Flying U Ranch
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B. M. Bower >> Flying U Ranch
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"You remember when you blew in here, a few weeks or so ago?" the
Native Son asked abruptly, a twinkle in his fathomless eyes. "You
put up a good one on the boys, that time, you remember. Bluffed
them into thinking I was a hero in disguise, and that you'd seen
me pull off a big stunt of bull-fighting and bull- dogging down
in Mexico. It was a fine josh. They believe it yet."
Andy glanced at him perplexedly. "Yes--but when it turned out to
be true," he amended, "the josh was on me, I guess; I thought I
was just lying, when I wasn't. I've wondered a good deal about
that. By gracious, it makes a man feel funny to frame up a yarn
out of his own think-machine, and then find out he's been telling
the truth all the while. It's like a fellow handing out a
twenty-four karat gold bar to a rube by mistake, under the
impression it only looks like one. Of course they believe it!
Only they don't know I just merely hit the truth by accident."
The Native Son smiled his slow, amused smile, that somehow never
failed to be impressive. "That's the funny part of it," he
drawled. "You didn't. I just piled another little josh on top of
yours, that's all. I never throwed a bull in my life, except with
my lariat. I'd heard a good deal about you, and--well, I thought
I'd see if I could go you one better. And you put that Mexico
yarn across so smooth and easy, I just simply couldn't resist the
temptation to make you think it was all straight goods. Sabe?"
Andy Green did not say a word, but he looked exceedingly foolish.
"So I think we can both safely consider ourselves top-hands when
it comes to lying," the Native Son went on shamelessly. "And if
you're willing to go in with me on it and help put Dunk on the
run--" He glanced over his shoulder, saw that Happy Jack, on
horseback, was coming out to haze in the saddle bunch, and turned
to stroll back as lazily as he had come. He continued to speak
smoothly and swiftly, in a voice that would not carry ten paces.
While Andy Green, with brown head bent attentively, listened
eagerly and added a sentence or two on his own account now and
then, and smiled--which he had not been in the habit of doing
lately.
"Say, you fellers are gittin' awful energetic, ain't
yuh?--wranglin' horses afoot!" Happy Jack bantered at the top of
his voice when he passed them by. "Better save up your strength
while you kin. Weary's goin' to set us herdin' sheep agin--and I
betche there's goin' to be something more'n herdin' on our hands
before we git through."
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was," sang out Andy, as
cheerfully as if he had been invited to dance "Ladies' choice"
with the prettiest girl in the crowd. "Wonder what hole he's
going to dump this bunch into," he added to the Native Son. "By
gracious, he ought to send 'em just as far north as he can drive
'em without paying duty! I'd sure take 'em over into Canada, if
it was me running the show."
"It was a mistake," the Native Son volunteered, "for the whole
bunch to go off like we did to-day. They had those sheep up here
on the hill just for a bait. They knew we'd go straight up in the
air and come down on those two freaks herding 'em, and that gave
them the chance to cross the other bunch. I thought so all along,
but I didn't like to butt in."
"Well Weary's mad enough now to do things that will leave a dent,
anyway," Andy commented under his breath when, from the corral
gate, he got a good look at Weary's profile, which showed the set
of his mouth and chin. "See that mouth? It's hunt the top rail,
and do it quick, when old Weary straightens out his lips like
that."
Behind them, Happy Jack bellowed for an open gate and no
obstructions, and they drew hastily to one side to let the saddle
horses gallop past with a great upflinging of dust. Pink, with a
quite obtrusive facetiousness, began lustily chanting that it
looked to him like a big night to-night--with occasional, furtive
glances at Weary's face; for he, also, had been quick to read
those close-pressed lips, which did not soften in response to the
ditty. Usually he laughed at Pink's drollery.
