Flying U Ranch
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B. M. Bower >> Flying U Ranch
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Weary looked at then with a faint smile. "I'm going to give a few
of you fellows a chance to herd sheep to-day," he announced,
cooling his coffee so that it would not actually scald his
palate. "That's why I wanted you to get some grub into you. Some
of you fellows will have to take the trail up on the hill, and
meet us outside the fence, so when we chase 'em through you can
make a good job of it this time. I wonder--"
"You don't need to call out the troops for that job; one man is
enough to put the fear uh the Lord into then herders," Andy
remarked slightingly. "Once they're on the move--"
"All right, my boy; we'll let you be the man," Weary told him
promptly. "I was going to have a bunch of you take a packadero
outfit down toward Boiler Bottom and comb the breaks along there
for horses--and I sure do hate to spend the whole day chasing
sheepherders around over the country. So we'll haze 'em through
the fence again, and, seeing you feel that way about it, I'll let
you go around and keep 'em going. And, if you locate their camp,
kinda impress it on the tender, if you can round him up, that the
Flying U ain't pasturing sheep this spring. No matter what kinda
talk he puts up, you put the run on 'em till you see 'em across
One-Man coulee. Better have Patsy put you up a lunch--unless
you're fond of mutton."
Andy twisted his mouth disgustedly. "Say, I'm going to quit
handing out any valuable advice to you, Weary," he expostulated.
"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" laughed Big Medicine, and slapped Andy on the
shoulder so that his face almost came in contact with his plate.
"Yuh will try to work some innercent man into sheepherdin', will
yuh? Haw-haw-haw-w! You'll come in tonight blattin'--if yuh don't
stay out on the range tryin' t' eat grass, by cripes! Andy had a
little lamb that follered him around--"
"Better let Bud take that herdin' job, Weary," Andy suggested.
"It won't hurt him--he's blattin' already."
"If you think you're liable to need somebody along," Weary began,
soft-heartedly relenting, "why, I guess--"
"If I can't handle two crazy sheepherders without any help, by
gracious, I'll get me a job holdin' yarn in an old ladies' hone,"
Andy cut in hastily, and got up from the table. "Being a truthful
man, I can't say I'm stuck on the job; but I'm game for it. And
I'll promise you there won't be no more sheep of that brand
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
mess-house 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
bug-killer 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 bug-killer.
"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 hat-brim. 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 bug-killer.
"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
bug-killer 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
bug-killer, 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 bug-killer, 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 bug-killer on top--and the
bug-killer 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 bug-killer. The
herder from Wyoming ran up, caught Andy's horse, and untied
Andy's rope from the saddle.
"Good fer you, Oscar," he praised the bug-killer. "Hang onto him
while I take a few turns." He thereupon helped force Andy's arms
to his side, and wound the rope several times rather tightly
around Andy's outraged, squirming person.
"Oh, it ain't goin' to do yuh no good to buck 'n bawl,"
admonished the tier. "I learnt this here little trick down in
Wyoming. A bunch uh punchers done it to me--and I've been just
achin' all over fer a chance to return the favor to some uh you
gay boys. And," he added, with malicious satisfaction, while he
rolled Andy over and tied a perfectly unslippable knot behind,
"it gives me great pleasure to hand the dose out to you, in
p'ticular. If I was a mean man, I'd hand yuh the boot a few times
fer luck; but I'll save that up till next time."
"You can bet your sweet life there'll be a next time," Andy
promised earnestly, with embellishments better suited to the
occasion than to a children's party.
"Well, when it arrives I'm sure Johnny-on-the-spot. Them Wyoming
punchers beat me up after they'd got me tied. I'm tellin' yuh so
you'll see I ain't mean unless I'm drove to it. Turn him feet
down hill, Oscar, so he won't git a rush uh brains to the head
and die on our hands. Now you're goin' to mind your own business,
sonny. Next time yuh set out to herd sheep, better see the boss
first and git on the job right."
He rose to his feet, surveyed Andy with his hands on his hips,
mentally pronounced the job well done, and took a generous chew
of tobacco, after which he grinned down at the trussed one.
"That the language uh flowers you're talkin'?" he inquired
banteringly, before he turned his attention to the horse, which
he disposed of by tying up the reins and giving it a slap on the
rump. When it had trotted fifty yards down the coulee bottom, and
showed a disposition to go farther, he whistled to his dogs, and
turned again to Andy.
