Hidden Gold, Wilder Anthony [best fiction books to read TXT] 📗

head out the door, yelled in real round-up style—'Come and git it!' Then he piled up his own plate and started in ter eat. In about ten minutes, in walks the English dude, and when he seen the cook eatin' away, he rares back and says, haughty-like—'Bless me soul, I cawn't eat with me servants, doncher know.' Flour Sack never bats an eye, but says, with his mouth full 'Take a cheer,' he says, 'an' wait until I git through.'"

Although Wade had heard the story before, he laughed pleasantly as Santry began to dish up the food; then the latter summoned the hired men.

"Mind, now, Bill," Wade admonished. "Not a word about the sheep."

The next morning, after a restless night, the young rancher set out alone for the sheep camp. He was more than ever concerned over the outlook, because sleep had brought to his pillow visions of cattle starving on a denuded range, and of Santry and Race Moran engaged in a death struggle. Particularly because of the danger of this, he had insisted upon Santry staying at home. The old plainsman, scarred veteran of many a frontier brawl, was too quick tempered and too proficient with his six-shooter to take back-talk from the despised sheep herders or to bandy words with a man he feared and hated. Wade was becoming convinced that Moran was responsible for the invasion of the range, although still at a loss for his reasons. The whole affair was marked with Moran's handiwork and the silent swiftness of his methods.

This Race Moran was a stranger who had come to Crawling Water some months before, and for reasons best known to himself, had been trying to ingratiate himself in the neighborhood, but, although he seemed to have plenty of funds, the ranch and stock men did not take kindly to his advances. He posed as the agent of some Eastern capitalists, and he had opened an office which for sumptuous appointments had never been equaled in that part of the country; but he had not been able to buy or lease land at the prices he offered and his business apparently had not prospered. Then sheep had begun to appear in great flocks in various parts of the surrounding country and some of these flocks to overflow into Crawling Water Valley. Moran denied, at first, that they had come at his instance, but later on, he tacitly admitted to the protesting cattlemen that he had a certain amount of interest in sheep raising.

More far-sighted than some of his neighbors, Wade had leased a large strip of land in the valley for use as winter range. Moran had seemed to want this land badly, and had offered a really fair price for it, but Wade had not cared to sell. Relying upon his privilege as lessee, Wade had not feared the approach of the sheep, and he had no reason to wish to dispose of his holdings. Now, it began to look as if the purpose was to "sheep" him out of his own territory, so that the agent might buy up the lease and homestead rights on practically his own terms. The thing had been done before in various parts of the cattle country.

Cattle and sheep cannot live on the same range, and when sheep take possession of a country, cattle must move out of it, or starve. No wonder, then, that the cattlemen of Crawling Water Valley were aroused. Their livelihood was slipping away from them, day by day, for unless prompt steps were taken the grass would be ruined by the woolly plague.

Thus far, Gordon Wade, a leader in the cattle faction, had been firm for peaceful measures though some of the ranchers had threatened an open war on the herders. "Avoid bloodshed at almost any cost," had been his advice, and he had done his best to restrain the more hot-headed members of his party, who were for shooting the sheep and driving out the herders at the rifle point. But there was a limit, even to Wade's patience, and his jaws squared grimly as he considered the probable result, should Moran and his followers, the sheep owners, persist in their present course of action.

It was still very early in the morning when Wade arrived at the herder's camp. Oscar Jensen, a short, thick-set man, with an unwholesome, heavy face, stepped out of the little tent as the rancher rode up.

"Mornin'."

"Good-morning!" The cattleman affected a cheerfulness which he did not feel. "Are these your sheep, Mr. Jensen?" He waved in the direction of the grazing band, a dirty white patch on the green of the valley.

"Yes."

"Perhaps you don't know that you are on Double Arrow land? I've ridden over to ask you to move your sheep. They're spoiling our grass."

Jensen grinned sardonically, for he had been expecting Wade's visit and was prepared for it.

"I got a right here," he said. "There's plenty good grass here and I take my sheep where they get fat. This is government land."

"It is government land," Wade quietly acknowledged, "but you have no right on it. I control this range, I've paid for it, and unless you move within the next twelve hours you'll be arrested for trespass."

The sheepman's sullen face darkened with anger.

"Who'll do it? The sheriff won't, and I'm not afeerd of you cattlemen. My sheep must eat as well as your cattle, and I got a good right here. I won't move."

"Then remember that I warned you if you get into trouble, Jensen. There's plenty of open range and good water on the other side of the hills. I advise you to trail your sheep there before it is too late. Don't think that Race Moran can save you from the law. Moran is not running this valley, and don't you forget it."

