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

nice.” Andy spoke with grim irony. “And you’ll get rid of

the ranch, too. You’ll sell it to the Flying U—cheap.”

 

“But my partner—Whittaker might object—”

 

“Look here, old-timer. You’ll fix that part up; you’ll find a way

of fixing it. Look here—at what you’re up against.” He waited,

with pointing finger, for one terrible minute. “Will you sell to

the Flying U?”

 

“Y-yes!” The word was really a gulp. He tried to avoid looking

where Andy pointed; failed, and shuddered at what he saw.

 

“I thought you would. We’ll get that in writing. And we’re going

to wait just exactly twenty-four hours before we make a move.

It’ll take some fine work, but we’ll do it. Our boss, here, will

fix up the business end with you. He’ll go with yuh right now,

and stay with yuh till you make good. And the first crooked move

you make—” Andy, in unconscious imitation of the Native Son,

shrugged a shoulder expressively and urged Weary by a glance to

take the leadership.

 

“Irish, you come with me. The rest of you fellows know about what

to do. Andy, I guess you’ll have to ride point till I get back.”

Weary hesitated, looked from Happy Jack to Oleson and the

herders, and back to the sober faces of his fellows. “Do what you

can for him, boys—and I wish one of you would ride over, after

Pink gets back, and—let me know how things stack up, will you?”

 

Incredible as was the situation on the face of it, nevertheless

it was extremely matter-of-fact in the handling; which is the way

sometimes with incredible situations; as if, since we know

instinctively that we cannot rise unprepared to the bigness of

its possibilities, we keep our feet planted steadfastly on the

ground and refuse to rise at all. And afterward, perhaps, we look

back and wonder how it all came about.

 

At the last moment Weary turned back and exchanged guns with Andy

Green, because his own was empty and he realized the possible

need of one—or at least the need of having the sheepmen

perfectly aware that he had one ready for use. The Native Son,

without a word of comment, handed his own silver-trimmed weapon

over to Irish, and rolled a cigarette deftly with one hand while

he watched them ride away.

 

“Does this strike anybody else as being pretty raw?” he inquired

calmly, dismounting among them. “I’d do a good deal for the

outfit, myself; but letting that man get off—Say, you fellows up

this way don’t think killing a man amounts to much, do you?” He

looked from one to the other with a queer, contemptuous hostility

in his eyes.

 

Andy Green took a forward step and laid a hand familiarly on his

rigid shoulder. “Quit it, Mig. We would do a lot for the outfit;

that’s the God’s truth. And I played the game right up to the

hilt, I admit. But nobody’s killed. I told Happy to play dead. By

gracious, I caught him just in the nick uh time; he’d been

setting up, in another minute.” To prove it, he bent and twitched

the handkerchief from the face of Happy Jack, and Happy opened

his eyes and made shift to growl.

 

“Yuh purty near-smothered me t’death, darn yuh.”

 

“Dios!” breathed the Native Son, for once since they knew him

jolted out of his eternal calm. “God, but I’m glad!”

 

“I guess the rest of us ain’t,” insinuated Andy softly, and

lifted his hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “I will say

that—” After all, he did not. Instead, he knelt beside Happy

Jack and painstakingly adjusted the crumpled hat a hair’s breadth

differently.

 

“How do yuh feel, old-timer?” be asked with a very thin disguise

of cheerfulness upon the anxiety of his tone.

 

“Well, I could feel a lot—better, without hurtin’ nothin,” Happy

Jack responded somberly. “I hope you fellers—feel better, now.

Yuh got ‘em—tryin’ to murder—the hull outfit; jes’ like I—told

yuh they would—” Gunshot wounds, contrary to the tales of

certain sentimentalists, do not appreciably sweeten, or even

change, a man’s disposition. Happy Jack with a bullet hole

through one side of him was still Happy Jack.

 

“Aw, quit your beefin’,” Big Medicine advised gruffly. “A feller

with a hole in his lung yuh could throw a calf through sideways

ain’t got no business statin’ his views on nothin’, by cripes!”

 

“Aw gwan. I thought you said—it didn’t amount t’ nothin’,” Happy

reminded him, anxiety stealing into his face.

 

“Well, it don’t. May lay yuh up a day or two; wouldn’t be

su’prised if yuh had to stay on the bed-ground two or three

meals. But look at Slim, here. Shot through the leg—shattered a

bone, by cripes!—las’ night, only; and here he’s makin’ a hand

and ridin’ and cussin’ same as any of us t’day. We ain’t goin’ to

let yuh grouch around, that’s all. We claim we got a vacation

comm’ to us; you’re shot up, now, and that’s fun enough for one

man, without throwin’ it into the whole bunch. Why, a little nick

like that ain’t nothin’; nothin’ a-tall. Why, I’ve been shot

right through here, by cripes”—Big Medicine laid an impressive

finger-tip on the top button of his trousers—“and it come out

back here”—he whirled and showed his thumb against the small of

his back—“and I never laid off but that day and part uh the

next. I was sore,” he admitted, goggling Happy Jack earnestly,

“but I kep’ a-goin’. I was right in fall roundup, an’ I had to. A

man can’t lay down an’ cry, by cripes, jes’ because he gets

pinked a little—”

 

“Aw, that’s jest because—it ain’t you. I betche you’d lay ‘em

down—jest like other folks, if yuh got shot—through the lungs.

