30,000 on the Hoof

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

Chapter 17

   Lucinda was no less shocked at Logan's aberration of mind than at his changed appearance. He appeared a ghost of his old stalwart, virile, giant self. And he forgot even the errands she sent him on. When he came home from down town she smelled liquor on his breath. She realized then, in deep alarm, that Logan had cracked. All his life he had leaned too far over on one side; now in this major catastrophe of his life he had toppled over the other way to collapse.
   She had divined something of this upon his return, and had at once appealed to him to take her and Barbara back to Sycamore. If anything could save Logan it was action--something to do with his hands--some labours to draw his mind back to the old channels of habit. Before this blow, despite his sixty years, he had been at the peak of a magnificent physical life. If he stayed in Flagg, to idle away the hours in saloons and on corners, to sit blankly staring at nothing, he would not live out the year.
   When the days had passed into weeks without his having done anything in regard to their return to Sycamore, she resolved to make the arrangements herself. She got Hardy to have a look at the big wagon, to grease the axles and repair the harness; and she hired a negro to drive in the team and put them on grain.
   Then she set about the dubious task of supplies and utensils. Al Doyle, who was as keen as Lucinda to get Logan out in the open again, declared vehemently: "There won't be one single damn thing left on that ranch. Logan forgot to leave a man on the place. All the tools, and furniture left in the cabin, will be gone. Stole!"
   "Oh dear me! Al, it's beginning to pioneer all over again!"
   "It shore is. But that's good, Lucinda, 'cause it'll raise Logan out of this bog he's in...I advise you to take two wagon-loads. I'll borrow one for you, and hire a driver, an' I'll buy all the necessary tools, an' have them packed. The grub supply is easy to figure out. We'll put our heads together on the cabin an' the needs of you women-folk...Don't worry, Lucinda. It'll all be jake. The thing to do is to be arustlin'."
   Only once did Lucinda's heart faint within her, and that was when she came home to 'find Logan and Barbara in the sitting-room, with little Abe crawling half naked and dirty around the floor. Logan was trying again to get some coherent response from Barbara. And she sat hunched in a chair, her great dark eyes the windows of a clouded mind. They struck terribly at Lucinda's heart.
   She could not endure to stay there on the moment, so she went into the kitchen, where she grappled with fear and doubt. Was she mad to take these two broken wrecks back to the wilderness? Possible illness, accident, loneliness, Barbara's obsession to wander around, would be infinitely more difficult to combat down in the canyon than in town. Here she could call in women neighbours or the doctor. Despite the strong appeal of reason supporting her fears, she succumbed to her first intuition. If there were any hopes left for Barbara and Logan, not to say bringing up the child, they might rise down in Sycamore Canyon. The labour did not appal Lucinda. Well she knew that upon the pioneer wife and mother fell the greater burdens. A strange subtle voice cried down her misgivings. And with resurging heart she plunged into the immediate tasks of getting ready.
   They left Flagg with two wagons next morning before sunrise. Only faithful old Al Doyle saw them off. His last words were--and they were the last they ever heard him speak--"Wal, old-timer, it's the long road again an' the canyon in the woods. That's good. Adios!"
   Lucinda rode on the driver's seat with Logan. Barbara and the boy had a little place behind, under the canvas. Evidently the movement, the grind of wheels and clip-clop of heavy hoofs had excited Barbara, who knelt on the hay to peer out with strained eyes no mortal could have read. The second wagon, driven by the negro, contained the farm tools, furniture, and utensils.
   After a while Lucinda's eyes cleared so that she could see. She was glad to get out of Flagg. The black stumps, the grey flats, the green lines of pines and blue bluffs in the distance seemed to welcome her. They had not quite reached the timber belt six miles from town when Lucinda sustained a thrilling relief and joy in Logan's response to the winding road, the reins once more in his hands, the team of big horses, the rolling wheels, and the beckoning range. These had been so great a part of his life that only insanity or paralysis or death could have wholly eradicated them. They began to call upon old associations. Lucinda's loving divination had been god-sent. Logan's heart and spirit had been broken, and the splendid rush of his life at maturity had been stemmed, stagnated, sunk in the sands of grief and hopelessness. Her great task was to keep him physically busy until this ghastly climax of tragedy wore into the past. Life held strange recompense for the plodder.
