"N-o-o-o," Pod drawled; "just traveling." That was the time in Pod's life when he ought to have lied. Then he explained where he was from, and where he was bound, but did not say that he was a darn fool. The cowboys grunted, or nodded, or smiled, some winked to each other, and one of 'em nudged another in the ribs; everything they did had a deep meaning. I began to tremble for Pod. Would they shoot at his heels and make him dance? Or make him ride a bucking bronco? Or what?

"Better feed yer jacks, Mister," said one; "ye'll find grain in th' shed yender." Pod seemed to be as delighted as we donks.

"The Prof is going to catch it soon," Cheese observed.

"Serve him right," added Damfino.

c.o.o.nskin left us to feed and walked to the house with Pod. Soon afterward they returned with a cowboy, who said I had a good shape, asked my weight, and inquired if I was sound in body and mind; then he questioned c.o.o.nskin.

"What did you do fer yer salt 'fore ye jined th' outfit?"

"I was night porter in a hotel," was the reply.

"What was ye doin' 'fore that?"

"Railroading some."

"And 'fore that?"

"Painting."

"Paintin' what?"

"Church steeples."

"Golly! yer jest th' man we're lookin' fer."

c.o.o.nskin didn't quite understand them, but he did later.

"Bridle this 'ere jack," said the cowboy, meaning me. c.o.o.nskin bridled me and rode to the joint. I didn't think anything would happen to me. Several more cowboys had just come in from the range, and soon every man of the gang was busy. I now noticed one fellow mixing red paint; three or four were making two ladders; another one appeared with an armful of blankets; and another with ropes, and presently a cowboy climbed one of the ladders to the roof. Something was doing, sure. Pod seemed interested, but didn't say anything. c.o.o.nskin looked as if he saw his finish. I giggled.

Suddenly came a surprise. One cowboy wrapped the blankets round my body, while another bound them on with lariats; another trimmed my tail with a pair of sheepshears. Then ropes were fastened to my body and the other ends thrown to the men on the roof. Next the ropes were slung round the two chimneys at both ends of the roof, and thrown to the gang below. At once the cowboys grabbed hold and pulled, and I rose in the air, until my head bunked against the eaves. There I dangled and swung and kicked and brayed. Never was so scared in all my life. Splinters flew as I kicked holes in the house, and knocked off a section of the eaves. The cowboys howled, they thought it so funny. But the real circus began when Pod was commanded to mount a ladder with a pail of red paint, and using my tail for a brush, paint the name "R A N G E L Y" on that house.

c.o.o.nskin was made to climb the other ladder with another pail of paint, and, he being a professional painter, with a real paint brush go over Pod's lettering to make a decent job of it.

Well, I had seen Pod mad, but never as mad as he was then. He grabbed my tail and started to paint a big letter R, when I up and kicked the pail out of his hands and sent red paint flying all over half the cowboys; not satisfied with this, I put a few more holes in the house, and finally hit the ladder and spilled Pod on the ground. The cowboys thought that was fun, too; some were so tickled they fired off their revolvers. Here c.o.o.nskin was told to divide his paint with Pod, and the painting was continued on the letter A.

The Prof worked as well as he could with such a nervous paint brush, now and then dodging my heels. I admit I didn't know what I was doing, when suddenly I struck my master in the stomach, and made him get down from the ladder. But the sign had to be finished. Up the ladder again Pod climbed like a man, the cowboys pulled on the ropes, dragging me along so that my tail could be brought to where the next letter should be. Then Pod started on the fourth letter, G. By this time the men were tugging on the ropes to keep me in position for the painter's convenience.

Finally the men backed from the house and pulled me away from its side, and Pod turned me about till I hung the other end to, and began the fifth letter, E.

Now I could see the sign. It was up hill. I knew it wouldn't suit those cowboys, and I expected it would have to be painted over. It wasn't Pod's fault, it wasn't mine. As I was gradually pulled along the eaves the higher I was raised, because there was no pulley on the rope. But now that I was turned about, I was swung back some, and the E had to be painted below the level of the first four letters. L and Y followed each other up hill, until, just as the job was finished, I hit the pail a crack with my right foot and sprinkled two more cowboys. The crowd made sport of them, and I think, after all, those cowboys fared worse than we three painters. Then I was lowered to the earth.

