The Flying U Ranch, B. M. Bower [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗

>teeth went together with a snap.

 

Weary glanced inquiringly across at the Native Son, who was

regarding Andy steadily, as one gazes upon a tangled rope,

looking for the end which will easiest lead to an untangling.

 

Miguel’s brown eyes turned languidly to meet the look. “You’d

better untie him,” he advised in his soft drawl. “He may not be

in the habit of doing it—but he’s telling the truth.”

 

“Untie me, Miguel,” begged Andy, going over to him, “and let me

at this bunch.”

 

“I’ll do it,” said Weary, and rose pacifically. “I kinda believe

you myself, Andy. But you can’t blame the boys none; you’ve

fooled ‘em till they’re dead shy of anything they can’t see

through. And, besides, it sure does look like a plant. I’d back

you single-handed against a dozen sheepherders like then two

we’ve been chasing around. If I hadn’t felt that way I wouldn’t

have sent yuh out alone with ‘em.”

 

“Well, Andy needn’t think he’s goin’ to stick me on that there

story,” Slim declared with brutal emphasis. “I’ve swallered too

many baits, by golly. He’s figurin’ on gettin’ us all out on the

warpath, runnin’ around in circles, so’s’t he can give us the

laugh. I’ll bet, by golly, he paid then herders to tie him up

like that. He can’t fool me!”

 

“Say, Slim, I do believe your brains is commencin’ to sprout!”

Big Medicine thumped him painfully upon the back by way of

accenting the compliment. “You got the idee, all right.”

 

Andy stood quiet while Weary unwound the rope; lifted his numbed

arms with some difficulty, and displayed to the doubters his

rope-creased wrists, and purple, swollen hands.

 

“I couldn’t fight a caterpiller right now,” he said thickly.

“Look at them hands! Do yuh call that a josh? I’ve been tied up

like a bed-roll for five hours, you—” Well, never mind, he

merely repeated a part of what he had recited aloud in Antelope

coulee, the only difference being that he applied the vitriolic

utterances to the Happy Family instead of to sheepherders, and

that with the second recitation he gained much in fluency and

dramatic delivery.

 

It is not nice for a man to swear; to swear the way Andy did, at

any rate. But the result perhaps atoned in a measure for the

wickedness, in that the Happy Family were absolutely convinced of

his sincerity, and the feelings of Andy greatly relieved, so

that, when he had for the third time that day completely

exhausted his vocabulary, he sat down and began to eat his dinner

with a keen appetite.

 

“I don’t suppose you know where your horse is at, by this tine,”

Weary observed, as casually as possible, breaking a somewhat

constrained silence.

 

“I don’t—and I don’t give a darn,” Andy snapped back. He ate a

few mouthfuls, and added less savagely: “He wasn’t in sight, as I

came along. I didn’t follow the trail; I struck straight across

and came down the coulee. He may be at the gate, and he may be

down toward Rogers’.”

 

Pink reached for a toothpick, eyeing Andy sidelong; dimpled his

cheeks disarmingly, and cleared his throat. “Please don’t kill me

off when you get that pie swallowed,” he began pacifically.

“Strange as it may seem, I believe you, Andy. What I want to know

is this: Who owns them Dots? And what are they chasing all over

the Flying U range for? It looks plumb malicious, to me. Did you

find out anything about ‘en, Andy, while you—er—while they—”

His eyes twinkled and betrayed him for an arrant pretender. (Pink

was not afraid of anything on earth—least of all Andy Green.)

 

“I will kill yuh by inches, if I hear any remarks out of yuh that

ain’t respectful,” Andy promised, thawing to his normal tone,

which was pleasant to the ear. “I didn’t find out much about ‘em.

The fellow I licked told me that Whittaker and Oleson owned the

sheep. He didn’t say—”

 

“Well—by—golly!” Shin thrust his head forward belligerently.

“Whittaker! Well, what d’yuh think uh that!” He glared from one

face to the other, his gaze at last resting upon Weary. “Say, do

yuh reckon it’s—Dunk?”

 

Weary paid no heed to Slim. He leaned forward, his face turned to

Andy with that concentration of attention which means so much

more than mere exclamation. “You’re sure he said Whittaker?” he

asked.

 

His tone and his attitude arrested Andy’s cup midway to his

mouth. “Sure—Whittaker and Oleson. I never heard of the

outfit—who’s this Whittaker person?”

 

Weary settled back in his place and smiled, but his eyes had

quite lost their habitually sunny expression.

 

“Up until four years ago,” he explained evenly, “he was the Old

Man’s partner. We caught him in some mighty dirty work,

and—well, he sold out to the Old Man. The old party with the

hoofs and tail can’t be everywhere at once, the way I’ve got it

sized up, so he turns some of his business over to other folks.

Dunk Whittaker’s his top hand.”

 

“Why, by golly, he framed up a job on the Gordon boys, and

railroaded ‘em to the pen, just—”

 

“Oh, that’s the gazabo!” Andy’s eyes shone with enlightenment.

“I’ve heard a lot about Dunk, but I didn’t know his last name—”

 

“Say! I’ll bet they’re the outfit that bought out Denson. That’s

why old Denson acted so queer, maybe. Selling to a sheep outfit

would make the old devil feel kinda uneasy, talking to us—”

Pink’s eyes were big and purple with excitement. “And that

trainload of sheep we saw Sunday, I’ll bet is the same identical

outfit.”

