Flying U Ranch

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"Well, Andy needn't think he's goin' to stick me on that there
story," Slim declared with brutal emphasis. "I've swallered too
many baits, by golly. He's figurin' on gettin' us all out on the
war-path, runnin' around in circles, so's't he can give us the
laugh. I'll bet, by golly, he paid then herders to tie him up
like that. He can't fool me!"

"Say, Slim, I do believe your brains is commencin' to sprout!"
Big Medicine thumped him painfully upon the back by way of
accenting the compliment. "You got the idee, all right."

Andy stood quiet while Weary unwound the rope; lifted his numbed
arms with some difficulty, and displayed to the doubters his
rope-creased wrists, and purple, swollen hands.

"I couldn't fight a caterpiller right now," he said thickly.
"Look at them hands! Do yuh call that a josh? I've been tied up
like a bed-roll for five hours, you--" Well, never mind, he
merely repeated a part of what he had recited aloud in Antelope
coulee, the only difference being that he applied the vitriolic
utterances to the Happy Family instead of to sheepherders, and
that with the second recitation he gained much in fluency and
dramatic delivery.

It is not nice for a man to swear; to swear the way Andy did, at
any rate. But the result perhaps atoned in a measure for the
wickedness, in that the Happy Family were absolutely convinced of
his sincerity, and the feelings of Andy greatly relieved, so
that, when he had for the third time that day completely
exhausted his vocabulary, he sat down and began to eat his dinner
with a keen appetite.

"I don't suppose you know where your horse is at, by this tine,"
Weary observed, as casually as possible, breaking a somewhat
constrained silence.

"I don't--and I don't give a darn," Andy snapped back. He ate a
few mouthfuls, and added less savagely: "He wasn't in sight, as I
came along. I didn't follow the trail; I struck straight across
and came down the coulee. He may be at the gate, and he may be
down toward Rogers'."

Pink reached for a toothpick, eyeing Andy side-long; dimpled his
cheeks disarmingly, and cleared his throat. "Please don't kill me
off when you get that pie swallowed," he began pacifically.
"Strange as it may seem, I believe you, Andy. What I want to know
is this: Who owns them Dots? And what are they chasing all over
the Flying U range for? It looks plumb malicious, to me. Did you
find out anything about 'en, Andy, while you--er--while they--"
His eyes twinkled and betrayed him for an arrant pretender. (Pink
was not afraid of anything on earth--least of all Andy Green.)

"I will kill yuh by inches, if I hear any remarks out of yuh that
ain't respectful," Andy promised, thawing to his normal tone,
which was pleasant to the ear. "I didn't find out much about 'em.
The fellow I licked told me that Whittaker and Oleson owned the
sheep. He didn't say--"

"Well--by--golly!" Shin thrust his head forward belligerently.
"Whittaker! Well, what d'yuh think uh that!" He glared from one
face to the other, his gaze at last resting upon Weary. "Say, do
yuh reckon it's--Dunk?"

Weary paid no heed to Slim. He leaned forward, his face turned to
Andy with that concentration of attention which means so much
more than mere exclamation. "You're sure he said Whittaker?" he
asked.

His tone and his attitude arrested Andy's cup midway to his
mouth. "Sure--Whittaker and Oleson. I never heard of the
outfit--who's this Whittaker person?"

Weary settled back in his place and smiled, but his eyes had
quite lost their habitually sunny expression.

"Up until four years ago," he explained evenly, "he was the Old
Man's partner. We caught him in some mighty dirty work,
and--well, he sold out to the Old Man. The old party with the
hoofs and tail can't be everywhere at once, the way I've got it
sized up, so he turns some of his business over to other folks.
Dunk Whittaker's his top hand."

"Why, by golly, he framed up a job on the Gordon boys, and
railroaded 'em to the pen, just--"

"Oh, that's the gazabo!" Andy's eyes shone with enlightenment.
"I've heard a lot about Dunk, but I didn't know his last name--"

"Say! I'll bet they're the outfit that bought out Denson. That's
why old Denson acted so queer, maybe. Selling to a sheep outfit
would make the old devil feel kinda uneasy, talking to us--"
Pink's eyes were big and purple with excitement. "And that
train-load of sheep we saw Sunday, I'll bet is the same identical
outfit."

"Dunk Whittaker'd better not try to monkey with me, by golly!"
Slim's face was lowering. "And he'd better not monkey with the
Flying U either. I'd pump him so full uh holes he'd look like a
colander, by golly!"