To my surprise, the cowboys liked the sign immensely. One p.r.o.nounced it artistic, another said it was odd and people would notice it, and several agreed that it was the best job of its kind they ever saw. Pod didn't seem to be tickled over this flattery, but c.o.o.nskin was puffed up with pride, and when one fellow told him he ought to have stuck to painting, he acknowledged that he should have done so.

When the two started down the ladders the cowboys called: "Hold on there, we want a speech." So the Prof made a speech. Both men were then escorted indoors and the barkeeper mixed a high-ball in a pail and sent it out to me. I was "loony" for hours afterwards.

I never want another experience like that. Pod said afterward it was his first and last painting. He thought the cowboys might have shot a pipe out of his mouth, but he hadn't thought they could condescend to such a low trick as to make him paint a sign with his donkey's tail. The cowboys wanted us to spend the night with them, but Pod replied that he couldn't tarry, but he said he was much obliged for all their courtesies. About dark we said good-bye, and pretending we would travel ten miles that evening, pitched camp near a bridge crossing White River, one or two miles from Rangely. At dawn the men were out after sage hens. They saw several, but couldn't get a shot at the shy creatures.

We started early and traveled over a desolate wilderness of sage and greasewood in a torturing sun, and were unpacked at one o'clock for an hour's rest. Sometimes the trail led through deep channels in the hard-baked sand for several hundred yards, where we were obscured from view. These channels wound about through the desert and mesa, as if they might be the beds of dried-up rivers; and they were often so narrow that had we met a wagon either our outfit or the vehicle would have had to turn back. We came across quant.i.ties of skeletons and skulls of horses and cattle and wild animals, but I failed to see any donkey's bones. Don was glad when in these cuts, for he managed there to keep in the shade, while trailing in the open he was ever trotting ahead to hide under a bush where three-fourths of him was exposed to the sun.

Toward the middle of the afternoon we crossed the backbone of the plateau, at an alt.i.tude of seven thousand feet, and met a wagon with four horses, bound for Leadville with honey. The driver said he was from Vernal, some sixty miles to the west. Pod thought honey would go well with hot cakes for supper, and after some coaxing got the freighter to break a case and sell him a half dozen boxes. Then the question arose, how could he safely carry the honey?

"Good idee not to put all your eggs in one basket," c.o.o.nskin remarked. Pod said he wouldn't. He tucked one box in a saddle-bag, another in a roll of blankets strapped behind his valet's saddle, another in a bag of supplies on Skates, and the last two he packed carefully in the canvas awning. The men conversed and smoked awhile, when the stranger happened to mention that he sometimes dealt in hides. Here was the chance the men were waiting for. The bearskin Skates had carried from Turkey Creek belonged to the poker-player, but he promised half what he should get for it to Pod, if he would let the donks carry it till disposed of. The man said he was willing to give $60 for a fine silvertip skin, so c.o.o.nskin unpacked. The stranger was more pleased with it than he would admit, and hemmed and hawed some about the price, but finally paid the $60, and we moved on.

It was six o'clock, and the sun was sinking behind the distant plain when the buildings of the K ranch loomed in the distance.

The sound of galloping horses approaching us from behind caused me to look around, and I beheld two Indians with guns in hand, yelling and gesticulating wildly as they leaned over their ponies'

necks, spurring hard to catch up with us. When Pod and c.o.o.nskin saw the Indians after them, they got ready to throw up their hands. Their faces were as chalky as an alkali desert.

"Have you seen any cattle branded U. S.?" one of the wild men inquired. Pod said he hadn't.

"Where you from?" questioned the half-breed. Pod said: "White River country."

"Ah, we just from there--been hunting up stolen cattle," the half-breed replied. "Found them, but fellows wouldn't give them up. We've done our duty; the fort must deal with them now."

