The Flying U\'s Last Stand
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B. M. Bower >> The Flying U\'s Last Stand
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17 This etext was prepared by Mary Starr.
THE FLYING-U'S LAST STAND
BY
B. M. BOWER
CONTENTS
1. OLD WAYS AND NEW
2. ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE
3. THE KID LEARNS SOME THINGS ABOUT HORSES
4. ANDY TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
5. THE HAPPY FAMILY TURN NESTERS
6. THE FIRST BLOW IN THE FIGHT
7. THE COMING OF THE COLONY
8. FLORENCE GRACE HALLMAN SPEAKS PLAINLY
9. THE HAPPY FAMILY BUYS A BUNCH OF CATTLE
10. WHEREIN ANDY GREEN LIES TO A LADY
ll. THE MOVING CHAPTER IN EVENTS
12. SHACKS, LIVESTOCK AND PILGRIMS PROMPTLY AND PAINFULLY
REMOVED
13. IRISH WORKS FOR THE CAUSE
14. JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER
15. THE KID HAS IDEAS OF HIS OWN
16. "A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER"
17. "LOST CHILD"
18. THE LONG WAY ROUND
19. HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY
20. THE RELL OLD COWPUNCHER GOES HOME
21. THE FIGHT GOES ON
22. LAWFUL IMPROVEMENTS
23. THE WATER QUESTION AND SOME GOSSIP
24. THE KID IS USED FOR A PAWN IN THE GAME
25. "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP!"
26. ROSEMARY ALLEN DOES A SMALL SUM IN ADDITION
27. "IT'S AWFUL EASY TO GET LOST"
28. AS IT TURNED OUT
THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND
CHAPTER 1. OLD WAYS AND NEW
Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age,
except that progress does not mean decay. The change that is
almost imperceptible and yet inexorable is much the same,
however. You will see a community apparently changeless as
the years pass by; and yet, when the years have gone and you
look back, there has been a change. It is not the same. It
never will be the same. It can pass through further change,
but it cannot go back. Men look back sick sometimes with
longing for the things that were and that can be no more;
they live the old days in memory--but try as they will they
may not go back. With intelligent, persistent effort they may
retard further change considerably, but that is the most that
they can hope to do. Civilization and Time will continue the
march in spite of all that man may do.
That is the way it was with the Flying U. Old J. G. Whitmore
fought doggedly against the changing conditions--and he
fought intelligently and well. When he saw the range
dwindling and the way to the watering places barred against
his cattle with long stretches of barbed wire, he sent his
herds deeper into the Badlands to seek what grazing was in
the hidden, little valleys and the deep, sequestered
canyons. He cut more hay for winter feeding, and he sowed his
meadows to alfalfa that he might increase the crops. He
shipped old cows and dry cows with his fat steers in the
fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raised
bigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number,
they improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the
result was much the same.
It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was
cunningly besting the situation, and was going to hold out
indefinitely against the encroachments of civilization upon
the old order of things on the range. And it had begun to
look as though he was going to best Time at his own game, and
refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being the
same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of
his men, the Happy Family of the Flying U.
Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the
joker, and then laugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G.
Whitmore had been going his way and refusing to grow old for
a long time--and then an accident, which is Time's joker,
turned the game against him. He stood for just a second too
long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between
going forward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to
play an accident. A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him
down and left him in a heap for the ambulance from the
nearest hospital to gather on its stretcher.
The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range
and he was pretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his
beloved Flying U, with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed
to easy chair and back again.
The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him
tirelessly; but it was long before there came a day when the
Old Man gave his crutch to the Kid to use for a stick-horse,
and walked through the living room and out upon the porch
with the help of a cane and the solicitous arm of the Little
Doctor, and with the Kid galloping gleefully before him on
the crutch.
Later he discarded the help of somebody's arm, and hobbled
down to the corral with the cane, and with the Kid still
galloping before him on "Uncle Gee Gee's" crutch. He stood
for some time leaning against the corral watching some of the
boys halter-breaking a horse that was later to be sold--when
he was "broke gentle"--and then he hobbled back again,
thankful for the soft comfort of his big chair.
