THE GRAY STEER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXI, 19 November 1898, Page 675

THE GRAY STEER.

Twelve hundred feet high is the sun-dial of the Lazy J Ranch, and nearly as broad—that cliff of divers hues which stands out from the wall of the canon of the Grand River. The opposite precipice serves the cowboys as gnomon or index to the hours of day. for its shadow sweeps over the stupendous, variegated face, and marks the course of the sun through a sky that is always unclouded. A ledge of porphyry, fifty feet deep, crowns the dial; often it looks like a strip of pink ribbon to the men below the stream. But it was a glorious coronal, kindling in the first rays from the east, when Holden hailed it with uplifted eye and hand, as he quilted his horse through the barway of the corral. 'Sunup.'' cried Holden, the young foreman, filled with the joy of the morning. He is the son of the president of the cattle company; he had come straight from college to the cow-camp, and the old stroke of the ’varsity eight set a hot pace in saddle for the Lazy J riders.

He rode that morning a big-boned. Roman-nosed, blue roan 'outlaw'—a horse pronounced irreclaimable by the boys; he had tied a bucking roll across the shoulders of his saddle to supplement the grip of his knees, and on top of that lay the big. loose coil of his fiftv-foot cable line, for he was still young' enough to disdain a lariat of lesser length and calibre.

Behind Holden Navajo Jim lifted a light left foot to the stirrup; then his spurred right tripped clinking to the evasive dance of his young horse, and he slipped inimitably into his saddle. To its right shoulder hung the trim coiled ring of his rope of braided rawhide, which, to that of the foreman. was as steel to iron, and would hold anything on hoofs.

Foreman and follower struck out through the greasewood over ground without grass; the grazing range lay high on the mesa, fenced by the lofty wall of the canon. Its seemingly inaccessible height was scaled by the surefooted, agile range cattle at a break in the porphyry ledge not far up the canon, and presently they took to the dizzv trail.

With slack cinches the blowing horses clawed up the loose footing at the top of the break, and moved out on a narrow projecting tongue of the mesa. Still higher the mesa broadened, and was set with squat cedars and pinons. Here the riders saw cattle already chewing their cuds in the shade.

These beasts, ranging free, had taken on some of the habits of deer. Lows and calves and yearlings hung, with the does and fawns, about the lower slopes, while the wild steers ranged with hardly wilder bucks on lhe higher hills. ‘We're too low down. There's nothing here.' said the yow-g foreman, his eyes roving over the stock. ‘lt's beef I'm after. I've got to git a train-load off by the first, and not a hundred steers gathered yet!’

Quaking asp putty good place for steer now.' said Navajo Jim. 'Water sweet there and stampin'- ground close.’ 'Yes. I know,' Holden returned, impatiently. 'The boys started twenty head down yesterday, and had them pointed out for the corral, when that blamed gray steer scattered the bunch, and they broke back for the hills.' 'That gray steer like bull elk. Better corral him with six-shooter,' said Jim. 'One steer not much worth.' 'Six-shooter nothing! What's our ropes for?' cried Holden. 'That big grizzly brute will feten up a whole car-load to the top notch in the stock pens. He goes on hoof to Omaha. I told the boys I'd give a fifty-dollar saddle to the first man that “twined” him and stayed with him.' ‘I already got putty good saddle. Mr Holden,' said Jim. with a grin. 'That steer seven, eight year old now. and all time run wild. Horns so long stick clean through horse.’ ‘Well, beef’s up in the air: horses are down.’ returned the foreman. ■Quirt up, Jim. We'll strike up higher."

On the loftier grazing-ground they found the cattle still at feed. Through thickening hosts of deer-flies and horse flies, their horses strained up the steep oakbrush slopes. In banded resistance to like winged attacks, the cattle of the higher range were beginning to 'bunch' on each open stamping ground. Toward these trampled circles the scattered steers were one by one making their way.

'The boys can run in all these steers to-morrow.' said Holden. ‘You and I. Jim. are going to twine that gray steer to-dav.'

'He got big scare yesterday; too sharp to show up on stampin’-ground to-day." Jim suggested.

