Cow-Country | Page 6

his eyes the blue fire of righteous conquest. He went
close-close enough to have brought a protesting cry from a
grownup-lifted the rock high as he could and brought it down fair on
the battered head of the rattler. The loathsome length of it winced and
thrashed ineffectively, and after a few minutes lay slack, the tail
wriggling aimlessly.
Buddy stood with his feet far apart and his hands on his hips, as he had
seen the cowboy do whom he had unconsciously imitated in the killing.
"Snakes like Injuns. Dead'ns is good 'ens," He observed sententiously,
still playing the part of the cowboy. Then, quite sure that the snake was
dead, he took it by the tail, felt again of the horned toad on his chest
and went back to see what the ants were doing.
When so responsible a person as a grownup stops to watch the orderly
activities of an army of ants, minutes and hours slip away unnoticed.
Buddy was absolutely fascinated, lost to everything else. When some
instinct born in the very blood of him warned Buddy that time was
passing, he stood up and saw that the sun hung just above the edge of
the world, and that the sky was a glorious jumble of red and purple and
soft rose.
The first thing Buddy did was to stoop and study attentively the dead
snake, to see if the tail still wiggled. It did not, though he watched it for
a full minute. He looked at the sun-- it had not set but glowed big and
yellow as far from the earth as his father was tall. Ezra had lied to him.
Dead snakes did not wiggle their tails until sundown.
Buddy looked for the dust cloud of the herd, and was surprised to find
it smaller than he had ever seen it, and farther away. Indeed, he could
only guess that the faint smudge on the horizon was the dust he had
followed for more days than he could count. He was not afraid, but he
was hungry and he thought his mother would maybe wonder where he
was, and he knew that the point-riders had already stopped pushing the
herd ahead, and that the cattle were feeding now so that they would bed

down at dusk. The chuckwagon was camped somewhere close by, and
old Step-and-a-Half, the lame cook, was stirring things in his Dutch
ovens over the camp- fire. Buddy could almost smell the beans and the
meat stew, he was so hungry. He turned and took one last, long look at
the endless stream of ants still crawling along, picked up the dead
snake by the tail, cupped the other hand over the horned toad inside his
waist, and started for camp.
After a while he heard someone shouting, but beyond faint relief that he
was after all near his "Outfit", Buddy paid no attention. The boys were
always shouting to one another, or yelling at their horses or at the herd
or at the niggers. It did not occur to him that they might be shouting for
him, until from another direction he heard Ezra's unmistakable,
booming voice. Ezra sang a thunderous baritone when the niggers lifted
up their voices in song around their camp- fire, and he could be heard
for half a mile when he called in real earnest. He was calling now, and
Buddy, stopping to listen, fancied that he heard his name. A little
farther on, he was sure of it.
"OOO-EE! Whah y'all, Buddy? OOO-EEE!"
"I'm a-comin'," Buddy shrilled impatiently. "What y' all want?"
His piping voice did not carry to Ezra, who kept on shouting. The
radiant purple and red and gold above him deepened, darkened. The
whole wild expanse of half-barren land became suddenly a place of
unearthly beauty that dulled to the shadows of dusk. Buddy trudged on,
keeping to the deep-worn buffalo trails which the herd had followed
and scored afresh with their hoofs. He could not miss his way-not
Buddy, son of Bob Birnie, owner of the Tomahawk outfit-but his legs
were growing pretty tired, and he was so hungry that he could have sat
down on the ground and cried with the gnawing food-call of his empty
little stomach.
He could hear other voices shouting at intervals now, but Ezra's voice
was the loudest and the closest, and it seemed to Buddy that Ezra never
once stopped calling. Twice Buddy called back that he was a-comin',
but Ezra shouted just the same: "OOO-EE! WHAH Y' ALL, BUDDY?
OOO-EE!"
Imperceptibly dusk deepened to darkness. A gust of anger swept
Buddy's soul because he was tired, because he was hungry and he was
yet a long way from the camp, but chiefly because Ezra persisted in

calling after Buddy had several times