“Indians?” I said. “Who did not hunt?”
“They lived in the town,” he said. “Do your people hunt who live in towns? “We built another place. It was up a narrow canyon among the trees, and there was the second spring. We did not go there, keeping it in reserve. There were nine of us.
“In the spring, one was killed by a spotted cat, what you call a jaguar. There were many around here in those years. Now it has been years since I have seen even one.
“Three of us went back to the town. The walls were of mud brick and they had fallen. Now they had returned to earth. Only a few were left. We picked around, but there was little to find. The fields were gone, some washed away, others buried in dust.
“When we came back, two more were dead and somebody had been there to kill them.
The others had retreated to our other place and had hidden there.” Food was passed around, and we ate. He ate sparingly, and spoke no more of those bygone years. How long ago? I did not know, but the more I saw of him, the older I believed him to be.
On the second day after that first camp with Ramon we came to where the horses were. We saw them out on the grassy plain, thousands of them, and for a time we sat our horses in the shade of trees along the mountainside and watched them. Our eyes picked out this one and that, judging, by the way they moved, their grace and speed.
In droves of one hundred or even as many as two hundred they fled across the plain, wheeled, and turned back, manes and tails flowing. They would come charging across the plain and come within a hundred yards or less of us before pausing, heads up, studying us to see what we were, then wheeling and rushing away like the wind.
It was a magnificent sight, and nothing I had seen equaled it. They seemed to flow across the plain like a varicolored wave, with often as many as a thousand horses within sight at one time, but each divided into smaller herds. A few of them stood out. One, a splendid black stallion with one white stocking, must have weighed a thousand pounds or more, whereas most of the horses were somewhat smaller.
One particular herd, numbering well over a hundred, wheeled and darted about us several times, as though challenging us to a race, but we made no effort to accept the challenge or to draw near, wanting them to become accustomed to our presence. They showed no evidence of ever having been chased, although Selmo suddenly pointed at a fine-looking bay who wore a brand on his hip. The area through which we how rode, walking our horses and studying the land, was covered with grasses. Once, nearing the mountains, we saw a herd of elk that must have numbered nearly a thousand, and as they moved, it was a veritable sea of horns. Some of these seemed as large as the horses themselves. Toward nightfall, coming up to the place where we would camp, Monte killed one that would dress out to several hundred pounds of meat. We saw several wolves, not at all afraid, for they had not seen our like before. They seemed to be following the elk to pull down any calves they could find straying from the herd or lagging behind. They were big gray wolves, moving like ghosts along the flanks of the elk herd.
Ramon led us again to our camp, this time beside a small but swift-running stream, several acres of grass and near the stream a spot of less than an acre surrounded by tall pines and a few scattered oak, although we were almost too high for the latter.
We staked our horses on the grass after watering them, and went about preparing our own camp. With Ramon and Francisco I walked out to look over the area. After a minute, Jacob walked out to join us. “This is their watering place.” Ramon pointed to a bunch of tules further along the stream. “The water spreads out and sinks into the ground over there.”
Jacob studied the long sweep of the valley, the trees, and the brush. “We could build our corral to straddle the stream so they’d have water, filling in with brush between the trees, and some poles to fence them in.” We walked along, studying the lay of the ground. Our plan was to build a wide-mouthed funnel down which they would go to water, a funnel that would narrow at the corral itself and which we could close off once enough horses were gathered.
“Take us a while,” Jacob said finally, “but we can pull back to camp each night and let them come down to water if they like. And if they get thirsty enough, they will come. They’ll leave when they wish, and they will get over being scared. Finally, we’ll just close them in. We should be able to get two, three hundred horses in there all to once.”
It was not all that easy, but we didn’t expect it to be.
Going out there with axes, we cut brush and filled the spaces between the trees. Here and there it needed poles. We took our time, working steadily, pausing for coffee now and again or simply to tell stories. We could see the horses from time to time, and when evening began to come, we’d stop work so our movements and the ring of the axes wouldn’t frighten the game. We were not thinking only of the horses, for in dry country water belongs to all living things, and we moved off from the creek to our own place, farther up. Then the horses would come in, moving along slowly but warily, alert for any movement. Along with them were a few elk and a deer or two. Sometimes, while it was still light, we’d lie up on a rock and watch them come.
Wolves would come, too, and in the morning sometimes there would be bear tracks. Occasionally we killed an elk or a deer, but never close by. One of the boys, often it was me, would ride off a few miles and do our shooting there so as not to scare the game.
It was hard work, but the air was clear, the sky blue, and the days went by like the drifting clouds, so we scarcely noticed they were gone. Finally our corral was ready, and the drift fence, too. We’d made a swinging gate of poles and brush that we swung wide to one side, and then we rode away up the valley. We wanted not only the horses that had been coming there, but a good many more. We started from ten miles up, the lot of us, spread out across the valley, and after we’d fixed ourselves a spot of grub and drunk some coffee we rode out across the country, turned and began to drift, walking our horses down toward our corral. This was wild stock, but we’d been moving around and not bothering them, so they hadn’t, after the first day or so, paid us much mind. Now, spread out maybe a half-mile apart, we started drifting, and they moved ahead of us. After all, this was their country, and most of them had lived their lives here. Wild horses are, more than you’d believe, inclined to be homebodies. They didn’t like to get too far from where they were born. They knew that country, and if driven away, would come back.
Gradually the valley narrowed, and gradually we cowboys moved in closer together. Not so much as they’d notice at first, but by the end of the first hour we were only a hundred yards or so apart. Ahead of us the horses were bunching a little, and here and there some wild old stallion was beginning to be bothered by it.
Once in a while one would stop, stand head-up looking around, but the way ahead was clear and we were coming along behind. We didn’t seem to be anything to worry about, but they just didn’t want us getting too close. At the last, just as he went through toward the water, that black stallion decided he didn’t like that crowd of horses up ahead and wheeled. He made a dash for the opening, but Alejandro and Martin were already swinging the gate closed. It had been easy, just too easy. Later, when they had become wary of men, it would prove much harder, but we had them. We didn’t know how many, but we guessed around three hundred horses.
There was grass enough for a few days, and there was water.
Thirty-three
“It will never be that easy again,” Monte commented. “They just aren’t used to people. Nobody’s tried to catch them before.”