That was well enough, as far as it went. The Flying U took it
for granted that the Old Man was slowly returning to the old
order of life, when rheumatism was his only foe and he could
run things with his old energy and easy good management. But
there never came a day when the Old Man gave his cane to the
kid to play with. There never came a day when he was not
thankful for the soft comfort of his chair. There never came
a day when he was the same Old Man who joshed the boys and
scolded them and threatened them. The day was always coming--
of course!--when his back would quit aching if he walked to
the stable and back without a long rest between, but it never
actually arrived.
So, imperceptibly but surely, the Old Man began to grow old.
The thin spot on top of his head grew shiny, so that the Kid
noticed it and made blunt comments upon the subject. His
rheumatism was not his worst foe, now. He had to pet his
digestive apparatus and cut out strong coffee with three
heaping teaspoons of sugar in each cup, because the Little
Doctor told him his liver was torpid. He had to stop giving
the Kid jolty rides on his knees,--but that was because the
Kid was getting too big for baby play, the Old Man declared.
The Kid was big enough to ride real horses, now, and he ought
to be ashamed to ride knee-horses any more.
To two things the Old Man clung almost fiercely; the old
regime of ranging his cattle at large and starting out the
wagons in the spring just the same as if twenty-five men
instead of twelve went with them; and the retention of the
Happy Family on his payroll, just as if they were actually
needed. If one of the boys left to try other things and other
fields, the Old Man considered him gone on a vacation and
expected him back when spring roundup approached.
True, he was seldom disappointed in that. For the Happy
Family looked upon the Flying U as home, and six months was
about the limit for straying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone
though they were, they bent backs over irrigating ditches and
sweated in the hay fields just for the sake of staying
together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did it
uncomplainingly--for the bunk-house was saturated to the
ridge-pole with their maledictions while they compared
blistered hands and pitchfork callouses, and mourned the days
that were gone; the days when they rode far and free and
scorned any work that could not be done from the saddle. But
they stayed, and they did the ranch work as well as the range
work, which is the main point.
They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams
and all their waking thoughts--but they never quite came to
the point of marrying and going their way. Except Pink, who
did marry impulsively and unwisely, and who suffered himself
to be bullied and called Percy for seven months or so, and
who balked at leaving the Flying U for the city and a
vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free
quite as suddenly as he had been tied.
They intended to marry and settle down--sometime. But there
was always something in the way of carrying those intentions
to fulfillment, so that eventually the majority of the Happy
Family found themselves not even engaged, but drifting along
toward permanent bachelorhood. Being of the optimistic type,
however, they did not worry; Pink having set before them a
fine example of the failure of marriage and having returned
with manifest relief to the freedom of the bunk-house.
CHAPTER 2. ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE
Andy Green, chief prevaricator of the Happy Family of the
Flying U--and not ashamed of either title or connection--
pushed his new Stetson back off his untanned forehead,
attempted to negotiate the narrow passage into a Pullman
sleeper with his suitcase swinging from his right hand, and
butted into a woman who was just emerging from the
dressingroom. He butted into her so emphatically that he was
compelled to swing his left arm out very quickly, or see her
go headlong into the window opposite; for a fullsized
suitcase propelled forward by a muscular young man may prove
a very efficient instrument of disaster, especially if it
catches one just in the hollow back of the knee. The woman
tottered and grasped Andy convulsively to save herself a
fall, and so they stood blocking the passage until the porter
arrived and took the suitcase from Andy with a tip-inviting
deference.
Andy apologized profusely, with a quaint, cowpunchery
phrasing that caused the woman to take a second look at him.
And, since Andy Green would look good to any woman capable of
recognizing--and appreciating--a real man when she saw him,
she smiled and said it didn't matter in the least.
That was the beginning of the acquaintance. Andy took her by
her plump, chiffon-veiled arm and piloted her to her seat,
and he afterward tipped the porter generously and had his own
belongings deposited in the section across the aisle. Then,
with the guile of a foreign diplomat, he betook himself to
the smoking-room and stayed there for three quarters of an
hour. He was not taking any particular risk of losing the
opportunity of an unusually pleasant journey, for the dollar
he had invested in the goodwill of the porter had yielded the
information that the lady was going through to Great Falls.
Since Andy had boarded the train at Harlem there was plenty
of time to kill between there and Dry Lake, which was his
destination.
