The Flying U's Last Stand, B. M. Bower [most read book in the world txt] 📗

waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating to a disputant.

“Oh, all right—if that's the way you feel about it,” Andy replied indifferently, and turned away. “Come on, boys—no use trying to bluff that gazabo. He's wise.”

He rode away with his face turned over his shoulder to see if the others were going to follow. When he was past the corner and therefore out of the man's sight, he raised his arm and beckoned to them imperatively, with a jerk of his head to add insistence. The four of them looked after him uncertainly. Weary kicked his horse and started, then Pink did the same. Andy beckoned again, more emphatically than before, and Big Medicine, who loved a fight as he loved to win a jackpot, turned and glared at the man in the doorway as he passed. Slim was rumbling by-golly ultimatums in his fat chest when he came up.

“Pink, you go on back and put the boys next, when they come up with the drag they won't do anything much but hand out a few remarks and ride on.” Andy said, in the tone of one who knows exactly what he means to do. “This is my claim-jumper. Chances are I've got three more to handle—or will have. Nothing like starting off right. Tell the boys just rag the fellow a little and ride on, like we did. Get the cattle up here and set Happy and Slim day-herding and the rest of us'll get busy.”

“You wouldn't tell for a dollar, would yuh?” Pi asked him with his dimples showing.

“I've got to think it out first,” Andy evaded, “feel all the symptoms of an idea. You let me alone a while.”

“Say, yuh going to tell him he's been found out and yuh know his past,” began Slim, “like yuh done Dunk? I'll bet, by golly—”

“Go on off and lay down!” Andy retorted pettishly. “I never worked the same one off on you twice, did I? Think I'm getting feeble-minded? It ain't hard to put his nibs on the run—that's dead easy. Trouble is I went and hobbled myself. I promised a lady I'd be mild.”

“Mamma!” muttered Weary, his sunny eyes taking in the shack-dotted horizon. “Mild!—and all these jumpers on our hands!”

“Oh, well—there's more'n one way to kill a cat,” Andy reminded them cheerfully. “You go on back and post the boys, Pink, not to get too riled.”

He galloped off and left them to say and think what they pleased. He was not uneasy over their following his advice or waiting for his plan. For Andy Green had risen rapidly to a tacit leadership, since first he told them of the coming colony. From being the official Ananias of the outfit, king of all joke-makers, chief irritator of the bunch, whose lightest word was suspected of hiding some deep meaning and whose most innocent action was analysed, he had come to the point where they listened to him and depended upon him to see a way out of every difficulty. They would depend upon him now; of that he was sure—therefore they would wait for his plan.

Strange as it may seem, the Happy Family had not seriously considered the possibility of having their claims “jumped” so long as they kept valid their legal residence. They had thought that they would be watched and accused of collusion with the Flying U, and they intended to be extremely careful. They meant to stay upon their claims at least seven months in the year, which the law required. They meant to have every blade of grass eaten by their own cattle, which would be counted as improving their claims. They meant to give a homelike air of permanency to their dwellings. They had already talked over a tentative plan of bringing water to their desert claims, and had ridden over the bench-land for two days, with the plat at hand for reference, that they might be sure of choosing their claims wisely. They had prepared for every contingency save the one that had arisen—which is a common experience with us all. They had not expected that their claims would be jumped and contests filed so early in the game, as long as they maintained their residence.

However, Andy was not dismayed at the turn of events. It was stimulating to the imagination to be brought face to face with an emergency such as this, and to feel that one must handle it with strength and diplomacy and a mildness of procedure that would find favor in the eyes of a girl.

He looked across the waving grass to where the four roomed shack was built upon the four corners of four “eighties” so that four women might live together and yet be said to live upon their own claims. That was drawing the line pretty fine, of course; finer than the Happy Family would have dared to draw it. But no one would raise any objection, on account of their being women and timid about living alone. Andy smiled sympathetically because the four conjunctive corners of the four claims happened to lie upon a bald pinnacle bare of grass or shelter or water, even. The shack stood bleakly revealed to the four winds—but also it over looked the benchland and the rolling, half-barren land to the west, which comprised Antelope Coulee and Dry Coulee and several other good-for-nothing coulees capable of supporting nothing but coyotes and prairie dogs and gophers.

A mile that way Andy rode, and stopped upon the steep side of a gulch which was an arm of Antelope Coulee. He looked down into the gulch, searched with his eyes for the stake that marked the southeast corner of the eighty lying off in this direction from the shack, and finally saw it fifty yards away on a bald patch of adobe.

He resisted the temptation to ride over and call upon Miss Allen—the resistance made easier by the hour, which was eight o'clock or thereabouts—and rode back to the others very well satisfied with himself and his plan.

He found the whole Happy Family gathered upon the level land just over his west line, extolling resentment while they waited his coming. Grinning, he told them his plan, and set them grinning also. He gave them certain work to be done, and watched them scatter to do his bidding. Then he turned and rode away upon business of his own.

The claim-jumper, watching the bench land through a pair of field glasses, saw a herd of cows and calves scattered and feeding contentedly upon the young grass a mile or so away. Two men on horseback loitered upon the outer fringe of the herd. From a distance hilltop came the staccato sound of hammers where an other shack was going up. Cloud shadows slid silently over the land, with bright sunlight chasing after. Of the other horsemen who had come up the bluff with the cattle, he saw not a sign. So the man yawned and went in to his breakfast.

Many times that day he stood at the corner of his shack with the glasses sweeping the bench-land. Toward noon the cattle drifted into a coulee where there was water. In a couple of hours they drifted leisurely back upon high ground and scattered to their feeding, still watched and tended by the two horsemen who looked the most harmless of individuals. One was fat and red-faced and spent at least half of his time lying prone upon some slope in the shade of his horse. The other was thin and awkward, and slouched in the saddle or sat upon the ground with his knees drawn up and