30,000 On the Hoof (29 page)

"Doggone my pictures! George and Grant have pestered me. And now you womenfolk! Now what's..."

"Hello!--Riders coming lickitty cut down the road," interrupted Abe.

"Luke Flesher and that cowboy who used to ride for Mooney."

"Yes, that's Luke... Something is up," rejoined Logan.

The horsemen reached the corral and reined their sweaty mounts. Lucinda knew Flesher to be a neighbour down the road. He doffed his sombrero to her and Barbara. The cowboy hung back a little, shy and silent.

"Howdy, Huett, an' you fellers," called Flesher, with flashing, tawny eyes upon them. His sallow visage showed strong excitement "Bet you my house you haven't heahed the news."

"Howdy, Luke... What makes you reckon we haven't heard the news?" returned Huett, curiously.

Abe leaned over the wall. George and Grant came striding up.

"Wal, if you had you'd shore not be layin' that wall," retorted Flesher, with a short laugh.

"No? It takes a heap to throw me off a job."

"Huett, cattle are sellin' at forty dollars on the hoof, an' going up."

"What?" boomed the rancher, his tanned face suddenly going red.

"Yes, what! But that ain't nothin' at all... United States has declared war on Germany!"

In the blank pregnant silence that ensued Flesher lighted a cigarette, while his keen, hard eyes studied the effect of his terrible announcement. For an instant Lucinda was concerned with a blinding shock to her consciousness. Then she saw Logan sit back utterly confounded.

Under Abe's dark, clear skin worked a miracle of change. George greeted the news with a ringing whoop. Grant stood transfixed and quivering.

Barbara's strong, sweet face turned pearly white.

"That was three days ago," went on Flesher. "I was in town before the wires came. Course everybody was het-up about the Boches sinkin' the Lusitania with hundreds of Americans on board. France is licked. England is licked. An' if the good old U. S. don't step in, to hell with democracy an' freedom! Germany shore has her eye on America. All the same, when the news came, Flagg went loco. Arizona is buzzin' like a nest of mad yellow-jackets. The draft is cumin' for able-bodied young men between twenty-one and thirty."

"Draft!... What's that?" queried Logan, huskily.

"Government order forcin' all fit young men to train for war... But a good many cowboys an' other fellers are not waitin' on the draft. They're enlistin'. Jack Campbell was the first."

That information appeared to sting Logan. He might as well have boomed out that if his sons had known, they would have been the first.

"My sons will not wait for the draft," he said stiffly.

"Good! There'll shore be a hell of a lot of speculation on how many Huns yore Abe will bore. Haw! haw! haw!... Arizona will send a regiment of riders an' shots that couldn't be beat nowhere... Wal, Huett, heah's the papers I was commissioned to give you. I've been ridin' all over to the outlyin' ranchers in the woods. Don't like the job. Shore falls tough on women. I'm sorry, Mrs. Huett, to have to tell you an' Miss Barbara. But it strikes into every home... We must be mozyin' on."

"Wait," called Logan, as Flesher gathered up his reins.

"Are the Babbitts holding on to their stock?"

"They are not--an' cussin' themselves blue in the face. Sold out for thirty-three dollars a haid."

"Well!--Who's buying?"

"Stockmen in Kansas City and Chicago. Speculators. Big cattle barons.

Stock movin' this last ten days. Santa Fe have wired for all available freight cars. Everybody figurin' that the Government will begin to buy beef an' hides."

"They'll shove the price up?"

"Sky-high, Huett. You want to be in on this. How much stock you runnin'?"

"I reckon--thirty thousand head," returned Logan, swallowing hard.

"Dad, the count will be more this spring," interposed George.

"My Gawd!" ejaculated the astonished Flesher. "Ain't you settin' pretty?

Hang on, Huett, but not too long."

Then the visitors wheeled their horses and made off up the road at a gallop. The Huetts did not soon rouse out of their trance. Lucinda felt herself to be a part of the stone wall upon which she leaned, numb, halted, dead except in her consciousness which was a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts.