The lady smiled at him rememberingly when finally he seated
himself across the aisle from her, and without any serious
motive Andy smiled back. So presently they were exchanging
remarks about the journey. Later on, Andy went over and sat
beside her and conversation began in earnest. Her name, it
transpired, was Florence Grace Hallman. Andy read it engraved
upon a card which added the information that she was engaged
in the real estate business--or so the three or
four words implied. "Homemakers' Syndicate, Minneapolis and
St. Paul," said the card. Andy was visibly impressed thereby.
He looked at her with swift appraisement and decided that she
was "all to the good."
Florence Grace Hallman was tall and daintily muscular as to
figure. Her hair was a light yellow--not quite the shade
which peroxide gives, and therefore probably natural. Her
eyes were brown, a shade too close together but cool and calm
and calculating in their gaze, and her eyebrows slanted
upward a bit at the outer ends and were as heavy as beauty
permitted. Her lips were very red, and her chin was very
firm. She looked the successful business woman to her
fingertips, and she was eminently attractive for a woman of
that self-assured type.
Andy was attractive also, in a purely Western way.
His gray eyes were deceivingly candid and his voice
was pleasant with a little, humorous drawl that matched
well the quirk of his lips when he talked. He was
headed for home--which was the Flying U--sober
and sunny and with enough money to see him through.
He told Florence Hallman his name, and said that he
lived "up the road a ways" without being too definite.
Florence Hallman lived in Minneapolis, she said; though she
traveled most of the time, in the interests of her firm.
Yes, she liked the real estate business. One had a chance to
see the world, and keep in touch with people and things. She
liked the West especially well. Since her firm had taken up
the homeseekers' line she spent most of her time in the West.
They had supper--she called it dinner, Andy observed--
together, and Andy Green paid the check, which was not so
small. It was after that, when they became more confidential,
that Florence Hallman, with the egotism of the successful
person who believes herself or himself to be of keen interest
to the listener spoke in greater detail of her present
mission.
Her firm's policy was, she said, to locate a large tract of
government land somewhere, and then organize a homeseekers'
colony, and settle the land-hungry upon the tract--at so much
per hunger. She thought it a great scheme for both sides of
the transaction. The men who wanted claims got them. The firm
got the fee for showing them the land--and certain other
perquisites at which she merely hinted.
She thought that Andy himself would be a success at the
business. She was quick to form her opinions of people whom
she met, and she knew that Andy was just the man for such
work. Andy, listening with his candid, gray eyes straying
often to her face and dwelling there, modestly failed to
agree with her. He did not know the first thing about the
real estate business, he confessed, nor very much about
ranching. Oh, yes--he lived in this country, and he knew THAT
pretty well, but--
"The point is right here," said Florence Grace Hallman,
laying her pink fingertips upon his arm and glancing behind
her to make sure that they were practically alone--their
immediate neighbors being still in the diner. "I'm speaking
merely upon impulse--which isn't a wise thing to do,
ordinarily. But--well, your eyes vouch for you, Mr. Green,
and we women are bound to act impulsively sometimes--or we
wouldn't be women, would we?" She laughed--rather, she gave a
little, infectious giggle, and took away her fingers, to the
regret of Andy who liked the feel of them on his forearm.
"The point is here. I've recognized the fact, all along, that
we need a man stationed right here, living in the country,
who will meet prospective homesteaders and talk farming; keep
up their enthusiasm; whip the doubters into line; talk
climate and soil and the future of the country; look the
part, you understand."
"So I look like a rube, do I?" Andy's lips quirked a half
smile at her.
"No, of course you don't!" She laid her fingers on his sleeve
again, which was what Andy wanted--what he had intended to
bait her into doing; thereby proving that, in some respects
at least, he amply justified Hiss Hallman in her snap
judgment of him.
"Of course you don't look like a rube! I don't want you to.
But you do look Western--because you are Western to the bone
Besides, you look perfectly dependable. Nobody could look
into your eyes and even think of doubting the truth of any
statement you made to them." Andy snickered mentally at that
though his eyes never lost their clear candor. "And," she
concluded, "being a bona fide resident of the country, your
word would carry more weight than mine if I were to talk
myself black in the face!"
"That's where you're dead wrong," Andy hastened to correct
her.
