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

I’d take off his shoes. Any jury in the

country’d know that would be hull lot worse fer us than it would

fer him, by cripes. Haw-haw-haw-w-w!”

 

“Say, that’s right; yuh didn’t say nothin’, ner do nothin’. By

golly, that was purty slick work, all right!” Slim forgot his

sore leg until he clapped his hand enthusiastically down upon the

place as comprehension of Bud’s finesse dawned upon him. He

yelped, and the Happy Family laughed unfeelingly.

 

“You want to be careful and don’t try to see through any jokes,

Slim, till that leg uh yours gets well,” Irish bantered, and they

laughed the louder.

 

All this was mere byplay; a momentary swinging of their mood to

pleasantry, because they were a temperamentally cheerful lot, and

laughter came to them easily, as it always does to youth and

perfect mental and physical health. Their brief hilarity over

Slim’s misfortune did not swerve them from their purpose, nor

soften the mood of them toward their adversaries. They were

unsmiling and unfriendly when they reached the man from Wyoming;

and, if they ever behaved like boys let out of school, they did

not show it then.

 

The Wyoming man was wiser than his fellow. He had been given

several minutes grace in which to meditate upon the unwisdom of

defiance; and he had seen the bugkiller change abruptly from

sullenness to terror, and afterward to abject obedience. He did

not know what they had said to him, or what they had done; but he

knew the bugkiller was a hard man to stampede. And he was one

man, and they were many; also he judged that, being human, and

this being the third offense of the Dot sheep under his care, it

would be extremely unsafe to trust that their indignation would

vent itself in mere words.

 

Therefore, when Weary told him to get the stragglers back through

the fence and up on the level, he stopped only long enough for a

good look at their faces. After that he called his dogs and

crawled through the fence.

 

It really did not require the entire Family to force those sheep

south that morning. But Weary’s jaw was set, as was his heart,

upon a thorough cleaning of that particular bit of range; and,

since he did not definitely request any man to turn back, and

every fellow there was minded to see the thing to a finish, they

straggled out behind the trailing two thousand—and never had one

bunch of sheep so efficient a convoy.

 

After the first few miles the way grew rough. Sheep lagged, and

the blatting increased to an uproar. Old ewes and yearlings these

were mostly, and there were few to suffer more than hunger and

thirst, perhaps. So Weary was merciless, and drove them forward

without a stop until the first jumble of hills and deep-worn

gullies held them back from easy traveling.

 

But the Happy Family had not ridden those breaks for cattle, all

these years, to be hindered by rough going. Weary, when the band

stopped and huddled, blatting incessantly against a sheer wall of

sandstone and gravel, got the herders together and told them what

he wanted.

 

“You take ‘em down that slope till you come to the second little

coulee. Don’t go up the first one—that’s a blind pocket. In the

second coulee, up a mile or so, there’s a spring creek. You can

hold ‘em there on water for half an hour. That’s more than any of

yuh deserve. Haze ‘em down there.”

 

The herders did not know it, but that second coulee was the rude

gateway to an intricate system of high ridges and winding

waterways that would later be dry as a bleached bone—the real

beginning of the bad lands which border the Missouri river for

long, terrible miles. Down there, it is possible for two men to

reach places where they may converse quite easily across a chasm,

and yet be compelled to ride fifteen or twenty miles, perhaps, in

order to shake hands. Yet, even in that scrap-heap of Nature

there are ways of passing deep into the heart of the upheaval.

 

The Happy Family knew those ways as they knew the most

complicated figures of the quadrilles they danced so

lightfootedly with the girls of the Bear Paw country. When they

forced the sheep and their herders out of the coulee Weary had

indicated he sent Irish and Pink ahead to point the way, and he

told them to head for the Wash Bowl; which they did with

praiseworthy zeal and scant pity for the sheep.

 

When at last, after a slow, heartbreaking climb up a long, bare

ridge, Pink and Irish paused upon the brow of a slope and let the

trail-weary band spill itself reluctantly down the steep slope

beyond, the sun stood high in the blue above them and their

stomachs clamored for food; by which signs they knew that it must

be near noon.

 

When the last sheep had passed, blatting discordantly, down the

bluff, Weary halted the sweating herders for a parting

admonition.

 

“We don’t aim to deal you any more misery, for a while, if you

stay where you’re at. You’re only working for a living, like the

rest of us—but I must say I don’t admire your trade none.

Anyway, I’ll send some of your bunch down here with grub and

beds. This is good enough range for sheep. You keep away from the

Flying U and nobody’ll bother you. Over there in them trees,” he

added, pointing a gloved finger toward a little grove on the far

side of the basin, “you’ll find a cabin, and water. And, farther

down the river there’s pretty good grass, in the little bottoms.

Now, git.”

