Flying U Ranch
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B. M. Bower >> Flying U Ranch
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"There's a lot uh cake you boys might just as well eat up," the
Countess called belatedly. "It'll all dry out, if yuh don't--and
there ain't no use wastin' it--and there's two lemon pies in the
brown cupboard, and what under the shinin' sun--" The wheels
bumped violently against a rock, and the Happy Family heard no
more.
CHAPTER IV. Some Hopes
On the third day after the Happy Family decided that there should
be some word from Chicago; and, since that day was Sunday, they
rode in a body to Dry Lake after it. They had not discussed the
impending tragedy very much, but they were an exceedingly Unhappy
Family, nevertheless; and, since Flying U coulee was but a place
of gloom, they were not averse to leaving it behind them for a
few hours, and riding where every stick and stone did not remind
then of the Old Man.
In Dry Lake was a message, brief but heartening:
"J. G. still alive. Some hopes".
They left the station with lighter spirits after reading that;
rode to the hotel, tied their horses to the long hitching pole
there and went in. And right there the Happy Family unwittingly
became cast for the leading parts in one of those dramas of the
West which never is heard of outside the theater in which grim
circumstance stages it for a single playing--unless, indeed, the
curtain rings down on a tragedy that brings the actors before
their district judge for trial. And, as so frequently is the
case, the beginning was casual to the point of triviality.
Sary, Ellen, Marg'reet, Sybilly and Jos'phine Denson (spelled in
accordance with parental pronunciation) were swinging idly upon
the hitching pole, with the self-conscious sang froid of country
children come to town. They backed away from the Happy Family's
approach, grinned foolishly in response to their careless
greeting, and tittered openly at the resplendence of the Native
Son, who was wearing his black Angora chaps with the three white
diamonds down each leg, the gay horsehair hatband, crimson
neckerchief and Mexican spurs with their immense rowels and
ornate conchos of hand-beaten silver. Sary, Ellen, Marg'reet,
Jos'phine and Sybilly were also resplendent, in their way. Their
carroty hair was tied with ribbons quite aggressively new, their
freckles shone with maternal scrubbing, and there was a hint of
home-made "crochet-lace" beneath each stiffly starched dress.
"Hello, kids," Weary greeted them amiably, with a secret smile
over the memory of a time when they had purloined the Little
Doctor's pills and had made reluctant acquaintance with a stomach
pump. "Where's the circus going to be at?"
"There ain't goin' to be no circus," Sybilly retorted, because
she was the forward one of the family. "We're going away; on the
train. The next one that comes along. We're going to be on it all
night, too; and we'll have to eat on it, too."
"Well, by golly, you'll want something to eat, then!" Slim was
feeling abstractedly in his pocket for a coin, for these were the
nieces of the Countess, and therefore claimed more than a cursory
interest from Slim. "You take this up to the store and see if yuh
can't swop it for something good to eat." Because Sary was the
smallest of the lot he pressed the dollar into her shrinking,
amazed palm.
"Paw's got more money'n that," Sybilly announced proudly. "Paw's
got a million dollars. A man bought our ranch and gave him a lot
of money. We're rich now. Maybe paw'll buy us a phony-graft. He
said maybe he would. And maw's goin' to have a blue silk dress
with green onto it. And--"
"Better haze along and buy that grub stake," Slim interrupted the
family gift for profuse speech. He had caught the boys grinning,
and fancied that they were tracing a likeness between the
garrulity of Sybilly and the fluency of her aunt, the Countess.
"You don't want that train to go off and leave yuh, by golly."
"Wonder who bought Denson out?" Cal Emmett asked of no one in
particular, as the children went strutting off to the store to
spend the dollar which little Sary clutched so tightly it seemed
as if the goddess of liberty must surely have been imprinted upon
her palm.
When they went inside and found Denson himself pompously "setting
'em up to the house," Cal repeated the question in a slightly
different form to the man himself.
Denson, while he was ready to impress the beholders with his
unaccustomed affluence, became noticeably embarrassed at the
inquiry, and edged off into vague generalities.