"Well, you must let me have my own opinion, Mr. Green. You
would be convincing enough, at any rate. You see, there is a
certain per cent of--let us call it waste effort--in this
colonization business. We have to reckon on a certain number
of nibblers who won't bite--" Andy's honest, gray eyes
widened a hair's breadth at the frankness of her language--"
when they get out here. They swallow the folders we send out,
but when they get out here and see the country, they
can't see it as a rich farming district, and they won't
invest. They go back home and knock, if they do anything.
"My idea is to stop that waste; to land every homeseeker that
boards our excursion trains. And I believe the way to do that
is to have the right kind of a man out here, steer the
doubtfuls against him--and let his personality and his
experience do the rest. They're hungry enough to come, you
see; the thing is to keep them here. A man that lives right
here, that has all the earmarks of the West, and is not known
to be affiliated with our Syndicate (you could have rigs to
hire, and drive the doubtfuls to the tract)--don't you see
what an enormous advantage he'd have? The class I speak of
are the suspicious ones--those who are from Missouri. They're
inclined to want salt with what we say about the resources of
the country. Even our chemical analysis of the soil, and
weather bureau dope, don't go very far with those hicks. They
want to talk with someone who has tried it, you see."
"I--see," said Andy thoughtfully, and his eyes narrowed a
trifle. "On the square, Miss Hallman, what are the natural
advantages out here--for farming? What line of talk do you
give those come-ons?"
Miss Hallman laughed and made a very pretty gesture with her
two ringed hands. "Whatever sounds the best to them," she
said. "If they write and ask about spuds we come back with
illustrated folders of potato crops and statistics of average
yields and prices and all that. If it's dairy, we have dairy
folders. And so on. It isn't any fraud--there ARE sections of
the country that produce almost anything, from alfalfa to
strawberries. You know that," she challenged.
"Sure. But I didn't know there was much tillable land left
lying around loose," he ventured to say.
Again Miss Hallman made the pretty gesture, which might mean
much or nothing. "There's plenty of land 'lying around
loose,' as you call it. How do you know it won't produce,
till it has been tried?"
"That's right," Andy assented uneasily. "If there's water to
put on it--"
"And since there is the land, our business lies in getting
people located on it. The towns and the railroads are back of
us. That is, they look with favor upon bringing settlers into
the country. It increases the business of the country--the
traffic, the freights, the merchants' business, everything."
Andy puckered his eyebrows and looked out of the window upon
a great stretch of open, rolling prairie, clothed sparely in
grass that was showing faint green in the hollows, and with
no water for miles--as he knew well--except for the rivers
that hurried through narrow bottom lands guarded by high
bluffs that were for the most part barren. The land was
there, all right. But--
"What I can't see," he observed after a minute during which
Miss Florence Hallman studied his averted face, "what I can't
see is, where do the settlers get off at?"
"At Easy street, if they're lucky enough," she told him
lightly. "My business is to locate them on the land. Getting
a living off it is THEIR business. And," she added
defensively, "people do make a living on ranches out here."
"That's right," he agreed again--he was finding it very
pleasant to agree with Florence Grace Hallman. "Mostly off
stock, though."
"Yes, and we encourage our clients to bring out all the young
stock they possibly can; young cows and horses and--all that
sort of thing. There's quantities of open country around
here, that even the most optimistic of homeseekers would
never think of filing on. They can make out, all right, I
guess. We certainly urge them strongly to bring stock with
them. It's always been famous as a cattle country--that's one
of our highest cards. We tell them--"
"How do you do that? Do you go right to them and TALK to
them?"
"Yes, if they show a strong enough interest--and bank
account. I follow up the best prospects and visit them in
person. I've talked to fifty horny-handed he-men in the past
month."
"Then I don't see what you need of anyone to bring up the
drag," Andy told her admiringly. "If you talk to 'em, there
oughtn't be any drag!"
"Thank you for the implied compliment. But there IS a 'drag,'
as you call it. There's going to be a big one, too, I'm
afraid--when they get out and see this tract we're going to
work off this spring." She stopped and studied him as a chess
player studies the board.
"I'm very much tempted to tell you something I shouldn't
tell," she said at length, lowering her voice a little.