 

The herders looked as if they would enjoy murdering them all, but

they did not say a word. With their dogs at heel they scrambled

down the bluff in the wake of their sheep, and the Happy Family,

rolling cigarettes while they watched them depart, told one

another that this settled that bunch; they wouldn’t bed down in

the Flying U dooryard that night, anyway.

 

CHAPTER XI. Weary Unburdens

 

Hungry with the sharp, gnawing hunger of healthy stomachs

accustomed to regular and generous feeding; tired with the

weariness of healthy muscles pushed past their accustomed limit

of action; and hot with the unaccustomed heat of a blazing day

shunted unaccountably into the midst of soft spring weather, the

Happy Family rode out of the embrace of the last barren coulee

and up on the wide level where the breeze swept gratefully up

from the west, and where every day brought with it a deeper tinge

of green into its grassy carpet.

 

Only for this harassment of the Dot sheep, the roundup wagons

would be loaded and ready to rattle abroad over the land. Meadow

larks and curlews and little, pert-eyed ground sparrows called

out to them that roundup time was come. They passed a bunch of

feeding Flying U cattle, and flat-ribbed, bandy-legged calves

galloped in brief panic to their mothers and from the sanctuary

of grass-filled paunches watched the riders with wide,

inquisitive eyes.

 

“We ought to be starting out, by now,” Weary observed a bit

gloomily to Andy and Pink, who rode upon either side of him. “The

calf crop is going to be good, if this weather holds on another

two weeks or so. But—” he waved his cigarette disgustedly

“—that darned Dot outfit would be all over the place, if we

pulled out on roundup and left ‘em the run of things.” He smoked

moodily for a minute. “My religion has changed a lot in the last

few days,” he observed whimsically. “My idea of hell is a place

where there ain’t anything but sheep and sheepherders; and

cowpunchers have got to spend thousands uh years right in the

middle of the corrals.”

 

“If that’s the case, I’m going to quit cussing, and say my

prayers every night,” Andy Green asserted emphatically.

 

“What worries me,” Weary confided, obeying the impulse to talk

over his troubles with those who sympathized, “is how I’m going

to keep the work going along like it ought to, and at the same

time keep them Dot sheep outa the house. Dunk’s wise, all right.

He knows enough about the cow business to know we ye got to get

out on the range pretty quick, now. And he’s so mean that every

day or every half day he can feed his sheep on Flying U grass, he

calls that much to the good. And he knows we won’t go to opening

up any real gun-fights if we can get out of it; he counts on our

faunching around and kicking up a lot of dust, maybe—but we

won’t do anything like what he’d do, in our places. He knows the

Old Man and Chip are gone, and he knows we’ve just naturally got

to sit back and swallow our tongues because we haven’t any

authority. Mamma! It comes pretty tough, when a lowdown skunk

like that just banks on your doing the square thing. He wouldn’t

do it, but he knows we will; and so he takes advantage of white

men and gets the best of ‘em. And if we should happen to break

out and do something, he knows the herders would be the ones to

get it in the neck; and he’d wait till the dust settled, and bob

up with the sheriff—” He waved his hand again with a hopeless

gesture. “It may not look that way on the face of it,” he added

gloomily, “but Dunk has got us right where he wants us. From the

way they’ve been letting sheep on our land, time and time again,

I’d gamble he’s just trying to make us so mad we’ll break out.

He’s got it in for the whole outfit, from the Old Man and the

Little Doctor down to Slim. If any of us boys got into trouble,

the Old Man would spend his last cent to clear us; and Dunk knows

that just as well as he knows the way from the house to the

stable. He’d see to it that it would just about take the Old

Man’s last cent, too. And he’s using these Dot sheep like you’d

use a red flag on a bull, to make us so crazy mad we’ll kill off

somebody.

 

“That’s why,” he said to them all when he saw that they had

ridden up close that they might hear what he was saying, “I’ve

been hollering so loud for the meek-and-mild stunt. When I

slapped him on the jaw, and he stood there and took it, I saw his

game. He had a witness to swear I hit him and he didn’t hit back.

And when I saw them Dots in our field again, I knew, just as well

as if Dunk had told me, that he was kinda hoping we’d kill a

herder or two so he could cinch us good and plenty. I don’t say,”

he qualified with a rueful grin, “that Dunk went into the sheep

business just to get r-re-venge, as they say in shows. But if he

can make money running sheep—and he can, all right, because

there’s more money in them right now than there is in cattle—and

at the same time get a good whack at the Flying U, he’s the lad

that will sure make a running jump at the chance.” He spat upon

the burnt end of his cigarette stub from force of the habit that

fear of range fires had built, and cast it petulantly from him;

as if he would like to have been able to throw Dunk and his sheep

problem as easily out of his path.

 

“So I wish you