"This here is just a hint to that bunch you trot with, to leave
us and our sheep alone," he said. "We don't pick no quarrels, but
we're goin' to cross our sheep wherever we dern please, to git
where we want to go. Gawd didn't make this range and hand it over
to you cowmen to put in yer pockets--I guess there's a chance fer
other folks to hang on by their eyebrows, anyway."
Andy, lying there like a very good presentation of a giant
cocoon, roped round and round, with his arms pinned to his sides,
had the doubtful pleasure of seeing that noisome, foolish-faced
band trail down Antelope coulee and back upon the level they had
just left, and of knowing to a gloomy certainty that he could do
nothing about it, except swear; and even that palls when a man
has gone over his entire repertoire three times in rapid
succession.
Andy, therefore, when the last sheep had trotted out of sight,
hearing and smell, wriggled himself into as comfortable a
position as his bonds would permit, and took a nap.
CHAPTER VII. Truth Crushed to Earth, etc.
Andy, only half awake, tried to obey both instinct and habit and
reach up to pull his hat down over his eyes, so that the sun
could not shine upon his lids so hotly; when he discovered that
he could do no more than wiggle his fingers, he came back with a
jolt to reality and tried to sit up. It is surprising to a man to
discover suddenly just how important a part his arms play in the
most simple of body movements; Andy, with his arms pinioned
tightly the whole length of them, rolled over on his face, kicked
a good deal, and rolled back again, but he did not sit up, as he
had confidently expected to do.
He lay absolutely quiet for at least five minutes, staring up at
the brilliant blue arch above him. Then he began to speak rapidly
and earnestly; a man just close enough to hear his voice sweeping
up to a certain rhetorical climax, pausing there and commencing
again with a rhythmic fluency of intonation, might have thought
that he was repeating poetry; indeed, it sounded like some of
Milton's majestic blank verse, but it was not. Andy was engaged
in a methodical, scientific, reprehensibly soul-satisfying period
of swearing.
A curlew, soaring low, with long beak outstretched before him,
and long legs outstretched behind cast a beady eye upon him, and
shrilled "Cor-reck! Cor-reck!" in unregenerate approbation of the
blasphemy.
Andy stopped suddenly and laughed. "Glad you agree with me, old
sport," he addressed the bird whimsically, with a reaction to his
normally cheerful outlook. "Sheepherders are all those things I
named over, birdie, and some that I can't think of at present."
He tried again, this time with a more careful realization of his
limitations, to assume an upright position; and being a
persevering young man, and one with a ready wit, he managed at
length to wriggle himself back upon the slope from which he had
slid in his sleep, and, by digging in his heels and going
carefully, he did at last rise upon his knees, and from there
triumphantly to his feet.
He had at first believed that one of the herders would, in the
course of an hour or so, return and untie him, when he hoped to
be able to retrieve, in a measure, his self-respect, which he had
lost when the first three feet of his own rope had encircled him.
To be tied and trussed by sheepherders! Andy gritted his teeth
and started down the coulee.
He was hungry, and his lunch was tied to his saddle. He looked
eagerly down the coulee, in the faint hope of seeing his horse
grazing somewhere along its length, until the numbness of his
arms and hands reminded him that forty lunches, tied upon forty
saddles at his side, would be of no use to him in his present
position. His hands he could not move from his thighs; he could
wiggle his fingers--which he did, to relieve as much as possible
that unpleasant, prickly sensation which we call a "going to
sleep" of the afflicted members. When it occurred to him that he
could not do anything with his horse if he found it, he gave up
looking for it and started for the ranch, walking awkwardly,
because of his bonds, the sun shining hotly upon his brown head,
because his hat had been knocked off in the scuffle, and he could
not pick it up and put it back where it belonged.
Taking a straight course across the prairie, he struck Flying U
coulee at the point where the sheep had left it. On the way there
he had crossed their trail where they went through the fence
farther along the coulee than before, and therefore with a better
chance of passing undetected; especially since the Happy Family,
believing that he was forcing them steadily to the north, would
not be watching for sheep. The barbed wire barrier bothered him
somewhat. He was compelled to lie down and roll under the fence,
in the most undignified manner, and, when he was through, there
was the problem of getting upon his feet again. But he managed it
somehow, and went on down the coulee, perspiring with the heat
and a bitter realization of his ignominy. What the Happy Family
would have to say when they saw him, even Andy Green's vivid
imagination declined to picture.
