Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other StoriesBarnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
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Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other Stories
Barnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
Horses -- Fiction; Western stories
"'Tain't no use for to tell you that we got a move onto ourselves.
You've all seen the Cimarron Kid git a move on an' tear round and just
bust hisself to get out to the herd in the mornin' to relieve the last
guard, along in the fall when the boss was pickin' out men for the
winter work. Well, that was the way we all tore round, an' as everybody
kep' up a night hoss (you all know what a crank that feller Wilson was
'bout night hosses; he'd make every man keep one up if he had the whole
cavyyard in a ten-acre field), we soon had a cup of coffee into us an'
was ready to ride slantin'. Pore Hart was so nigh crazy that he couldn't
say nothin', an' 'twas hard to see a big, strong feller as he was all
broke up like.
"By this time 'twas gettin' daylight in the east an' we struck out,
scatterin' every way, but keepin' in sight an' hearin' of each other.
'Bout two miles from camp I ran slap dab onto the buckboard, with one of
the hosses tied up to the wheel, an' 'tother gone. The harness of the
other hoss laid on the ground, an' from the sign, she had evidently
unharnessed the gentlest hoss of the two, an' got on him, with the kids,
an' tried to ride him bareback. I fired a couple of shots, which brought
some of the other boys to me, an' we follered up the trail, step by
step, 'cause 'twas a hard trail to pick out, owin', as I said, to the
sand an' snow.
"Pretty soon we come to where she had got off the hoss an' led him for a
ways; then we found the tracks of the kids; an' we judged they'd all got
so cold they had to walk to git warm; an' all that time my fingers an'
ears was tinglin' an achin', they was so cold, an' what was them pore
kids an' that little woman goin' to do, when a big, stout puncher like
me was shiverin' an' shakin' like a old cow under a cedar in a norther?
"Bimeby we struck the hoss standin' there all humped up with the cold,
the reins hooked over a little sage bush. I sent one of the boys back
with the hoss, an' tole him to hitch up to the buckboard an' foller on,
fer I knowed shore we'd need it to put their pore frozen bodies on when
we found 'em.
"Here we saw signs where she'd tried to build a fire, but, Lord
A'mighty, you know how hard it is to find anything to burn round that
there Petrified Forest country, an' she only had three or four matches,
an' nothin' to make a fire catch with. Then she started on ag'in, an' I
judged she'd got a star to go by, 'cause she kep' almost straight north
to'ds the railroad. By the trail, she was a-carryin' the youngest kid, a
boy 'bout two years old, an' leadin' the other, which was a little gal
'bout five.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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