   Logan spoke at intervals, especially when they passed old camp-sites, now homesteads and ranches. Cedar Ridge, Turkey Flat, Rock Waterhole still existed in their pristine loneliness. Logan halted at the Waterhole for lunch and to rest the horses. Then he drove on till sunset, to stop at a small brook which drained into Mormon Lake.
   They camped. The negro turned out to be a helpful fellow, and between him and Logan, with Lucinda cooking, they soon had camp made and supper ready. Barbara walked around, her staring dark eyes as groping as her actions. She ate, fed the boy, and helped Lucinda. Sometimes she broke out into soft, hurried speech, half coherent, and again she stood gazing into the pine forest. Logan sat beside the camp-fire, but he did not smoke. Lucinda spread her blankets under a tarpaulin pegged down from the wagon-top and lay down with weary, aching body. The camp-fire sputtered, the wind blew--then while she was fearing the old lonely sounds, her eyelids closed as if with glue and she faded into oblivion.
   Next day Logan made another long drive, to the deserted cabin half-way between the south end of Mormon Lake and Sycamore Canyon. Logan might not have even thought of their nearness to the old ranch, but Lucinda, during the supper tasks and afterwards, kept talking and asking questions until he became aroused.
   Before noon the next day Logan turned off the main road at the end of Long Valley and drove down through the forest towards Sycamore.
   What stinging beautiful emotions flashed over her as they passed the open glade where she had first seen Barbara play' ing with the boys! From then on she was blinded by tears. They struck the down-grade. The old gate had not been closed since the cattle-drive. Logan emitted a strange hard cough, almost like a sob. He drove on, applying the brake. The wheels squeaked, the heavy wagon pushed the horses on. And then they reached a level.
   "Same as always, Luce--just the same!" exclaimed Logan, huskily. "Only we are changed."
   Lucinda wiped her eyes so that she could see to get off.
   "Drive up to the cabin, Logan," she said, "and spread a blanket in the shade for Barbara and the baby...What shall I tell the teamster to do with his load?"
   "Unload it, I reckon, here by the barn," rejoined Logan,' whipping his reins. "Gedap there!"
   The negro arrived while Lucinda was looking around. The barn was stripped, proving how wise Al Doyle had been to advise a new outfit. Lucinda directed the driver to unload the farming equipment and pack it into the barn, then come on up to the cabin with the furniture.
   That done, Lucinda turned to the old hollow-worn path. Her feet seemed leaden. There was a pang in her breast and a constriction in her throat. The joy she had anticipated failed to come at once. But she knew something would break the deadlock.
   The brook was bank-full of snow-fed water, the old log bridge as it had been. Then she espied Logan. He had halted the wagon and was looking across at the unfinished stone corral. One look at his tortured visage was enough. The very stone Lucinda remembered seeing Logan put down on the wall sat there, mute yet trenchant with memory of the three sons who had helped build that wall with Logan, and who could not finish it because they had gone to war.
   Logan drove on up to the cabin. Lucinda, lagging behind, fighting her own anguish, came to the long row of her sunflowers. They were blooming, great golden-leaved, brown-centred flowers, facing the sun. With sight of them the joy of home-coming flooded her being. She caressed the big blossoms and pressed them to her breast; then she found early golden rod and purple asters along the path. She gazed down the canyon for the first time. The high walls, the black ruins, seemed to gaze down protectingly upon her. Home! They assured her of that and they gave austere and solemn promise of the future.
   Lucinda found the baby rolling and crawling on a blanket; Barbara, wildly excited by familiar scenes and objects that must have pierced close to reason, was running around in and out of the cabin. Logan was inside.