Logan tumbled the stone off his knee that he had forgotten was there.

"Sons, we'll never finish this corral," he said, loud and clear. "We leave for town at once... George, get out your car. Luce, you and Bab pack pronto. Abe, you and Grant rustle with the wagon."

Grant ran off with thudding boots. But Abe had not heard. He fixed a strained, soft gaze from his wonderful grey eyes upon Barbara. She saw only him.

"Bab, will you--marry me--at once?" he asked trenchantly.

"Oh--yes--Abe!" she cried. A radiant transfixed face attested to joy that overcame grief. Abe took her hand and put an arm around her. They forgot the others. Lucinda walked behind, leaving Logan by his unfinished stone corral.

Lucinda's perceptions magnified to startling clear and vivid reactions.

She saw that a profound and tremendous excitement had seized upon her family, stultifying, inhibiting, blinding them to the incredible and insupportable truth. Her husband, after thirty years of the poverty and toil of a galley-slave, saw suddenly the grand rainbow of his dreams looming before him in an arch of gold. His sons would not wait to be drafted! Those sons, reared in the wilderness, red-blooded and virile as savages, to whom the world and cities and ships and armies had been but names, had rudely been shocked into a passion of patriotism, had had flashed before their serene vision the kaleidoscopic train of great scenes, of brilliant images, of the glory of adventure, of the romance of war. As for Barbara, she had been staggered, and before her sensitive soul had grasped the significance of this catastrophe, love with its fulfilment, with the wifehood delayed so long, closed her mind for the time to all but the tumultuous truth.

But upon Lucinda descended the doom of the mother. She thought of her sons. She remembered the travail of their birth. She saw them from the beautiful moment to this fatal hour. They were a part of her flesh and blood, of her spirit; the inexplicable dread that had weighed upon her for months gathered strength, yet never clarified its sinister meaning.

The tall pines, black and old, moaned with the old voice that had been a bane to her all her life there; the looming walls, grey and silent, looked down upon her in pitiless knowledge of her plight.

Presently entering the cabin with this burden, Lucinda was plunged into the vortex of her family's wild excitement. Logan was a young man again.

George and Grant raved like two boys upset by prospect of an adventure too grand to grasp. Abe had got no farther than his marriage to Barbara.

And Barbara, her eyes like stars, her thought and emotion meeting those of her lifelong playmate and sweetheart, ran and packed and laughed without realizing her eyes were wet with tears.

"Folks, pack all your things and throw them into the wagon," said Logan.

"We're leaving Sycamore for good. I'll keep the ranch... We'll come back for a visit every fall, when the leaves colour and the deer take on their blue coats... At last--by God!... Thirty thousand head and more!... Forty dollars and going up!"

George drove the old Ford at a speed that would have appalled Lucinda during a less poignant time. She sat in the front seat with Barbara and held on tightly. The back of the car was loaded full with their baggage.

Every familiar landmark along the road gave Lucinda a pang. Barbara laughed at every bump. She saw something beautiful, but not along the road. It never crossed George's absorbed mind that he might be passing the entrance to Sycamore Canyon for the last time, and Turkey Flat and Cedar Ridge. He never saw them at all.

For once the Huetts did not stop at Mormon Lake. Lucinda saw with pity the run-down ranch of the Holberts, and she thought sadly of their disintegration, and the old man still living there, waiting for the prodigal son who would never come back.

It was dark when George ended the drive with a grand rattling flourish in front of Wetherington's Hotel. He engaged rooms, stored the baggage, and took Lucinda and Barbara to supper. Afterwards they went out. The main street was bright with lights and thronged with people. Cowboys in groups jangled their spurs along the sidewalks. They had heated faces and eyes that flashed.

"Kinda like July Fourth, circus day, fiesta, and Saturday night all messed up," said George. "Everybody going some place but don't know where!"

"Take us to the motion-pictures," entreated Barbara.

