30,000 on the Hoof

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Zane Grey (1940)
Country of origin: USA
Available texts by the same author here

Chapter 10

   Logan Huett took no stock of the passing years. He did not count them, but he saw his sons grow into tall, broad-shouldered, small-hipped, round-limbed riders, lean-jawed men, with intent clear eyes and still, tanned faces. He saw them grow into the hunters and cowboys he had vowed to make them when they were little boys tumbling about the green bench with their pets. George was the born cattleman, Abe the woodsman, the keenest tracker, the best shot in that section of Arizona. Grant became the cowboy, the hardest rider, the most unerring roper from the Cibeque to the railroad.
   Likewise, and with almost as great satisfaction, Huett saw his little band of carefully guarded and nourished cattle grow into the nucleus of a herd. He counted them from calving time to the snows, and from the first white fall to the thaw in spring--jealously, morosely, sorrowfully in lean years, hopefully in those seasons that favoured him.
   In the same terms he saw and counted the new homesteaders, the settlers that drifted in, the cattlemen who opened up the wide range from Mormon Lake to Flagg, the squatters who located at a spring or water-hole, to eke out a bare, miserable existence in log shacks, always looking towards making a stake out of their water-rights. Nor did Huett miss any of the men who drifted in to make their homes back in the great forest. They lived on meat and beans, holed up in the winter, rode the trails in other seasons, and idled away fruitless hours in a few little hamlets that sprang up across the vast rangeland.
   Huett's failure for so many years was due to a one-man fight against too many obstacles. As his sons grew up, this condition imperceptibly diminished until it was overcome. If any one factor more than another contributed to this victory, it was the winter trapping of fur-bearing animals. But Huett developed his farm. This and the sale of pelts provided them with a living while his herd slowly grew.
   His habits of restless energy and indomitable purpose were transmitted to his sons. They were Logan Huett all over again. And as the bitter ordeal of the past years gradually faded and he saw the physical manifestations of his vision take shape before his eyes, he touched happiness almost as great as his pride in his boys.
   One late afternoon in the early spring Huett returned from the corrals to the cabin. His wife and Barbara had put the dining-table out on the porch for the first time that season, perhaps a little too early, considering the cool evenings But Huett liked to eat out where he could see the gar. den, the alfalfa, the pasture, and the cattle dotting the long valley.
   Abe had just come down from the rim, and stood leaning on his rifle talking to George and Grant. In buckskins, compared to the blue-jeaned, high-booted garb of his brothers, he appeared shorter, but the fact was that he equalled them in lithe six-foot manhood.
   "Dad, here's good news," spoke up' George, his intent eyes alight. "Abe trailed that bunch of wild horses down into the head of Three Spring Draw."
   "Ahuh. Well, he's always trailing something," replied Huett, with a laugh. "But what of it?"
   "We can drive them down into the canyon."
   "Trap them," added Grant, eagerly.
   "It could be done, if they're in that draw. I reckon, though, during the night they'll work out."
   Abe said he did not think so. Below the brakes of that ravine it opened out into a sunny park where the snow melted off early, and the young shoots of grass had come up rich and green. Abe recalled that once before he had seen wild horses down there.
   "How many of them?" asked Huett, becoming fired with possibilities.
   "Big drove. I saw a hundred head. Some fine stock. There's a blue roan stallion in that bunch I'd like to catch."
   "Well, I reckon if we trapped them we'd have a hell of a time catching them."
   "But, Dad, they could never climb out of the canyon. And it'll be a long time before our herd grows so big as to need all the grass."
   "Dad, it's sure a windfall of luck," put in George. "We need horses. We could cut out some of the best, catch them, break them. Breed them, too."
   "What's your plan, Abe?" asked Huett, convinced.
   "You go down the canyon in the morning, at daybreak, and tear down that pole fence half-way up the draw. We'll ride on top, spread out and roll rocks off the rim. Then we'll pile down the several trails, yelling and shooting. I'll bet the whole bunch will break for the canyon."
   "Supper's waiting, father," called Barbara, who stood by the table listening.