   The flat flagstone lay under the hollowed log threshold. Lucinda knew both as well as her right hand. Wan bluebells smiled up at her out of the grassy margins. She peered into the cabin conscious of a clogged breast and pounding heart. Her emotions had not prepared her for practical facts. That cabin, hallowed by so much of sad and beautiful life, was a dingy, dusty, spider-webbed barn. The rude table and bench-seats and the old rustic armchair, relics of Logan's master hand so many years ago, were the only articles left inside. The bough-bed had been torn apart, no doubt for firewood; all the deer and elk horns and skins were gone from the walls. In places the yellow stones of the fireplace were crumbling. An Indian or some cowboy artist had drawn crude but striking images on the smooth surfaces.
   Logan was cursing, which sounds for once Lucinda heard with delight.
   "...---- ----dirty hole not fit for cattle. This here home of ours has been a camp for low-down hunters and loafers, and later a den for skunks, wildcats, coyotes, and Lord knows what else!...There's a hole in the shingles. Some of the chinks are out between the logs. That door is hanging loose and won't shut. And dirt! Say, it's dirtier than all outdoors. Just one hell of a dump!"
   "Yes, Logan--but home," rejoined Lucinda softly, as much overcome by his practical reaction as by the fact she expressed. "Huh!...Home?--Aw, thet's so, Luce."
   "I'll be practical, too, husband," said Lucinda, inspired to action. "Get out the broom and mop. And water buckets. And soap. We'll sweep and brush and scrape and scrub...Mend the hinge on the door. Have the driver put a canvas over the hole in the roof. Have him cut a lot of spruce boughs. After that's done you can unpack and carry everything in. After that, Logan, if you're able to, see if you can chop some wood."
   "Hell! I can chop wood," declared Logan, in gruff resentment.
   Lucinda set to work, and she kept the two men, and Barbara also, busy at various tasks. When Logan flagged and Barbara drifted off into space, Lucinda prompted them again. They could not apply themselves for long. When sunset came, and at that season of early summer the golden rays shone through door and window, Lucinda surveyed the interior of the cabin with incredulous eyes and swelling heart. The den of hunters and beasts had been transformed. It was home once more, and more comfortable and colourful than ever before. Barbara had her old corner, where she sat on her bed with vague gaze trying to pierce a veil of mystery. Little Abe crawled around delighted with this new abode. Logan sat in his old chair, watching the fire, apparently lost to any of the grateful and beautiful feelings that stirred Lucinda.
   Darkness stole up the canyon while she prepared supper. The night-hawks and the insects began their familiar choruses. A glorious rose and gold after-glow slowly paled above the western rim. The brook babbled as of old. Nature had not changed. Lucinda recalled the prayers of her youth. Her task was infinite, almost insurmountable, but her faith grew stronger. When night came, while she lay awake by Logan's side, with Barbara's corner silent as the grave, and the old wind-song mourning in the tips of the pines, then she seemed divided between hope and terror. In the hours when she wooed slumber she became prey to the past, to her early years here, to memory of her awakening to real love for her pioneer husband, to the coming of their first-born, to that terrible and fascinating Matazel, to Abe's birth in a cow-manger, and so on through all the succeeding years of trial down to this agonizing end for the Huetts.
   However, when morning came and the sun shone and the canyon smiled in its early summer dress, Lucinda did not fall prey to such memories. Her hope for the future battled with realism, with the thought of age and poverty, of her insupportable task with Logan and Barbara.
   Night and day then for a week her mind worked from the sombre to the bright, from the material fact to the spiritual belief, before she noted a gain for the latter. She grasped something to her soul that she could not explain. She no longer pondered over the inscrutable ways of God. She forgot the horror of war and the crawling maggots of men who fostered it. Her work lay here in this wild canyon and was still a long way from being finished.
   Lucinda soon began her labours in the garden. About the only thing she could keep Logan steadily at was chopping wood. He seemed to enjoy that, and his swing of axe had much of its old vigour; but when she sent him to the pasture to bring in one of the horses, saddle and snake down dead aspen and oak to chop, he seldom materialized unless she hunted him up. Manifestly this was what she must do! Mostly she found Logan beside the old unfinished 'stone corral. At these sad times she hated to break in on his reveries, and some days she could not bring herself to this cruelty, and she left him alone with his memories. Nevertheless it was forced on her to see that she must keep him working.
