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Where are the cows that we used to own?" he cried, hotly. "What happens to a maverick-hunter now-a-days? By God, if a man helps hisself to a pore, sick dogie he's hunted down! It can't go on much longer, an' that's shore." Cries of approbation arose on all sides, for his auditors ignored the fact that their kind, by avarice and thievery, had forever killed the occupation of maverick-hunting.
But what had become of the dogie? What would have been Leviatt's duty, after the departure of the rustlers? Obviously to drive the calf to the herd and report the occurrence to the manager. Leviatt may have driven the calf to the herd, but assuredly he had not reported the occurrence to the manager, for he had not been in to the ranchhouse. Why not?
"There's them that she'll let pick posies with her, an' them that she won't." Leviatt's face crimsoned with anger. "I reckon if you hadn't been monkeyin' around too much with the girl, you'd have run across that dead Two Diamond cow an' the dogie that she left," he sneered. Ferguson's lips straightened. "How far off was you standin' when that cow died?" he drawled.
"Come again soon," urged Berrie; "father wants to see you." "Thank you. I will look in very shortly," he replied, and went out with such dignity as he could command, feeling, however, very much like a dog that has been kicked over the threshold. Closing the door behind him, Belden turned upon the girl. "What's that consumptive 'dogie' doing here?
The dream was bothering him now, as he rode away from the ranchhouse toward the gully where he had found the dead Two Diamond cow. He had not reported the finding of the dead cow, intending to return the next morning to look the ground over and to fetch the "dogie" back to the home ranch. It would be time enough then to make a report of the occurrence to Stafford.
"Probably Dutchy didn't take no note of what the locoed little dogie DID say," thinks I to myself. The Irishman bellied up to the bar again, and pounded on it with his fist. "Look here!" he yells. "Listen to what I'm tellin' ye! God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle! Do ye hear me?" "Sure, I hear ye," says Dutchy, and goes on swabbin' his bar with a towel. At that my soul just grew sick.
I reckon he figgered that if he tried to ride away on this ridge whoever'd done the shootin' would see him. An' so he didn't go. He stayed right here an' watched me when I rode up." He smiled. "There ain't no use lookin' for that dogie. The man that stayed here has run him off." There was nothing left for Ferguson to do. He mounted and rode slowly along the ridge, examining the tobacco pouch.
"Maybe it's a 'dogie," says Larry Eagen we calls calves whose mothers have died "dogies." "No," says I, "I don't hardly think so. A dogie is always under size and poor, and he's layin' around water holes, and he always has a big, sway belly onto him. No, this is no dogie; and, if it's an honest calf, there sure ought to be a T 0 cow around somewhere." So we separated to have a good look.
Riding for a dogie outfit was a hard life, but one could always get a laugh out of it somehow. The philosophy of the range is to grin and bear it. A few days later Bob rode into town with a pack-horse at heel. He was to bring back some supplies for the ranch. Harshaw had chosen him to go because he wanted to buy some things for himself.
Now Punk Dixon was a bit sensitive on the dogie question; while employed in the engaging pursuit of prodding refractory yearlings up a loading chute that spring his flimsy footing had given way, precipitating him under the feet of two score frightened animals whose sharp hoofs had reduced his brand new "chaps" to rags and himself to a sadly dilapidated mass of incoherent blasphemy.
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