   "All right, Barbara, I'll be there pronto," he called gaily. "Fetch me a little hot water. I've got axle-grease on my hands."
   She brought it and stood by while he washed his hands. "Father, that's great--Abe's tracking wild horses into the draw, isn't it?"
   "Yes, Barbara, it sure is. I reckon our luck has changed. A bunch of fine horses, all at once--almost too good to be true."
   "Buck is old and lame now," went on Barbara. "He ought to be turned loose for good."
   "He's sure earned it...Barbara, I reckon what makes your eyes so bright is the chance for a new horse for you, eh?"
   "Oh, yes, I'd love to have one of my own," replied Barbara.
   Her earnest feeling touched Huett in that old sore spot--the poignant fact of his failure to give his loved ones the comforts, the pleasures, the rare luxuries which made life so much easier and happier. He had known some of these when a boy. Lucinda had never been without them until she came to him. And he had always shared her conviction that Barbara had come of fine stock, whatever the fatality and tragedy of her childhood.
   "Abe, this girl Barbara is raving about a wild mustang broken for her," he said, a little huskily.
   "Barbara, you shall have two and take your pick," replied Abe, with a warm, soft glow in his grey eyes.
   "Oh, grand!" she cried, ecstatically. "May I go with you to drive the wild horses down?"
   "Aw now, ask me an easy one," said Abe, regretfully. "Babs, you're good on a horse, but this drive will take awful hard riding. Suppose you go with Dad. You can help him tear down the fence, then, get back out of the way and watch those wild horses pile by out into the canyon. Watch for that blue roan stallion!"
   "Come to supper," called Lucinda, impatiently. "It's get; Ling cold."
   Logan straddled the crude deerskin-covered bench and sat down to the table that was likewise the work of his hands, It was laden with good wholesome food. He and his sons were too hungry to talk. The shades of the spring dusk fell upon them there.
   Before daylight the next morning Logan arose, scraped the red coals out of the ashes and started a fire. He put the kettle on. Then he called Barbara.
   "I'll be right down," she replied. "I heard you get up."
   "Boil some coffee. And butter sow biscuits. We might not get back in time for breakfast. I'll go milk--then saddle up."
   It was dark outside and coyotes were wailing over the ridge. The lofty pines stood up black and still. Logan heard the boys coming in with the horses. He went out, to find Buck and his steed saddled and haltered to the corral fence. Faint streaks of grey shone in the east, while the morning air was cold and raw. He could hear wild turkeys calling sleepily from their roost up in the forest. Returning, Logan found the boys had preceded him to the cabin. Barbara, clad in overalls and boots, looking like a lithe, sturdy boy with a pretty brown face, was serving them with coffee and biscuits.
   "Good! I reckoned you'd better have a snack of grub," said Logan, as they greeted him. "What's the deal, sons?"
   "Dad, you'd better rustle," replied Abe. "We'll be at the head of Three Springs by sunrise."
   "Don't worry, Abraham. We'll have a hole in that fence."
   It was grey dawn when Logan set out riding down the canyon with Barbara. Five miles down the walled valley spread widest and then began to close in again. The walls grew more rugged and opened up with intersecting canyons'--or draws, the boys called them. The gorge called Three' Springs Draw was as deceiving as any ramification of this strange valley. Its opening appeared like a shallow cove in the east wall, but the inside soon spread out into a large area of grassy parks, groves of pine and maple, and thickets of oak. The fence of poles crossed the narrow neck between the open oval valley and the rough-timbered, rock-strewn gorge beyond.
   "Reckon this is a good place," said Logan, dismounting. "Barbara, pile off and tie Buck back-a-ways. Wild horses have a peculiar effect upon tame horses. Abe says a tame horse gone wild is almost impossible to catch...You climb on that fiat rock. You can see everything from there and be safe."
   "All right, that'll be jake," returned Barbara. "But can't I help you take down the fence?"
   "Sure, and let's rustle. Abe will be letting out that Indian yell of his pronto. That'll be their signal."