   With Barbara she had less trouble. Barbara would obey as long as the idea of work lingered in her mind, but when sooner or later it faded, she would wander away. She always wanted to go into the woods. There seemed to be something beckoning to her off under the dark pines. She would sit by the door on the old porch bench and watch the canyon trail, a habit appearing to Lucinda to be the one nearest rationality. It had to do, Lucinda thought, with vague mind-pictures of Abe riding up the canyon. It was heart-rending to watch, but Lucinda found some inexplicable grain of hope in it.
   Little Abe had improved and grew like a weed. Sometimes Barbara neglected to nurse him, but he never forgot when he was hungry. When Lucinda told Logan that they must have a milk cow very soon, Logan agreed, and almost instantly let the need slip from his mind.
   Lucinda, with some help from Logan and Barbara, succeeded in planting her garden patch by the end of June. This time, in a normal season, was not too late to ensure a crop before the severe frosts came, and with their supplies and the meat she hoped Logan would provide they could live well through even a fairly severe winter.
   "Logan," she said one night as he sat by the fire, "summer is getting along. You must snake down a lot of firewood and chop it for winter."
   "Plenty of time, wife," he said. "Why, it can't be June yet."
   "June has passed, husband," she replied patiently. "You should have all the wood cut and stowed before Indian-summer comes."
   "Why ought I?"
   "Because at that season you roam around the forest locating the game. Getting ready for your fall hunt! You forget. There never was anything you'd let interfere with that. We must have plenty of venison hung up and frozen, a lot of turkeys, an elk haunch or two--and some of those nice juicy bear-ribs that always pleased you."
   She did not betray her intense hope for his reception of these suggestions. Long she had refrained from urging them. If he showed no interest--if he failed to respond...She dared not follow out her train of thought.
   "Huntin' season!--By gosh, I never thought of that," he ejaculated, lifting his shaggy head with a flare of grey-stone eyes. She had struck fire from him and was overjoyed. Next instant he sagged back. "Aw hell!--Huntin' without Abe?--I don't know...I reckon I couldn't."
   "Logan, you must feed Abe's boy so that he can grow up fast and hunt with you," replied Lucinda, sagely.
   "My Gawd, Luce, do you expect me to live that long?" he asked, haggardly.
   "Of course I do."
   "Humph. I reckon I don't want to," he said gloomily. But he seemed to be disturbed and haunted by the idea. "Wal, there won't be any game when little Abe gets big enough to pack a gun."
   "You once said there would always be turkey and deer in the breaks of the canyons."
   "That's so, Luce. I'll think it over...Have you seen my rifles?"
   "Yes. I rolled them in canvas. And Al bought a new stock of shells."
   "Ahuh...Doggone me!" he added mildly.
   Lucinda wept that night while Logan slept heavily beside her. It was not from exhaustion and pain, although after she lay down she could not move, and her raw, blistered hands and aching limbs hurt her excruciatingly, that Lucinda shed slow, hot tears. They were tears of joy at some little reward to her prayers for Logan.
   But Logan never unrolled the canvas bundles of rifles which Lucinda leaned against the fireplace, nor did he take down the pipe and tobacco which she placed in plain sight on the jutting corner of the chimney, where he had always kept them.
   Lucinda toiled on, unquenchable in faith that Logan would rise out of his gloom of despondency, and that Barbara was not permanently deprived of her sanity. If there were not daily almost imperceptible things to keep this hope alive in her, then she suffered under a delusion. Work was a blessing. It sustained Lucinda in this period which tried her soul.
   One summer morning, towards noon, when the great forest was so still that a dropping pine-cone could be heard far away, Lucinda bent over her work at the table under the back window of the cabin.
   Occasionally she looked out to peer down the brook at Logan, who sat beside the unfinished stone wall staring at space. He made a pathetic figure. All about him expressed the catastrophe in which the labour of a lifetime, fortune, comfort, his sons, his patriotism, his faith in man and God, had vanished.
   Lucinda sighed. She had moments of despair, in which she had to fight like a tigress for her young. It was ever-present, the stark, naked fact; against which she had only mother love, an ineradicable faith, and a nameless, groundless hope. Yet in the last analysis of her terrible predicament she had the profoundest of all reasons to fight and never to yield, never to lose faith--the task of bringing up Abe's son. When gloom lay thick upon her soul she was carried ahead by that duty.