Weary got up and started to the door, his face suddenly grown
careworn. "Slim, you and Miguel better go and hunt up Andy's
horse," he said with a hint of abstraction in his tone, as though
his mind was busy with more important things. "Maybe Andy'll feel
able to help you set those posts, Bud--and you'd better go along
the upper end of the little pasture with the wire stretchers and
tighten her up; the top wire is pretty loose, I noticed this
morning." His fingers fumbled with the door-knob.

"Want me to do anything?" Pink asked quizzically just behind him.
"I thought sure we'd go and remonstrate with then gay--"

Weary interrupted him. "The herders can wait--and, anyway, I've
kinda got an idea Andy wants to hand out his own brand of poison
to that bunch. You and I will take a ride over to Denson's and
see what's going on over there. Mamma!" he added fervently, under
his breath, "I sure do wish Chip and the Old Man were here!"

CHAPTER VIII. The Dot Outfit

Before he laid him down to sleep, that night, Weary had repeated
to himself many times and fervently that wish for old J. G.
Whitmore and the stout staff upon which he was beginning more and
more to lean, his brother-in-law, Chip Bennett. As matters stood,
Weary could not even bring himself to let then know anything
about his trouble--and that the thing was beginning to assume the
form and shape and general malevolent attributes of Trouble,
Weary was forced to admit to himself.

Just at present an unthinking, unobserving person might pass over
this sheep outfit as a mere unsavory incident; but Weary was
neither unobserving nor unthinking--nor, for the matter of that,
were the rest of the Happy Family. It needed no Happy Jack, with
his foreboding nature, to point out the unpleasant possibilities
that night when the committee of two made their informal report
at the supper table.

They had ridden to Denson coulee, which was in reality a
meandering branch of Flying U coulee itself. To reach it one rode
out of Flying U coulee and over a wide hill, and down again to
Denson's. But the creek--Flying U creek--followed the devious
turnings from Denson coulee down to the Flying U. A long mile of
Flying U coulee J. G. Whitmore owned outright. Another mile he
held under no other title save a fence. The creek flowed through
it all--but that creek had its source somewhere up near the head
of Denson coulee. J. G. Whitmore had, to his regret, been unable
to claim the whole earth--or at least that portion of it--for his
own; so, when he was constrained to make a choice, he settled
himself in the wider, more fertile coulee, which he thereafter
called the Flying U. While it is good policy to locate as near as
possible to the source of those erratic little creeks which water
certain garden spots of the northern range land, it is also well
to choose land that will grow plenty of hay. J. G. Whitmore chose
the hay land, and trusted that providence would insure the water
supply. Through all these years Flying U creek had never once
disappointed him. Denson, who settled in the tributary coulee,
had not made any difference in the water supply, and his stock
had consisted of thirty or forty head of cattle and horses.

When Denson sold, however, things might be different. And, if he
had sold to a sheepman, the change might be unpleasant If he had
sold to Dunk Whittaker--the Flying U boys faced that possibility
just as they would face any other disaster, undaunted, but grim
and unsmiling.

It was thus that Pink and Weary rode slowly down into Denson
coulee. Two miles back they had passed the band of Dot sheep,
feeding leisurely just without the Flying U fence, which was the
southern boundary. The bug-killer and the other were there, and
they noted that the features of that other bore witness to the
truth of Andy's story of the fight. He regarded them with one
perfectly good eye and one which was considerably swollen, and
grinned a swollen grin.

The two had ridden ten paces past him when Pink pulled up
suddenly. "I'm going to get off and lick that son-of-a-gun
myself, just for luck," he stated dispassionately. "I'm going to
lick 'em both," he revised while he dismounted.

"Oh, come on, Cadwalloper," Weary dissuaded. "You'll likely have
all the excitement you need, without that."

"Here, you hold this fool cayuse. No." He shook his head, cutting
short further protest. "You're the boss, and you don't want to
mix in, and that part is all right. But I ain't responsible--and
I sure am going to take a fall or two out of these geesers.
They're a-w-l together too stuck on themselves to suit me." Pink
did not say that he was thinking of Andy, but nevertheless a
vivid recollection of that unfortunate young man's rope-creased
wrists and swollen hands sent him toward the herder with long,
eager strides.

Pink was not tall, and he was slight and boyish of build; also,
his cherubic face, topped by tawny curls and lighted by eyes as
deeply blue and as innocent as a baby's, probably deceived that
herder, just as they had deceived many another. For Pink was a
good deal like a stick of dynamite wrapped in white tissue paper
and tied with blue ribbon; and Weary was not at all uneasy over
the outcome, as he watched Pink go clanking back, though he loved
him well.

