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

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lickin’ our doorsteps. What darned outfit is it, anyway? I never

bumped into any Dot sheep before, to my knowledge.”

 

“It’s a new one on me,” Weary testified, heading the procession

down to the stable. “If they belonged anywhere in this part of

the country, though, they wouldn’t be acting the way they are.

They’d be wise to the fact that it ain’t healthy.”

 

Even while he spoke his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon

a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To

the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that

indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that

aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a

favorable wind will carry a long way.

 

They slapped saddles on their horses in record time that morning,

and raced down the coulee ironically shouting commiserating

sentences to the unfortunate Andy, who rode slowly up to the

messhouse for the lunch which Patsy had waiting for him in a

flour sack, and afterward climbed the grade and loped along

outside the line fence to a point opposite the sheep and the

shouting horsemen, who forced them back by weight of numbers.

 

This morning the herders were not quite so passive. The

bugkiller still scowled, but he spoke without the preliminary

sulky silence of the day before,

 

“We’re goin’ across the coulee,” he growled. “Them’s orders. We

range south uh here.”

 

“No, you don’t,” Weary dissented calmly. “Not by a long shot, you

don’t. You’re going back where you come from—if you ask me. And

you’re going quick!”

 

CHAPTER VI. What Happened to Andy

 

With the sun shining comfortably upon his back, and with a

cigarette between his lips, Andy sat upon his horse and watched

in silent glee while the irate Happy Family scurried here and

there behind the band, swinging their ropes down upon the woolly

backs, and searching their vocabularies for new and terrible

epithets. Andy smiled broadly as a colorful phrase now and then

boomed across the coulee in that clear, snappy atmosphere, which

carries sounds so far. He did not expect to do much smiling upon

his own account, that day, and he was therefore grateful for the

opportunity to behold the spectacle before him.

 

There was Slim, for instance, unwillingly careening down hill

toward home, because, in his zeal to slap an old ewe smartly with

his rope, he drove her unexpectedly under his horse, and so

created a momentary panic that came near standing both horse and

rider upon their heads. And there was Big Medicine whistling

until he was purple, while the herder, with a single gesture,

held the dog motionless, though a dozen sheep broke back from the

band and climbed a slope so steep that Big Medicine was compelled

to go after them afoot, and turn them with stones and profane

objurgations.

 

It was very funny—when one could sit at ease upon the hilltop

and smoke a cigarette while others risked apoplexy and their

souls’ salvation below. By the time they panted up the last

rock-strewn slope of the bluff, and sent the vanguard of the

invaders under the fence, Andy’s mood was complacent in the

extreme, and his smile offensively wide.

 

“Oh, you needn’t look so sorry for us,” drawled the Native Son,

jingling over toward him until only the fence and a few feet of

space divided them. “Here’s where you get yours, amigo. I wish

you a pleasant day—and a long one!” He waved his hand in mocking

adieu, touched his horse with his silver spurs, and rode gaily

away down the coulee.

 

“Here, sheepherder’s your outfit. Ma-aa-a-a!” jeered Big

Medicine. “You’ll wisht, by cripes, you was a dozen men just like

yuh before you’re through with the deal. Haw-haw-haw-w!”

 

There were others who, seeing Andy’s grin, had something to say

upon the subject before they left.

 

Weary rode up, and looked undecidedly from Andy to the sheep, and

back again.

 

“If you don’t feel like tackling it single-handed, I’ll send—”

 

“What do yuh think I am, anyway ?” Andy interrupted crisply, “a

Montgomery Ward two-for-a-quarter cowpuncher? Don’t you fellows

waste any time worrying over me!”

 

The herders stared at Andy curiously when he swung in behind the

tail-end of the band and kept pace with their slow moving, but

they did not speak beyond shouting an occasional command to their

dogs. Neither did Andy have anything to say, until he saw that

they were swinging steadily to the west, instead of keeping

straight north, as they had been told to do. Then he rode over to

the nearest herder, who happened to be the bugkiller.

 

“You don’t want to get turned around,” he hinted quietly. “That’s

north, over there.”

 

“I’m workin’ fer the man that pays my wages,” the fellow retorted

glumly, and waved an arm to a collie that was waiting for orders.

The dog dropped his head, and ran around the right wing of the

band, with sharp yelps and dartings here and there, turning them

still more to the west.

 

Andy hesitated, decided to leave the man alone for the present,

and rode around to the other herder.

 

“You swing these sheep north!” he commanded, disdaining preface

or explanation.

 

“I’m workin’ for the man that pays my wages,” the herder made

answer stolidly, and chewed steadily upon a quid of tobacco that

had stained his lips unbecomingly.

 

So they had talked the thing over—had those two herders—and

were following a premeditated plan of defiance! Andy hooked at

the man a minute. “You turn them sheep, damn you,” he commanded

again, and laid a hand upon his saddle-horn suggestively.

 

“You go to the devil, damn yuh,” advised the herder, and cocked a

wary eye at him from under his hatbrim. Not all herders, let it

be said in passing, take unto themselves the mental attributes of

their sheep; there are those who believe that a bold front is

better than weak compliance, and who will back that belief by a

very bold front indeed.