   Barbara was outside on the porch, in her favourite place facing the canyon and the trail, and the fact that she was humming a little song to the boy indicated that she was in one of her placid states of apathy.
   All at once Lucinda ceased her work to gaze out up the forested canyon. No differing sounds had caused this. She was puzzled. The brook murmured on, the soft wind moaned on, a stillness pervaded the canyon. The sun was directly overhead, as she ascertained by the shadows of the pines. Something had checked her actions, stopped her train of thought. It did not come from outside.
   Suddenly a stentorian yell burst the silence.
   "Waa-hoo-oo!"
   That was Logan's hunting-yell. Had he gone mad? Lucinda became rooted to the spot. Then her ears strung to the swift, hard hoof-beats of a running horse. Who was riding in? What had happened? Logan's whoop to a visiting cowboy? It seemed unnatural. The charged moment augmented unnaturally. How that horse was running! His hoofs rang on the hard trail up the bench. A grind of iron on stone, a sliding scrape and a pattering of gravel--then a thud of jangling boots!
   "Bab, old girl--here I am!" called a trenchant voice, deep and rich and sweet.
   Lucinda recognized it; and her frightened heart leaped pulsingly to her throat.
   Barbara's piercing shriek followed. It had the same wild note that had characterized Logan's, and above and beyond 434 a high-keyed exquisite rapture which could only have burst from recognition.
   "Abe!...Abe!"
   "Yes, darling. It's Abe. Alive and well. Didn't you get my telegram from New York?...My God, I--I expected to see you...but not--not so thin, so white. Dad must be okay--the way he yelled. And...Aw, my boy!...So this is little Abe? He has your eyes, Barbara...Brace up, honey. I'm home. It'll all be jake pronto."
   "Abe!...You've come back--to me," cried Barbara, in solemn bewilderment.
   Lucinda heard Abe's kisses, but not his incoherent words. She lost all sensation from her head down. Her body seemed stone. She could not move. Abe had come home, and the shock had restored Barbara's mind. Lucinda felt that she was dying: joy had saved, but joy could also kill.
   "Mother!" cried Abe. "Come out!"
   If Lucinda had been on the verge of death itself his call at that moment would have drawn her back, imbued her through arid through with revivifying life. She rushed out. There stood Abe in uniform, splendid as she had never seen him, bronzed and changed, with one arm clasping Barbara and the boy, the other outstretched for her, and his grey eyes marvellously alight.
   "Doggone! Here we are again," Logan kept saying.
   It was an hour later. The incredible and insupportable transport of the reunion had yielded to some semblance of deep, calm joy. Logan seemed utterly carried out of his apathetic self. Barbara had recovered her reason; there was no doubt of that. Spent and white, she lay back against Abe, but her eyes shone with a wondrous love and gratitude and intelligence. Lucinda knew herself to be the weakest of the four. She had just escaped collapse. The hope of this resurrection, though she had not divined it, had been upholding her for weeks.
   "Some day--not soon--I'll tell you about George and Grant," Abe was saying gently. "When you hear what they did--what their buddies and officers thought of them--you won't feel their loss so terribly...My case was simple. I had shell-shock and lay weeks in the hospital unidentified. When I came to my senses I proved who I was and got invalided home. I was in bad shape then. Once started homeward I got well pronto. That's all. The Germans are licked. They'll never last another winter."
   "Abe, I reckon you smoked 'em up," said Logan, intensely.
   "Dad--I knew you'd ask me that," replied Abe, a grey convulsion distorting his face, ageing and changing it horribly. "Yes, I did. At first I had a savage joy in my skill...It was sheer murder for me to shoot at those poor devils. A hard-nosed thirty Government bullet would get right through their metal helmets...But in time I grew sick of it...And now--well, let's bury it for ever."
   "Sorry, son. Just the same, it's good for me to know. I'm holding on by an eyelash."
   "Abe, did anyone in Flagg or on the way out tell you what happened to your father?" asked Lucinda.
