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Billee! throw your ugly props over that Navagh mustang. Putty hoss too; but I wudn't giv my old mar for a hul cavayard o' him. Gi's a sprig o' the black feather." Here the old trapper drew one of the ostrich feathers out of the helmet of the Navajo chief, and continued "Boyees! take care o' the ole mar till I kum back, an don't let her stampede, do 'ee hear. I wants a blanket.
A dozen mout do it safe enough, but not the hul cavayard." "And would you have the rest to remain here?" "Not hyur. Let 'em go north'ard from hyur, and then strike west through the Musquite Hills. Thur's a crick runs thur, about twenty mile or so this side the trail. They can git water and grass, and `cacher' thur till we sends for 'em."
They ain't over leg-free." "But how should we do for provisions, in that case? We could never cross the desert without them." "Why, cap, thur's no diffeeculty 'bout that. Wi' the parairas as dry as they are, I kud stampede that hul cavayard as easy as a gang o' bufflers; and we'd come in for a share o' them, I reckin. Thur's a wus thing than that, this child smells." "What?"
The second man in command was the assistant wagon-master; then came the "extra hand," next the night herder; and lastly, the cavayard driver, whose duty it was to drive the lame and loose cattle. There were thirty-one men all told in a train. The men did their own cooking, being divided into messes of seven.
"We need Indian fighters, Billy," he told me, and giving me a mule to ride assigned me to a job as cavayard driver. Our long train, twenty-five wagons in a line, each with its six yoke of oxen, rolled slowly out of Leavenworth over the western trail. Wagon-master assistants, bull-whackers thirty men in all not to mention the cavayard driver it was an imposing sight.
When the snakes was in front of us, the little devils came to the end of the snakes' tongues, laughing and dancing, and singing like idiots. Then the big dogs jumped clean over us, growling louder than a cavayard of grizzly bear, and the devils, holding on to their tails, flopped over my head, screaming 'We've got you we've got you at last!
"I stepped forward with a big fellow, with hair frizzled out like an old buffalo just before shedding time; and the people jawing worse than a cavayard of paroquets, stopped, while frizzly shouted: "'Mr. Hatcher, formerly of Wapakonnetta, latterly of the Rocky Mountains. "Well, there I stood. Things were mighty strange, and every darned nigger of them looked so pleased like.
"An' how are 'ee gwine to `cacher' in the Peenyun 'ithout water?" "There is a spring on the side of it, at the foot of the mountain." "That's true as Scripter. I knows that; but at that very spring the Injuns 'll cool their lappers as they go down south'ard. How are 'ee gwine to get at it with this cavayard 'ithout makin' sign? This child don't see that very clur." "You are right, Rube.
I told him of our situation, and that I needed it very badly for the support of my mother and family. "But you're only a boy, Billy," he objected. "What can you do?" "I can ride as well as a man," I said. "I could drive cavayard, couldn't I?" Driving cavayard is herding the extra cattle that follow the wagon train. Mr. Majors agreed that I could do this, and consented to employ me.
The rocks on the sides was pecked smooth as a beaver-skin, ribbed with the grain, and the ground was covered with bits of cedar, like a cavayard of mules had been nipping and scattering them about. Overhead it was roofed, leastwise it was dark in here, and only a little light come through the holes in the rock.
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