Now that the herd law was a fact, the next task Rob and Harry had to undertake was getting hay for the winter. Yet it was almost impossible for them to find time to look for it. Every day was crowded with work. The herd law would not take effect until the following spring, and the cattle at present in the hills would remain there until the fall round-up. Until then one or the other of the young people must always ride the fence to look for breaks, to push the range cattle back and to keep their own animals near home in an effort to stop the losses that continued with baffling persistence.
With the patience of an old hand Harry performed that part of the work. Early and late she rode to all the water holes not already gone dry, to all the favorite midday haunts of the herds, constantly hoping to find one or all of the six creatures that had disappeared. She found none of them; and, while she searched, two more steers, a yearling, and a cow and a calf vanished one by one.
Ludlum's "cow-punchers," with growing insolence, came repeatedly inside the fence to look through the milk cows and calves on pasture; and they never lost a chance to make threatening remarks to Harry about rustlers and what they were doing. Harry never [Pg 259]repeated their remarks to Rob, for she was anxious to shield him from any additional annoyance.
Slowly she had waked up to the fact that behind her brother's undemonstrative calm there was deep anxiety and worry. Never given to talking much, he now scarcely spoke a word. His appetite vanished; when Harry begged him to eat, he said that he had a headache or that he had not slept very well the night before, which soon began to mean that he was not sleeping well any of the time.
"Poor Bobby is killing himself over the business, and there isn't a thing I can do to help him," she said to herself. "I can't even sell out until this fall, and by that time——"
But she could not say what she thought might happen by that time. The last cutting of hay would soon be made now, and Rob must surely be able to get some then.
By the middle of August the range was stripped of feed. The foothills, browsed over by thousands of sheep and cattle, burned by the dry winds and endless days of bright sunshine, stretched their dreary length of black lava and yellow sandstone buttes, gray sagebrush and trodden dust. Water holes and springs finally succumbed to the long drought, and from all sides the herds came down round the ranches. Trailing along the fences, they disturbed the silent nights with their uneasy bellowings.
About the first of September Rob and Harry brought all their cattle inside, in relays. Their wheat was not[Pg 260] going to pay for harvesting it, and it was better to feed it now as pasture and save the alfalfa. They had, intended, of course, to ship their best steers to the stockyards, but the lack of feed had flooded the markets both East and West with half-starved and young creatures; and even fat beef was bringing a ruinously low price.
"Better to hold on as long as we can," Rob decided; "the price should go up as soon as this low grade is cleaned out."
"I should think that with so many hundreds being shipped there would be plenty of hay for all that are left," Harry suggested.
"I haven't found a man who's got more than enough for his own stock—if he has that. Even grain hay is being held for winter feed."
Harry had no answer. Slowly, distinctly, before her unwilling mind rose the vision of the famine winter. Against her wish she recalled the stories to which in the unmeaning time of plenty she and Rob had listened, shudderingly thankful that they had been spared such distress and anguish of mind.
Early in November she had asked Rob a question that she had been pondering. They had finally sold sixteen steers at the ruinous price of thirty dollars a head, and with hay at fifteen dollars it was clear they would not have enough money to pull through. Yet while they were suffering this famine here, down on the South Side a great harvest was being gathered. Why[Pg 261] was there no way of getting part of that feed on the prairie? "What's the reason they can't ship baled hay in here?" she said.
"Baled hay? Forty miles by wagon? It couldn't be done. No, the ranchers on this side of the hills have to take their chances, and they know it. If they haven't enough hay, they'll sell half their stock and put the rest on short rations and pull through somehow."
"Why couldn't they drive their cattle down there? Other men bring their stock up here in summer and go back to the South Side for the winter."
"Sure. That's where they live. These fellows here would have to take all their belongings—a raft of children, chickens, pigs—why, they'd rather let their cattle starve."
"Well, we haven't a raft of children to hold us here. If you can't find hay on the prairie, we'll go down on the South Side and buy hay and feed the stock there."
"Don't you know that we'd have to have a house to live in and a well? The stock's got to be watered, and the ditches don't run all winter. You seem to think we can move round anywhere we take a fancy. In the West there aren't any obligingly abandoned farms waiting at the end of shady lanes, with pasture attached. Every house and shed and shack in this country was built for some special bunch of folks, and every acre of pasture is carrying just so much stock, and the rest is desert."
"But you'll go down there and try to find something,[Pg 262] won't you?" Harry urged. "Some one is going to get the last hay for sale there, and you may be that one. I'll see to things here."
"Well, seeing as I haven't got any advice of my own to follow, I may as well take yours."
When he set out, two days later, Harry walked down to the big gate with him.
"Now don't hurry back," was her warning as he left her. "You must find hay. It means the beginning of our everlasting fortune if we bring the herd through this winter. And if," she added to herself as he rounded the butte, "if we can't get hay—what then?"
At the end of a week she received a post card from Rob.
"No luck yet. Plenty of feed, but mostly contracted for in big lots; small stacks not for sale. Am going farther on next week, so don't expect me until you see me."
As Harry read this she felt a pang of terror such as she had felt when, as a child playing "I spy" and wildly seeking a hiding place at the last minute, she had heard the warning shout, "Ready or not you shall be caught." Were they going to be caught now? Not only must they get hay, but they must get it before the first big snowstorm should imprison the herd in the hills. Would Rob, down in the Snake River country where the weather was still warm, remember that up in the hills winter was very near?
[Pg 263]
To Harry, waiting, watching, the suspense became almost unendurable. As November glided away with its pale, clear skies and its short, windless days, the desert grew lonelier, vaster. The forsaken fields, the sear hillsides on which not one of the animals that had fed there was left, even the empty skies where only a single hawk floated—all were dumb witnesses that the harvest was ended.
If Harry had been idle, the suspense would have been worse; but there was plenty for her to do, whether they stayed where they were for the winter or departed. The root vegetables must be dug and stored, the weeds burned, the dry wood hauled down from the grove and stacked, the asparagus bed mulched and the young trees tied in tar paper to keep off rabbits. When she had done all that and had cleaned the house, Harry felt that she could afford to take an afternoon off and go to see Isita. Though the girl had been out of her sick bed for more than three months, she was not yet strong, and for that reason Harry was doubly set on getting her away to school.
She found Isita sitting on an old box in the sunshine, picking wool for a quilt. She was working slowly, steadily, but all too evidently without interest. At sight of Harry her face lighted with pleasure.
"I was so afraid you'd gone for the winter!" she exclaimed. "It's such a long time since you've been up."
"As if I'd go without saying good-by! I don't want to go at all until you're settled down on the flat, going to school. Has your mother persuaded your father?"
[Pg 264]
Isita's head drooped. "I don't believe he's going to let me go. He wants me to work." She half glanced up and smiled rather wanly. "I can't explain. You wouldn't understand."
"No, I don't understand," Harry answered. "I'd like to ask, too. Is your father here?"
The words were still on her lips when Biane turned the corner of the house at a leisurely walk.
"Good afternoon, miss!" he said. "You wish to speak to me?"
"If you please, Mr. Biane. Isita seems to think that you can't spare her to go to sch............