30,000 On the Hoof (21 page)

Holbert's pessimism, which was corroborated by his neighbour Collier, in no wise dampened Huett's ardour. He had his heavy boot on the neck of the hydra-headed giant that had kept him poor for twenty years. That trip to Flagg, for him and his family, far outdid the one years before, when his beaver pelts had brought their first happy Christmas. He spent lavishly.

He bought secret gifts for the Christmas soon to come. He paid his pressing debts and saw himself at last on the road to success.

The drive back home, with a second wagon and team, was in the nature of a jubilee. More than once Lucinda had Logan stop the wagon so that she could get out and gather purple asters and golden rod. She talked of their honeymoon ride through that dreary, desolate forest. And before they got home Lucinda talked of other things--particularly about Barbara.

"Logan, you're blind as a bat to all except cattle," she said, tersely.

"You never saw how the men at Flagg, young and old, flocked around Barbara. That girl could be the belle of Arizona. She could marry any one of them. Take her pick."

"Good Lord, Luce!" ejaculated Logan, surprised and stung. "Our Barbara leaving? Not to be thought of!"

"How can we help it?--But for Barbara's singular loyalty to us--her love for the boys--she would be having suitors now."

"Luce, you trouble me."

"No wonder. I'm troubled myself. Barbara loves George and Grant. And she worships Abe. But she doesn't know it. She thinks she's just a fond sister. Nature will out, Logan!--She's no kin of ours. She's not their sister... And my trouble is this. Since she must marry--do her part for our West--she should marry one of our boys!"

"My God, Lucinda! you'd have to tell her you're not her mother. I'm not her Dad. Who could we tell her she is? We don't even know her name... Aw, Luce, let's keep it secret long as we can. Not to break that sweet girl's heart!"

"There's the rub, Logan dear," returned Lucinda, soberly. "But the thing can't be overlooked for ever."

Another autumn came. It was different from all the autumns, except one, that Huett remembered. It followed a hot summer remarkable for short, dry, electric storms. What little rain fell was up on the bluffs and the high rims. Not a drop descended in Sycamore Canyon.

That spring and summer the grass in the canyon had been thicker and richer than usual. Huett had dammed the brook into a small lake and had run many branches from it through the meadows, until it sank into the ground. The gardens, orchards, and alfalfa fields, having abundant water from the irrigation ditches, did not suffer from the scorching sun and dry wind.

Indian summer held off.

One day Abe met two cowboys out on the road, riding to Payson. They reported the worst grasshopper plague ever known in that section of Arizona. Ranchers all the way down had sent word along the line for Collier, Holbert, and Huett to look out for a river of grasshoppers flowing over the best of the range land.

When Abe reported that news to his father it was received seriously, but not in any anxiety. Sycamore was a deep hole in the forest, and unlikely to be visited by a plague.

George Huett, the most studious and keenest of the Huetts, took a pessimistic view of the possibilities.

"But, Dad, suppose the grasshoppers did happen to light down in Sycamore," he said, in reply to Logan's sanguine convictions. "They would absolutely eat us up, clean us out, ruin us."

"Son! How do you figure that?"

"Because our canyon is a narrow strip compared to the open range. They'd sweep right through, eating everything to the roots."

"But our stock can live on browse."

"In normal years, yes. But this is not normal. No slopes, and very little leafage."

"Then it is serious," returned Logan, quickly troubled. "Just when' our prospects are so bright!... God must be against me!"

"Nature is, that's sure."

"What can we do?"

"Dad, that's the hell of it. We can't do anything but hope and pray."

"Would you cut the alfalfa?"

"Sure, if we had time. But you know what a job that is. Usually we take a week to cut, dry, rake, and haul. And here those grasshoppers are right on top of us."

"You don't say?" Huett swore under his breath.

"Abe said he'd not worry you till he had to. He rode up the canyon, meaning to climb out and scout back towards the open range. You see, our canyon is almost in a direct line with that flight of grasshoppers. The open country east of Mormon Lake sticks a spike down into this forest.

And the point of it is not very far from the head of Sycamore. Grassy draws through the woods all the way. And, Dad, these damn grasshoppers don't hop! They fly."

