'Thanks, Orrin. Ma made me promise to go careful.'
'She told me ... an' lucky for this gent.' He stepped down from the saddle, a fine, big, handsome man with shoulders wide enough for two strong men. He wore a belt gun, too, and I knew he could use it.
'Are you two brothers?' Belden asked.
'Brothers from the hills,' Orrin said, 'bound west for the new lands.'
'You're hired,' Mr. Belden said, 'I like men who work together.'
So that was how it began, but more had begun that day than any of us could guess, least of all the fine- looking man with the beard who was Tom Sunday, our foreman on the drive. From the moment he had spoken up all our lives were pointed down a trail together, but no man could read the sign.
From the first Orrin was a well-loved man. With that big, easy way of his, a wide smile, as well as courage and humor enough for three men, he was a man to ride the trail with. He did his share of the work and more, and at night around the fire he would sing or tell yarns. When he sang to the cows in that fine Welsh baritone of his, everybody listened.
Nobody paid me much mind. Right off they saw I could do my work and they let me do it. When Orrin told them I was the tough one of the two they just laughed.
Only there was one or two of them who didn't laugh and of these one was Tom Sunday, the other Cap Rountree, a thin, wiry old man with a walrus mustache who looked to have ridden a lot of trails.
The third day out, Tom Sunday fetched up alongside me and asked, 'Tye, what would you have done if Reed Carney had grabbed his gun?'
'Why, Mr. Sunday,' I said, 'I'd have killed him.'
He glanced at me. 'Yes, I expect you would have.'
He swung off then, only turned in his saddle. 'Call me Tom. I'm not much on long-handled names.'
Have you seen those Kansas plains? Have you seen the grass stretch away from you to the horizon? Grass and nothing but grass except for flowers here and there and maybe the white of buffalo bones, but grass moving gentle under the long wind, moving like a restless sea with the hand of God upon it?
On the fifth day when I was riding point by myself, and well out from the herd a dozen men came riding out of a ravine, all bunched up. Right off I had a smell of trouble, so instead of waiting for them to come up, I rode right to meet them.
It was a mighty pleasant day and the air was balmy with summer. Overhead the sky was blue and only a mite of cloud drifting like a lost white buffalo over the plain of the sky. When they were close I drew up and waited, my Spencer .56 cradled on my saddle, my right hand over the trigger guard.
They drew up, a dirty, rough-looking bunch--their leader mean enough to sour cream. 'We're cuttin' your herd,' he was a mighty abrupt man, 'we're cuttin' it now. You come through the settlements an' swept up a lot of our cattle, an' they've et our grass.'
Well, I looked at him and I said, 'I reckon not.' Sort of aimless-like I'd switched that Spencer to cover his belt buckle, my right finger on the trigger.
'Look here, boy,' he started in to bluster.
'Mister,' I said, 'this here Spencer ain't no boy, an' I'm just after makin' a bet with a fellow. He says one of those big belt buckles like you got would stop a bullet. Me, I figure a chunk of lead, .56 caliber would drive that buckle right back into your belly. Mister, if you want to be a sport we can settle that bet.'
He was white around the eyes, and if one of the others made a wrong move I was going to drop the bull of the herd and as many others as time would allow.
'Back,' it was one of the men behind the leader, 'I know this boy. This here is one of them Sacketts I been tellin' you about.' It was one of those no-account Aikens from Turkey Flat, who'd been run out of the mountains for hog stealing.
'Oh?' Back smiled, kind of sickly. 'Had no idea you was friends. Boy,' he said, 'you folks just ride on through.'
'Thanks. That there's just what we figured to do.'
They turned tail around and rode off and a couple of minutes later hoofs drummed on the sod and here came Mr. Belden, Tom Sunday, Cap Rountree, and Reed Carney, all asweat an' expecting trouble. When they saw those herd cutters ride off they were mighty surprised.
'Tye,' Mr. Belden asked, 'what did those men want?'
'They figured to cut your herd.'
'What happened?'
'They decided not to.'
He looked at me, mighty sharp. Kneeing Dapple around I started back to the herd.
'Now what do you make of that?' I could hear Belden saying. 'I'd have sworn that was Back Rand.'
'It was,' Rountree commented dryly, 'but that there's quite a boy.'
When Orrin asked me about it at fire that night, I just said, 'Aiken was there.
From Turkey Flat.'
Carney was listening. 'Aiken who? Who's Aiken?'
'He's from the mountains,' Orrin said, 'he knows the kid.'
Reed Carney said nothing more but a couple of times I noticed him sizing me up like he hadn't seen me before. There would be trouble enough, but man is born to trouble, and it is best to meet it when it comes and not lose sleep until it does. Only there was more than trouble, for beyond the long grass plains were the mountains, the high and lonely mountains where someday I would ride, and where someday, the Good Lord willing, I would find a home.
How many trails? How much dust and loneliness? How long a time until then?
Chapter II
There was nothing but prairie and sky, the sun by day and the stars by night, and the cattle moving westward. If I live to be a thousand years old I shall not forget the wonder and the beauty of those big longhorns, the sun glinting on their horns; most of them six or seven feet from tip to tip. Some there were like Old Brindle, our lead steer, whose horns measured a fair nine feet from point to point, and who stood near to seventeen hands high.
It was a sea of horns above the red, brown, brindle, and white-splashed backs of the steers. They were big, wild, and fierce, ready to fight anything that walked the earth, and we who rode their flanks or the drag, we loved them and we hated them, we cussed and reviled them, but we moved them westward toward what destination we knew not.
Sometimes at night when my horse walked a slow circle around the bedded herd, I'd look at the stars and think of Ma and wonder how things were at home. And sometimes I'd dream great dreams of a girl I'd know someday.
Suddenly something had happened to me, and it happened to Orrin too. The world had burst wide open, and where our narrow valleys had been, our hog-backed ridges, our huddled towns and villages, there was now a world without end or limit. Where our world had been one of a few mountain valleys, it was now as wide as the earth itself, and wider, for where the land ended there was sky, and no end at all to that.
We saw no one. The plains were empty. No cattle had been before us, only the buffalo and war parties of Indians crossing. No trees, only the far and endless grass, always whispering its own soft stories. Here ran the antelope, and by night the coyotes called their plaintive songs to the silent stars.
Mostly a man rode by himself, but sometimes I'd ride along with Tom Sunday or Cap Rountree, and I learned about cattle from them. Sunday knew cows, all right, but he was a sight better educated than the rest of us, although not one for showing it.
Sometimes when we rode along he would recite poetry or tell me stories from the history of ancient times, and it was mighty rich stuff. Those old Greeks he was always talking about, they reminded me of mountain folk I'd known, and it fair made me ache to know how to read myself.
Rountree talked mighty little, but whatever he said made a sight of sense. He knew buffalo ... although there was always something to learn about them. He was a mighty hard old man, rode as many hours as any of us, although he was a mighty lot older. I never did know how old he was, but those hard old gray eyes of his had looked on a sight of strange things.
'Man could make some money,' Rountree said one day, 'over in the breaks of western Kansas and Colorado.