   Barbara did not have her, wide shoulders and strong arms for nothing. She had done her share of the Huett labours. Logan found a strong satisfaction in watching her. How well he remembered Lucinda's pride in Barbara's good looks, which some time got the better of Lucinda's need of help. Barbara always wore gloves for heavy work, and Lucinda worried too much about sun and dirt. Logan was always amused at these evidences of Lucinda's lingering vanity. For his part he thought Barbara a pretty girl, and what was better, good, obedient, and lovable, who would make some settler as wonderful a wife as was Lucinda. But that last thought always worried Logan. He did not want to lose Barbara.
   The pole fence was a makeshift affair, strong enough, but neither nailed nor wired, and it was so easily pushed over that Logan quickly saw the need of a new one.
   "Oh--listen!" cried Barbara, suddenly, dropping the pole she had carried to one side.
   On the instant a piercing yell rang down from the heights. It was Abe's call which he always used when they were hunting the canyons. In the early, still morning, with the air cold and clear, the prolonged bugle note pealed down, to rebound with a clapping sound from wall to wall, to wind across the canyon and die in hollow echo.
   "Wonderful!" cried Barbara. "Hasn't Abe a voice?"
   "Yells like an Indian," replied Logan, with enthusiasm. "Get up on your rock now. I'll answer. Then you'll hear some thunder."
   Logan cupped his hands round his mouth, drew a deer breath, and expelled it in a stentorian: "Wa--hoo-o!"
   His yell let loose a thousand weird and hollow echoes. Logan went back to have another look at the haltered horses; then he returned to mount the rock beside Barbara. He had scarcely sat down when from high up and far away a rock crashed from the rim, to start a rattling slide. It had scarcely ceased when a like sound came from the other side of the canyon.
   "If I remember right there's a rocky weathered wall just at the head of Three Springs," said Logan. "A big rock rolled there will start an avalanche. The boys do that when they hunt bears. You bet if there are any bears below they come piling out...By golly! I forgot my rifle. It wouldn't be so much fun if an old grizzly got routed out up there and came rumbling down here."
   "I'll shinny up that tree," replied Barbara, gaily.
   "Daughter, I'm a little heavy to run or shinny up trees...There!"
   "Oh my!" shrilled Barbara.
   Thunder had burst under the rim. A sliding rattle soon drowned heavy crashes and thuds, until it swelled into a deep booming roar that filled the canyon. It was a tremendous sound that took moments to lose its power to lessen and end in rattling slides and cracking rocks.
   "Golly! Wasn't that a noise!!" ejaculated Logan.
   "Terrible. But oh, so thrilling!"
   "Barbara, every four-legged animal up that draw will run wild down here. The boys won't need to waste their ammunition shooting or their voices either...Look! Deer coming."
   "Oh! How strangely they bound! As if on springs. But so graceful...There's a fawn..."
   "Barbara, I hear the trample of hoofs. Stampede! That's the sound to thrill me. Horses or cattle it's all the same."
   "Look, Dad!--Flashing through the brush--under the trees--white, red, brown, black!...Look! Wild horses!"
   Logan saw them burst out of the timber and yelled his delight. A wild, shaggy drove of mustangs, long manes and tails flying, poured out of the draw like a flood. The vanguard passed Logan and Barbara in a cloud of dust, so swiftly as to be obscured from clear view, but this body was followed by strings of horses and then stragglers that could be seen distinctly. Logan discerned many a clean-limbed, racy mustang that if well-broken would sell at a good price. His thrifty, eager mind grasped at that. But Barbara was squealing over the beauty of this sorrel and that bay or buckskin. Suddenly Ale tugged at Logan.
   "Look, Dad, look! Abe's blue stallion!...Did you ever see such a beautiful horse. 'Wild! Oh, he could never be tamed."
   "Gosh, but he's a thoroughbred," returned Logan. "Lamed himself a little. Reckon that accounts for him being behind...Bab, I'm afraid there's a horse Abe wouldn't give you."
   "Abe would give me anything in the world," cried Barbara, her voice rich and sweet. "They're gone, Dad, out into the canyon. How many altogether?"
