The Flying U Ranch, B. M. Bower [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗
![](/uploads/posts/books/2/7/9/6/1/the-flying-u-ranch.jpg)
- Author: B. M. Bower
- Performer: -
Book online «The Flying U Ranch, B. M. Bower [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗». Author B. M. Bower
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
Comments (0)