The Orphan, Clarence E. Mulford [find a book to read TXT] 📗

him, don’t you, Tom? Yes, I reckoned you wouldn’t forget the man who got us out of that Apache scrape. Well, I had a good talk with him, and this is what I learned:

“About twenty years ago a family named Gordon moved into northwestern Texas and put up a shack in one of the valleys. There was three of them, father, mother, and a bright little five-year-old boy, and they brought about two hundred head of cattle, a few horses and a whole raft of books. Gordon bought up quite a bit of land from a ranch nearby at almost a song, and he never thought of asking for a deed–who would, down there in those days? There wasn’t a rancher who owned more than a quarter section; you know the game, Tom–take up a hundred and sixty acres on a stream and then claim about a million, and fight like the very devil to hold it. We’ve all done it, I reckon, but there is plenty of land for everybody, and so there is no kick. Well, he was shore lucky, for his boundary on two sides was a fair-sized stream that never went dry, and you know how scarce that is–a whole lot better than a gold mine to a cattleman.

“They got along all right for a while, had a tenderfoot’s luck with their cattle, which soon began to be more than a few specks on the plain, and he was very well satisfied with everything, except that there wasn’t no school. Old man Gordon was daffy on education, which is a good thing to be daffy over, and he was some strong in that line himself, having been a school teacher back East. But he took his boy in hand and taught him all he knew, which must have been a whole lot, judging from things in general, and the kid was a smart, quick youngster. He was plumb crazy about two things–books and guns. He read and re-read all the books he could borrow, and got so he could handle a gun with any man on the range.

“About five years after he had located, the ranchman from whom he bought his range and water rights went and died. Some of the heirs, who were not what you would call square, began to get an itching for Gordon’s land, which was improved by the first irrigation ditch in Texas. There was a garden and a purty good orchard, which was just beginning to bear fruit. It was pure, cussed hoggishness, for there was more land than anybody had any use for, but they must grab everything in sight, no matter what the cost. Trouble was the rule after that, and the old man was up against it all the time. But he managed to hold his own, even though he did lose a lot of cattle.

“His brand was a gridiron, which wasn’t much different from the gridiron circle brand of the big ranch. It ain’t much trouble to use a running iron through a wet blanket and change a brand like that when you know how, and the Gridiron Circle gang shore enough knew how. Their expertness with a running iron would have caused questions to be asked, and probably a lynching bee, in other parts of the country, but down there they were purty well alone. They let Gordon know that he had jumped the range, which was just what they had done, that he didn’t own it, and that the sooner he left the country the better it would be for his health. But he had peculiar ideas about justice, and he shore was plumb full of grit and obstinacy. He knew he was right, that he had paid for the land, and that he had improved it. And he had a lot of faith in the law, not realizing that he hadn’t anything to show the law. And he didn’t know that law and justice don’t always mean the same thing, not by a long shot.

“Well, one day he went out looking for a vein of coal, which he thought ought to be thereabouts, according to his books, and it ought to be close to the surface of a fissure. He reckoned that coal of any quality would be some better than chips and the little wood he owned, so he got busy. But he didn’t find coal, but something that made him hotfoot it to his books. When the report came back from the assay office he knew that he had hit on a vein of native silver, which was some better than coal.

“It didn’t take long for the news to get around, though God Himself only knows how it did, unless the storekeeper told that a package had gone through his hands addressed to the assay office, and things began to happen in chunks. He caught three Gridiron Circle punchers shooting his cows, and he was naturally mad about it and just shot up the bunch before they knew he was around. He killed one and spoiled the health of the other two for some time to come, which naturally spelled war with a big W. Then about this time his wife went and died, which was a purty big addition to his troubles. As he stood above her grave, all broken up, and about ready to give up the fight and go back East, he was shot at from cover. He didn’t much care if he was killed or not, until he remembered that he had a boy to take care of. Then he got fighting mad all at once, all of his troubles coming up before him in a bunch, and he got his gun and went hunting, which was only right and proper under the circumstances.”