"Sure grasshoppers can fly. I've seen the wild turkeys chase them. It's always good hunting when the turks are feeding on them... Son, what you mean? Grasshoppers can't eat while they fly."

"No. But all the same, that's how they cover ground so fast. I've read in the Bible of the locust flights in Egypt. And I've heard, of grasshoppers' flights in Kansas. Much the same, I reckon."

Huett and his two sons waited anxiously for Abe's return. He rode in presently, dark of face and sombre of eye.

"Bad news, son?" queried the cattleman.

"Dad, it couldn't be no worse," replied Abe, sliding out of his saddle, his glance like grey fire. "They're in the canyon."

"No!--Not our canyon?"

"Yes, our canyon. Half-way down. A mile or two of grasshoppers, like a yellow carpet rolling down the grass. They leave the ground as bare as if it'd been burned... Thousands, millions, billions... Barbara," he called to the listening wide-eyed girl, "what's next after billions?"

"Trillions, you stupid boy!"

"Well, trillions of yellow-legged hoppers. They'll be on us pronto... I'm so mad I'm sick. If we could only do something."

"My--God!" gasped Huett. "I can't feed our stock a month this winter, even if we had the corn and alfalfa cut."

Lucinda heard from the door. Her face appeared to Logan to take on again the old sad cast. But she returned indoors without speaking. Barbara, however, vented enough amaze, disgust, and anger for the whole family.

"Bab, swear all you want," said Grant solemnly. "It won't do us any good.

We're going to be ruined by a mob of bugs!"

"Oh no! You men can do something," she cried.

"What?"

"Set fire to the grass!"

"By golly, that's an idea, Dad," spoke up George.

"We can meet them with fire. That'll do the trick, but..." Abe broke off with a sombre shake of his dark sleek head.

"Not to be thought of!" boomed Huett. "We'd set the forest afire, burn all the timber and grass in the country... But let's think of some other way."

"Dad, just wait till you see the air full of buzzing grasshoppers and the ground yellow with them--then you'll savvy we can't do a thing," averred Abe, tragically.

"Well, I won't see it till I have to," averred Logan, gruffly, as he got up. "But no Huett ever showed yellow. And we won't, even with a yellow plague upon us!--Come, sons, we'll cut the alfalfa."

George and Grant followed him to the barn to get scythes and rakes. But Abe sat looking at Barbara. Presently he mounted his horse and rode up the canyon. Huett went ploddingly at the labour, his sombre gaze bent upon the rich green hay that he was mowing.

"Say!" called Grant, suddenly. "What'n hell can be chasing Abe?"

"Dad--look!" shouted George.

Then Logan looked up to see Abe riding swiftly by the cabin. He waved and shouted to Barbara as he passed. He headed his lean mustang across the gardens and came tearing up to Logan, scattering dust all over him.

"Dad--we're saved!" he panted hoarsely, his dark face alight, his eyes piercingly bright. "What you--think?... You'd never guess--in a thousand years."

"I reckon not--if you come ararin' at me like this. What ails you, son?"

"He's loco, sure as our rotten luck!" declared George, which assertion corroborated Logan's. Abe was not the kind to show excitement in any event, let alone the intensity which radiated from him now.

"We haven't got rotten luck," he cried. "But the most--marvellous luck--in the world... We're not going to be cleaned out... I tell you--we're saved!"

"Son, I heard you the first time," replied Huett, soberly, not daring to accept Abe's strange, excited statements. "If you're not crazy--tell me how we're saved."

"By God, you'll never believe me," declared Abe, with a deep laugh. "I couldn't believe my own eyes. But dang it--come and see... Dad, I hope to die if I didn't see thousands of wild turkeys come flapping, sailing, running down out of the woods upon that swarm of grasshoppers."

"Wild turkeys!" burst out Huett, suddenly dazzled.

"Sure as you're alive," replied Abe, eagerly. "The regular fall round-up, you know, when the turks band together to come up-country for the pine nuts and acorns."

"Of all the miracles!" exclaimed George, beamingly. "Dad, one big gobbler fan eat a bushel of hoppers!"