They rode rather quietly upon the hill again, to where fed the
sheep. During the hour or so that they had been absent the sheep
had not moved appreciably; they still grazed close enough to the
boundary to make their position seem a direct insult to the
Flying U, a virtual slap in the face. And these young men who
worked for the Flying U, and who made its interests right loyally
their own, were growing very, very tired of turning the other
cheek. With them, the time for profanity and for horseplay
bluffing and judicious temporizing was past. There were other
lips besides Weary's that were drawn tight and thin when they
approached that particular band of sheep. More than one pair of
eyes turned inquiringly toward him and away again when they met
no answering look.
They topped a rise of ground, and in the shallow wrinkle which
had hidden him until now they came full upon Dunk Whittaker,
riding a chunky black which stepped restlessly about while he
conferred in low tones with a couple of the herders. The Happy
Family recognized them as two of the fellows in whose safe
keeping they had left their ropes the night before. Dunk looked
around quickly when the group appeared over the little ridge,
scowled, hesitated and then came straight up to them.
"I want you rowdies to bring back those sheep you took the
trouble to drive off this morning," he began, with the even,
grating voice and the sneering lift of lip under his little,
black mustache which the older members of the Happy Family
remembered--and hated--so vividly. "I've stood just all I'm going
to stand, of these typically Flying U performances you've been
indulging in so freely during the past week. It's all very well
to terrorize a neighborhood of long-haired rubes who don't know
enough to teach you your places; but interfering with another
man's property is--"
"Interfering with another--what?" Big Medicine, his pale blue
eyes standing out more like a frog's than ever upon his face,
gave his horse a kick and lunged close that he might lean and
thrust his red face near to Dunk's. "Another what? I don't see
nothin' in your saddle that looks t'me like a man, by cripes! All
I can see is a smooth-skinned, slippery vermin I'd hate to name a
snake after, that crawls around in the dark and lets cheap rough-
necks do all his dirty work. I've saw dogs sneak up and grab a
man behind, but most always they let out a growl or two first.
And even a rattler is square enough to buzz at yuh and give yuh a
chanc't to side-step him. Honest to grandma, I don't hardly know
what kinda reptyle y'are. I hate to insult any of 'em, by cripes,
by namin' yuh after 'em. But don't, for Lordy's sake, ever call
yourself a man agin!"
Big Medicine turned his head and spat disgustedly into the grass
and looked back slightingly with other annihilating remarks close
behind his wide-apart teeth, but instead of speaking he made an
unbelievably quick motion with his hand. The blow smacked loudly
upon Dunk's cheek, and so nearly sent him out of the saddle that
he grabbed for the horn to save himself.
"Oh, I seert yuh keepin' yer hand next yer six-gun all the
while," Big Medicine bawled. "That's one reason I say yuh ain't
no man! Yuh wouldn't dast talk up to a prairie dog if yuh wasn't
all set to make a quick draw. Yuh got your face slapped oncet
before by a Flyin' U man, and yuh had it comm'. Now
you're--gittin'--it--done--right!"
If you have ever seen an irate, proletarian mother cuffing her
offspring over an empty wood-box, you may picture perhaps the
present proceeding of Big Medicine. To many a man the thing would
have been unfeasible, after the first blow, because of the
horses. But Big Medicine was very nearly all that he claimed to
be; and one of his pet vanities was his horsemanship; he managed
to keep within a fine slapping distance of Dunk. He stopped when
his hand began to sting through his glove.
"Now you keep your hand away from that gun--that you ain't honest
enough to carry where folks can see it, but 'ye got it cached in
your pocket!" he thundered. "And go on with what you was goin'
t'say. Only don't get swell-headed enough to think you're a man,
agin. You ain't."
"I've got this to say!" Mere type cannot reproduce the
malevolence of Dunk's spluttering speech. "I've sent for the
county sheriff and a dozen deputies to arrest you, and you, and
you, damn you!" He was pointing a shaking finger at the older
members of the Happy Family, whom he recognized not gladly, but
too well. "I'll have you all in Deer Lodge before that lying,
thieving, cattle-stealing Old Man of yours can lift a finger.
I'll sheep Flying U coulee to the very doors of the white house.
I'll skin the range between here and the river--and I'll have
every one of you hounds put where the dogs won't bite you!" He
drew a hand across his mouth and smiled as they say Satan himself
can smile upon occasion.
