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