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

and he had shouted something to

Weary about spanking the kid if Weary didn’t make him behave.

Speedily he became a very surprised herder, and a distressed one

as well.

 

“All right,” Pink remarked, a little quick-breathed, when the

herder decided for the third time to get up. “A friend of mine

worked yuh over a little, this morning, and I just thought I’d

make a better job than he did. Your eyes didn’t match. They will,

now.”

 

The herder mumbled maledictions after him, but Pink would not

even give him the satisfaction of resenting it.

 

“I’d like to have broken a knuckle against his teeth, darn him,”

he observed ruefully when he was in the saddle again. “Come on,

Weary. It won’t take but a minute to hand a punch or two to that

bugkiller, and then I’ll feel better. They’ve both got it

coming—come on!” This because Weary showed a strong inclination

to take the trail and keep it to his destination. “Well, I’ll go

alone, then. I’ve got to kinda square myself for the way I threw

it into Andy; and you know blamed well, Weary, they played it

lowdown on him, or they’d never have got that rope on him. And

I’m going to lick that—”

 

“Mamma! You sure are a rambunctious person when you feel that

way,” Weary made querulous comment; but he rode over with Pink to

where the bugkiller was standing with his long stick held in a

somewhat menacing manner, and once more he held Pink’s horse for

him.

 

Pink was gone longer this time, and he came back with a cut lip

and a large lump on his forehead; the bugkiller had thrown a

small rock with the precision which comes of much practice—such

as stoning disobedient dogs, and the like—and, when Pink rushed

at him furiously, the herder caught him very neatly alongside the

head with his stick. These little amenities serving merely to

whet Pink’s appetite for battle, he stopped long enough to thrash

that particular herder very thoroughly and to his own complete

satisfaction.

 

“Well, I guess I’m ready to go on now,” he observed, dimpling

rather one-sidedly as he got back on his horse.

 

“I thought maybe you’d want to whip the dogs, too,” Weary told

him dryly; which was the nearest he came to expressing any

disapproval of the incident. Weary was a peace-loving soul,

whenever peace was compatible with self-respect; and it would

never have occurred to him to punish strange men as summarily as

Pink had done.

 

“I would, if the dogs were half as ornery as the men,” Pink

retorted. “Say, they hang together like bull snakes and rattlers,

don’t they? If they was human, they’d have helped each other

out—but nothing doing! Do you reckon a man could ride up to a

couple of our bunch, and thrash one at a time without the other

fellow having something to say about it?” He turned in the saddle

and looked back. “So help me, Josephine, I’ve got a good mind to

go back and lick them again, for not hanging together like they

ought to.” But the threat was an idle one, and they went on to

Denson’s, Weary still with that anxious look in his eyes, and

Pink quite complacent over his exploit.

 

In Denson coulee was an unwonted atmosphere of activity;

heretofore the place had been animated chiefly by young Densons

engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, but now a covered buggy,

evidently just arrived, bore mute witness to the new order of

things. There were more horses about the place, a covered wagon

or two, three or four men working upon the corral, and, lastly,

there was one whom Weary recognized the moment he caught sight of

him.

 

“Looks like a sheep outfit, all right,” he said somberly. “And,

if that ain’t old Dunk himself, it’s the devil, and that’s next

thing to him.”

 

Dunk, they judged, had just arrived with another man whom they

did not know: a tall man with light hair that hung lank to his

collar, a thin, sharp-nosed face and a wide mouth, which

stretched easily into a smile, but which was none the pleasanter

for that. When he turned inquiringly toward them they saw that he

was stoop-shouldered; though not from any deformity, but from

sheer, slouching lankness. Dunk gave them a swift, sour look from

under his eyebrows and went on.

 

Weary rode straight past the lank man, whom he judged to be

Oleson, and overtook Dunk Whittaker himself.

 

“Hello, Dunk,” he said cheerfully, sliding over in the saddle so

that a foot hung free of the stirrup, as men who ride much have

learned to do when they stop for a chat, thereby resting while

they may. “Back on the old stamping ground, are you?”

 

“Since you see me here, I suppose I am,” Dunk made churlish

response.

 

“Do you happen to own those Dot sheep, back there on the hill?”

Weary tilted his head toward home.

 

“I happen to own half of them.” By then they had reached the gate

and Dunk passed through and started on to the house.

 

“Oh, don’t be in a rush—come on back and be sociable,” Weary

called out, in the mildest of tones, twisting the reins around

his saddle-horn so that he might roll a cigarette at ease.

 

Dunk remembered, perhaps, certain things he had learned when he

was J. G. Whitmore’s partner, and had more or less to do with the

charter members of the Happy Family. He came back and stood by

the gate, ungraciously enough, to be sure; still, he came back.

Weary smiled under cover of lighting his cigarette. Dunk, by that

reluctant compliance, betrayed something which Weary had been

rather anxious to know.