   "Eighty or a hundred head. And I'll bet half of them good for something. This is not a bad morning's work!"
   "Isn't that a bear?" queried Barbara, pointing up "On the ledge--above the clump of firs...Yes, it's a nice big shiny black bear."
   "Sure is. Wish I had my gun."
   "I don't. Dad, I never forgot my bear cubs. Oh, why did they have to grow up, to be nuisances to you? Never to me!"
   "Bab, your bears got too big. But it sure was interesting--the way they refused at first to go back to the wild and kept coming home...That fellow, though, never belonged to you. He's part cinnamon. See the red shine on him in the sun...Wow! the boys are shooting at him. Listen to the bullets crack on the rocks. Must be shooting at long range."
   "Oh, I hope he gets away," cried Barbara.
   "There he piles off the ledge, out of sight in the brush. When a bear runs downhill like that he's safe, Bab, even from as wonderful a shot as Abe."
   Logan got off the rock to begin putting up the fence. While he was at this task George and Grant rode out of the draw, and came trotting up to Barbara, gay and excited over their successful venture.
   "Hello, Babs," called Grant, as he leaped off, to brush the pine needles and bits of wood from his person. "Did you hear the rocks rolling? Wasn't that slide Abe started a humdinger of a roar?--Did you see the wild horses?"
   "Grant, it was all wonderful," replied Barbara, her eyes fixed eagerly upon the draw.
   The boys set to work helping Logan with the fence. By the time Abe rode out of the timber they had completed the job, at least to Logan's satisfaction.
   "Paw, it's not high enough," said Abe. "Some of those wild horses would jump it. We'll cut some more poles and snake out some stumps. Build up the low places. Then we'll have them corralled."
   "Abe, it was a slick job," said Logan, admiringly. "Talk about a windfall!"
   "Funny how I hated to start that big slide. Guess I got soft-hearted at the last...Barbara, what do you think?"
   "Abe, those wild horses will be safer, happier, shut up in our canyon...And I picked out two...Oh, we saw your blue stallion. He was a little lame. Prettiest horse I ever saw, Abe."
   "Do you want him?" asked Abe, his eyes shining on her.
   "I wouldn't be mean enough to take him," she replied.
   George rode into the timber to drag out stumps. Grant walked off with the axe. Abe sat his horse watching Barbara with that slight pensive smile upon his tanned face. Logan found a seat to rest upon while the boys fetched more materials to raise the fence. He felt unusually exhilarated. Abe had solved the horse problem for some time to come. Nearer and nearer crept the actuality of that vision of years.
   "Sons," said Logan Huett, to his boys, "our hay is cut and stored. The corn and beans can wait. We've a hundred sacks of potatoes to haul to town. That leaves us the big job. Driving cattle in to sell!--The first time in twenty years I--By God, I can't believe it!"
   "Dad, we could have sold quite a bunch last year, but you wouldn't," rejoined George.
   "I hadn't the nerve...Boys, we'll cut out all our old cows that haven't calved, and the steers, and throw them into the pasture to-night...Your mother and Barbara will go with me on the wagon. We'll leave at daybreak. I'll wait for you at Turkey Flat. Next day we'll camp from there."
   Two hours later the boys had Huett's herd bunched under the wall in the west side of the canyon. Those several hundred head of cattle, that had appeared so few down on the wide range, now, When bunched and milling, raising the dust and bawling, appeared to Huett an imposing and all-satisfying spectacle. They were the beginning of a great herd.
   He rode out to meet the boys and have his share in the roundup. Lucinda came out to watch. Barbara, astride her spirited little buckskin mustang, flashed here and there to drive stragglers back into the bunch.
   "Logan Huett, you're holding a round-up," soliloquized the rancher. "Kick yourself and wake up. The most important move on a cattleman's range is about to take place for the first time in Sycamore Canyon."
   He reined his horse beside the corral fence upon which Lucinda had climbed to see.
   "Luce, look at your sons. Cowboys!" he exclaimed, with a thrill that was communicated to his voice. "Isn't that a grand sight?"