They went. The big, barnlike hall was crowded with a noisy, motley crowd of cowboys and lumbermen. When Lucinda's eyes grew accustomed to the dim light she saw a sprinkling of girls all over the theatre. It seemed full of a charged atmosphere. Before the regular picture came on there were shown comic features, and then a kind of bulletin of war news and Government propaganda, the first of which elicited roars of mirth from the audience, and the second drew a fearful din of stamping boots, shrill whistles, and wild whoops. Lucinda felt the surge of feeling that was rampant. She wept over a screen drama which at a normal hour would have been as nauseous as sawdust.

After the show they squeezed out of the theatre, merging with the stream of excited humanity. Cowboys sidled up to Barbara and made bold advances.

One of them said: "Sweetheart, I'm goin' to fight the Huns for you. Come out an' play with me." Barbara appeared bewildered, but not angry. George laughed at the cowboys, and placed Barbara between him and Lucinda.

"Town wide open. Everything goes. Bab, I reckon you'd better not run around alone."

"Oh, I can take care of myself. I like it."

But Lucinda probed deeper. She guessed a laxity, a levity, a hurried, audacious, haunting something in the crowd of young people. She had never known there were so many girls in and around Flagg. She had never seen them so unreserved, so silly, giggling, flirting, brazen. The old-time western girls, except the dance-hall type and the street-walkers, had been noted for their poise, their dignity, but these virtues seemed gone.

Something had let loose. The rows of saloons fronting the railroad were thronged with cowboys. Lucinda was relieved and Barbara disappointed when George took them back to the hotel. Lucinda closed weary eyes on Barbara preening herself before the mirror, listening to the strange hum in the street.

Next morning Lucinda awoke to the tasks at hand. After breakfast she and Barbara called upon Mrs. Hardy to ask about a furnished house to rent.

That worthy friend did not know of one and could not help them. She talked volubly about her son Joe, who had gone to France and was flying an airplane in the famed Lafayette Escadrille. Lucinda could not understand the woman's pride, or Barbara's shining-eyed wonder!

Mr. Al Doyle, an old friend of Logan's whom they met on the street, directed them to a house that was to be had for renting. It had just become vacant, but would not be so for long, The town was full, the landlord said. Lucinda took it, mainly for the cosy sitting-room with open fireplace, which she knew Logan would like when the cold nights came. Flagg stood at a high altitude and had bitter winters.

Lucinda sent Barbara down town to purchase many needed things for the house, while she set to work to clean the place and make it comfortable.

George came presently with the baggage.

"This shack will do for the present, Maw," he said. "But when Dad sells out you can afford the swellest house in town."

Lucinda could not accustom herself to the idea that they were rich and could afford everything. George moved furniture about, stowed the baggage where Lucinda wanted it, then drove down town for Barbara's purchases. By nightfall they were comfortable, but George dragged them down town to supper, and again to the movies. This was a Saturday night, and for noise, crowd, hilarity, and a wild clinging of young men and women, eclipsed anything Lucinda had ever seen.

"When will Abe get in?" asked Barbara, for the hundredth time.

"I reckon to-morrow sure, maybe early," replied George.

"Hope so... Mother," he hesitated a moment. "Did I tell you I--I passed A

Number One?"

"Passed! What?"

"Why, the army examination for soldiers."

"Ah--I see," murmured Lucinda, so low she was scarcely heard.

"Grant is as fit as I am," went on George. "And, of course, Abe could pass anything... Grant and I want to go into the Cavalry or, if not that, the Light Artillery. Anything with horses!

"What'll Abe go in for?" asked Barbara, tensely.

"He wants to be a sharpshooter, like Dad's father was in the Civil War... God help the Huns that Abe draws a bead on!"

Lucinda thought there would be many beside the Germans in need of God's help. Mothers--Wives--sweethearts deserted! Men had always, from the remote aboriginal days, loved to fight. But it was the women who bore sons, and therefore the brunt of war. In that moment Lucinda regretted the lapse of her religion after her marriage to Logan. She had to face her soul now, and perhaps some day the final sacrifice of a mother, and she needed God.