Free Home Ranch by Ralph Moody Page A

hadn’t been a sound except the chuckle of the wheel hubs on the axles and the clump of horses’ feet, when Zeb suddenly sang out, “
She wore a yella ribbon around her neck.
”
    It was more hollered than sung. Zeb’s voice was high and through his nose, and it went up and down like the braying of a mule, but the canyon walls caught it, and echoed, “
Neck
 . . .
neck
 . . .
neck
 . . .
neck
 . . .” until it died away to a whisper. Zeb sat with an ear cocked, listening until the echo died away, then slumped back with his eyes half-closed.
    An hour later we’d left the canyon floor and climbed rough wheel tracks that led over the spur of a low mountain. Neither of us had made a sound since Zeb sang, and I’d gone back to thinking. At the top of the rise, Zeb stopped the team, and sat up with his back toward me, looking off to the south. “I cal’clate this here is jist about the die-rection he was a-lookin’ in when first he seen her,” he said slowly.
    â€œWhen who first saw who?” I asked.
    â€œZebulon Montgomery Pike,” Zeb said, almost reverently. “Who else but Injuns ever seen her afore him?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said, “because I don’t know who she is.”
    â€œThe peak! The peak!” he half whispered. “The silver-haired queen o’ the Rockies.”
    The clouds had moved away, and the mantle of snow on the summit of Pikes Peak did look like a head of silvery, wavy hair. “It’s a beautiful mountain, isn’t it?” I said.
    â€œThe queen! The queen!” he said in a sort of hushed voice. “And she’s a-settin’ there holdin’ her pot o’ gold in her lap. Ain’t no man never goin’ to dig deep enough to rob it afore the day o’ jedgment.”
    I’d heard people say there was probably more gold left inside Pikes Peak than had ever been mined from it, but I’d never heard anyone call the mountain a queen. I was sitting there thinking of it when Zeb clucked to the horses and we moved on. He didn’t speak again until we’d pulled up below a stand of tall firs in Bootheel Canyon.
    Ned and Sid were hacking away to beat the band when we reached the canyon, and already had eight or ten posts their wagon. I wanted to hurry and catch up with them, but there was no hurrying Zeb. He sat looking over the firs for nearly ten minutes before he pulled the wagon in below them. I had one horse unharnessed, hobbled, and turned out to graze before he had the buckles undone on the other. But when I took the axes out of the wagon, I could see he hadn’t been loafing while I was having my fight with Blueboy. They were ground and stoned almost to razor edges, and each head was carefully wrapped in a gunny sack.
    I’d only felled a few small trees in my life, but had chopped plenty of railroad ties for firewood. Father had been brought up in the woods of Maine, and could really make chips fly. He’d made me a small axe a couple of years before he died, had taught me to swing it, and always made me keep the edge honed sharp. I thought that felling a really big tree would be a lot of fun, so I grabbed the lightest axe, and started for the tallest fir at the lower edge of the stand. It was nearly twenty inches through the butt, and I went at the uphill side of it as fast as I could swing the axe. When I had to stop for breath, I looked up to see Zeb leaning on his axe handle and watching me. “Cabin or bridge log?” he asked.
    I felt pretty silly as I watched Zeb climb slowly up the hill beyond me, but I’d already ruined the tree, and there was nothing to do but go on and fell it. But when I went to do that, I found that I hadn’t run out of breath soon enough; I’d cut so far into the uphill side of the tree that it was going to fall that way. It did, but not all the way. It tangled with some other trees,