   "Dear, I--I can't see very well," faltered his wife.
   "What you crying for, Luce? Didn't I always tell you the day would come?...Look at Barbara ride!"
   "She'll kill herself on that wild pony...Oh, Logan, need she be like the boys?"
   "Lucinda, she can't be anything but what you made her--the finest girl west of the Rockies."
   "Logan!" He saw her eyes shine through her tears. "Do you really mean that?"
   "I sure do, wife. Let her ride."
   He joined his sons and lent his big voice and his tireless energy to this task--the happiest and most important that had ever been undertaken on his range.
   Yet, buoyant as they all were, they addressed themselves to that task with intense seriousness.
   The herd was not by any means tame. Crowded into the triangle under the wall, with one corral fence preventing escape from the other side, they milled around like a maelstrom, bawling loudly, knocking heads and horns together. Barbara had the swiftest riding to do, as her job was to overtake those that ran out of the circle, and drive them inside the pasture gate. Logan helped Abe cut out the cows and steers designated by George, whose job of selection was the one of great responsibility. Grant had to rope the cattle that could not be cut out of the herd, and drag them from the melee. He was left-handed, but extraordinarily unerring with a lasso. He could pitch a small loop over the horns of a steer that was fenced all about by a forest of horns, as well as throw clear across the herd and fasten it to a steer plunging out on the opposite side.
   Logan revelled in the round-up. The sharp calls of the boys, Barbara's high-pitched cry, the pound of hoofs and grind of horns, the coarse bawls of the steers, the swaying, straining mill of the whole herd, the dry, acrid smell of rising dust, and the swift horses, running in, halting on a pivot, to wheel and hold hard--these were music and sweetness and incense to the longing ambition of Logan Huett.
   At length George called the count.
   "Eighty-seven--and that's aplenty," he announced. "Dad, cattle were selling at thirty dollars on the hoof last spring. They'll fetch more now. What'll you do with all that money?"
   "Lord--son," panted Logan, wiping his grimy face, "after I square myself with your mother and you all, not forgetting Barbara, I'll not have enough left to pay my debts...But, by thunder, once in our lives we'll ride high and handsome."
   "Whoopee!" yelled George and Grant in unison. Abe bent thoughtful eyes upon the glowing Barbara.
   "Luce, now supper and to bed," shouted Logan. "We'll be on our way before sun-up."
   The snail's-pace drive was not too slow for Logan. It could have been slower and yet have given him joy. Every windfall along the dusty road, every big pine and rock, swale and flat, in fact every landmark so well known to him that he could locate them in the dark, each and all seemed to greet him. "Wal, old timer, drivin' to the railroad at last!"
   Holbert, at Mormon Lake, was frankly glad to see Huett come along at last with cattle to sell. He was full of news, much of it bad. At the peak of his cattle-raising, the year before, his son-in-law had thrown in with a band of rustlers and had driven ten thousand head of stock out of the territory before Holbert knew a hoof was moving.
   "Look out down your way, Huett," he advised, morosely. "When you begin to sell cattle you're a marked man. There'll be hell to pay on this range, in five years."
   Holbert's pessimism, which was corroborated by his neighbour Collier, in no wise dampened Huett's ardour. He had his heavy boot on the neck of the hydra-headed giant that had kept him poor for twenty years. That trip to Flagg, for him and his family, far outdid the one years before, when his beaver pelts had brought their first happy Christmas. He spent lavishly. He bought secret gifts for the Christmas soon to come. He paid his pressing debts and saw himself at last on the road to success.
   The drive back home, with a second wagon and team, was in the nature of a jubilee. More than once Lucinda had Logan stop the wagon so that she could get out and gather purple asters and golden rod. She talked of their honeymoon ride through that dreary, desolate forest. And before they got home Lucinda talked of other things--particularly about Barbara.
   "Logan, you're blind as a bat to all except cattle," she said, tersely. "You never saw how the men at Flagg, young and old, flocked around Barbara. That girl could be the belle of Arizona. She could marry any one of them. Take her pick."