He knew by the sun that it was full noon when he came in sight of
the stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of
facing that derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins
and their barbed tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had
reached the limit of prickly sensations and were numb to his
shoulders. He shook his hair back from his beaded forehead, cast
a wary glance at the silent stables, set his jaw, and went on up
the hill to the mess-house, wishing tardily that he had waited
until they were off at work again, when he might intimidate old
Patsy into keeping quiet about his predicament.
Within the mess-house was the clatter of knives and forks plied
by hungry men, the sound of desultory talk and a savory odor of
good things to eat. The door was closed. Andy stood before it as
a guilty-conscienced child stands before its teacher; clicked his
teeth together, and, since he could not open the door, lifted his
right foot and gave it a kick to strain the hinges.
Within were exclamations of astonishment, silence and then a
heavy tread. Patsy opened the door, gasped and stood still, his
eyes popping out like a startled rabbit.
"Well, what's eating you?" Andy demanded querulously, and pushed
past him into the room.
Not all of the Happy Family were there. Cal, Jack Bates, Irish
and Happy Jack had gone into the Bad Lands next to the river; but
there were enough left to make the soul of Andy quiver
forebodingly, and to send the flush of extreme humiliation to his
cheeks.
The Happy Family looked at him in stunned surprise; then they
glanced at one another in swift, wordless inquiry, grinned wisely
and warily, and went on with their dinner. At least they
pretended to go on with their dinner, while Andy glared at them
with amazed reproach in his misleadingly honest gray eyes.
"When you've got plenty of time," he said at last in a choked
tone, "maybe one of you obliging cusses will untie this damned
rope."
"Why, sure!" Pink threw a leg over the bench and got up with
cheerful alacrity. "I'll do it now, if you say so; I didn't know
but what that was some new fad of yours, like--"
"Fad!" Andy repeated the word like an explosion.
"Well, by golly, Andy needn't think I'm goin' to foller that
there style," Slim stated solemnly. "I need m' rope for something
else than to tie n' clothes on with."
"I sure do hate to see a man wear funny things just to make
himself conspicuous," Pink observed, while he fumbled at the
knot, which was intricate. Andy jerked away from him that he
might face him ragefully.
"Maybe this looks funny to you," he cried, husky with wrath. "But
I can't seem to see the joke, myself. I admit I let then herders
make a monkey of me.... They slipped up behind, going down into
Antelope coulee, and slid down the bluff onto me; and, before I
could get up, they got me tied, all right. I licked one of 'en
before that, and thought I had 'en gentled down--"
Andy stopped short, silenced by that unexplainable sense which
warns us when our words are received with cold disbelief.
"Mh-hm--I thought maybe you'd run up against a hostile
jackrabbit, or something," Pink purred, and went back to his
place on the bench.
"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" came Big Medicine's tardy bellow. "That's more
reasonable than the sheepherder story, by cripes!"
Andy looked at them much as he had stared up at the sky before he
began to swear--speechlessly, with a trembling of the muscles
around his mouth. He was quite white, considering how tanned he
was, and his forehead was shiny, with beads of perspiration
standing thickly upon it.
"Weary, I wish you'd untie this rope. I can't." He spoke still in
that peculiar, husky tone, and, when the last words were out, his
teeth went together with a snap.
Weary glanced inquiringly across at the Native Son, who was
regarding Andy steadily, as one gazes upon a tangled rope,
looking for the end which will easiest lead to an untangling.
Miguel's brown eyes turned languidly to meet the look. "You'd
better untie him," he advised in his soft drawl. "He may not be
in the habit of doing it--but he's telling the truth."
"Untie me, Miguel," begged Andy, going over to him, "and let me
at this bunch."
"I'll do it," said Weary, and rose pacifically. "I kinda believe
you myself, Andy. But you can't blame the boys none; you've
fooled 'em till they're dead shy of anything they can't see
through. And, besides, it sure does look like a plant. I'd back
you single-handed against a dozen sheepherders like then two
we've been chasing around. If I hadn't felt that way I wouldn't
have sent yuh out alone with 'em."
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