"I jest nacherlly had to sell when I got m' price," he told the
Happy Family in a tone that savored strongly of apology. "I like
the country, and I like m' neighbors fine. Never'd ask for better
than the Flyin' U has been t' me. I ain't got no kick comin'
there. Sorry to hear the Old Man's hurt back East. Mary was real
put out at not bein' able to see Louise 'fore she went away"--
Louise being the Countess' and Mary Denson's sister--"but soon as
I sold I got oneasy like. The feller wanted p'session right away,
too, so I told Mary we might as well start b'fore we git outa the
notion. I wouldn't uh cared about sellin', maybe, but the kids
needs to be in school. They're growin' up in ign'rance out here,
and Mary's folks wants us to come back 'n' settle close handy
by--they been at us t' sell out and move fer the last five years,
now, and I told Mary--"
Even Cal forgot, eventually, that he had asked a question which
remained unanswered; what interest he had felt at first was
smothered to death beneath that blanket of words, and he eagerly
followed the boys out and over to Rusty Brown's place, where
Denson, because of an old grudge against Rusty, might be trusted
not to follow.
"Mamma!" Weary commented amusedly, when they were crossing the
street, "that Denson bunch can sure talk the fastest and longest,
and say the least, of any outfit I ever saw."
"Wonder who did buy him out?" Jack Bates queried. "Old
ginger-whiskers didn't pass out any facts, yuh notice. He
couldn't have,got much; his land's mostly gravel and 'doby
patches. He's got a water right on Flying U creek, you
know--first right, at that, seems to me--and a dandy fine spring
in that coulee. Wonder why our outfit didn't buy him out--seeing
he wanted to sell so bad?"
"This wantin' to sell is something I never heard of b'fore," Slim
said slowly. "To hear him tell it, that ranch uh hisn was worth a
dollar an inch, by golly. I don't b'lieve he's been wantin' to
sell out. If he had, Mis' Bixby woulda said something about it.
She don't know about this here sellin' business, or she'd a
said--"
"Yeah, you can most generally bank on the Countess telling all
she knows," Cal assented with some sarcasm; at which Slim grunted
and turned sulky afterward.
Denson and his affairs they speedily forgot for a time, in the
diversion which Rusty Brown's familiar place afforded to young
men with unjaded nerves and a zest for the primitive pleasures.
Not until mid-afternoon did it occur to them that Flying U coulee
was deserted by all save old Patsy, and that there were chores to
be done, if all the creatures of the coulee would sleep in
comfort that night. Pink, therefore, withdrew his challenge to
the bunch, and laid his billiard cue down with a sigh and the
remark that all he lacked was time, to have the scalps of every
last one of them hanging from his belt. Pink was figurative in
his speech, you will understand; and also a bit vainglorious over
beating Andy Green and Big Medicine twice in succession.
It occurred to Weary then that a word of cheer to the Old Man and
his anxious watchers might not cone amiss. Therefore the Happy
Family mounted and rode to the depot to send it, and on the way
wrangled over the wording of the message after their usual
contentious manner.
"Better tell 'em everything is fine, at this end uh the line,"
Cal suggested, and was hooted at for a poet.
"Just say," Weary began, when he was interrupted by the
discordant clamor from a trainload of sheep that had just pulled
in and stopped. "'Maa-aa, Ma-a-aaa,' darn yuh," he shouted
derisively, at the peering, plaintive faces, glimpsed between the
close-set bars. "Mamma, how I do love sheep!" Whereupon he put
spurs to his horse and galloped down to the station to rid his
ears of the turbulent wave of protest from the cars.
Naturally it required some time to compose the telegram in a
style satisfactory to all parties. Outside, cars banged together,
an engine snorted stertorously, and suffocating puffs of coal
smoke now and then invaded the waiting-room while the Happy
Family were sending that message of cheer to Chicago. If you are
curious, the final version of their combined sentiments was not
at all spectacular. It said merely:
"Everything fine here. Take good care of the Old Man. How's the
Kid stacking up?"
It was signed simply "The Bunch."
"Mary's little lambs are here yet, I see," the Native Son
remarked carelessly when they went out. "Enough lambs for all the
Marys in the country. How would you like to be Mary?"
"Not for me," Irish declared, and turned his face away from the
stench of them.
Others there were who rode the length of the train with faces
averted and looks of disdain; cowmen, all of them, they shared
the range prejudice, and took no pains to hide it.
The wind blew strong from the east, that day; it whistled through
the open, double-decked cars packed with gray, woolly bodies,
whose voices were ever raised in strident complaint; and the
stench of them smote the unaccustomed nostrils of the Happy
Family and put them to disgusted flight up the track and across
it to where the air was clean again.
"Honest to grandma, I'd make the poorest kind of a sheepherder,"
Big Medicine bawled earnestly, when they were well away from the
noise and smell of the detested animals. "If I had to herd sheep,
by cripes, do you know what I'd do? I'd haze 'em into a coulee
and turn loose with a good rifle and plenty uh shells, and call
in the coyotes to git a square meal. That's the way I'd herd
sheep. It's the only way you can shut 'em up. They just 'baa-aa,
baa-aa, baa-aa' from the time they're dropped till somebody kills
'em off. Honest, they blat in their sleep. I've heard 'em."
