The Rawhide

: THE RAWHIDE
: Arizona Nights

First of all he unhitched the horses from the buckboard and turned them

loose. Then, since he was early trained in Indian warfare, he dragged

Palmer to the wagon wheel, and tied him so closely to it that he could

not roll over. For, though the bronco-buster was already so fettered

that his only possible movement was of the jack-knife variety,

nevertheless he might be able to hitch himself along the ground to a

sharp tone, there to saw through the rope about his wrists. Estrella,

her husband held in contempt. He merely supplemented her wrist bands

by one about the ankles.



Leisurely he mounted Button and turned up the wagon trail, leaving the

two. Estrella had exhausted herself. She was capable of nothing more

in the way of emotion. Her eyes tight closed, she inhaled in deep,

trembling, long-drawn breaths, and exhaled with the name of her Maker.



Brent Palmer, on the contrary, was by no means subdued. He had

expected to be shot in cold blood. Now he did not know what to

anticipate. His black, level brows drawn straight in defiance, he

threw his curses after Johnson's retreating figure.



The latter, however, paid no attention. He had his purposes. Once at

the top of the arroyo he took a careful survey of the landscape, now

rich with dawn. Each excrescence on the plain his half-squinted eyes

noticed, and with instant skill relegated to its proper category of

soap-weed, mesquite, cactus. At length he swung Button in an easy lope

toward what looked to be a bunch of soap-weed in the middle distance.



But in a moment the cattle could be seen plainly. Button pricked up

his ears. He knew cattle. Now he proceeded tentatively, lifting high

his little hoofs to avoid the half-seen inequalities of the ground and

the ground's growths, wondering whether he were to be called on to rope

or to drive. When the rider had approached to within a hundred feet,

the cattle started. Immediately Button understood that he was to

pursue. No rope swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran as

fast as he could to cut ahead of the bunch. But his rider with knee

and rein forced him in. After a moment, to his astonishment, he found

himself running alongside a big steer. Button had never hunted

buffalo--Buck Johnson had.



The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again. The steer staggered,

fell to his knees, recovered, and finally stopped, the blood streaming

from his nostrils. In a moment he fell heavily on his side--dead.



Senor Johnson at once dismounted and began methodically to skin the

animal. This was not easy for he had no way of suspending the carcass

nor of rolling it from side to side. However, he was practised at it

and did a neat job. Two or three times he even caught himself taking

extra pains that the thin flesh strips should not adhere to the inside

of the pelt. Then he smiled grimly, and ripped it loose.



After the hide had been removed he cut from the edge, around and

around, a long, narrow strip. With this he bound the whole into a

compact bundle, strapped it on behind his saddle, and remounted. He

returned to the arroyo.



Estrella still lay with her eyes closed. Brent Palmer looked up

keenly. The bronco-buster saw the green hide. A puzzled expression

crept across his face.



Roughly Johnson loosed his enemy from the wheel and dragged him to the

woman. He passed the free end of the riata about them both, tying them

close together. The girl continued to moan, out of her wits with

terror.



"What are you going to do now, you devil?" demanded Palmer, but

received no reply.



Buck Johnson spread out the rawhide. Putting forth his huge strength,

he carried to it the pair, bound together like a bale of goods, and

laid them on its cool surface. He threw across them the edges, and

then deliberately began to wind around and around the huge and unwieldy

rawhide package the strip he had cut from the edge of the pelt.



Nor was this altogether easy. At last Brent Palmer understood. He

writhed in the struggle of desperation, foaming blasphemies. The

uncouth bundle rolled here and there. But inexorably the other, from

the advantage of his position, drew the thongs tighter.



And then, all at once, from vituperation the bronco-buster fell to

pleading, not for life, but for death.



"For God's sake, shoot me!" he cried from within the smothering folds

of the rawhide. "If you ever had a heart in you, shoot me! Don't

leave me here to be crushed in this vise. You wouldn't do that to a

yellow dog. An Injin wouldn't do that, Buck. It's a joke, isn't it?

Don't go away and leave me, Buck. I've done you dirt. Cut my heart

out, if you want to; I won't say a word, but don't leave me here for

the sun--"



His voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to

herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her an

occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch it

without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment with

it. The terror of her doom had now added to it for her all the vague

and premonitory terrors which heretofore she had not understood.



The richness of the dawn had flowed to the west. Day was at hand.

Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind devils to raise

their straight columns. A first long shaft of sunlight shot through a

pass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the dust-moted air, and laid its

warmth on the rawhide. Senor Johnson roused himself from his gloom to

speak his first words of the episode.



"There, damn you!" said he. "I guess you'll be close enough together

now!"



He turned away to look for his horse.