30,000 On the Hoof by Grey Zane

Author:Grey, Zane [Zane, Grey,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-02-28T06:16:06.250000+00:00

Chapter TEN.

Logan Huett took no stock of the passing years. He did not count them, but he saw his sons grow into tall, broad-shouldered, small-hipped, round-limbed riders, lean-jawed men, with intent clear eyes and still, tanned faces. He saw them grow into the hunters and cowboys he had vowed to make them when they were little boys tumbling about the green bench with their pets. George was the born cattleman, Abe the woodsman, the keenest tracker, the best shot in that section of Arizona. Grant became the cowboy, the hardest rider, the most unerring roper from the Cibeque to the railroad.

Likewise, and with almost as great satisfaction, Huett saw his little band of carefully guarded and nourished cattle grow into the nucleus of a herd. He counted them from calving time to the snows, and from the first white fall to the thaw in spring--jealously, morosely, sorrowfully in lean years, hopefully in those seasons that favoured him.

In the same terms he saw and counted the new homesteaders, the settlers that drifted in, the cattlemen who opened up the wide range from Mormon Lake to Flagg, the squatters who located at a spring or water-hole, to eke out a bare, miserable existence in log shacks, always looking towards making a stake out of their water-rights. Nor did Huett miss any of the men who drifted in to make their homes back in the great forest. They lived on meat and beans, holed up in the winter, rode the trails in other seasons, and idled away fruitless hours in a few little hamlets that sprang up across the vast rangeland.

Huett's failure for so many years was due to a one-man fight against too many obstacles. As his sons grew up, this condition imperceptibly diminished until it was overcome. If any one factor more than another contributed to this victory, it was the winter trapping of fur-bearing animals. But Huett developed his farm. This and the sale of pelts provided them with a living while his herd slowly grew.

His habits of restless energy and indomitable purpose were transmitted to his sons. They were Logan Huett all over again. And as the bitter ordeal of the past years gradually faded and he saw the physical manifestations of his vision take shape before his eyes, he touched happiness almost as great as his pride in his boys.

One late afternoon in the early spring Huett returned from the corrals to the cabin. His wife and Barbara had put the dining-table out on the porch for the first time that season, perhaps a little too early, considering the cool evenings But Huett liked to eat out where he could see the gar. den, the alfalfa, the pasture, and the cattle dotting the long valley.

Abe had just come down from the rim, and stood leaning on his rifle talking to George and Grant. In buckskins, compared to the blue-jeaned, high-booted garb of his brothers, he appeared shorter, but the fact was that he equalled them in lithe six-foot manhood.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.