The sheriff flecked the ashes of his cigar into a blue flower pot which was gay with white ribbons, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“I hate to think that it is possible to find a whole ranch of hellions from the owner down,” he continued, “but the nature of the owner picks a dirty foreman, and a dirty foreman needs dirty men, and there you are. That fits the case of the Gridiron Circle to a T. There was not one white man in the whole gang,” and he sat in silence for a space.

“Well, the boy, who was about fifteen years old by this time, took his gun and went out to find his daddy, and he succeeded. He cut him down and buried him and then went home. That night the shack burned to the ground, the orchard was ruined and the boy disappeared. Some people said that the kid took what he wanted and burned the house rather than to have it profaned as a range house by the curs who murdered his dad; and some said the other thing, but from what I know of the kid, I reckon he did it himself.

“Right there and then things began to happen that hurt the ease and safety of the Gridiron Circle. Cows were found dead all over the range–juglars cut in every case. Three of their punchers were found dead in one week–a .5O-caliber Sharps had done it. A regular reign of terror began and kept the outfit on the nervous jump all the time. They searched and trailed and searched and swore, and if one of them went off by himself he was usually ready to be buried. Ten experienced, old-time cowmen were made fools of by a fifteen-year-old kid, who was never seen by anybody that lived long enough to tell about it. When he got hungry, he just killed another cow and had a porterhouse steak cooked between two others over a good fire. He ate the middle steak, which had all the juices of the two burned ones, and threw the others away. Three meals a day for six months, and one cow to a meal, was the order of things on the ranges of the Gridiron Circle. He had plenty of ammunition, because every dead puncher was minus his belt when found and his guns were broken or gone; and early in the game the boy had made a master stroke: he raided the storehouse of the ranch one night and lugged away about five hundred rounds of ammunition in his saddle bags, with a couple of spare Colts and a repeating Winchester of the latest pattern, and he spoiled all the rest of the guns he could lay his hands on. Humorous kid, wasn’t he, shooting up the ranch with its own guns and cartridges?

“Finally, however, after the news had spread, which it did real quick, a regular lynching party was arranged, and the U-B, which lay about sixty miles to the east, sent over half a dozen men to take a hand. Then the Gridiron Circle had a rest, but while the gang was hunting for him and laying all sorts of elaborate traps to catch him, the boy was over on the U-B, showing it how foolish it had been to take up another man’s quarrel. By this time the whole country knew about it, and even some Eastern papers began to give it much attention. One of the punchers of the Gridiron Circle, when he found a friend dead and saw the tracks of the kid in the sand, swore and cried that it was ‘that d––n Orphan’ who had done it, and the name stuck. He had become an outlaw and was legitimate prey for any man who had the chance and grit to turn the trick. For ten years he has been wandering all over the range like a hunted gray wolf, fighting for his life at every turn against all kinds of odds, both human and natural. And I reckon that explains why he is accused of doing so much killing. He has been hunted and forced to shoot to save his own life, and a gray wolf is a fighter when cornered. I know that I wouldn’t give up the ghost if I could help it, and neither would anybody else.”

“Oh, it is a shame, an awful shame!” cried Helen, tears of sympathy in her eyes. “How could they do it? I don’t blame him, not a bit! He did right, terrible as it was! And only a boy when they began, too! Oh, it is awful, almost unbelievable!”

“Yes, it is, Sis,” replied Shields earnestly. “It ain’t his fault, not by any manner or means–he was warped.” And then he added slowly: “But Tom and I will straighten him out, and if some folks hereabouts don’t like it, they can shore lump it, or fight.”

“Tell me how you met him, Jim,” requested Blake in the interval of silence. “I’ve heard some of it, second-handed, or third-handed, but I’d like to have it straight.”

“Well,” the sheriff continued, “when he came to these parts I didn’t know anything about him except what I had heard, which was only bad. He had a nasty way of handling his gun, a hair-trigger and a nervous finger on his gun, and he had a distressing way of using one cow to a meal, so I got busy. I didn’t expect much trouble in getting him. I knew that he was only a youngster and I counted on my fifty years, and most of them of experience, getting him. Being young, I reckoned he would be foolhardy and hasty and uncertain in his wisdom; but, Lord! it was just like trying to catch a flea in the dark. He was here, there and everywhere. While I was down south hunting along his trail he would be up north objecting to the sheep industry in ingenious ways and varying