‘Like enough.' Holden assented, ‘but we'll rustle him out. The boys lost him late yesterday in the long quak-ing-asp patch in that gulch up there, just below the rim-rock." He pointed to the rim-rock of the spruce ridge, rising yet loftily above them with innumerable aspen gulches and brushy slopes draining down into the side canons. Quickening their horses, they presently rode into the green gloom of the gulch, where the quaking aspens trembled over hidden springs. Here mighty hoof prints dinted deep the mud and the sodden trails. ‘Dere his track, fresh.’ said Jim, stooping from his saddle over a print like a post-hole. 'He lie close somewhere.’ 'We'll put him up.’ said Holden, confidently. ‘And once he shows, stay with him. Jim.’ 'You bet I stay!’ said Jim. simply. They threaded the winding thicket on separate trails, and met near its head without a sight of the gray steer. 'lt's no use looking for him down in here.' said Holden. ‘He's gone up higher. Let's try in the spruce below the rim-rock.’ He led the way upward along the steep, brushy side of the gulch until, stopped by the rim-rock, they sat in their saddles and looked down and back in disappointment. Below them the gulch enclosed the fastness of the deer, a space darkened to twilight by a growth of young spruce and aspen saplings. ‘Maybe he down in those.’ said Jim, with a drop alike of voice and hand. Hide hisself in daytime like blacktail buck.’ ‘But we can’t get into that “pocket” on horses.’ Holden replied loudly, in vexation. Wait! I'll try for him!’ As he spoke, he dismounted to act on a boyish inspiration. He had noticed a big block fallen from the rim-rock, and lying tilted up on the slope. With mighty heaving he overturned it. and down the slope it crashed in smashing leaps through the brush and swaying timber to the very heart of the spruce thicket. Snorts came up from below: Holden marked the course of startled, hurrying creatures by the lines of swaying

tops furrowing the still, green surface. and three gram! bucks sprang out. their horns showing brown in the velvet as they topped the lower brush; but a bearer of mightier horns was breaking through the pliant young trees, and a glimpse of a grizzly hide was exultantly caught by the young foreman. 'Ah. he show up now!’ shouted Navajo Jim. erect in the stirrups, as the great steer came out below. Bred from the finest of the Lazy J stock, he would have weighed near two thousand pounds; but such speed and bottom were hi§ from 'rustling' on that rough range that the big body rose over the brush with the wild grace of a buck, and with deerlike ease his frontlet, black and threatening, was thrown back over his grizzly shoulder as he stopped and eyed his hunters for an instant. One defiant shake of his perfect horns, then he raced onward. and only the bending brush marked his path. Holden was already galloping after him. smashing the undergrowth in a straight course down the slope to intercept him below, shouting as he ran. Jim. with Indian circumspection, ran his horse in an easier descent along the slope, keeping his eyes on the swaying brush beneath, and waiting for an opportunity of closing in more open ground.

Now. Holden's horse, the blue outlaw. showed once more his spirit and his staying power. Shying through the brush, leaping the fallen logs, darting under the leaning trunks, he held so staunchly to the chase that he brought Holden close behind the game. Navajo Jim emerged from the thicket to see the young foreman in full career, swinging his big rope, while the haltered head of the horse and the huge horned frontlet of the steer reached out in an even race across the little open space beyond. The loop of Holden's cable lit fairly over the wide-spread horns; but his hand was hardly quick enough in closing it. While it hung slack the steer leaped with both front legs through it, and then Holden’s tardy jerk brought it tight around the grizzly flanks.

The beast bellowed as the plunge of his great grey body drew the turn of the rope swiftly from the saddle horn. Vainly Holden tried to stay it. Recklessly he threw the slack end in a hitch around the steel horn, and clapping his hand over it braced his horse for the shock.

With fore legs outplanted and quarters lowered the stubborn blue outlaw staunchly set himself to the tightening rope.’ For an instant he was jerked along, stiff-legged, then over they went, dragged down, fierce horse and reckless roper. Clearing his legs, hanging at the side of his struggling horse. Holden still held the saddle horn with powerful grasp. Another bawl, a plunge that no cinches could withstand, and. Io! the saddle was stripped from the outlaw and jerked high and far from Holden’s hand. Navajo Jim checked his horse, but 'On!' roared the young foreman, and on the obedient Indian spurred after the wild steer and the flying saddle. It flapped with wing-like skirts through grass and brush, it rose and fell and rose again as it was jerked over rocks and logs, as it flew before Jim's snorting horse. The great steer seemed scarcely to feel the fifty pound drag of the bumping saddle. Yet it tightened the rope about loin and flanks, and by making it harder for him to breathe so lessened his speed that Jim easily kept him in sight. Through yielding brush and swaying thicket, through bunches of frightened cattle that split to let him pass and came stringing after, bucking and bawling in sympathy, the brute plunged on. Each bawling bunch in turn was distanced. The brushy slopes broke away. As the mesa, sprinkled with pinons. began to offer to Jim smooth spaces for handling his horse, he unbuckled the strap that held the coil of his rope; but still, as every leap of the steer took him the nearer to the corral, the wise Indian only held the rawhide ringed ready in his hand.