"You've done enough to send you all over the road; destroying
property and assaulting harmless men--you wait! There are other
and better ways to fight than with the fists, and I haven't
forgotten any of you fellows--there are a few more rounders among
you--"
"Hey! You apologize fer that, by cripes, er I'll kill yuh the
longest way I know. And that--" Big Medicine again laid violent
hands upon Dunk, "and that way won't feel good, now I'm tellin'
yuh. Apologize, er--"
"Say, all this don't do any good, Bud," Weary expostulated. "Let
Dunk froth at the mouth if he wants to; what we want is to get
these sheep off the range. And," he added recklessly, "so long as
the sheriff is headed for us anyway, we may as well get busy and
make it worth his while. So--" He stopped, silenced by a most
amazing interruption.
On the brow of the hill, when first they had sighted Dunk in the
hollow, something had gone wrong with Miguel's saddle so that he
had stopped behind; and, to keep him company, Andy had stopped
also and waited for him. Later, when Dunk was spluttering
threats, they had galloped up to the edge of the group and pulled
their horses to a stand. Now, Miguel rode abruptly close to Dunk
as rides one with a purpose.
He leaned and peered intently into Dunk's distorted countenance
until every man there, struck by his manner, was watching him
curiously. Then he sat back in the saddle, straightened his legs
in the stirrups and laughed. And like his smile when he would
have it so, or the little twitch of shoulders by which he could
so incense a man, that laugh brought a deeper flush to Dunk's
face, reddened though it was by Big Medicine's vigorous slapping.
"Say, you've got nerve," drawled the Native Son, "to let a
sheriff travel toward you. I can remember when you were more
timid, amigo." He turned his head until his eyes fell upon Andy.
"Say, Andy!" he called. "Come and take a look at this hombre.
You'll have to think back a few years," he assisted laconically.
In response, Andy rode up eagerly. Like the Native Son, he leaned
and peered into eyes that stared back defiantly, wavered, and
turned away. Andy also sat back in the saddle then, and snorted.
"So this is the Dunk Whittaker that's been raising merry hell
around here! And talks about sending for the sheriff, huh? I've
always heard that a lot uh gall is the best disguise a man can
hide under, but, by gracious, this beats the deuce!" He turned to
the astounded Happy Family with growing excitement in his manner.
"Boys, we don't have to worry much about this gazabo! We'll just
freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There'll
sure be something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person
really is! And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh,
Lord!" He looked with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk's
glance flickered again and dropped, just as his hand dropped to
the pocket of his coat.
"No, yuh don't, by cripes!" Big Medicine's hand gripped Dunk's
arm on the instant. With his other he plucked the gun from Dunk's
pocket, and released him as he would let go of something foul
which he had been compelled to touch.
"He'll be good, or he'll lose his dinner quick," drawled the
Native Son, drawing his own silver-mounted six-shooter and
resting it upon the saddle horn so that it pointed straight at
Dunk's diaphragm. "You take Weary off somewhere and tell him
something about this deal, Andy. I'll watch this slippery
gentleman." He smiled slowly and got an answering grin from Andy
Green, who immediately rode a few rods away, with Weary and Pink
close behind.
"Say, by golly, what's Dunk wanted fer?" Slim blurted
inquisitively after a short silence.
"Not for riding or driving over a bridge faster than a walk
Slim," purred the Native Son, shifting his gun a trifle as Dunk
moved uneasily in the saddle. "You know the man. Look at his
face--and use your imagination, if you've got any."
CHAPTER XIII. The Happy Family Learn Something
"Well, I hope this farce is about over," Dunk sneered, with as
near an approach to his old, supercilious manner as he could
command, when the three who had ridden apart returned presently.
"Perhaps, Weary, you'll be good enough to have this fellow put up
his gun, and these--" he hesitated, after a swift glance, to
apply any epithet whatever to the Happy Family. "I have two
witnesses here to swear that you have without any excuse
assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you may consider
yourselves lucky if I do not insist--"
"Ah, cut that out," Andy advised wearily. "I don't know how it
strikes the rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don't
overlook the fact that two of us happen to know all about you;
and we know just where to send word, to dig up a lot more
identification. So bluffing ain't going to help you out, a darned
bit."