   "No. I got in late, borrowed a horse and came araring...What happened?"
   "He sold out to the army cattle-buyers. Thirty thousand and nine hundred, at twenty-eight dollars a head...They swindled him. Not one dollar did he ever receive of that money."
   "Good God!" exclaimed Abe, furiously.
   It was for Logan then to confess shamefacedly his monstrous carelessness and trust.
   "Aw, Dad!--Then we're back in the old rut again?"
   "Poor as Job's turkey, son," replied Logan, huskily.
   "I don't care on my own account," said Abe, dubiously. "But for mother and Bab--it'll be tough to begin all over again."
   "Darling, I needed only you," whispered Barbara.
   "Dad, I forgot to tell you," went on Abe, brightening. "You'll never believe it. Cattle are selling at fifty dollars a head, and going up."
   "For the land's sake!...Who's buying?"
   "Kansas City and Chicago."
   "Did I ever hear the like of that!...My Gawd, why didn't I wait!" ejaculated Logan, with a spasm working his visage.
   "Never mind, Dad," returned Abe, slowly. "We're not licked yet."
   Abe's return acted miraculously not alone upon Barbara. Logan hung around him as if fascinated; as if he could not believe the evidence of his senses. Lucinda knew they were all saved. The war had not impaired Abe physically. And spiritually she thought he was finer, stronger. Abe was of the wilderness. The old potent loneliness and solitude, the trails and trees, the cliff walls, and home with Barbara and his boy--these would soon blot out whatever horror it was that haunted him.
   The family sat together for hours until late afternoon.
   "By gum, I forgot to unsaddle that nag," said Abe. "Bab, if you'll let go of me for a spell I'll ride down the old trail a ways."
   "Abe, are you really home?" she asked, eloquently. "What do you say, sweet?"
   "This is not a dream? You are not among the missing?" Abe stood upright to swing her aloft and clasp her endearingly.
   "Bab, I've caught you looking at me--I believe you've been a little loco. Dad seems kind of daffy, too. But I am home. I'm well. I'm so happy I--I---...there's no words to express how I feel."
   He strode across the garden to the field where the horse was grazing, dragging its bridle; and mounting with the old incomparable cowboy step into the saddle he rode down the canyon.
   They all watched him disappear around the jutting corner. "Gosh, Luce," ejaculated Logan, coming out of a trance, "must rustle some firewood. I don't want Abe knowing..." He shook his head ponderingly and slowly made for the empty space around the chopping-block.
   "Hurry. I must get supper. Abe will be starved," called Lucinda.
   "Just as little Abe is this moment," declared Barbara, as she took up the crying boy.
   Verily, thought Lucinda with fervent thanksgiving, the return of the lost soldier had reclaimed that family.
   Barbara watched for Abe from her old waiting-place on the porch. The afternoon waned, the sun set in golden splendour, the purple shadows fell, and twilight came with its lingering after-glow.
   "He's coming, Mother," Barbara called joyfully from outside, and she ran down the path to meet him. Presently they came in, with arms around each other. Barbara's face was flushed and rosy.
   "Maw, I'm starved," yelped Abe, at sight of the steaming Pots.
   "Come and get it, boy," she replied happily.
   "Dad, just wait till I eat, and I'll sure take a fall out of you," declared Abe, as he straddled the bench. "I've a swell joke on you."
   "You have, huh?" said Logan. "Wal, son, if you can make anythin' in this God-forsaken world of mine look like a joke, come out with it pronto."
   "Wal, I shore can, old-timer," drawled Abe.
   It was not a bountiful supper, to Lucinda's regret; she had been caught unprepared. But never wider that cabin roof, where Abe had grown to manhood, where he had sat hundreds of times after a gruelling drive or two days' hunt, had he eaten so ravenously. Lucinda waited on him, Barbara hung over him, Logan watched him, and they all forgot their own suppers. Their feelings transcended happiness.
   "How about that joke?" demanded Logan, impatiently.
   "I'm afraid I'm too full to talk," declared Abe, as he threw off the snug-fitting khaki jacket and unloosened his belt. His powerful shoulders had lost their brawn. "Dad, you were telling me this afternoon how poor we are. One team, one wagon, a few tools, no horses, no help--and only a little money left. Wasn't that it?"
