses grew; cinches were tightened, and chaps and spurs buckled on, followed by careful, easy mounting by the cowboys as they tested out horses, never too well broken and always fractious at this early hour; then full dawn, the soft creak of leather on leather, the faint musical jingling of spurs and the dull thud of horses’ feet on the dry meadow as we moved off.
Percy was the leader. Riding the high circle, at the top of each valley he deployed two men, one to throw the cattle down from the hillside, the other to bunch and hold them at the bottom. Technically, I believe every such bunching is a round-up, but the real round-up of the morning comes when all these smaller herds, driven in, are gathered together at same designated spot.
The men took the orders as they came, gathered up their reins, spurred their horses and disappeared. We rode on and on. After what I figured was high noon and lunchtime, I asked Lizzie to look at her wrist watch. She did so and then held it to her ear.
“It’s stopped," she said. “It says six o’clock.”
But it had not stopped!
Underneath me Pink moved sedately along. He had the air of an old hand at the business and of being slightly bored at the preliminaries. And I was growing increasingly easy. We had seen no cattle; maybe I was not to see any cattle. It was a fine morning; the sun warmed my back, and Pink’s delicate tread was like a rocking-chair beneath me. I yawned. And then somehow or other I was riding down a valley with Irving, and Irving was glancing right and left for cattle, and Pink was gathering himself together and getting ready. Ready for what?
“Wha-what am I to do?” I inquired in a thin voice.
“You just sit tight,” said Irving comfortably, “and let Pink do it. He knows. Only watch him when he whirls. That’s all.”
Four hours later Irving and I drove our herd up the long slope to the rendezvous. There on the top of the hill were the other bunched cattle, milling wildly and emitting a sound not unlike the roaring of an angry sea. Our bunch saw them and tried to turn; in a second Pink started for them, and then and there did I give such an exhibition of pulling leather as I hope not to give again. He whirled and ducked, he flew and leaped, and to his back, helpless, I clung and prayed. And he did the job. He rounded up that stampeding herd and pointed it where it should go. And when it was over I let go the saddle horn, took my first full breath in five minutes and straightened my hat.
“Hey!” called a cowboy, as we moved on, “that’s working them! How’d you like to join the outfit?”
“Oh, I’m learning,” I said composedly.
I moved on. Lizzie and Dorothy were already back and stretched out under a tree.
“How far did you go?”
“Fifteen miles or so. How about you?”
“Oh, Irving and I took the big circle.” Very, very casually. “Thirty miles or so, I believe.”
Gently and gingerly, I got off Pink and laid me down on the ground. It was soft. It was wonderful. I closed my eyes. Bedlam was raging all around, but I cared not. Cows were shrieking for their calves and as many calves were crying for their mothers. Two great Hereford bulls were facing each other, heads down, and pawing up small sandstorms of dust with their forefeet. Frantic animals were trying to dart out of the bunch and being run back by watchful herders.
Under ordinary circumstances I would have climbed the tree above me, but these were not ordinary circumstances. Let Pink step on me if he wanted to; let the bulls come and fight across me; let the whole darned herd stampede and run over me. I lay on the ground with one of Pink’s reins under my head and closed my eyes. Sometime later I raised my voice above the turmoil and asked Lizzie the time.
“Ten o’clock,” she said.
Ten o’clock, and I had lived a lifetime!
At first it was comparatively easy. Irving did the work and I rode along. He would ride up a coulee or small valley above the cattle and then with a shrill cry start them down to me. It was my business—and Pink’s—to see that they did not run past me, but headed on in the direction we were going.
But as time went on and our little herd increased, so did the attempts of the bunch quitters. With sudden resolution, they would dart out from the rest, turn and beat it. And if anyone believes that a two-year-old steer cannot run, I am here to set him right. Naturally, the only way to head him off is to run faster than he does, and here Pink got in his best work. Seizing the bit firmly in his teeth and disregarding my pleas to let Irving do it, Pink was off. Into washes and out again, skirting gopher holes, jumping rocks, Pink carried me madly after his quarry. And in the end the creature would succumb; would turn meekly back after the others and I would release my death grip on the reins and mop my streaming face.
As time passed on, however, I grew more cheerful. No cow as yet had pointed at me with dire intent her long and deadly horns; no bull had lowered his head and roared. To be honest, I had seen no bull at all. To all intents and purposes our herd was purely a matriarchy and our calves were fatherless.
And then, suddenly, the worst came. Irving, above me in a valley, called that there were cattle hidden in a dry creek bed below. The creek bed was like a canon; Pink slid and scrambled down into it, and between its high and unclimbable banks we moved along. The cattle were hidden beyond a bend, and around this bend we went.
And there, without warning, we came face to face with an enormous bull. He looked as large as a locomotive, and he was barring the way with his wives and children behind him.
The moment he saw me he lowered his head and began to paw the ground! And there we were!
I attempted to turn Pink around, but he refused to turn. Instead he tried to make for the creature, and it pawed the ground again and stared at me with red and horrible eyes. I moistened my dry lips and spoke to it in a small faint voice.
“Go on!” I said. “Get along there!”
“Just an inch nearer!” said the bull in effect. “Just one inch!”
“Irving!” I called feebly. “Irving!”
But he did not hear, and Pink was tugging at the bit, and the cows had set up a sort of melancholy chorus. I tried other tactics; I spoke gently and kindly.
“Go along,” I said. “Nice old fellow! Go along, like a good boy!”
I even whistled; I cannot really whistle, but I have a small faint pipe I use to call the dogs, and when I could pucker my trembling lips I tried that. But the whistle after all did the work, for while it had no appreciable effect on the bull, Pink took it as a signal and dashed at him. And the craven creature instantly threw up his tail and started off. Some few minutes later I rode up out of the creek bed, driving my monster and his harem before me. And Irving, waiting on the bank, surveyed my catch with approval.
“Made quite a pick-up,” he said.
I nodded.
“Took a little time,” I said easily. “That creek bed’s a poor place to work.”
Our bunch was augmented gradually and as it increased it grew more unwieldy. Almost any cover served as a refuge. But I had a lesson in patience from Irving as he followed them into the bogs and creek bottoms, the thorny thickets and swales where they tried to hide themselves.
“Get along there, little feller,” he would say to some fugitive in his soft Southern voice. Never did he frighten them, or push them too fast. He watched the calves, too, and in that last four dreadful miles of creek bottom, bog and heavy low-growing trees he worked them through without haste and without the loss of a single animal.
Out of all the other valleys, converging to the high rendezvous, moved other bunches and other cowboys. The broiling sun glared down, the calves bawled, the mothers wailed, the horses worked and sweated.
And at last ten o’clock and dinnertime, and just a third of the day’s work over. Another circle in the afternoon and branding after that, and then—and only then—the tarp bed on the ground and sleep, until a voice roars the call to “Roll out” and, long before day, another day begins.