 

“We’ve been having a little trouble with those sheep of yours,”

Weary remarked between puffs. “You’ve got some poor excuses for

humans herding them. They drove the bunch across our coulee just

exactly three times. There ain’t enough grass left in our lower

field to graze a prairie dog.” He glanced back to see where Pink

was, saw that he was close behind, as was the lank man, and spoke

in a tone that included them all.

 

“The Flying U ain’t pasturing sheep, this spring,” he informed

them pleasantly. “But, seeing the grass is eat up, we’ll let yuh

pay for it. Why didn’t you bring them in along the trail,

anyway?”

 

“I didn’t bring them in. I just came down from Butte to-day. I

suppose the herders brought them out where the feed was best;

they did if they’re worth their wages.”

 

“They happened to strike some feed that was pretty expensive.

And,” he smiled down at Whittaker misleadingly, “you ought to

keep an eye on those herders, or they might let you in for

another grass bill. The Flying U has got quite a lot of range,

right around here, you recollect. And we’ve got plenty of cattle

to eat it. We don’t need any help to keep the grass down so we

can ride through it.”

 

“Now, look here,” began the lank man with that sort of

persuasiveness which can turn instantly into bluster, “all this

is pure foolishness, you know. We’re here to stay. We’ve bought

this place, and some other land to go with it, and we expect to

stay right here and make a living. It happens that we expect to

make a living off of sheep. Now, we don’t want to start in by

quarreling with our neighbors, and we don’t want our neighbors to

start any quarrel with us. All we want—”

 

“Mamma! You’re taking a fine way to make us love yuh,” Weary cut

in ironically. “I know what you want. You want the same as every

other meek and lovely sheepman wants. You want it all— core,

seeds and peeling. Dunk,” he said with a more impatient disgust

than he was in the habit of showing for his fellowmen, “this

man’s a stranger; but I should think you’d know better than to

come in here with sheep.”

 

“I don’t know why a sheep outfit isn’t exactly as good as a cow

outfit, and I don’t know why they haven’t as much right here.

You’re welcome to what land you own, but it always seemed to me

that public land is open to the use of the public. Now, as Oleson

says, we expect to raise sheep here, and we expect your outfit to

leave us alone. As far as our sheep crossing your coulee is

concerned—I don’t know that they did. But, if they did, and, if

they did any damage, let J. G. do the talking about that. I deal

with the owners—not with the hired men.”

 

Weary, you must understand, was never a bellicose young man. But,

for all that, he leaned over and gave Dunk a slap on the jaw

which must have stung considerably—and the full reason for his

violence lay four years behind the two, when Dunk was part owner

of the Flying U, and when his sneering arrogance had been very

hard to endure.

 

“Are you going to swallow that—from a hired man?” Weary

inquired, after a minute during which nothing whatever occurred

beyond the slow reddening of Dunk’s face.

 

“I’m not going to fight, if that’s what you mean,,” Dunk sneered.

“I decline to bring myself down to your level. One doesn’t expect

anything from a jackass but a bray, you know—and one doesn’t

feel compelled to bray because the jackass does.” He smiled that

supercilious smile which Weary had hated of old, and which, he

knew, was well used to covering much treachery and small

meannesses of various sorts.

 

“As I said, if the Flying U has any claim against us, let the

owner present it in the usual way. Dunk drew down his black

brows, lifted a corner of his lip and turned his back

deliberately upon them.

 

Oleson let himself through the gate, which he closed somewhat

hastily behind him. “I’m sorry you fellows seem to want to make

trouble,” he said, without looking up from the latch, which

seemed somewhat out of repair, like the rest of the Denson

property. “That’s a poor way to start in with new neighbors.” He

lifted his hat with what Pink considered insulting politeness,

and followed Dunk into the house.

 

Weary waited there until they had gone in and closed the door,

then turned and rode back home again, frowning thoughtfully at

the trail ahead of them all the way, and making no reply to

Pink’s importunings for war.

 

“I’d hate to say you’ve lost your nerve, Weary,” Pink cried at

last, in sheer desperation. “But why the devil didn’t you get

down and thump the daylights out of that black son-of-a-gun? I

came pretty near walking into him myself, only I hate to butt

into another fellow’s scrap. But, if I’d known you were going to

set there and let him walk off with that sneer on his face—”

 

“I can’t fight a man that won’t hit back,” Weary protested. “You

couldn’t either, Cadwalloper. You’d have done just what I did;

you’d have let him go.”

 

“He will hit back, all right enough,” Pink retorted passionately.

“He’ll do it when you ain’t looking, though. He—”

 

“I know it,” Weary sighed. “I’m kinda sorry, now, I slapped him.

He’ll hit back—but he won’t hit me; he’ll aim at the outfit. If

the Old Man was here, or Chip, I’d feel a whole lot easier in my

mind.”

 

“They couldn’t do anything you can’t do,” Pink assured him

loyally, forgetting his petulance when he saw the careworn look

in Weary’s face. “All they can do is gobble all the range around

here—and I guess there’s