Pink did not waste any time or words on the preliminaries. With a
delightful frankness of purpose he pulled off his coat and threw
it on the ground, as he came up, sent his hat after it, and
arrived fist first.

The herder had waited grinning, and he had shouted something to
Weary about spanking the kid if Weary didn't make him behave.
Speedily he became a very surprised herder, and a distressed one
as well.

"All right," Pink remarked, a little quick-breathed, when the
herder decided for the third time to get up. "A friend of mine
worked yuh over a little, this morning, and I just thought I'd
make a better job than he did. Your eyes didn't match. They will,
now."

The herder mumbled maledictions after him, but Pink would not
even give him the satisfaction of resenting it.

"I'd like to have broken a knuckle against his teeth, darn him,"
he observed ruefully when he was in the saddle again. "Come on,
Weary. It won't take but a minute to hand a punch or two to that
bug-killer, and then I'll feel better. They've both got it
coming--come on!" This because Weary showed a strong inclination
to take the trail and keep it to his destination. "Well, I'll go
alone, then. I've got to kinda square myself for the way I threw
it into Andy; and you know blamed well, Weary, they played it
low-down on him, or they'd never have got that rope on him. And
I'm going to lick that--"

"Mamma! You sure are a rambunctious person when you feel that
way," Weary made querulous comment; but he rode over with Pink to
where the bug-killer was standing with his long stick held in a
somewhat menacing manner, and once more he held Pink's horse for
him.

Pink was gone longer this time, and he came back with a cut lip
and a large lump on his forehead; the bug-killer had thrown a
small rock with the precision which comes of much practice--such
as stoning disobedient dogs, and the like--and, when Pink rushed
at him furiously, the herder caught him very neatly alongside the
head with his stick. These little amenities serving merely to
whet Pink's appetite for battle, he stopped long enough to thrash
that particular herder very thoroughly and to his own complete
satisfaction.

"Well, I guess I'm ready to go on now," he observed, dimpling
rather one-sidedly as he got back on his horse.

"I thought maybe you'd want to whip the dogs, too," Weary told
him dryly; which was the nearest he came to expressing any
disapproval of the incident. Weary was a peace-loving soul,
whenever peace was compatible with self-respect; and it would
never have occurred to him to punish strange men as summarily as
Pink had done.

"I would, if the dogs were half as ornery as the men," Pink
retorted. "Say, they hang together like bull snakes and rattlers,
don't they? If they was human, they'd have helped each other
out--but nothing doing! Do you reckon a man could ride up to a
couple of our bunch, and thrash one at a time without the other
fellow having something to say about it?" He turned in the saddle
and looked back. "So help me, Josephine, I've got a good mind to
go back and lick them again, for not hanging together like they
ought to." But the threat was an idle one, and they went on to
Denson's, Weary still with that anxious look in his eyes, and
Pink quite complacent over his exploit.

In Denson coulee was an unwonted atmosphere of activity;
heretofore the place had been animated chiefly by young Densons
engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, but now a covered buggy,
evidently just arrived, bore mute witness to the new order of
things. There were more horses about the place, a covered wagon
or two, three or four men working upon the corral, and, lastly,
there was one whom Weary recognized the moment he caught sight of
him.

"Looks like a sheep outfit, all right," he said somberly. "And,
if that ain't old Dunk himself, it's the devil, and that's next
thing to him."

Dunk, they judged, had just arrived with another man whom they
did not know: a tall man with light hair that hung lank to his
collar, a thin, sharp-nosed face and a wide mouth, which
stretched easily into a smile, but which was none the pleasanter
for that. When he turned inquiringly toward them they saw that he
was stoop-shouldered; though not from any deformity, but from
sheer, slouching lankness. Dunk gave them a swift, sour look from
under his eyebrows and went on.

Weary rode straight past the lank man, whom he judged to be
Oleson, and overtook Dunk Whittaker himself.

"Hello, Dunk," he said cheerfully, sliding over in the saddle so
that a foot hung free of the stirrup, as men who ride much have
learned to do when they stop for a chat, thereby resting while
they may. "Back on the old stamping ground, are you?"

"Since you see me here, I suppose I am," Dunk made churlish
response.

"Do you happen to own those Dot sheep, back there on the hill?"
Weary tilted his head toward home.

"I happen to own half of them." By then they had reached the gate
and Dunk passed through and started on to the house.