"How do you know Moran's backin' me?" The Swede could not conceal his surprise. "You can't bluff me, Wade. I know my rights, and I'm goin' to stick to 'em."

"The devil you say!" Now that he was sure of Moran's complicity in the matter, Wade felt himself becoming angry, in spite of his resolve to keep cool. "You'd best listen to reason and pull out while you're able to travel. There are men in this valley who won't waste time in talk when they know you're here."

"Bah!" Jensen snorted contemptuously. "I can take care of myself. I know what I'm doin', I tell you."

"You may, but you don't act like it," was Wade's parting remark, as he turned his horse and rode off.

"Go to hell!" the Swede shouted after him.

Heading toward Crawling Water, the ranch owner rode rapidly over the sun-baked ground, too full of rage to take notice of anything except his own helplessness. The sting of Jensen's impudence lay in Wade's realization that to enlist the aid of the sheriff against the sheep man would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible. There was very little law in that region, and what little there was seemed, somehow, to have been taken under the direction of Race Moran.

It was now broad day and the prairie warmed to the blazing sun. Long, rolling stretches of grass, topped with rocks and alkaline sand, gave back a blinding glare like the reflection of a summer sea, from which arose a haze of gray dust like ocean mists over distant reaches. Far to the South, a lone butte lifted its corrugated front in forbidding majesty.

Beyond the summit of the butte was a greenish-brown plateau of sagebrush and bunch-grass. Behind this mesa, a range of snow-topped mountains cut the horizon with their white peaks, and in their deep and gloomy canyons lurked great shadows of cool, rich green. As far as the eye could see, there was no sign of life save Wade and his mount.

The horse's feet kicked up a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air like smoke from a battery of cannon. It enveloped the ranchman, who rode with the loose seat and straight back of his kind; it came to lie deeply on his shoulders and on his broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and in the wrinkles of the leather chaps that encased his legs. He looked steadily ahead, from under reddened eyelids, over the trackless plain that encompassed him. At a pace which would speedily cover the twenty odd miles to Crawling Water, he rode on his way to see Race Moran.

Two hours later Oscar Jensen was shot from behind as he was walking alone, a little distance from his camp. He fell dead and his assassin disappeared without being seen.

CHAPTER II A MEETING AND A PARTING

Had some one of Gordon Wade's multitude of admirers in the East seen him as he stood looking out over his Wyoming ranch, he might have recognized the true cowboy composure with which the ranchman faced the coming storm, but he would not have recognized the stripling who had won scholastic and athletic honors at Princeton a few short years before, and who had spent a year after graduating in aimless travel and reckless adventure.

After flitting rapidly and at random almost all over the habitable globe, he had returned to his home in New York with some thought of settling down there, but the old family mansion was empty excepting for the servants, and his sense of loneliness and sorrow for the loved ones who were no longer there to greet him, drove him on speedily and he turned toward the West to explore his own country last of all, as so many other travelers do.

Attracted by the surpassing beauty of the country, he had lingered in Wyoming long enough to feel fascination of the ranch life that was then to be found in all its perfection in the wilder part of that State, and realizing that he had found the precise location and vocation that suited him, he had converted his modest fortune into cash, and invested all in the Double Arrow Ranch.

But on his way thither, he had stopped in Chicago, and there he had come face to face with Romance.

Before he had gone a dozen steps after getting off the train, some one dealt him a mighty blow between the shoulders, that well nigh sent him spinning. Before he could recover himself, he was caught from behind and hurled headlong into a taxicab.

"I've heard of Western hospitality before," he said, calmly, before he could see who his assailant was, "but you seem to be hard up for guests."

"No," said his college chum, George Stout, grinning happily as he clambered into the taxi, "but I wasn't taking chances; somebody else might have seen you first."

Followed three feverish days and nights; then as they sat in pajamas in Stout's apartment, Wade said: "I don't imagine there is anything more to see or do in this hectic city of yours, and I am free to say I don't like it; I think I'll move on."

"Not yet," said Stout, with the grin that endeared him to everybody that ever met him. "You've only seen the outside edges so far. To-night you are going to break into society."

"Do they have society here?" asked Wade.

"Well, they call it that," still grinning, "anyhow you'll be interested, not to say amused. The game is new as yet, but they go through the motions, and Oh, boy, how lavish they are! You'll see everything money can buy this evening, and probably meet people you wouldn't be likely to run across anywhere else.

"You're bidden to appear, sir, at the ornate mansion of a Senator of the United States—the Senator, perhaps, I should say, I've secured the invitation, and Mrs. Rexhill will never recognize me again if you don't go."

"Would that be serious?"

"Very serious. I am counsel for one of the Senator's companies."

"And does that imply social obligation?"

"It