Pod asked what fort, and was told Fort d.u.c.h.esne, some seventy miles away. We learned that two companies of colored troops of the U. S. army were stationed there. The Indians never touched us.

CHAPTER XLIV.

BY PYE POD.

"Dost not hear the neighing of horses, the blare of the trumpets, the beating of the drums?"

"I hear nothing," said Sancho, "but a great bleating of ewes and wethers." And this was true, for the two flocks had now come up near them.--_Don Quixote._

The great K ranch welcomed us just before dark. My animals were generously fed, and we men soon joined the Indian policemen at supper in the house.

When, next morning, the foreman saw us pack the donkeys, he expressed surprise at my traveling with such a luxurious camp outfit. The folding table and chairs, awning, many blankets and other articles were condemned as disgraceful by this experienced plainsman; so, my sensibilities being shocked by such a criticism, I abandoned a hundred pounds of luggage, giving the table, chairs and superfluous blankets to the ranchman, and selling him the awning; then we resumed the journey.

Green River was twenty-five miles to the west. The journey was even more monotonous than that of the previous day. The powdered alkali rose in our faces and penetrated our eyes and throats, compelling us almost constantly to sip from our canteens, wrapped in wet cloths to keep the water cool. Frequently my dog would jump at the larger canteens in the panniers and bark for a drink. I loved to watch him lie down in the narrow shade of a donkey, and, resting his chin on the rim of the basin, slowly lap the frugal measure of water I was able to spare him.

We reached Green River by five, and waited until the ferryman awoke from his daydream to guide the flat-boat across the stream for us. He charged me only two dollars. I thought it very decent of him, as the river was too deep to be forded and he controlled the only ferry; our only alternative was to swim this treacherous stream. Several overland travelers with prairie schooners were in camp on the opposite sh.o.r.e, eastward bound.

I paid a dollar to graze my animals in an alfalfa field for the night, but when we left for Vernal next morning every donkey had the stomach-ache. They grunted and groaned on the march until noontime, and deplored their gluttony with sundry brays that were grating on the nerves.

Vernal is a veritable oasis in a desert, nestling in a broad and fertile valley, which, irrigated from the numerous springs in the mountains forming a rampart round it, is a garden of vivid green.

Farmhouses dot the orchards and meadows everywhere, and the village itself is splendidly shaded. Honey is a leading industry; one can see bee-hives in almost every door yard.

After a good supper with a stranger who offered his hospitality, we two strolled about the flower-scented streets in the cool evening air, until we retired to a downy bed in his apartment that made me wish my trip at an end. Here were no mosquitoes. The fruits of this valley are prolific and delicious, and haven't a blemish; the water is pure, and the climate healthful and exhilarating; surely Vernal received its name from Nature.

The frontier post, Fort d.u.c.h.esne, lay twenty-eight miles to the south, across a desert waste. A few miles beyond Vernal we entered the Uintah Indian Reservation. Further on we saw the shacks and teepees of the Utes, and once we pa.s.sed a party of this treacherous tribe on their ponies. Apparently taking us for desperadoes, they veered off to some distance in the sage and gave us a "wide berth." The strength and humility of their little steeds was surprising. Several of them carried four and five people, the buck sometimes with a boy in front of him and his squaw astride behind him with a papoose strapped to her back, and a boy or girl behind her. When they saw Damfino with her towering pack they, too, perhaps, did some wondering.

We crossed the bridge spanning the Uintah River just before sunset, and reached the guardhouse of the fort just as the bugle sounded retreat parade. To my surprise and delight the officer of the day, Lieut. Horne, was adjutant and chief commissary, and better still, an old cla.s.smate. And when, after parade, I saw the popular officer crossing the parade ground to meet me, I wondered if the changes wrought in our appearance by the lapse of thirteen years would make us both unrecognizable. Our meeting was amusing.

The orderly ushered me into the officer's presence, and I advanced and grasped my old friend's hand in a manner to convince him that I knew him; but while we shook hands vigorously and playfully punched each other in the shoulders, the puzzled man could not speak my name.

"You old fool! Don't you know me?" I asked, still shaking his hand.