"Oh, don't be in a rush--come on back and be sociable," Weary
called out, in the mildest of tones, twisting the reins around
his saddle-horn so that he might roll a cigarette at ease.

Dunk remembered, perhaps, certain things he had learned when he
was J. G. Whitmore's partner, and had more or less to do with the
charter members of the Happy Family. He came back and stood by
the gate, ungraciously enough, to be sure; still, he came back.
Weary smiled under cover of lighting his cigarette. Dunk, by that
reluctant compliance, betrayed something which Weary had been
rather anxious to know.

"We've been having a little trouble with those sheep of yours,"
Weary remarked between puffs. "You've got some poor excuses for
humans herding them. They drove the bunch across our coulee just
exactly three times. There ain't enough grass left in our lower
field to graze a prairie dog." He glanced back to see where Pink
was, saw that he was close behind, as was the lank man, and spoke
in a tone that included them all.

"The Flying U ain't pasturing sheep, this spring," he informed
them pleasantly. "But, seeing the grass is eat up, we'll let yuh
pay for it. Why didn't you bring them in along the trail,
anyway?"

"I didn't bring them in. I just came down from Butte to-day. I
suppose the herders brought them out where the feed was best;
they did if they're worth their wages."

"They happened to strike some feed that was pretty expensive.
And," he smiled down at Whittaker misleadingly, "you ought to
keep an eye on those herders, or they might let you in for
another grass bill. The Flying U has got quite a lot of range,
right around here, you recollect. And we've got plenty of cattle
to eat it. We don't need any help to keep the grass down so we
can ride through it."

"Now, look here," began the lank man with that sort of
persuasiveness which can turn instantly into bluster, "all this
is pure foolishness, you know. We're here to stay. We've bought
this place, and some other land to go with it, and we expect to
stay right here and make a living. It happens that we expect to
make a living off of sheep. Now, we don't want to start in by
quarreling with our neighbors, and we don't want our neighbors to
start any quarrel with us. All we want--"

"Mamma! You're taking a fine way to make us love yuh," Weary cut
in ironically. "I know what you want. You want the same as every
other meek and lovely sheepman wants. You want it all-- core,
seeds and peeling. Dunk," he said with a more impatient disgust
than he was in the habit of showing for his fellowmen, "this
man's a stranger; but I should think you'd know better than to
come in here with sheep."

"I don't know why a sheep outfit isn't exactly as good as a cow
outfit, and I don't know why they haven't as much right here.
You're welcome to what land you own, but it always seemed to me
that public land is open to the use of the public. Now, as Oleson
says, we expect to raise sheep here, and we expect your outfit to
leave us alone. As far as our sheep crossing your coulee is
concerned--I don't know that they did. But, if they did, and, if
they did any damage, let J. G. do the talking about that. I deal
with the owners--not with the hired men."

Weary, you must understand, was never a bellicose young man. But,
for all that, he leaned over and gave Dunk a slap on the jaw
which must have stung considerably--and the full reason for his
violence lay four years behind the two, when Dunk was part owner
of the Flying U, and when his sneering arrogance had been very
hard to endure.

"Are you going to swallow that--from a hired man?" Weary
inquired, after a minute during which nothing whatever occurred
beyond the slow reddening of Dunk's face.

"I'm not going to fight, if that's what you mean,," Dunk sneered.
"I decline to bring myself down to your level. One doesn't expect
anything from a jackass but a bray, you know--and one doesn't
feel compelled to bray because the jackass does." He smiled that
supercilious smile which Weary had hated of old, and which, he
knew, was well used to covering much treachery and small
meannesses of various sorts.

"As I said, if the Flying U has any claim against us, let the
owner present it in the usual way. Dunk drew down his black
brows, lifted a corner of his lip and turned his back
deliberately upon them.

Oleson let himself through the gate, which he closed somewhat
hastily behind him. "I'm sorry you fellows seem to want to make
trouble," he said, without looking up from the latch, which
seemed somewhat out of repair, like the rest of the Denson
property. "That's a poor way to start in with new neighbors." He
lifted his hat with what Pink considered insulting politeness,
and followed Dunk into the house.

Weary waited there until they had gone in and closed the door,
then turned and rode back home again, frowning thoughtfully at
the trail ahead of them all the way, and making no reply to
Pink's importunings for war.

