At Home At Cross L

: Rowdy Of The Cross L

In two days Rowdy was quite at home with the Cross L. In a month he

found himself transplanted from the smoke-laden air of the bunk-house,

and set off from the world in a line camp, with nothing to do but patrol

the boggy banks of Milk River, where it was still unfenced and unclaimed

by small farmers. The only mitigation of his exile, so far as he could

see, lay in the fact that he had Pink and the Silent One for companions.
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It developed that when he would speak to the Silent One, he must say

Jim, or wait long for a reply. Also, the Silent One was not always

silent, and he was quick to observe the weak points in those around him,

and keen at repartee. When it pleased him so to do, he could handle the

English language in a way that was perfectly amazing--and not always

intelligible to the unschooled. At such times Pink frankly made no

attempt to understand him; Rowdy, having been hustled through grammar

school and two-thirds through high school before he ran away from a

brand new stepmother, rather enjoyed the outbreaks and Pink's consequent

disgust.



Not one of them loved particularly the line camp, and Rowdy least of

all, since it put an extra ten miles between Miss Conroy and himself.

Rowdy had got to that point where his mind dwelt much upon matters

domestic, and he made many secret calculations on the cost of

housekeeping for two. More than that, he put himself upon a rigid

allowance for pocket-money--an allowance barely sufficient to keep

him in tobacco and papers. All this without consulting Miss Conroy's

wishes--which only goes to show that Rowdy Vaughan was a born optimist.



The Silent One complained that he could not keep supplied with

reading-matter, and Pink bewailed the monotony of inaction. For, beyond

watching the river to keep the cattle from miring in the mud lately

released from frost grip, there was nothing to do.



According to the calendar, spring was well upon them, and the prairies

would soon be flaunting new dresses of green. The calendar, however, had

neglected to record the rainless heat of the summer gone before, or

the searing winds that burned the grass brown as it grew, or the winter

which forgot its part and permitted prairie-dogs to chip-chip-chip above

ground in January, when they should be sleeping decently in their cellar

homes.



Apart from the brief storm which Rowdy had brought with him, there had

been no snow worth considering. Always the chill winds shaved the barren

land from the north, or veered unexpectedly, and blew dry warmth from

the southwest; but never the snow for which the land yearned. Wind, and

bright sunlight, and more wind, and hypocritical, drifting clouds, and

more sun; lean cattle walking, walking, up-hill and down coulee, nose to

the dry ground, snipping the stray tufts where should be a woolly carpet

of sweet, ripened grasses, eating wildrose bushes level with the sod,

and wishing there was only an abundance even of them; drifting uneasily

from hilltop to farther hilltop, hunger-driven and gaunt, where should

be sleek content. When they sought to continue their quest beyond the

river, and the weaker bogged at its muddy edge, Rowdy and Pink and

the Silent One would ride out, and with their ropes drag them back

ignominiously to solid ground and the very doubtful joy of living.



May Day found the grass-land brown and lifeless, with a chill wind

blowing over it. The cattle wandered as before except that knock-kneed

little calves trailed beside their lean mothers and clamored for full

stomachs.



The Cross L cattle bore the brunt of the range famine, because Eagle

Creek Smith was a stockman of the old school. His cattle must live on

the open range, because they always had done so. Other men bought or

leased large tracts of grass-land, and fenced them for just such an

emergency, but not he. It is true that he had two or three large fields,

as Miss Conroy had told Rowdy, but it was his boast that all the hay he

raised was eaten by his saddlehorses, and that all the fields he owned

were used solely for horse pastures. The open range was the place for

cattle and no Cross L critter ever fed inside a wire fence.



Through the dry summer before, when other men read the ominous signs

and hurriedly leased pasture-land and cut down their herds to what the

fields would feed, Eagle Creek went calmly on as he had done always.

He shipped what beef was fit--and that, of a truth, was not much!--and

settled down for the winter, trusting to winter snows and spring rains

to refill the long-dry lakes and waterholes, and coat the levels anew

with grass.



But the winter snows had failed to appear, and with the spring came

no rain. "April showers" became a hideously ironical joke at nature's

expense. Always the wind blew, and sometimes great flocks of clouds

would drift superciliously up from the far sky-line, play with men's

hopes, and sail disdainfully on to some more favored land.



It is all very well for a man to cling stubbornly to precedent, but if

he clings long enough, there comes a time when to cling becomes akin to

crime. Eagle Creek Smith still stubbornly held that rangecattle should

be kept to the range. He waited until May was fast merging to June,

watching, from sheer habit, for the spring transformation of brown

prairies into green. When it did not come, and only the coulee sides and

bottoms showed green among the brown, he accepted ruefully the unusual

conditions which nature had thrust upon him, and started "Wooden Shoes"

out with the wagons on the horse round-up, which is a preliminary to the

roundup proper, as every one knows.