   "Good Lord, Luce!" ejaculated Logan, surprised and stung. "Our Barbara leaving? Not to be thought of!"
   "How can we help it?--But for Barbara's singular loyalty to us--her love for the boys--she would be having suitors now."
   "Luce, you trouble me."
   "No wonder. I'm troubled myself. Barbara loves George and Grant. And she worships Abe. But she doesn't know it. She thinks she's just a fond sister. Nature will out, Logan!--She's no kin of ours. She's not their sister...And my trouble is this. Since she must marry--do her part for our West--she should marry one of our boys!"
   "My God, Lucinda! you'd have to tell her you're not her mother. I'm not her Dad. Who could we tell her she is? We don't even know her name...Aw, Luce, let's keep it secret long as we can. Not to break that sweet girl's heart!"
   "There's the rub, Logan dear," returned Lucinda, soberly. "But the thing can't be overlooked for ever."
   Another autumn came. It was different from all the autumns, except one, that Huett remembered. It followed a hot summer remarkable for short, dry, electric storms. What little rain fell was up on the bluffs and the high rims. Not a drop descended in Sycamore Canyon.
   That spring and summer the grass in the canyon had been thicker and richer than usual. Huett had dammed the brook into a small lake and had run many branches from it through the meadows, until it sank into the ground. The gardens, orchards, and alfalfa fields, having abundant water from the irrigation ditches, did not suffer from the scorching sun and dry wind.
   Indian summer held off.
   One day Abe met two cowboys out on the road, riding to Payson. They reported the worst grasshopper plague ever known in that section of Arizona. Ranchers all the way down had sent word along the line for Collier, Holbert, and Huett to look out for a river of grasshoppers flowing over the best of the range land.
   When Abe reported that news to his father it was received seriously, but not in any anxiety. Sycamore was a deep hole in the forest, and unlikely to be visited by a plague.
   George Huett, the most studious and keenest of the Huetts, took a pessimistic view of the possibilities.
   "But, Dad, suppose the grasshoppers did happen to light down in Sycamore," he said, in reply to Logan's sanguine convictions. "They would absolutely eat us up, clean us out, ruin us."
   "Son! How do you figure that?"
   "Because our canyon is a narrow strip compared to the open range. They'd sweep right through, eating everything to the roots."
   "But our stock can live on browse."
   "In normal years, yes. But this is not normal. No slopes, and very little leafage."
   "Then it is serious," returned Logan, quickly troubled. "Just when' our prospects are so bright!...God must be against me!"
   "Nature is, that's sure."
   "What can we do?"
   "Dad, that's the hell of it. We can't do anything but hope and pray."
   "Would you cut the alfalfa?"
   "Sure, if we had time. But you know what a job that is. Usually we take a week to cut, dry, rake, and haul. And here those grasshoppers are right on top of us."
   "You don't say?" Huett swore under his breath.
   "Abe said he'd not worry you till he had to. He rode up the canyon, meaning to climb out and scout back towards the open range. You see, our canyon is almost in a direct line with that flight of grasshoppers. The open country east of Mormon Lake sticks a spike down into this forest. And the point of it is not very far from the head of Sycamore. Grassy draws through the woods all the way. And, Dad, these damn grasshoppers don't hop! They fly."
   "Sure grasshoppers can fly. I've seen the wild turkeys chase them. It's always good hunting when the turks are feeding on them...Son, what you mean? Grasshoppers can't eat while they fly."
   "No. But all the same, that's how they cover ground so fast. I've read in the Bible of the locust flights in Egypt. And I've heard, of grasshoppers' flights in Kansas. Much the same, I reckon."
   Huett and his two sons waited anxiously for Abe's return. He rode in presently, dark of face and sombre of eye.
   "Bad news, son?" queried the cattleman.
   "Dad, it couldn't be no worse," replied Abe, sliding out of his saddle, his glance like grey fire. "They're in the canyon."
   "No!--Not our canyon?"