Remember, Andy Green was a very good looking man, and his
eyes were remarkable for their clear, candid gaze straight
into your own eyes. Even as keen a business woman as Florence
Grace Hallman must be forgiven for being deceived by them."
I'm tempted to tell you where this tract is. You may know
it."
"You better not, unless you're willing to take a chance," he
told her soberly. "If it looks too good, I'm liable to jump
it myself."
Miss Hallman laughed and twisted her red lips at him in what
might be construed as a flirtatious manner. She was really
quite taken with Andy Green. "I'll take a chance. I don't
think you'll jump it. Do you know anything about Dry Lake, up
above Havre, toward Great Falls--and the country out east of
there, towards the mountains?"
The fingers of Andy Green closed into his palms. His eyes,
however, continued to look into hers with his most guileless
expression.
"Y-es--that is, I've ridden over it," he acknowledged simply.
"Well--now this is a secret; at least we don't want those
mossback ranchers in there to get hold of it too soon, though
they couldn't really do anything, since it's all government
land and the lease has only just run out. There's a high
tract lying between the Bear Paws and--do you know where the
Flying U ranch is?"
"About where it is--yes."
"Well, it's right up there on that plateau--bench, you call
it out here. There are several thousand acres along in there
that we're locating settlers on this spring. We're just
waiting for the grass to get nice and green, and the prairie
to get all covered with those blue, blue wind flowers, and
the meadow larks to get busy with their nests, and then we're
going to bring them out and--" She spread her hands again. It
seemed a favorite gesture grown into a habit, and it surely
was more eloquent than words. "These prairies will be a dream
of beauty, in a little while," she said. "I'm to watch for
the psychological time to bring out the seekers. And if I
could just interest you, Mr. Green, to the extent of being
somewhere around Dry Lake, with a good team that you will
drive for hire and some samples of oats and dry-land spuds
and stuff that you raised on your claim--" She eyed him
sharply for one so endearingly feminine. "Would you do it?
There'd be a salary, and besides that a commission on each
doubter you landed. And I'd just love to have you for one of
my assistants."
"It sure sounds good," Andy flirted with the proposition, and
let his eyes soften appreciably to meet her last sentence and
the tone in which she spoke it. "Do you think I could get by
with the right line of talk with the doubters?"
"I think you could," she said, and in her voice there was a
cooing note. "Study up a little on the right dope, and I
think you could convince--even me."
"Could I?" Andy Green knew that cooing note, himself, and one
a shade more provocative. "I wonder!"
A man came down the aisle at that moment, gave Andy a keen
glance and went on with a cigar between his fingers. Andy
scowled frankly, sighed and straightened his shoulders.
"That's what I call hard luck," he grumbled got to see that
man before he gets off the train--and the h--worst of it is,
I don't know just what station he'll get off at." He sighed
again. "I've got a deal on," he told her confidentially,
"that's sure going to keep me humping if I pull loose so as
to go in with you. How long did you say?"
"Probably two weeks, the way spring is opening out here. I'd
want you to get perfectly familiar with our policy and the
details of our scheme before they land. I'd want you to be
familiar with that tract and be able to show up its best
points when you take seekers out there. You'd be so much
better than one of our own men, who have the word 'agent'
written all over them. You'll come back and--talk it over
won't you?" For Andy was showing unmistakable symptoms of
leaving her to follow the man.
"You KNOW it," he declared in a tone of "I won't sleep nights
till this thing is settled--and settled right." He gave her a
smile that rather dazzled the lady, got up with much
reluctance and with a glance that had in it a certain element
of longing went swaying down the aisle after the man who had
preceded him.
Andy's business with the man consisted solely in mixing
cigarette smoke with cigar smoke and of helping to stare
moodily out of the window. Words there were none, save when
Andy was proffered a match and muttered his thanks. The
silent session lasted for half an hour. Then the man got up
and went out, and the breath of Andy Green paused behind his
nostrils until he saw that the man went only to the first
section in the car and settled there behind a spread
newspaper, invisible to Florence Grace Hallman unless she
searched the car and peered over the top of the paper
to see who was behind.
After that Andy Green continued to stare out of the
window, seeing nothing of the scenery but the flicker
of telegraph posts before his eyes that were visioning
the future.
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