Cowmen and Rustlers: A Story of the Wyoming Cattle Ranges, Edward Sylvester Ellis [e reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Edward Sylvester Ellis
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"Was anybody—hurt?" faltered the mother.
"Wal, I reckon; three of them rustlers won't rustle again very soon, onless that bus'ness is carried on below, where they've gone; two others have got holes through their bodies about the size of my hat."
"But—but were any of our people injured?" continued the parent, while Jennie tried to still the throbbing of her heart until the answer came.
"Wal, yes," replied Budd, removing his hat and passing his handkerchief across his forehead, as though the matter was of slight account; "I'm sorry to say some of us got it in the neck."
"Who—who—how was it? Don't trifle!"
"Wal, you see Zip Peters rode over from Capt. Whiting's to tell us about the rustlers, and he hadn't much more'n arriv, when along come the others behind him with one of our branded steers. I made them give him up, and then the fight was on. Zip got a piece of lead through the body and the arm, and went out of the saddle without time to say good-by. My hip was grazed twice, but it didn't amount to nothin'; I'm as good as ever. Grizzly lost a piece of his ear, but he bored the rustler through that done it, so that account was squared."
"Then father and Fred were not hurt?" gasped Jennie, clasping her hands and gazing inquiringly into the face of the messenger.
"Wal," he replied, with the same exasperating coolness he had shown after his first exclamation, "I wish I could say that, but it ain't quite so good."
"What—what of my husband?" demanded Mrs. Whitney, stepping so close that she laid her hand on the knee of the sturdy horseman; "tell me quick; and what of Fred, my son?"
"Fred fought like a house afire; he killed one of the rustlers, but his horse was shot and Fred got it through the arm, which ended his power to do much fighting, but he laid down behind his hoss and kept it up like the trump he is."
"Then he isn't badly injured?"
"Bless your heart! of course not; he will be all right in a few days; his arm wants a little nursing, that's all. In the midst of the rumpus who should ride up but Mont Sterry, as he had heard the firing, and the way he sailed in was beautiful to behold. It reminded me of the times down in Arizona when Geronimo made it so lively. He hadn't much chance to show what he could do, for the rustlers found they had bitten off more than they could chaw, and they skyugled after he had dropped one."
The wife and mother drew a sigh of relief, but the daughter was far from satisfied. A dreadful fear in her heart had not yet been quelled.
Her quick perceptions noticed that Budd had said nothing more about her father than to mention the fact that he had been wounded. The mother, in her distress and anxiety, caught at a hope as an assurance which the daughter could not feel.
At the same time Jennie saw that, despite the apparent nonchalance of the messenger and his assumed gayety, he was stirred by some deep emotion.
"He is keeping back something, because he fears to tell it," was her correct conclusion.
CHAPTER VI. — COWMEN AND RUSTLERS.
Jennie Whitney saw something else, which almost made her heart stop beating.
To the southward, whence Budd Hankinson had ridden, several horsemen were in sight, coming from the direction of the cattle-ranges. They were approaching at a walk, something they would not do unless serious cause existed.
The messenger had been sent ahead to break the news to the sad and anxious hearts.
"Budd," she said, "you have not told us about father."
"Why, yes, my dear," interposed her mother, as if to shut out all evil tidings; "nothing has happened to him."
"Wal, I'm sorry to say that he has been hurt worse than Fred," was the alarming response, accompanied by a deep sigh.
"How bad? How much worse? Tell us, tell us," insisted the wife.
"Thar's no use of denyin' that he got it bad; fact is he couldn't have been hit harder."
The distressed fellow was so worked up that he turned his head and looked over his shoulder, as if to avoid those yearning eyes fixed upon him. That aimless glance revealed the approaching horsemen and nerved him with new courage.
"Now, Mrs. Whitney and Jennie, you must be brave. Bear it as he would bear the news about you and Fred if he was—alive!"
A shriek accompanied the words of the cowman, and Jennie caught her mother in time to save her from falling. Her own heart was breaking, but she did her utmost, poor thing, to cheer the one to whom the sunlight of happiness could never come again.
"There, mother, try to bear it. We have Fred left to us, and I am with you. God will not desert us."
Hugh Whitney had never spoken after that first interchange of volleys with the rustlers. He died bravely at the post of duty and was tenderly borne homeward, where he was given a decent burial, his grave bedewed not only by the tears of the stricken widow and children, but by those of the stern, hardy cowmen to whom he had been an employer as kind and indulgent as he was brave.
A few paragraphs are necessary to explain the incidents that follow.
Wherever cattlemen have organized outfits and located ranches cattle-thieves have followed, and fierce fighting has resulted. These men are known as "rustlers." The late troubles caused cattle and horse-thieves to unite against the legitimate owners, and the name now includes both classes of evil-doers. The troubles in Wyoming were the results of the efforts of the Wyoming State Live Stock Association to put a check upon rustlers who are tempted to steal by the vast profits afforded.
At the time the Association was formed the rustlers were few in number, and confined their acts to branding the mavericks or unbranded yearlings with their own brands. They did not act in concert, and since the laws of the State require every brand to be registered, in order to establish ownership, the rustlers had as much right to their own brands as the legitimate cowmen. As long as the mavericks were not openly branded there was no means of stopping them.
It happens quite often that the round-up fails to gather in all the cattle. The mavericks are allowed to go to the outfit with whose cattle they have run, and that outfit puts its own brand on them.
The rustlers grew more daring as their numbers increased, and, instead of
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