"Miguel, you can go with Andy," Weary said with brisk decision.
"Take Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here--if it's
straight goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can
take Dunk in to-morrow, ourselves." He turned and fixed a cold,
commanding eye upon the slack-jawed herders. "Come along, you
two, and get these sheep headed outa here."
"Say, we'll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on
back," Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. "He
couldn't get out in a million years; not after I'm through
staking him out to the anvil with a log-chain." He smiled
maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed countenance, and waved him
a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did without a word of protest
while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.
"What's it all about, Weary?" Irish asked, when the three were
gone. "What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty
fierce, the way he wilted down into the saddle."
"You'll have to wait and ask the boys." Weary rode off to hurry
the herders on the far side of the band.
So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the
subject and for that they said hard things about Weary, and about
Andy and Miguel as well. They believed that they were entitled to
know the truth, and they called it a smart-aleck trick to keep
the thing so almighty secret.
There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and
the dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always
sweep down upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently
it happens that perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer.
The Happy Family had been extremely forbearing, as has been
pointed out before. They had frequently come to the boiling point
of rage and had cooled without committing any real act of
violence. But that day had held a long series of petty
annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from them
as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked
Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook
his head and said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of
lying, and his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as
anyone can readily understand.
When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started
them moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against
that shuffling, nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long,
weary hours in the saddle with the other band. But it was Irish
who first took measures to accelerate that pace.
He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across
the nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few
paces and returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it
names and whacked another.
After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing
it have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close
to the heels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped
to look up at him foolishly and blat, and the buck charged ahead
in a panic at the noise and the spat of the bullet behind him.
"Hit him agin in the same place!" yelled Big Medicine, and drew
his own gun. The Happy Family, at that high tension where they
were ready for anything, caught the infection and began shooting
and yelling like crazy men.
The effect was not at all what they expected. Instead of adding
impetus to the band, as would have been the case if they had been
driving cattle, the result was exactly the opposite. The sheep
ran--but they ran to a common center. As the shooting went on
they bunched tighter and tighter, until it seemed as though those
in the center must surely be crushed flat. From an ambling,
feeding company of animals, they become a lumpy gray blanket,
with here and there a long, vacuous face showing idiotically upon
the surface.
The herders grinned and drew together as against a common
enemy--or as with a new joke to be discussed among themselves.
The dogs wandered helplessly about, yelped half-heartedly at the
woolly mass, then sat down upon their haunches and lolled red
tongues far out over their pointed little teeth, and tilted
knowing heads at the Happy Family.
"Look at the darned things!" wailed Pink, riding twice around the
huddle, almost ready to shed tears of pure rage and helplessness.
"Git outa that! Hi! Woopp-ee!" He fired again and again, and gave
the range-old cattle-yell; the yell which had sent many a tired
herd over many a weary mile; the yell before which had fled fat
steers into the stockyards at shipping time, and up the chutes
into the cars; the yell that had hoarsened many a cowpuncher's
voice and left him with a mere croak to curse his fate with; a
yell to bring results--but it did not start those sheep.
The Happy Family, riding furiously round and round, fired every
cartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper
thing they could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes
were starting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep
so tight together that dynamite could scarcely have pried them
apart.
And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely
over hunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low
tones, and grinned.
Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them
pointing derisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great
oath and made for them, calling aloud that he would knock those
grins so far in that they would presently find themselves smiling
wrong-side-out from the back of their heads.
Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of a
burrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand in
reversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came
bellowing up from the far side of the huddle like a bull
challenging to combat from across a meadow. Big Medicine did not
know what it was all about, but he scented battle, and that was
sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equally ignorant of the cause,
started at a lope toward the trouble center.
It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon
those herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much
so that the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails
toward the rim of Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the
west.
"Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep
it," exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from
him that day.
While he was still laughing, there was a shot from the ridge
toward which they were running; the sharp, vicious crack of a
rifle. The Happy Family heard the whistling hum of the bullet,
singing low over their heads; quite low indeed; altogether too
low to be funny. And they had squandered all their ammunition on
the prairie sod, to hurry a band of sheep that flatly refused to
hurry anywhere except under one another's odorous, perspiring
bodies.
From the edge of the coulee the rifle spoke again. A tiny geyser
of dust, spurting up from the ground ten feet to one side of Cal
Emmett, showed them all where the bullet struck.
"Get outa range, everybody!" yelled Weary, and set the example by
tilting his rowels against Glory's smooth hide, and heading
eastward. "I like to be accommodating, all right, but I draw the
line on standing around for a target while my neighbors practise
shooting."
The Happy Family, having no other recourse, therefore retreated
in haste toward the eastern skyline. Bullets followed them,
overtook them as the shooter raised his sights for the increasing
distance, and whined harmlessly over their heads. All save one.
CHAPTER XIV. Happy Jack
Big Medicine, Irish and Pink, racing almost abreast, heard a
scream behind them and pulled up their horses with short,
stiff-legged plunges. A brown horse overtook them; a brown horse,
with Happy Jack clinging to the saddle-horn, his body swaying far
over to one side. Even as he went hurtling past them his hold
grew slack and he slumped, head foremost, to the ground. The
brown horse gave a startled leap away from him and went on with
empty stirrups flapping.
They sprang down and lifted him to a less awkward position, and
Big Medicine pillowed the sweat-dampened, carroty head in the
hollow of his arm. Those who had been in the lead looked back
startled when the brown horse tore past them with that empty
saddle; saw what had happened, wheeled and galloped back. They
dismounted and stood silently grouped about poor, ungainly Happy
Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big Medicine's arms. Not
one of them remembered then that there was a man with a rifle not
more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they quite
forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves. They were
thinking of Happy Jack.
Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker,
the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest,
the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had
"betched" there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he
had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had
laughed at him, swore at him, lied to him, "joshed" him
unmercifully, and kept him in a state of chronic indignation,
never dreaming that the memory of it would choke them and strike
them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their chests with
which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of weeping.
"Where's he hurt?" asked Weary, in the repressed tone which only
tragedy can bring into a man's voice, and knelt beside Big
Medicine.
"I dunno--through the lungs, I guess; my sleeve's gitting soppy
right under his shoulder." Big Medicine did not bellow; his voice
was as quiet as Weary's.
Weary looked up briefly at the circle of staring faces. "Pink,
you pile onto Glory and go wire for a doctor. Try Havre first;
you may get one up on the nine o' clock train. If you can't, get
one down on the 'leven-twenty, from Great Falls. Or there's
Benton--anyway, git one. If you could catch MacPherson, do it.
Try him first, and never mind a Havre doctor unless you can't get
MacPherson. I'd rather wait a couple of hours longer, for him.
I'll have a rig--no, you better get a team from Jim. They'll be
fresh, and you can put 'em through. If you kill 'em," he added
grimly, "we can pay for 'em." He had his jack-knife out, and was
already slashing carefully the shirt of Happy Jack, that he might
inspect the wound.
Pink gave a last, wistful look at Happy Jack's face, which seemed
unfamiliar with all the color and all the expression wiped out of
it like that, and turned away. "Come and help me change saddles,
Cal," he said shortly. "Weary's stirrups are too darned long."
Even with the delay, he was mounted on Glory and galloping toward
Flying U coulee before Weary was through uncovering the wound;
and that does not mean that Weary was slow.
The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty
feet beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or
gave any other sign of realization that they were still the
target; they were staring, with that frowning painfully intent
look men have at such moments, at a purplish hole not much bigger
than if punched by a lead pencil, just under the point of Happy
Jack's shoulder blade; and at the blood oozing sluggishly from it
in a tiny stream across the girlishly white flesh and dripping
upon Big Medicine's arm.
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