   "Yes, our canyon. Half-way down. A mile or two of grasshoppers, like a yellow carpet rolling down the grass. They leave the ground as bare as if it'd been burned...Thousands, millions, billions...Barbara," he called to the listening wide-eyed girl, "what's next after billions?"
   "Trillions, you stupid boy!"
   "Well, trillions of yellow-legged hoppers. They'll be on us pronto...I'm so mad I'm sick. If we could only do something."
   "My--God!" gasped Huett. "I can't feed our stock a month this winter, even if we had the corn and alfalfa cut."
   Lucinda heard from the door. Her face appeared to Logan to take on again the old sad cast. But she returned indoors without speaking. Barbara, however, vented enough amaze, disgust, and anger for the whole family.
   "Bab, swear all you want," said Grant solemnly. "It won't do us any good. We're going to be ruined by a mob of bugs!"
   "Oh no! You men can do something," she cried.
   "What?"
   "Set fire to the grass!"
   "By golly, that's an idea, Dad," spoke up George.
   "We can meet them with fire. That'll do the trick, but..." Abe broke off with a sombre shake of his dark sleek head.
   "Not to be thought of!" boomed Huett. "We'd set the forest afire, burn all the timber and grass in the country...But let's think of some other way."
   "Dad, just wait till you see the air full of buzzing grasshoppers and the ground yellow with them--then you'll savvy we can't do a thing," averred Abe, tragically.
   "Well, I won't see it till I have to," averred Logan, gruffly, as he got up. "But no Huett ever showed yellow. And we won't, even with a yellow plague upon us!--Come, sons, we'll cut the alfalfa."
   George and Grant followed him to the barn to get scythes and rakes. But Abe sat looking at Barbara. Presently he mounted his horse and rode up the canyon. Huett went ploddingly at the labour, his sombre gaze bent upon the rich green hay that he was mowing.
   "Say!" called Grant, suddenly. "What'n hell can be chasing Abe?"
   "Dad--look!" shouted George.
   Then Logan looked up to see Abe riding swiftly by the cabin. He waved and shouted to Barbara as he passed. He headed his lean mustang across the gardens and came tearing up to Logan, scattering dust all over him.
   "Dad--we're saved!" he panted hoarsely, his dark face alight, his eyes piercingly bright. "What you--think?...You'd never guess--in a thousand years."
   "I reckon not--if you come ararin' at me like this. What ails you, son?"
   "He's loco, sure as our rotten luck!" declared George, which assertion corroborated Logan's. Abe was not the kind to show excitement in any event, let alone the intensity which radiated from him now.
   "We haven't got rotten luck," he cried. "But the most--marvellous luck--in the world...We're not going to be cleaned out...I tell you--we're saved!"
   "Son, I heard you the first time," replied Huett, soberly, not daring to accept Abe's strange, excited statements. "If you're not crazy--tell me how we're saved."
   "By God, you'll never believe me," declared Abe, with a deep laugh. "I couldn't believe my own eyes. But dang it--come and see...Dad, I hope to die if I didn't see thousands of wild turkeys come flapping, sailing, running down out of the woods upon that swarm of grasshoppers."
   "Wild turkeys!" burst out Huett, suddenly dazzled.
   "Sure as you're alive," replied Abe, eagerly. "The regular fall round-up, you know, when the turks band together to come up-country for the pine nuts and acorns."
   "Of all the miracles!" exclaimed George, beamingly. "Dad, one big gobbler fan eat a bushel of hoppers!"
   "I reckon I was wrong to say God had deserted me," declared Huett, in august self-reproach.
   "Sight of my life," declared Abe. "Come on. You've got to see it. Maw and Bab, too...But we must walk--slip along under the trees--so those turks won't catch a glimpse of us. I reckon, though, that wouldn't make no difference to-day...Come, we'll take a short cut."
   Soon all the Huetts were following Abe through the woods. Barbara slipped her hand into Logan's and ran to keep up with him. Abe hushed their exuberant talk. They crossed the timbered slope above the cabin, keeping to the left, climbing the rocky, vine-covered ledges above the falls, and went rapidly through the thick belt of timber beyond. Abe led across the brook. Soon Logan saw through the scattering trees the brown open canyon again. Perhaps half a mile beyond Abe halted.
