Oak Spring

: The Last Of The Plainsmen

Moze and Don and Sounder straggled into camp next morning, hungry,

footsore and scarred; and as they limped in, Jones met them with

characteristic speech: "Well, you decided to come in when you got

hungry and tired? Never thought of how you fooled me, did you? Now, the

first thing you get is a good licking."



He tied them in a little log pen near the cabin and whipped them

soundly. And the next few days, w
ile Wallace and I rested, he took

them out separately and deliberately ran them over coyote and deer

trails. Sometimes we heard his stentorian yell as a forerunner to the

blast from his old shotgun. Then again we heard the shots unheralded by

the yell. Wallace and I waxed warm under the collar over this peculiar

method of training dogs, and each of us made dire threats. But in

justice to their implacable trainer, the dogs never appeared to be

hurt; never a spot of blood flecked their glossy coats, nor did they

ever come home limping. Sounder grew wise, and Don gave up, but Moze

appeared not to change.



"All hands ready to rustle," sang out Frank one morning. "Old Baldy's

got to be shod."



This brought us all, except Jones, out of the cabin, to see the object

of Frank's anxiety tied to a nearby oak. At first I failed to recognize

Old Baldy. Vanished was the slow, sleepy, apathetic manner that had

characterized him; his ears lay back on his head; fire flashed from his

eyes. When Frank threw down a kit-bag, which emitted a metallic

clanking, Old Baldy sat back on his haunches, planted his forefeet deep

in the ground and plainly as a horse could speak, said "No!"



"Sometimes he's bad, and sometimes worse," growled Frank.



"Shore he's plumb bad this mornin'," replied Jim.



Frank got the three of us to hold Baldy's head and pull him up, then he

ventured to lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened out

his leg and sent Frank sprawling into the dirt. Twice again Frank

patiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then he

lifted a forefoot. Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit through

Wallace's glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I let

go his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree.

There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantly

held on to Baldy's head, and a thrashing of scrub pinyon, where Baldy

reached out vigorously with his hind feet. But for Jim, he would have

escaped.



"What's all the row?" called Jones from the cabin. Then from the door,

taking in the situation, he yelled: "Hold on, Jim! Pull down on the

ornery old cayuse!"



He leaped into action with a lasso in each hand, one whirling round his

head. The slender rope straightened with a whiz and whipped round

Baldy's legs as he kicked viciously. Jones pulled it tight, then

fastened it with nimble fingers to the tree.



"Let go! let go! Jim!" he yelled, whirling the other lasso. The loop

flashed and fell over Baldy's head and tightened round his neck. Jones

threw all the weight of his burly form on the lariat, and Baldy crashed

to the ground, rolled, tussled, screamed, and then lay on his back,

kicking the air with three free legs. "Hold this," ordered Jones,

giving the tight rope to Frank. Whereupon he grabbed my lasso from the

saddle, roped Baldy's two forefeet, and pulled him down on his side.

This lasso he fastened to a scrub cedar.



"He's chokin'!" said Frank.



"Likely he is," replied Jones shortly. "It'll do him good." But with

his big hands he drew the coil loose and slipped it down over Baldy's

nose, where he tightened it again.



"Now, go ahead," he said, taking the rope from Frank.



It had all been done in a twinkling. Baldy lay there groaning and

helpless, and when Frank once again took hold of the wicked leg, he was

almost passive. When the shoeing operation had been neatly and quickly

attended to and Baldy released from his uncomfortable position he

struggled to his feet with heavy breaths, shook himself, and looked at

his master.



"How'd you like being hog-tied?" queried his conqueror, rubbing Baldy's

nose. "Now, after this you'll have some manners."



Old Baldy seemed to understand, for he looked sheepish, and lapsed once

more into his listless, lazy unconcern.



"Where's Jim's old cayuse, the pack-horse?" asked our leader.



"Lost. Couldn't find him this morning, an' had a deuce of a time

findin' the rest of the bunch. Old Baldy was cute. He hid in a bunch of

pinyons an' stood quiet so his bell wouldn't ring. I had to trail him."



"Do the horses stray far when they are hobbled?" inquired Wallace.



"If they keep jumpin' all night they can cover some territory. We're

now on the edge of the wild horse country, and our nags know this as

well as we. They smell the mustangs, an' would break their necks to get

away. Satan and the sorrel were ten miles from camp when I found them

this mornin'. An' Jim's cayuse went farther, an' we never will get him.

He'll wear his hobbles out, then away with the wild horses. Once with

them, he'll never be caught again."



On the sixth day of our stay at Oak we had visitors, whom Frank

introduced as the Stewart brothers and Lawson, wild-horse wranglers.

They were still, dark men, whose facial expression seldom varied; tall

and lithe and wiry as the mustangs they rode. The Stewarts were on

their way to Kanab, Utah, to arrange for the sale of a drove of horses

they had captured and corraled in a narrow canyon back in the Siwash.

Lawson said he was at our service, and was promptly hired to look after

our horses.



"Any cougar signs back in the breaks?" asked Jones.



"Wal, there's a cougar on every deer trail," replied the elder Stewart,

"An' two for every pinto in the breaks. Old Tom himself downed fifteen

colts fer us this spring."



"Fifteen colts! That's wholesale murder. Why don't you kill the

butcher?"