"When you and the dogs were shooting off coyotes?" asked Andy
Green pointedly, and so precipitated dissension which lasted for
ten miles.
CHAPTER V. Sheep
Slim rising first from dinner on the next day but one opened the
door of the mess-house, and stood there idly picking his teeth
before he went about his work. After a minute of listening to the
boys "joshing" old Patsy about some gooseberry pies he had baked
without sugar, he turned his face outward, threw up his head like
a startled bull, and began to sniff.
"Say, I smell sheep, by golly!" he announced in the bellowing
tone which was his conversational voice, and sniffed again.
"Oh, that's just a left-over in your system from the dose yuh got
in town Sunday," Weary explained soothingly. "I've smelled sheep,
and tasted sheep, and dreamed sheep, ever since."
"No, by golly, it's sheep! It ain't no memory. I--I b'hieve I
hear 'em, too, by golly." Slim stepped out away from the building
and faced suspiciously down the coulee.
"Slim, I never suspected you of imagination before," the Native
Son drawled, and loitered out to where Slim stood still sniffing.
"I wonder if you're catching it from Andy and me. Don't you think
you ought to be vaccinated?"
"That ain't imagination," Pink called out from within. "When
anybody claims there's sheep in Flying U coulee, that's straight
loco."
"Come on out here and smell 'em yourself, then!" Slim bawled
indignantly. "I never seen such an outfit as this is gittin' to
be; you fellers don't believe nobody, no more. We ain't all Andy
Greens."
Upon hearing this Andy pushed back his chair and strolled
outside. He clapped his hand down upon Slim's fat-cushioned
shoulder and swayed him gently. "Never mind, Slim; you can't all
be famous," he comforted. "Some day, maybe, I'll teach yuh the
fine art of lying more convincingly than the ordinary man can
tell the truth. It is a fine art; it takes a genius to put it
across. Now, the only time anybody doubts my word is when I'm
sticking to the truth hike a sand burr to a dog's tail."
From away to the west, borne on the wind which swept steadily
down the coulee, came that faint, humming sing-song, which can be
made only by a herd of a thousand or more sheep, all blatting in
different keys--or by a distant band playing monotonously upon
the middle octave of their varied instruments.
"Slim's right, by gracious! It's sheep, sure as yuh live." Andy
did not wait for more, but started at a fast walk for the stable
and his horse. After him went the Native Son, who had not been
with the Flying U long enough to sense the magnitude of the
affront, and Slim, who knew to a nicety just what "cowmen"
considered the unpardonable sin, and the rest of the Happy
Family, who were rather incredulous still.
"Must be some fool herder just crossing the coulee, on the move
somewhere," Weary gave as a solution. "Half of 'em don't know a
fence when they see it."
As they galloped toward the sound and the smell, they expressed
freely their opinion of sheep, the men who owned them, and the
lunatics who watched over the blatting things. They were
cattlemen to the marrow in their bones, and they gloried in their
prejudice against the woolly despoilers of the range.
All these years had the Flying U been immune from the nuisance,
save for an occasional trespasser, who was quickly sent about his
business. The Flying U range had been kept in the main inviolate
from the little, gray vandals, which ate the grass clean to the
sod, and trampled with their sharp-pointed hoofs the very roots
into lifelessness; which polluted the water-holes and creeks
until cattle and horses went thirsty rather than drink; which, in
that land of scant rainfall, devastated the range where they fed
so that a long-established prairie-dog town was not more barren.
What wonder if the men who owned cattle, and those who tended
them, hated sheep? So does the farmer dread an invasion of
grasshoppers.
A mile down the coulee they came upon the band with two herders
and four dogs keeping watch. Across the coulee and up the
hillsides they spread like a noisome gray blanket. "Maa-aa, maa-
aa, maa-aa," two thousand strong they blatted a strident medley
while they hurried here and there after sweeter bunches of grass,
very much like a disturbed ant-hill.
The herders loitered upon either slope, their dogs lying close
beside them. There was good grass in that part of the coulee; the
Flying U had saved it for the saddle horses that were to be
gathered and held temporarily at the ranch; for it would save
herding, and a week in that pasture would put a keen edge on
their spirits for the hard work of the calf roundup. A dozen or
two that ranged close had already been driven into the field and
were feeding disdainfully in a corner as far away from the sheep
as the fence would permit.