 

Andy appraised him mentally, decided that he was an able-bodied

man and therefore fightable, and threw his right leg over the

cantle with a quite surprising alacrity.

 

“Are you going to turn them sheep?” Andy was taking off his coat

when he made that inquiry.

 

“Not for your tellin’. You keep back, young feller, or I’ll sick

the dogs on yuh.” He turned and whistled to the nearest one, and

Andy hit him on the ear.

 

They clinched and pummeled when they could and where they could.

The dog came up, circled the gyrating forms twice, then sat down

upon his haunches at a safe distance, tilted his head sidewise

and lifted his ears interestedly. He was a wise little dog; the

other dog was also wise, and remained phlegmatically at his post,

as did the bugkiller.

 

“Are you going to turn them sheep?” Andy spoke breathlessly, but

with deadly significance.

 

“N-yes.”

 

Andy took his fingers from the other’s Adam’s apple, his knee

from the other’s diaphragm, and went over to where he had thrown

down his coat, felt in a pocket for his handkerchief, and, when

he had found it, applied it to his nose, which was bleeding

profusely.

 

“Fly at it, then,” he advised, eyeing the other sternly over the

handkerchief. “I’d hate to ask you a third time.”

 

“I’d hate to have yuh,” conceded the herder reluctantly. “I was

sure I c’d lick yuh, or I’d ‘a’ turned ‘em before.” He sent the

dog racing down the south line of the band.

 

Andy got thoughtfully back upon his horse, and sat looking hard

at the herder. “Say, you’re grade above the general run uh lamb-hickers,” he observed, after a minute. “Who are you working for,

and what’s your object in throwing sheep on Flying U land?

There’s plenty of range to the north.”

 

“I’m workin’,” said the herder, “for the Dot outfit. I thought

you could read brands.”

 

“Don’t get sassy—I’ve got a punch or two I haven’t used yet. Who

owns these woollies?”

 

“Well—Whittaker and Oleson, if yuh want to know.”

 

“I do.” Andy was keeping pace with him around the band, which

edged off from then and the dogs. “And what makes you so crazy

about Flying U grass?” he pursued.

 

“We’ve got to cross that coulee to git to where we’re headed for;

we got a right to, and we’re going to do it.” The herder paused

and glanced up at Andy sourly. “We knowed you was a mean outfit;

the boss told us so. And he told us you was blank ca’tridges and

we needn’t back up just ‘cause you raised up on your hind legs

and howled a little. I’ve had truck with you cowmen before. I’ve

herded sheep in Wyoming.” He walked a few steps with his head

down, considering.

 

“I better go over and talk some sense into the other fellow,” he

said, looking up at Andy as if all his antagonism had oozed in

the fight. “You ride along this edge, so they won’t scatter—we

ought to be grazin’ ‘em along, by rights; only you seem to be in

such an all-fired rush—”

 

“You go on and tell that loco son-of-a-gun over there what he’s

up against,” Andy urged. “Blank cartridges—I sure do like that!

If you only knew it, high power dum-dums would be a lot closer to

our brand. Run along—I am in a kinda hurry, this morning.”

 

Andy, riding slowly upon the outskirts of the grazing, blatting

band, watched the two confer earnestly together a hundred yards

or so away. They seemed to be having some sort of argument; the

bugkiller gesticulated with the long stick he carried, and the

sheep, while the herders talked, scattered irresponsibly. Andy

wondered what made sheepmen so “ornery,” particularly herders. He

wondered why the fellow he had thrashed was so insultingly

defiant at first, and, after the thrashing, so unresentful and

communicative, and so amenable to authority withal. He felt his

nose, and decided that it was, all things considered, a cheap

victory, and yet one of which he need not be ashamed.

 

The herder cane back presently and helped drive the sheep over

the edge of the bluff which bordered Antelope coulee. The

bugkiller, upon his side, also seemed imbued with the spirit of

obedience; Andy heard him curse a collie into frenzied zeal, and

smiled approvingly.

 

“Now you’re acting a heap more human,” he observed; and the man

from Wyoming grinned ruefully by way of reply.

 

Antelope coulee, at that point, was steep; too steep for riding,

so that Andy dismounted and dug his boot-heels into the soft

soil, to gain a foothold on the descent. When he was halfway

down, he chanced to look back, straight into the scowling gaze of

the bugkiller, who was sliding down behind him.

 

“Thought you were hazing down the other side of ‘em,” Andy called

back, but the herder did not choose to answer save with another

scowl.

 

Andy edged his horse around an impracticable slope of shale stuff

and went on. The herder followed. When he was within twelve feet

or so of the bottom, there was a sound of pebbles knocked loose

in haste, a scrambling, and then came the impact of his body.

Andy teetered, lost his balance, and went to the bottom in one

glorious slide. He landed with the bugkiller on top—and the

bugkiller failed to remove his person as speedily as true

courtesy exacted.

 

Andy kicked and wriggled and tried to remember what was that

high-colored, vituperative sentence that Irish had invented over

a stubborn sheep, that he might repeat it to the bugkiller. The

herder from Wyoming ran