"We've tried more'n onct. It's a turrible busted up country, them

brakes. No man knows it, an' the cougars do. Old Tom ranges all the

ridges and brakes, even up on the slopes of Buckskin; but he lives down

there in them holes, an' Lord knows, no dog I ever seen could follow

him. We tracked him in the snow, an' had dogs after him, but none could

stay with him, except two as never cum back. But we've nothin' agin Old

Tom like Jeff Clarke, a hoss rustler, who has a string of pintos

corraled north of us. Clarke swears he ain't raised a colt in two

years."



"We'll put that old cougar up a tree," exclaimed Jones.



"If you kill him we'll make you all a present of a mustang, an' Clarke,

he'll give you two each," replied Stewart. "We'd be gettin' rid of him

cheap."



"How many wild horses on the mountain now?"



"Hard to tell. Two or three thousand, mebbe. There's almost no ketchin'

them, an' they regrowin' all the time We ain't had no luck this spring.

The bunch in corral we got last year."



"Seen anythin' of the White Mustang?" inquired Frank. "Ever get a rope

near him?"



"No nearer'n we hev fer six years back. He can't be ketched. We seen

him an' his band of blacks a few days ago, headin' fer a water-hole

down where Nail Canyon runs into Kanab Canyon. He's so cunnin' he'll

never water at any of our trap corrals. An' we believe he can go

without water fer two weeks, unless mebbe he hes a secret hole we've

never trailed him to."



"Would we have any chance to see this White Mustang and his band?"

questioned Jones.



"See him? Why, thet'd be easy. Go down Snake Gulch, camp at Singin'

Cliffs, go over into Nail Canyon, an' wait. Then send some one slippin'

down to the water-hole at Kanab Canyon, an' when the band cums in to

drink--which I reckon will be in a few days now--hev them drive the

mustangs up. Only be sure to hev them get ahead of the White Mustang,

so he'll hev only one way to cum, fer he sure is knowin'. He never

makes a mistake. Mebbe you'll get to see him cum by like a white

streak. Why, I've heerd thet mustang's hoofs ring like bells on the

rocks a mile away. His hoofs are harder'n any iron shoe as was ever

made. But even if you don't get to see him, Snake Gulch is worth

seein'."



I learned later from Stewart that the White Mustang was a beautiful

stallion of the wildest strain of mustang blue blood. He had roamed the

long reaches between the Grand Canyon and Buckskin toward its southern

slope for years; he had been the most sought-for horse by all the

wranglers, and had become so shy and experienced that nothing but a

glimpse was ever obtained of him. A singular fact was that he never

attached any of his own species to his band, unless they were coal

black. He had been known to fight and kill other stallions, but he kept

out of the well-wooded and watered country frequented by other bands,

and ranged the brakes of the Siwash as far as he could range. The usual

method, indeed the only successful way to capture wild horses, was to

build corrals round the waterholes. The wranglers lay out night after

night watching. When the mustangs came to drink--which was always after

dark--the gates would be closed on them. But the trick had never even

been tried on the White Mustang, for the simple reason that he never

approached one of these traps.



"Boys," said Jones, "seeing we need breaking in, we'll give the White

Mustang a little run."



This was most pleasurable news, for the wild horses fascinated me.

Besides, I saw from the expression on our leader's face that an

uncapturable mustang was an object of interest for him.



Wallace and I had employed the last few warm sunny afternoons in riding

up and down the valley, below Oak, where there was a fine, level

stretch. Here I wore out my soreness of muscle, and gradually overcame

my awkwardness in the saddle. Frank's remedy of maple sugar and red

pepper had rid me of my cold, and with the return of strength, and the

coming of confidence, full, joyous appreciation of wild environment and

life made me unspeakably happy. And I noticed that my companions were

in like condition of mind, though self-contained where I was exuberant.

Wallace galloped his sorrel and watched the crags; Jones talked more

kindly to the dogs; Jim baked biscuits indefatigably, and smoked in

contented silence; Frank said always: "We'll ooze along easy like, for

we've all the time there is." Which sentiment, whether from reiterated

suggestion, or increasing confidence in the practical cowboy, or charm

of its free import, gradually won us all.



"Boys," said Jones, as we sat round the campfire, "I see you're getting

in shape. Well, I've worn off the wire edge myself. And I have the

hounds coming fine. They mind me now, but they're mystified. For the

life of them they can't understand what I mean. I don't blame them.

Wait till, by good luck, we get a cougar in a tree. When Sounder and

Don see that, we've lion dogs, boys! we've lion dogs! But Moze is a

stubborn brute. In all my years of animal experience, I've never

discovered any other way to make animals obey than by instilling fear

and respect into their hearts. I've been fond of buffalo, horses and

dogs, but sentiment never ruled me. When animals must obey, they

must--that's all, and no mawkishness! But I never trusted a buffalo in

my life. If I had I wouldn't be here to-night. You all know how many

keepers of tame wild animals get killed. I could tell you dozens of

tragedies. And I've often thought, since I got back from New York, of

that woman I saw with her troop of African lions. I dream about those

lions, and see them leaping over her head. What a grand sight that was!

But the public is fooled. I read somewhere that she trained those lions

by love. I don't believe it. I saw her use a whip and a steel spear.

Moreover, I saw many things that escaped most observers--how she

entered the cage, how she maneuvered among them, how she kept a

compelling gaze on them! It was an admirable, a great piece of work.

Maybe she loves those huge yellow brutes, but her life was in danger

every moment while she was in that cage, and she knew it. Some day, one

of her pets likely the King of Beasts she pets the most will rise up

and kill her. That is as certain as death."



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