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Updated: June 22, 2025
Whatever his quarry the plainsman's movements would have been difficult of detection, for he crept along toward his goal with that rapid, serpentine movement so essentially Indian. Rube watched him until darkness hid him from view. Then, stooping low, and scanning the sky-line a few minutes later, he distinctly made out the silhouette of two men standing talking together.
Even Major Mackenzie, the engineer in charge of the large irrigation project being built by a company in southern Arizona, relaxed at one of the plainsman's humorous tales.
"A young coyote, just a pup," he announced upon his return. "I'm glad I got that fellah. They are an awful pest." It was a big bird with an eight-foot stretch from wing tip to tip as measured by this plainsman's rule his hands. "They carry away lambs and attack new-born calves," he said. "They attack people sometimes, but that is rare." He helped me on my horse. "All my fault.
One thing seems certain, however, they don't mean to harm us, at least not yet." The rear guard closed up again, necessitating silence once more. All night they traveled, ambling at the plainsman's "trotecito" when opportunity offered, and then again slacking to a crawling walk where the baked ground grew uneven and criss-crossed with gullies and arroyos.
There lay his little calf tied fast, and to the north ran many others, some of which he must he would have. To think quickly had meant the solving of many a plainsman's problem. Should he stay with his prize to save it, or leave it to be devoured? "Ha! you old gray devils!" he yelled, shaking his fist at the wolves. "I know a trick or two."
It was all a fearsome venture, but after all it was glorious. The placid round of her own life seemed for the moment intolerably commonplace. There was epic largeness in the circuit of the plainsman's daring plans. The wonders of Nature which he catalogued loomed large in the misty knowledge she held of the West. She cried out: "Oh, I wish I could see those wonderful scenes!"
Twice he neighed, impatiently and long; and as he quickened his gait still more, the packhorse did the same, and I realized that there was about me still a spice of the tenderfoot: those dots were not cattle; they were horses. My horse had put me in the wrong. He had known his kind from afar, and was hastening to them. The plainsman's eye was not yet mine; and I smiled a little as I rode.
But I must hurry on." He hastened at a gallop up the ridge away from the creek, his mind still on that red scarf flung about by the winter wind. "It was a strange thing," he thought, "but every human token is startling out here. What's that now?" The doctor had a plainsman's ear as well as a plainsman's eye.
In fact, the plainsman's watchful eye had detected, a short distance ahead, a black void in the surface of the hillside, which he guessed to be a deep arroyo. Their horses' hoofs clattered in an unpleasantly loud manner, as they reached the hard highway, and began to hammer down it, still bearing due east. Behind them now they could hear distinctly the yells and shouts of the pursuers.
After a long time, he cautiously crawled out of the thicket and searched the surroundings with a plainsman's eye. He climbed the slope and saw the clouds of dust, the near one small, the far one large, which told him all he needed to know. "Comanches?" queried Adams, with a quaver in his voice. He was new to the plains. "Likely," said Jones, who thought it best not to tell all he knew.
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