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"It's up to me to play the hand I've been dealt." That he was in a good deal of pain was easy to guess. "We're past the worst of it," Pauline told him, "Up this hill down the other side and then we're home." The bawling of thirsty cattle and the blatting of calves could be heard now.
Many years in the sheep business had taught him into what small compass a band of sheep can be pressed, and he knew that, once thrown together in the dark cañon, they would stop their telltale blatting and go to sleep. Leaving his herders to hold them there he climbed back up to his peak and beheld the cowboys in the near distance, but still riding east.
Yet our cab whizzed along at a twenty-five mile gait, and every few seconds a great blatting devil would honk out of the darkness, and whirl past us, and sometimes we would be abreast of another and the fiendish horns of us would go screaming in chorus as we raced and passed and repassed one another on the broad street. The din was nerve racking but highly Parisian.
From the looming cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats, and overhead the first stars were peeping mistily through the ragged train of the passing squall. At the end of two hours, having come a mile into the bay, we dropped anchor in eleven fathoms. And so we came to Taiohae. In the morning we awoke in fairyland.
"Must be some fool herder just crossing the coulee, on the move somewhere," Weary gave as a solution. "Half of 'em don't know a fence when they see it." As they galloped toward the sound and the smell, they expressed freely their opinion of sheep, the men who owned them, and the lunatics who watched over the blatting things.
But these young women will grow up and they will be afraid of no cow. So much for a Soledad education. The top-ropers rode slowly into the dust of the milling herd, scampered madly, cast their ropes, and came jumping to us with a blatting calf trailing at their ropes' end.
Tails were thinned, hoofs trimmed, manes cleared of witches' bridles, and ears swabbed to free them of ticks. The start was made before dawn. Stars were shining by thousands when the chuck-wagon rolled down the road. The blatting of cows could be heard as the riders moved the phantom cattle from their bedding-ground. The dogies were long-legged and shaggy, agile and wild as deer.
The goats, held in spasmodic restraint by Humbolt and Greeley and a little spotted dog which Casey had overlooked in his first inventory, were blatting inconsequently in the sage behind the garage. Casey cooked a belated supper and hoped that the outfit would get an early start, and that their tires would hold until they reached Ludlow, at least.
When the last sheep had passed, blatting discordantly, down the bluff, Weary halted the sweating herders for a parting admonition. "We don't aim to deal you any more misery, for a while, if you stay where you're at. You're only working for a living, like the rest of us but I must say I don't admire your trade none. Anyway, I'll send some of your bunch down here with grub and beds.
Four of the calves were huddled together for mutual comfort in a corner. They were blatting indefatigably. Val went over to where the fifth one still stood beside the fence, as near the cow as it could get, and threw a small stone, that bounced off the calf's rump.
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