The Happy Family, riding close-grouped, stiffened in their
saddles and stared amazed at the outrage.
"Sheepherders never did have any nerve," Irish observed after a
minute. "They keep their places fine! They'll drive their sheep
right into your dooryard and tell 'en to help themselves to
anything that happens to look good to them. Oh, they're sure
modest and retiring!"
Weary, who had charge of the outfit during Chip's absence, was
making straight for the nearest herder. Pink and Andy went with
him, as a matter of course.
"You fellows ride up around that side, and put the run on them
sheep," Weary shouted back to the others. "We'll start the other
side moving. Make 'em travel--back where they came from." He
jerked his head toward the north. He knew, just as they all knew,
that there had been no sheep to the south, unless one counted
those that ranged across the Missouri river.
As the three forced their horses up the steep slope, the herder,
sitting slouched upon a rock, glanced up at them dully. He had a
long stick, with which he was apathetically turning over the
smaller stones within his reach, and as apathetically killing the
black bugs that scuttled out from the moist earth beneath. He
desisted from this unexciting pastime as they drew near, and eyed
them with the sullenness that comes of long isolation when the
person's nature forbids that other extreme of babbling garrulity,
for no man can live long months alone and remain perfectly
normal. Nature, that stern mistress, always exacts a penalty from
us foolish mortals who would ignore the instincts she has wisely
implanted within us for our good.
"Maybe," Weary began mildly and without preface, "you don't know
this is private property. Get busy with your dogs, and haze these
sheep back on the bench." He waved his hand to the north. "And,
when you get a good start in that direction," he added, "yuh
better keep right on going."
The herder surveyed him morosely, but he said nothing; neither
did he rise from the rock to obey the command. The dogs sat upon
their haunches and perked their ears inquiringly, as if they
understood better than did their master that these men were not
to be quite overlooked.
"I meant to-day," Weary hinted, with the manner of one who
deliberately holds his voice quiet.
"I never asked yuh what yuh meant," the herder mumbled, scowling.
"We got to keep 'em on water another hour, yet." He went back to
turning over the small rocks and to pursuing with his stick the
bugs, as if the whole subject were squeezed dry of interest.
For a minute Weary stared unwinkingly down at him, uncertain
whether to resent this as pure insolence, or to condone it as
imbecility. "Mamma!" he breathed eloquently, and grinned at Andy
and Pink. "This is a real talkative cuss, and obliging, too. Come
on, boys; he's too busy to bother with a little thing like
sheep."
He led the way around to the far side of the band, the nearest
sheep scuttling away from then as they passed. "I don't suppose
we could work the combination on those dogs--what?" he considered
aloud, glancing back at them where they still sat upon their
haunches and watched the strange riders. "Say, Cadwalloper, you
took a few lessons in sheepherding, a couple of years ago, when
you was stuck on that girl--remember? Whistle 'em up here and set
'en to work."
"You go to the devil," Pink's curved hips replied amiably to his
boss. "I've got loss-uh-memory on the sheep business."
Whereat Weary grinned and said no more about it.
On the opposite side of the coulee, the boys seemed to be
laboring quite as fruitlessly with the other herder. They heard
Big Medicine's truculent bellow, as he leaned from the saddle and
waved a fist close to the face of the herder, but, though they
rode with their eyes fixed upon the group, they failed to see any
resultant movement of dogs, sheep or man.
There is, at times, a certain safety in being the hopeless
minority. Though seven indignant cowpunchers surrounded him, that
herder was secure from any personal molestation--and he knew it.
They were seven against one; therefore, after making some caustic
remarks, which produced as little effect as had Weary's command
upon the first man, the seven were constrained to ride here and
there along the wavering, gray line, and, with shouts and
swinging ropes, themselves drive the sheep from the coulee.
There was much clamor and dust and riding to and fro. There was
language which would have made the mothers of then weep, and
there were faces grown crimson from wrath. Eventually, however,
the Happy Family faced the north fence of the Flying U boundary,
and saw the last woolly back scrape under the lower wire, leaving
a toll of greasy wool hanging from the barbs.
The herders had drawn together, and were looking on from a
distance, and the four dogs were yelping uneasily over their
enforced inaction. The Happy Family went back and rounded up the
herders, and by sheer weight of numbers forced them to the fence
without laying so much as a finger upon then. The one who had
been killing black bugs gave then an ugly look as he crawled
through, but even he did not say anything.
"Snap them wires down where they belong," Weary commanded
tersely.