Down the rapidly narrowing tongue of the mesa—the mesa which tipped precipitously out into the river gorge and was bounded on either side by an abyss—the trapped steer sped. He must soon be at a standstill or attempt to return on his tracks. The Indian's eyes had already kindled with anticipation of triumph, when

at the last of the pinons. the bumping, hurtling saddle caught fast between projecting roots. It scarcely checked the steer. Holden's cable tore loose from the saddle horn, ami its slackened loop was speedily kicked from the steer's high-plunging haunches. Once more the great brute was free. 'Ah. he on the push now.' said Jim. and looked to his loop as the steer reversed his big body, gave a high, writhing leap over the spurned rope, confronted the herder with the threatening crescent of his sharp horns, and plunged forward to the combat. The Navajo lifted his horse aside with the spurs, swung the loop open in his right hand, and rose, half-turn-ed in the stirrups, in a quick underthrow for the front hoofs of the steer as he lunged by. Jim's eyes saw for an instant, lowered horns and uplifted hoofs mingled together, and his throw was true. But so quick was the play of the ponderous feet that the loop caught one foreleg only, and passed over the face ami hung across the horns. The loop, drawn tight by the roper's instantaneous jerk and kept from slacking by his nimble horse, bound horn and hoof together. Now the steer was in a sad plight. With head drawn sidewise, with tongue lolling from open jaws, bellowing, he surged on three legs; but his spirit was unbroken. The roper slowed his horse to the strain. From horn to cantie the saddle creaked, as. trampling ami tugging in a wild, wide waltz, straining horse and hauling steer made the mad circuit of the precipices. The Navajo, active in the saddle with rein, spur and rope, was, in spite of all his efforts, dragged past the break where the trail ran down the slope. His horse, always straining desperately. was tugged on and on until he circled along the perilous porphyry brink, and Jim glanced longingly from the saddle on the corral, seemingly almost directly beneath him. its great square shrunk to the measure ot his saddle blanket. Holden, pounding down bareback on the blue roan, had stopped to gather up his rope, but now Jim heard his encouraging shout. The quickened tramp of his rushing horse, the whirring of his big rope as he swung it aloft, sounded close at hand, and'the sweating roper relaxed his strain. The steer, alert to the slack, jerked his hoof from the loop. Heedless of the cutting rope, instantly tightened across face and frontlet.' his stately head was lifted and he stood, wildeyed, quivering, cornered, caught but not conquered. He was on four legs again. Conquered? Never! With resistless pull on the rope he wheeled and broke for escape across the cliff that rises, red-banded, above the corral.’ ‘Stay with him. Jim!' roared the young foreman, swinging his rope, sure the steer would stop at the edge. Stay with him? It meant death, surely. Already under the plunging front hoofs of the desperate rebel the porphyry rim crumbled. Jim's obedience did not falter, although he was fairly staring down on the corral. How would the falling feel? The Indian had a swift picture of it —the steer lowest in the air on the taut lariat, horse and man whirling after—but Navajo Jim set his savage jaws. No foreman should dare him to stay with a roped beast. He would not look on the faces of white ropers sneering. He was hired body and soul —he was obedient—he would stay. Holden, for this mad second, watched incredulously. The steer would not go over—surely not. What? Straight on! And Jim! Was the man also crazy? Then the Navajo heard onee more his master's voice. 'For God's sake, Jim—let go! Oh. heaven!’ Jim obeyed. He flung loose the rope, but on his horse staggered. And the black length of the lariat was still whipping out with the defiant horned head that pitched off into space when the agile horse saved himself ami his rider on the very brink. Holden dropped his useless rope as the Navajo, skimming the porphvrv edge like a swallow, rode back and stared into the eyes of the white man. 'He was brave, that steer.' said Jim. with a queer choke in his throat. He saved himself from the stock pens.' Holden held out his hand ami grasped the Indian's. 'You beat my time. Jim,* was all he said, but something in the tone called a new pride into the Navajo's stern face. FRANK OAKLING.