CHAPTER XII

DROUTH

“That makes three hundred, Russ,” counted Raquel, while a wriggling leggy calf, baaing frantically for its mother, was caught in the “squeezer” as it tried to slip through the cattle chute.

Russ pulled the calf out and in a moment had the little whiteface on its side in the corral. There was a smell of singeing hair, an enraged moan from the waiting mother cow and, as her baby struggled to its feet, a little Lazy L branded on its flank, she charged wildly.

Everybody scattered and Georgie got under the corral fence just in time to escape a competent pair of horns. The calf looked wildly about, discovered its mother charging the world, and with a bawl butted into her side.

Immediately her frenzy disappeared from the range mother. She became quiet and peaceful and loving, and began vigorously to lick her son into shape, while he healed his hurts with nourishment.

“Oh, you old cow-mother you. That’s just the way I feel; peaceful and lovin’.” Raquel grinned at Russell.

It was a glorious day, the first of May, although the sun was too hot for eight o’clock in the morning.

“Do you know, Russ, the Lazy L cleared just sixty-five thousand dollars on that bunch of cattle we shipped two weeks ago. The market raised from fifty to sixty-five dollars a head and is still going up. If we’d sent them all off at first we’d have lost--let’s see--just nine thousand dollars.

“All of that’s gone into Liberty bonds now. We’ve paid Mr. Marvin back, with interest, and the rest is in the bank for operatin’ expenses.

“But the question is, where are we goin’ to get more cattle for the Government? After this next bunch we can’t ship anything but veal until September.”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Cattle is gettin’ scarcer and scarcer already with this war. And if we don’t get some rain, what cattle we got left won’t be fit to put on ice.”

The roundup, which was nearly complete, had totalled Los Ranchos already some twenty-five hundred calves. As a number of the great pastures of Los Ranchos were fenced the cattle were being branded in lots. The roundup proper, which takes place once a year and for one purpose only, that of branding all cattle, is a thing of the open range, where there are no fences, and cattle must be rounded up for fifty miles. There is much riding, a big outfit is necessary, and it takes longer than when it can be done by pastures. In the old days Dad would be out on the range for five and six weeks at a time, and cattle from ’way up in Colorado would have to be cut out of his herd, “drifters” that had traveled a couple of hundred miles.

Russ’s gloomy prediction almost came true during the hot weeks that followed, hot weeks without so much as a tiny cloudlet appearing in that matchless blue of sky. The young grass that had sprung up from the moisture of the rain on the night when they had driven their first shipment of cattle down into town, had already shriveled. The mesas that in other years had been flowered meadows, knee deep in gramma grass, were now one with the desert, yellow and dry, except for the tender green of the mesquite.

Raquel stood at the edge of the alamo grove, looking out over the desert. Above her head the young leaves of the alamos were shiny and green. Raquel looked up to them admiringly.

“You-all just go on a-diggin’ for water till you get it, don’t you, old trees? I wonder how deep those great old roots of yours go. The same with that mesquite out yonder. The most of that little bush is down under ground, nosin’ maybe forty feet to keep those pretty little leaves green like that.

[Illustration: RAQUEL RODE OVER SOUTH TO A WINDMILL]

“I wish grass could help itself that way!” She spoke mournfully, for in the past two weeks the last of the small water holes had disappeared. And the big reservoirs were low. Not a breath of wind strong enough to turn the windmill had there been in weeks. And now the little shiny leaves overhead hung motionless.

Jami and Georgie had gone out to drive up the straggling cattle that were coming in for water. Raquel’s forethought in regard to the tank in the grove had proved wise, for quite a pool had survived in the deep shade of the trees.

Now, as she watched, a straggling line of cattle came up the slight incline that set the grove off from the desert, and broke clumsily into a run as they saw the water they had been smelling so long. They plunged down into it, burying heads and shoulders in its heavenly wetness. One old cow was so exhausted that she could not rise from her knees and would have drowned on the spot if Raquel had not shouted for help to pull her out.

That afternoon Raquel rode over south to a windmill, now idle but still dripping a few drops that in the course of hours would fill a small trough. Here stood a line of patient cows licking the drops as fast as they fell.

This had always been one of the best wells. Raquel was miserable as she saw the thirst-tormented creatures waiting there so patiently. Formerly there had been back of the shack near the windmill a small pipe line leading down from one of those tiny springs in a _cañoncito_ above.

Remembering this, Raquel tore up to the spot. She was riding the pinto, who had become her inseparable companion, and who followed at her heels the moment she dismounted. Rummaging under the dead grass and leaves she soon found the end of the pipe, but not a drop oozed from its dust-clogged mouth. It was choked, that was clear.

Climbing up above, Raquel found that under a shelving rock there was moisture. Her groping fingers felt water in the deep crevice, unbelievably cool in its natural rock filter.

It took but a long piece of baling wire and a few minutes to clean the pipe, to join it with another length that reached crookedly down to the trough, and to watch the tiny stream trickle forth--to be sucked into thirsty, heat-caked muzzles, before it fell.