 

“Dunk Whittaker’d better not try to monkey with me, by golly!”

Slim’s face was lowering. “And he’d better not monkey with the

Flying U either. I’d pump him so full uh holes he’d look like a

colander, by golly!”

 

Weary got up and started to the door, his face suddenly grown

careworn. “Slim, you and Miguel better go and hunt up Andy’s

horse,” he said with a hint of abstraction in his tone, as though

his mind was busy with more important things. “Maybe Andy’ll feel

able to help you set those posts, Bud—and you’d better go along

the upper end of the little pasture with the wire stretchers and

tighten her up; the top wire is pretty loose, I noticed this

morning.” His fingers fumbled with the door-knob.

 

“Want me to do anything?” Pink asked quizzically just behind him.

“I thought sure we’d go and remonstrate with then gay—”

 

Weary interrupted him. “The herders can wait—and, anyway, I’ve

kinda got an idea Andy wants to hand out his own brand of poison

to that bunch. You and I will take a ride over to Denson’s and

see what’s going on over there. Mamma!” he added fervently, under

his breath, “I sure do wish Chip and the Old Man were here!”

 

CHAPTER VIII. The Dot Outfit

 

Before he laid him down to sleep, that night, Weary had repeated

to himself many times and fervently that wish for old J. G.

Whitmore and the stout staff upon which he was beginning more and

more to lean, his brother-in-law, Chip Bennett. As matters stood,

Weary could not even bring himself to let then know anything

about his trouble—and that the thing was beginning to assume the

form and shape and general malevolent attributes of Trouble,

Weary was forced to admit to himself.

 

Just at present an unthinking, unobserving person might pass over

this sheep outfit as a mere unsavory incident; but Weary was

neither unobserving nor unthinking—nor, for the matter of that,

were the rest of the Happy Family. It needed no Happy Jack, with

his foreboding nature, to point out the unpleasant possibilities

that night when the committee of two made their informal report

at the supper table.

 

They had ridden to Denson coulee, which was in reality a

meandering branch of Flying U coulee itself. To reach it one rode

out of Flying U coulee and over a wide hill, and down again to

Denson’s. But the creek—Flying U creek—followed the devious

turnings from Denson coulee down to the Flying U. A long mile of

Flying U coulee J. G. Whitmore owned outright. Another mile he

held under no other title save a fence. The creek flowed through

it all—but that creek had its source somewhere up near the head

of Denson coulee. J. G. Whitmore had, to his regret, been unable

to claim the whole earth—or at least that portion of it—for his

own; so, when he was constrained to make a choice, he settled

himself in the wider, more fertile coulee, which he thereafter

called the Flying U. While it is good policy to locate as near as

possible to the source of those erratic little creeks which water

certain garden spots of the northern range land, it is also well

to choose land that will grow plenty of hay. J. G. Whitmore chose

the hay land, and trusted that providence would insure the water

supply. Through all these years Flying U creek had never once

disappointed him. Denson, who settled in the tributary coulee,

had not made any difference in the water supply, and his stock

had consisted of thirty or forty head of cattle and horses.

 

When Denson sold, however, things might be different. And, if he

had sold to a sheepman, the change might be unpleasant If he had

sold to Dunk Whittaker—the Flying U boys faced that possibility

just as they would face any other disaster, undaunted, but grim

and unsmiling.

 

It was thus that Pink and Weary rode slowly down into Denson

coulee. Two miles back they had passed the band of Dot sheep,

feeding leisurely just without the Flying U fence, which was the

southern boundary. The bugkiller and the other were there, and

they noted that the features of that other bore witness to the

truth of Andy’s story of the fight. He regarded them with one

perfectly good eye and one which was considerably swollen, and

grinned a swollen grin.

 

The two had ridden ten paces past him when Pink pulled up

suddenly. “I’m going to get off and lick that son-of-a-gun

myself, just for luck,” he stated dispassionately. “I’m going to

lick ‘em both,” he revised while he dismounted.

 

“Oh, come on, Cadwalloper,” Weary dissuaded. “You’ll likely have

all the excitement you need, without that.”

 

“Here, you hold this fool cayuse. No.” He shook his head, cutting

short further protest. “You’re the boss, and you don’t want to

mix in, and that part is all right. But I ain’t responsible—and

I sure am going to take a fall or two out of these geesers.

They’re a-w-l together too stuck on themselves to suit me.” Pink

did not say that he was thinking of Andy, but nevertheless a

vivid recollection of that unfortunate young man’s rope-creased

wrists and swollen hands sent him toward the herder with long,

eager strides.

 

Pink was not tall, and he was slight and boyish of build; also,

his cherubic face, topped by tawny curls and lighted by eyes as

deeply blue and as innocent as a baby’s, probably deceived that

herder, just as they had deceived many another. For Pink was a

good deal like a stick of dynamite wrapped in white tissue paper

and tied with blue ribbon; and Weary was not at all uneasy over

the outcome, as he watched Pink go clanking back, though he loved

him well.

 

Pink did not waste any time or words on the preliminaries. With a

delightful frankness of purpose he pulled off his coat and threw

it on the ground, as he came up, sent his hat after it, and

arrived fist first.

 

The herder had waited grinning,