That ain’t no—joke, lemme tell yuh!” Happy Jack was beginning to

show considerable spirit for a wounded man. So much spirit that

Andy Green, who had seen men stricken down with various ills,

read fever signs in the countenance and in the voice of Happy,

and led Big Medicine somewhat peremptorily out of ear-shot.

 

“Ain’t you got any sense?” he inquired with fine candor. “What do

you want to throw it into him like that, for? You may not think

so, but he’s pretty bad off—if you ask me.”

 

Big Medicine’s pale eyes turned commiseratingly toward Happy

Jack. “I know he is; I ain’t no fool. I was jest tryin’ to cheer

‘im up a little. He was beginnin’ to look like he was gittin’

scared about it; I reckon maybe I made a break, sayin’ what I did

about it, so I jest wanted to take the cuss off. Honest to

gran’ma—”

 

“If you know anything at all about such things, you must know

what fever means in such a case. And, recollect, it’s going to be

quite a while before a doctor can get here.”

 

“Oh, I’ll be careful. Maybe I did throw it purty strong; I won’t,

no more.” Big Medicine s meekness was not the least amazing

incident of the day. He was a big-hearted soul under his bellow

and bluff, and his sympathy for Happy Jack struck deep. He went

back walking on his toes, and he stood so that his sturdy body

shaded Happy Jack’s face from the sun, and he did not open his

mouth for another word until Irish and Jack Bates came rattling

up with the spring wagon hurriedly transformed with mattress,

pillows and blankets into an ambulance.

 

They had been thoughtful to a degree. They brought with them a

jug of water and a tin cup, and they gave Happy Jack a long,

cooling drink of it and bathed his face before they lifted him

into the wagon. And of all the hands that ministered to his

needs, the hands of Big Medicine were the eagerest and gentlest,

and his voice was the most vibrant with sympathy; which was

saying a good deal.

 

CHAPTER XVI. The End of the Dots

 

Slim may not have been more curious than his fellows, but he was

perhaps more single-hearted in his loyalty to the outfit. To him

the shooting of Happy Jack, once he felt assured that the wound

was not necessarily fatal, became of secondary importance. It was

all in behalf of the Flying U; and if the bullet which laid Happy

Jack upon the ground was also the means of driving the hated Dots

from that neighborhood, he felt, in his slow, phlegmatic way,

that it wasn’t such a catastrophe as some of the others seemed to

think. Of course, he wouldn’t want Happy to die; but he didn’t

believe, after all, that Happy was going to do anything like

that. Old Patsy knew a lot about sickness and wounds. (Who can

cook for a cattle outfit, for twenty years and more, and not know

a good deal of hurts?) Old Patsy had looked Happy over carefully,

and had given a grin and a snort.

 

“Py cosh, dot vos lucky for you, alreatty,” he had pronounced.

“So you don’t git plood-poisonings, mit fever, you be all right

pretty soon. You go to shleep, yet. If fix you oop till der

dochtor he cooms. I seen fellers shot plumb through der middle

off dem, und git yell. You ain’t shot so bad. You go to shleep.”

 

So, his immediate fears relieved, Slim’s slow mind had swung back

to the Dots, and to Oleson, whom Weary was even now assisting to

keep his promise (Slim grinned widely to himself when he thought

of the abject fear which Oleson had displayed because of the

murder he thought he had done, while Happy Jack obediently

“played dead”). And of Dunk, whom Slim had hated most abominably

of old; Dunk, a criminal found out; Dunk, a prisoner right there

on the very ranch he had thought to despoil; Dunk, at that very

moment locked in the blacksmith shop. Perhape it was not

curiosity alone which sent him down there; perhaps it was partly

a desire to look upon Dunk humbled—he who had trodden so

arrogantly upon the necks of those below him; so arrogantly that

even Slim, the slow-witted one, had many a time trembled with

anger at his tone.

 

Slim walked slowly, as was his wont; with deadly directness, as

was his nature. The blacksmith shop was silent, closed—as grimly

noncommittal as a vault. You might guess whatever you pleased

about its inmate; it was like trying to imagine the emotions

pictured upon the face behind a smooth, black mask. Slim stopped

before the closed door and listened. The rusty, iron hasp

attracted his slow gaze, at first puzzling him a little, making

him vaguely aware that something about it did not quite harmonize

with his mental attitude toward it. It took him a full minute to

realize that he had expected to find the door locked, and that

the hasp hung downward uselessly, just as it hung every day in

the year.

 

He remembered then that Andy had spoken of chaining Dunk to the

anvil. That would make it unnecessary to lock the door, of

course. Slim seized the hanging strip of iron, gave it a jerk and

bathed all the dingy interior with a soft, sunset glow. Cobwebs

quivered at the inrush of the breeze, and glistened like threads

of fine gold. The forge remained a dark blot in the corner. A new

chisel, lying upon the earthen floor, became a bar of yellow

light.

 

Slim’s eyes went to the anvil and clung there in a widening

stare. His hands, white and soft when his gloves were off, drew

up convulsively into fighting fists, and as he stood looking, the

cords swelled and stood out upon his thick neck. For years he had

hated