   "Yes, son. I wish to heaven I didn't have to confess it. But we're as bad off as ever in our lives."
   "Dad, you sure are a rotten cattleman," went on Abe, with a smile and a fine flash of eyes upon his father.
   Logan took that amiss. Manifestly it hurt him deeply, for I he crushed his big hands between his knees and almost rocked double. That was one of the moments when Lucinda could not look at him.
   "Dad!...I was talking in fun. That's my joke," cried Abe, contritely.
   "Wal, I can't see it--son."
   "Listen. And you will darned pronto...Do you remember Three Spring Wash?"
   "I reckon so. Why?" rejoined Logan, lifting his head.
   "Do you remember the time we trapped the wild horses there?"
   "Sure do."
   "Oh, Abe, I remember that," cried Barbara, wonderingly.
   "Well, Dad, do you remember we had a bunch of cattle running in there before the big drive?"
   "I reckon we had, same as in those other side canyons."
   "Do you remember that Grant and I, with the help of some Indians, had the job of tearing down that fence in Three Springs and driving the cattle out into the main herd?"
   "I remember that, too," declared Logan.
   "We didn't tear it down."
   "Huh!" grunted Logan, stupidly.
   "Grant forgot, and I missed that job on purpose. I knew there were more than thirty thousand head in the main canyons. So I left that bunch in Three Springs. We never tore the fence down. Nobody tore it down for that drive. It has not been torn down since."
   "My Gawd, son--what you--sayin'?"
   "Dad, the fence is there still...And I counted around fifteen hundred head of cattle, all fine and fat. And you can bet that's a short count, for I didn't ride up in the oak draws and pine swales."
   Logan's big square jaw wobbled and dropped over a query he could not enunciate.
   "That's my joke on you, Dad. And I think it's a peach."
   "Abe!" cried Barbara.
   "You sure are a locoed old cattleman. Here you've been moping around Sycamore, heart-broke and pocket-broke, when you've got sixteen or eighteen hundred head of cattle worth fifty dollars a head."
   "For God's sake, son, you wouldn't play a joke--like that--on your poor old Dad?" implored Logan.
   "I wouldn't if it were a lie, Dad, but this is true. Absolutely true. I'll show you to-morrow."
   It seemed to Lucinda that while she watched with beating heart and bated breath, a slow change worked in her husband. He stared into the fire. A rumbling cough issued from his broad breast. Then he stood up, apparently seeing straight through the cabin wall. He expanded. His shoulders squared. His grey eyes began to kindle and gleam, and all the slack lines and leaden shades vanished ruddily from his visage. When Logan reached for the old black pipe and the little buckskin bag, and' began to stuff tobacco in the bowl, then Lucinda realized she was witness to a miracle. She stifled a sob which only Barbara heard, for she came swiftly to Lucinda, whispering the very truth that seemed so beautiful and so distracting. Logan bent down to pick up a half-burnt ember, which he placed upon his pipe. Then he puffed huge clouds of smoke, out of which presently stood his shaggy, erect head, his shining face, his eagle look. Lucinda saw her old Logan Huett with something infinite and indescribable added.
   "Wal, son," he drawled in his old, cool, easy way. "You Can't never tell about this here cattle business. Quien sabe? as Al used to say...I reckon I was kinda sick in my gizzard...Now let me see. A few cattle makes a hell of a difference. Say we got fifteen or sixteen hundred head. All right. You'll rustle some cowboys and cut out all except the youngest stock. I reckon that'd be half, say eight hundred head. You'll drive them to Flagg and sell...Eight hundred at fifty?--Forty thousand dollars, son!...You'll bank that money. You'll buy a truck and a car--and all you can think of--and Luce can think of--and Bab can think of--and new guns for me. Aghh!...Then you rustle the cars and all that stuff home...Abe, we'll begin cattle-raising again. And we'll bring little Abe up to know the game. We'll never make the mistakes I Made...The ways of God are inscrutable. I reckon I'll never forget again...And after all I'll never miss that thirty thousand head."