"I reckon I was wrong to say God had deserted me," declared Huett, in august self-reproach.

"Sight of my life," declared Abe. "Come on. You've got to see it. Maw and Bab, too... But we must walk--slip along under the trees--so those turks won't catch a glimpse of us. I reckon, though, that wouldn't make no difference to-day... Come, we'll take a short cut."

Soon all the Huetts were following Abe through the woods. Barbara slipped her hand into Logan's and ran to keep up with him. Abe hushed their exuberant talk. They crossed the timbered slope above the cabin, keeping to the left, climbing the rocky, vine-covered ledges above the falls, and went rapidly through the thick belt of timber beyond. Abe led across the brook. Soon Logan saw through the scattering trees the brown open canyon again. Perhaps half a mile beyond Abe halted.

"Listen! Did you ever hear the like of that?" he queried.

A strange sound filled Logan's ears. Indeed, he could not compare it to anything he had ever heard. It was a loud, buzzing, seething hum mixed with a thumping, flapping roar.

"I'll be doggoned!" ejaculated Logan. "Hear it, Barbara?"

"Do I? Oh, what music! Come, let's hurry, Abe, so we can see!"

Abe led them to the edge of the woods. Out there in the grassy open of the canyon, under a dust-cloud, was being enacted a one-sided war--a massacre--a carnage. Clear across the flat stretched a wide, shifting, bronze, white, and black belt of wild turkeys in swift and ruthless action. Logan made no estimate of that huge flock. But in that country of wild turkeys, where he had seen large flocks for twenty years, this one surpassed all. Beyond the dust-cloud, up the canyon, moved a yellow, glassy mass in the air. It waved up and down. Behind it under the dust thumped and picked and darted the army of huge, gay-plumaged birds. They moved forward in a stretched formation, yet dozens of great gobblers left the line to run back after grasshoppers that tried to escape to the rear.

They were big, fat, slow grasshoppers and they could not fly far. Not one escaped to the rear.

"Oh, Dad, isn't it grand?" cried Barbara, excitedly as she clung to him and they hurried along at the edge of the timber to keep up with the moving spectacle.

Manifestly Huett was entranced, enraptured by the scene. This was, if anything, the strange miracle of destiny prophesying his success. Nothing could halt him now.

"Wonderful, Barbara! I never saw the like," he said with a voice that shook. "Abe was right... We're saved. And never so long as I live will I kill another turkey."

"Dad, it's all day with that bunch of grasshoppers," said George. "The turkeys will stick to them until they've gobbled every darned one. You know a gobbler likes a fat juicy hopper about the same as Abe does apple pie."

"In that case, good-bye to the hoppers!" laughed Barbara. They came to where a point of the forest-land projected out into the open. Abe halted, there.

"I reckon this is far enough," he said, as they joined him. "Some of those wary old gobblers have begun to look back. It won't do to scare that bunch... Isn't it a mess, Paw? Aren't those turks doing a great job for us?"

"So great, son, that I'll hang here a while longer," replied Huett, fervently. "Go back, all of you. Mother looks tired. We've come a couple, of miles. All to watch a flock of wild turkeys!"

"Logan, nothing is ever as terrible as it seems--at first," returned Lucinda, and giving him a sweet smile she started back with Barbara, followed by the boys.

Abe halted and turned with one of his rare smiles: "Paw, would you like turkey for supper?"

Logan waved him on. Soon they passed out of sight under the pines. Then Logan once more turned his attention to the massacre of the grasshoppers.

The action did not change. The cloud of insects kept flying and hopping up the canyon, while the turkeys ran, thumping up the dust, pouncing and picking as before. But the sight grew somehow magnificent to Logan. It was nothing in raw nature but an incident. But to Logan it had vast significance.

The dust-cloud moved along behind the yellow stream. And the coloured throng of turkeys, their bronze backs bent, or their red heads high, with chequered wings flapping and feet pounding, kept surging, massing, disintegrating, running up the canyon. The loud seethe and buzz, with the roar of the feathered jackals, gradually diminished to a hum.