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and they have some reason for their beliefs. When they talk of running you
out, they are serious.
 Then  he chuckled--?I reckon they ll have to learn the hard way, because I
intend to stay right where I am.
When she had gone he went to work. He fixed the lock on the back door, built
a door for the stable, and repaired the water trough. He was dead tired when
he turned.
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At daybreak he was in the saddle checking the boundaries of his land. There
was wild land to the north, but he could check on that later. Loco weed had
practically taken over some sections of his land, but he knew that animals
will rarely touch it if there is ample forage of other grasses and brush.
Several of the loco-weed varieties were habit-forming. Scarcity of good forage
around water holes or salt grounds was another reason. Most of the poisonous
species were early growing and if stock was turned on the range before the
grass was sufficiently matured, the cattle would often turn to loco weed.
It was early spring now, but grass was showing in quantity. There was loco
weed, but it seemed restricted to a few areas. He had learned in Texas that
overgrazing causes the inroad of the weed, but when land is ungrazed the
grasses and other growths tend to push the loco back. That had happened here.
The following days found him working dawn until dark. He found some old wire
and fenced off the worst sections of weed. Then he borrowed a team from
Susan s father and hitched it to a heavy drag made of logs laden with heavy
slabs of rock. This drag ripped the weed out by the roots, and once it was
loose he raked it into piles for burning.
During all of this time he had seen nobody around. Yet one morning he saddled
up, determined to do no work that day. His time was 115 short, as the week
they had given him was almost up, and if trouble was coming it might start the
following day. He rode north but was turned back by a wall of chaparral
growing ten to fifteen feet high, as dense a tangle as he had ever seen in the
brush country on the Nueces.
For two miles he skirted the jungle of prickly pear, cat claw, mesquite, and
greasewood until he was almost directly behind Black Mesa.
Looking up, he was aware that he was seeing the mesa from an unusual angle.
The area was a jumble of upthrust ledges and huge rock slabs and practically
impenetrable, yet from where he sat he could see a sort of shadow along the
wall of the mesa. Working his way closer, he could see that it was actually an
undercut along the face of the cliff. It was visible only because the
torrential rains had left the rock damp in the shadow of the cliff. It might
be that it had never been seen under these circumstances and from this angle
before.
Forcing his horse through a particularly dense mass of brush, he worked a
precarious way through the boulders until he was within a few feet of the
wall, and near it, of a gigantic earth crack. In the bottom of this crack was
a trickle of water, but it was running toward the mesa!
Leaving his horse, he descended to the bottom of the crack. At the point
where he had left his horse it was all of thirty feet wide, but at the bottom,
a man could touch both walls with outstretched arms.
All was deathly still. Only the faint trickle of the water and the crunch of
gravel under his boots broke the stillness. Yet he was aware of a distant and
subdued roar that seemed to issue from the base of Black Mesa itself!
He came suddenly to a halt. Before him was a vast black hole! Into th
trickled the stream he had been following, and far below he could hear the
sound of the water falling into a pool. Recalling the small hole on the
opposite side, he realized that under Black Mesa lay a huge underground pool
or lake. By all reason the water should have been flowing away from the Mesa,
but due to the cracks and convulsions of the earth, the water flowed downward
into some subterranean basin of volcanic formation.
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But if it did not escape? Then there 117 would be a vast reservoir of water,
constantly supplied and wholly untapped!
When he emerged, he looked again at the shadow on the wall, revealing a wind-
and rain-hollowed undercut that slanted up the side of the mesa. And while he
looked he had an idea.
The following day he rode north again, seeking a way through the chaparral.
Beyond the belt of brush Sue had told him the green petered out into desert.
Although she had not seen it herself, she also told him that only one ranch
lay that way, actually to the northwest of Black Mesa, and that was the
Pitchfork.
Suddenly he came upon the tracks of two horses. They were shod horses,
walking west, and side by side. The tracks ended abruptly as they had begun,
at an uptilted slab of sandstone, but seeing scratches on the sandstone, he
rode up himself. It was quite a scramble, but the ledge broke sharply off and
a crack, bottomed with blown sand, showed horse tracks.
When he reached the bottom he was in a small meadow and the belt of chaparral
was behind him except for scattered clumps. The riders had worked here he
puzzled out the tracks rounding up a few head of cattle and starting them
northwest up the edge of the watery meadow.
Realization flooded over Matt Calou like a cold shower. Wheeling his horse,
he started back up the meadow and had gone only a short distance when he came
upon a Slash D steer! That was the brand of Dyer, the saloon keeper. Farther
along he found another Slash D and three KR S.
Grinning with satisfaction, he retracted his steps and rode back to his own
ranch.
Sue was in the kitchen and a frying pan was sizzling with bacon and eggs when
he returned.
 Eggs! He grinned at her.  Those are the first eggs I ve seen in months!
 We keep a few chickens, she replied,  and I thought I d surprise you. She
dished up a plate of the eggs and bacon, then poured coffee.  You d better get
ready to leave, young man. Foster, of the Pitchfork, is coming over here with
his crowd and the crowd from Wagonstop. They say they ll run you out of the
country!
Calou chuckled.  Let  em come! I m ready for  em now!
 You look like the cat that swallowed the 119 canary, she said, studying him
curiously.  What s happened?
 Wait an see! he teased.  Just wait!
 You ve been working, she said.  What are you
going to do with that pasture you dragged?
 Plant it to crop. After a few years of that I ll let it go back to grass.
That will take care of the loco weed.
 Crops take water.
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 We ll have lots of water! Plenty of it!
Enough for the crops, all the stock, an baths every night for ourselves and
the kids.
She was startled.  Ourselves?
 My wife and myself.
 You didn t tell me you had a wife! She
stared at him.
 I haven t one, but I sure aim to get one now. I ve got one in mind. One that
will be the mother of fifteen or twenty kids.
 Fifteen or twenty? You re crazy!
 I like big families. I m the youngest of
twelve boys. Anyway, I got a theory about
raisin  em. It s like this 
 It will have to wait, Sue put her hand on his arm.  Here they are.
Matt Calou got to his feet. He was, she realized suddenly, wearing a
tied-down gun. His rifle was beside the front door and standing alongside it
was a shotgun.
Outside she could see the tall, lean figure of Foster of the Pitchfork and
beside him were Russell, Knauf, and a half dozen others. Then, coming up
behind them, she saw Old Man Karr, Dyer, and Wente. With them were a dozen
riders. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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