While she waited there was a continual straggling procession of cattle coming up for water. And now one of those piteous tragedies of the cow country passed before Raquel’s eyes.

A drouth-crazed cow came weaving towards the trough. Ten feet away she stopped, lifted her nose to sniff that scent of water, then stumbling a few steps she buried her muzzle in the dust, lapping it feebly, and fell over dead.

It was impossible to keep some one at each trough all the time, Raquel reflected sadly as she rode homeward. Her depression was not only because of the suffering, but because it meant terrific loss to the cattle country. And it meant that the Government’s demand for beef could not be met.

As she rode Raquel’s eyes traveled anxiously over the plains in search of wandering stock. What cattle she saw were making toward water holes, some of them with stumbling calves at their udders, trying to moisten their baby mouths as they followed along. The little pipe line would take care of them, Raquel reflected gratefully, until the boys could bring them into the home corral.

Not more than a mile from the house she came across a big she-mule, tenderly nuzzling a baby _burrito_, that butted feebly and in vain for its dinner against this barren foster-mother.

“So you stole you a baby, you poor old childless thing, you.”

Raquel dismounted and picked up the fuzzy, rabbit-eared little bundle, weak with hunger. She laid it across her saddle, much to the pinto’s distaste.

“Hey, there, Paintbrush! Slow there, boy. It’s all right.” She vaulted quickly into the saddle and trotted away with the _burrito_ in her arms and the bereaved kidnaper following close behind.

“Any of you boys see this baby’s mother?” Arrived at the home corral Raquel lifted the woolly little creature, that looked like nothing so much as a giant jack rabbit, into Georgie’s arms, and he bore it off to the house to give it warm milk.

As Raquel stepped into the kitchen Mom handed her a letter from Dad. He was proud of the way she had handled the loan.

“And do your best, my girl, to save every head of beef this summer. These soldier boys have greater need of meat now than they’re ever likely to have again.”

* * * * *

June was drawing to a close, a June in which roses had little part; and only the hardiest of flowers bloomed in Mom’s patio.

“Mother Daniels”--things were serious when Raquel spoke so--“I don’t believe we could ship more than eight hundred lean, very lean, feeders, off this range if we tried. So I have a plan. Tell you when I get back.” And she flung off to Red Dog in the car.

“Here comes that Daniels gal,” drawled Red Dog, lounging in his doorway. “I see her in town t’other day.” He bit off a chew of tobacco and looked in at “A. B.,” who leaned against the bar. “A. B.” apparently did not hear.

“She seemed to have a lot o’ business in the bank, depositin’ her profits and the like.” Red Dog thoroughly enjoyed making this communication and was no whit disconcerted that it was received in silence.

“I hear she’s going across the border after stock next....” Still no effect. “You-all don’t seem to have such a lot of business over towards La Bolsa these days as a while back. Ain’t you on good terms with Esquibal no more? I thought he was stockin’--I mean runnin’--La Bolsa.”

A steely gaze bore into Red Dog’s eyes.

“Some folks don’t know when to mind their own business,” remarked “A. B.” with dangerous softness. “Can’t seem to sense when talkin’ ain’t healthy.--But as long as you’re so conversational today you might just add what cattle the Daniels gal aims to buy.”

“Oh, as to that I don’t know nothin’ for sure,” replied Red Dog unperturbed. “All I know is I heard old Don Justino Chaves say that she was the only person could afford to bring over a bunch o’ cattle from Sonora that his _primo’s_ holdin’ down there.”

“That so?” replied the cowman. “_Is_ that so?”

“Now what in th’ name o’ the Gila monster did I go and tell him that for?” regretted Red Dog as he watched “A. B.” swing into his car and move off towards town without so much as a backward glance. “I’ll get myself into trouble yet braggin’ about that little gal.”

Down in town the boss of the Lazy L was just making a request that left the good Mr. Putney aghast.

“But five thousand in currency, my dear child! Money is meant to be kept in _banks_! Why endanger yourself by taking that much cash with you?”

Raquel waved aside his qualms with such effect that within fifteen minutes she strode out the door of the main bank of La Cruz with the amount she wanted in bills and gold, stowed away in a money belt about her slender waist. Nothing but cash talked in Mexico, she had always heard Dad say.

And so it came about that Raquel, with Georgie as first aid, made ready to set out for the Mexican border on a shimmering, blinding, July day.

They would ride into town. From there they would ship their horses to the border, riding in the box cars with them, for Raquel had determined to take the pinto with her. There might be a lot of riding, she explained. But the truth was she didn’t want Paintbrush to be separated from her, to forget her and all she had taught him.

“We’ll be back inside two or three weeks at the most, so don’t you fret, Mother honey. I had it straight from Don Justino, who has just come up, that his cousin has several thousand head waiting there at his rancho just across the _frontera_. Don Justino promised him to find purchasers as soon as he got here.

“He says that everything is quiet along the border now, and there’ll be no trouble. It’s only the rich refugees who are worried.

“Gold, American money, is the only thing that counts in Mexico, and I’ll be back with a herd if they’re as Don Justino says. When you get my wire have the boys meet us at the border.”