"I'd hate to say you've lost your nerve, Weary," Pink cried at
last, in sheer desperation. "But why the devil didn't you get
down and thump the daylights out of that black son-of-a-gun? I
came pretty near walking into him myself, only I hate to butt
into another fellow's scrap. But, if I'd known you were going to
set there and let him walk off with that sneer on his face--"

"I can't fight a man that won't hit back," Weary protested. "You
couldn't either, Cadwalloper. You'd have done just what I did;
you'd have let him go."

"He will hit back, all right enough," Pink retorted passionately.
"He'll do it when you ain't looking, though. He--"

"I know it," Weary sighed. "I'm kinda sorry, now, I slapped him.
He'll hit back--but he won't hit me; he'll aim at the outfit. If
the Old Man was here, or Chip, I'd feel a whole lot easier in my
mind."

"They couldn't do anything you can't do," Pink assured him
loyally, forgetting his petulance when he saw the careworn look
in Weary's face. "All they can do is gobble all the range around
here--and I guess there's a few of us that will have a word or
two to say about that."

"What makes me sore," Weary confided, "is knowing that Dunk isn't
thinking altogether of the dollar end of it. He's tickled to
death to get a whack at the outfit. And I hate to see him get
away with it; but I guess we'll have to stand for it."

That sentiment did not please Pink; nor, when Weary repeated it
later that evening in the bunk-house, did it please the Happy
Family. The less pleasing it was because it was perfectly true
and every man of them knew it. Beyond keeping the sheep off
Flying U land, there was nothing they could do without stepping
over the line into lawlessness--and, while they were not in any
sense a meek Happy Family, they were far more law-abiding than
their conversation that night made them appear.

CHAPTER IX. More Sheep

The next week was a time of harassment for the Flying U; a week
filled to overflowing with petty irritations, traceable, directly
or indirectly, to their new neighbors, the Dot sheepmen. The band
in charge of the bug-chaser and that other unlovable man from
Wyoming fed just as close to the Flying U boundary as their
guardians dared let them feed; a great deal closer than was good
for the tempers of the Happy Family, who rode fretfully here and
there upon their own business and at the same time tried to keep
an eye upon their unsavory neighbors--a proceeding as
nerve-racking as it was futile.

The Native Son, riding home in jingling haste from Dry Lake,
whither he had hurried one afternoon in the hope of cheering news
from Chicago, reported another trainload of Dots on the wide
level beyond Antelope coulee. There were, he said, four men in
charge of the band, and he believed they carried guns, though he
was not positive of that. They were moving slowly, and he thought
they would not attempt to cross Flying U coulee before the next
day; though, from the course they were taking, he was sure they
meant to cross.

Coupled with that bit of ill-tidings, the brief note from Chip,
saying very little about the Old Man, but implying a good deal by
its very omissions, would have been enough to send the Happy
Family to sleepless beds that night if they had been the kind to
endure with silent fortitude their troubles.

"If you fellers would back me up," brooded Big Medicine down by
the corral after supper, "I'd see to it them sheep never gits
across the coulee, by cripes! I'd send 'em so far the other way
they'd git plumb turned around and forgit they ever wanted to go
south."

"It's all Dunk's devilishness," Jack Bates declared. "He could
take them in the other way, even if the feed ain't so good along
the trail. It's most all prairie-dog towns--but that's good
enough for sheep." Jack, in his intense partisanship, spoke as if
sheep were not entitled to decent grass at any time or under any
circumstances.

"Them herders packin' guns looks to me like they're goin' to make
trouble if they kin," gloomed Happy Jack. "I betche they'll kill
somebody before they're through. When sheepmen gits mean--"

Pink picked up his rope and started for the large corral, where a
few saddle horses had been driven in just before supper and had
not yet been turned out.

"You fellows can stand around and chew the rag, if you want to,"
he said caustically, "and wait for Weary to make a war-talk. But
I'm going to keep cases on them Dots, if I have to stand an
all-night guard on 'em. I don't blame Weary; he's looking out for
the law-and-order business--and that's all right. But I'm not in
charge of the outfit. I'm going to do as I darn please, and, if
they don't like my style, they can give me my time."

"Good for you, Little One!" Big Medicine hurried to overtake him
so that he might slap him on the shoulder with his favorite,
sledge-hammer method of signifying his approval of a man's
sentiments. "Honest to grandma, I was just b'ginnin' to think
this bunch was gitting all streaked up with yeller. 'Course, we
ain't goin' to wait for no official orders, by cripes! I'd ruther
lock Weary up in the blacksmith shop than let him tell us to go
ahead. Go awn and tell him a good, stiff lie, Andy--just to keep
him interested while us fellers make a gitaway. He ain't in on
this; we don't want him in on it."

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