The man hesitated a minute, then sullenly unhooked the barbs of
the two lower strands, so that the wires, which had thus been
lifted to permit the passing of the sheep, twanged apart and once
more stretched straight from post to post.
"Now, just keep in mind the fact that fences are built for use.
This is a private ranch, and sheep are just about as welcome as
smallpox. Haze them stinking things as far north as they'll
travel before dark, and at daylight start 'em going again.
Where's your camp, anyhow?"
"None of your business," mumbled the bugkiller sourly.
Weary scanned the undulating slope beyond the fence, saw no sign
of a camp, and glanced uncertainly at his fellows. "Well, it
don't matter much where it is; you see to it you don't sleep
within five miles of here, or you're liable to have bad dreams.
Hit the trail, now!"
They waited inside the fence until the retreating sheep lost
their individuality as blatting animals, ambling erratically here
and there, while they moved toward the brow of the hill, and
merged into a great, gray blotch against the faint green of the
new grass--a blotch from which rose again that vibrant, sing-song
humming of many voices mingled. Then they rode back down the
coulee to their own work, taking it for granted that the
trespassing was an incident which would not be repeated--by those
particular sheep, at any rate.
It was, therefore, with something of a shock that the Happy
Family awoke the next morning to hear Pink's melodious treble
shouting in the bunk-house at sunrise next morning:
"'G'wa-a-y round' 'em, Shep! Seven black ones in the coulee!" Men
who know well the West are familiar with that facetious call.
"Ah, what's the matter with yuh?" Irish raised a rumpled, brown
head from his pillow, and blinked sleepily at him. "I've been
dreaming I was a sheepherder, all night."
"Well, you've got the swellest chance in the world to 'make every
dream cone true, dearie,'" Pink retorted. "The whole blamed
coulee's full uh sheep. I woke up a while ago and thought I just
imagined I heard 'en again; so I went out to take a look--or a
smell, it was--and they're sure enough there!"
Weary swung one long leg out from under his blankets and reached
for his clothes. He did not say anything, but his face portended
trouble for the invaders.
"Say!" cried Big Medicine, coming out of his bunk as if it were
afire, "I tell yuh right now then blattin' human apes wouldn't
git gay around here if I was runnin' this outfit. The way I'd
have of puttin' them sheep on the run wouldn't be slow, by
cripes! I'll guarantee--"
By then the bunk-house was buzzing with voices, and there was
none to give heed to Big Medicine s blatant boasting. Others
there were who seemed rather inclined to give Weary good advice
while they pulled on their boots and sought for their gloves and
rolled early-morning cigarettes, and otherwise prepared
themselves for what Fate might have waiting for then outside the
door.
"Are you sure they're in the coulee, Cadwalloper?" Weary asked,
during a brief lull. "They could be up on the hill--"
"Hell, yes!" was Pink's forceful answer. "They could be on the
hill, but they ain't. Why, darn it, they're straggling into the
little pasture! I could see 'em from the stable. They--"
"Come and eat your breakfast first, boys, anyway." Weary had his
hand upon the door-knob. "A few minutes more won't make any
difference, one way or the other." He went out and over to the
mess-house to see if Patsy had the coffee ready; for this was a
good three-quarters of an hour earlier than the Flying U outfit
usually bestirred themselves on these days of preparation for
roundup and waiting for good grass.
"I'll be darned if I'd be as calm as he is," Cal Emmett muttered
while the door was being closed. "Good thing the Old Man ain't
here, now. He'd go straight up in the air. He wouldn't wait for
no breakfast."
"I betche there'll be a killin' yet, before we're through with
them sheep," gloomed Happy Jack. "When sheepherders starts in
once to be ornery, there ain't no way uh stoppin' 'em except by
killin' 'em off. And that'll mean the pen for a lot of us
fellers--"
"Well, by golly, it won't be me," Slim declared loudly. "Yuh
wouldn't ketch me goin' t' jail for no doggone sheepherder. They
oughta be a bounty on 'en by rights."
"Seems queer they'd be right back here this morning, after being
hazed out yesterday afternoon," said Andy Green thoughtfully.
"Looks like they're plumb anxious to build a lot of trouble for
themselves."
Patsy, thumping energetically the bottom of a tin pan, sent them
trooping to the mess-house. There it was evident that the
breakfast had been unduly hurried; there were no biscuits in
sight, for one thing, though Patsy was lumbering about the stove
frying hot-cakes. They were in too great a hurry to wait for
them, however. They swallowed their coffee hurriedly, bolted a
few mouthfuls of meat and fried eggs, and let it go at that.
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