   "Listen! Did you ever hear the like of that?" he queried.
   A strange sound filled Logan's ears. Indeed, he could not compare it to anything he had ever heard. It was a loud, buzzing, seething hum mixed with a thumping, flapping roar.
   "I'll be doggoned!" ejaculated Logan. "Hear it, Barbara?"
   "Do I? Oh, what music! Come, let's hurry, Abe, so we can see!"
   Abe led them to the edge of the woods. Out there in the grassy open of the canyon, under a dust-cloud, was being enacted a one-sided war--a massacre--a carnage. Clear across the flat stretched a wide, shifting, bronze, white, and black belt of wild turkeys in swift and ruthless action. Logan made no estimate of that huge flock. But in that country of wild turkeys, where he had seen large flocks for twenty years, this one surpassed all. Beyond the dust-cloud, up the canyon, moved a yellow, glassy mass in the air. It waved up and down. Behind it under the dust thumped and picked and darted the army of huge, gay-plumaged birds. They moved forward in a stretched formation, yet dozens of great gobblers left the line to run back after grasshoppers that tried to escape to the rear. They were big, fat, slow grasshoppers and they could not fly far. Not one escaped to the rear.
   "Oh, Dad, isn't it grand?" cried Barbara, excitedly as she clung to him and they hurried along at the edge of the timber to keep up with the moving spectacle.
   Manifestly Huett was entranced, enraptured by the scene. This was, if anything, the strange miracle of destiny prophesying his success. Nothing could halt him now.
   "Wonderful, Barbara! I never saw the like," he said with a voice that shook. "Abe was right...We're saved. And never so long as I live will I kill another turkey."
   "Dad, it's all day with that bunch of grasshoppers," said George. "The turkeys will stick to them until they've gobbled every darned one. You know a gobbler likes a fat juicy hopper about the same as Abe does apple pie."
   "In that case, good-bye to the hoppers!" laughed Barbara. They came to where a point of the forest-land projected out into the open. Abe halted, there.
   "I reckon this is far enough," he said, as they joined him. "Some of those wary old gobblers have begun to look back. It won't do to scare that bunch...Isn't it a mess, Paw? Aren't those turks doing a great job for us?"
   "So great, son, that I'll hang here a while longer," replied Huett, fervently. "Go back, all of you. Mother looks tired. We've come a couple, of miles. All to watch a flock of wild turkeys!"
   "Logan, nothing is ever as terrible as it seems--at first," returned Lucinda, and giving him a sweet smile she started back with Barbara, followed by the boys.
   Abe halted and turned with one of his rare smiles: "Paw, would you like turkey for supper?"
   Logan waved him on. Soon they passed out of sight under the pines. Then Logan once more turned his attention to the massacre of the grasshoppers. The action did not change. The cloud of insects kept flying and hopping up the canyon, while the turkeys ran, thumping up the dust, pouncing and picking as before. But the sight grew somehow magnificent to Logan. It was nothing in raw nature but an incident. But to Logan it had vast significance.
   The dust-cloud moved along behind the yellow stream. And the coloured throng of turkeys, their bronze backs bent, or their red heads high, with chequered wings flapping and feet pounding, kept surging, massing, disintegrating, running up the canyon. The loud seethe and buzz, with the roar of the feathered jackals, gradually diminished to a hum.
   Logan watched them out of sight and sound. And then he lingered there in the dreaming, silent forest. This unexpected and unparalleled accident that meant so much to him seemed inexplicable as a mere happening on the cattle range. Logan's pondering thought was not equal to the subtle intimations. What was his long toil, his ceaseless energy, reserved for? Had not Lucinda meant that this should be a lesson to him--that he had been too self-centred, too grimly fettered to his one task, too prone to doubt and fear? Something nameless and inevitable waited upon his years. A mournful stir in the great forest, a breath of the soul of that wilderness, had a counterpart in his emotion, a whisper, the meaning of which eluded him.