The Free Range

CHAPTER I

FLINGING THE GAUNTLET

“Then you insist on ruining me, Mr. Bissell?”

Bud Larkin, his hat pushed back on his head, looked unabashed at the scowling heavy features of the man opposite in the long, low room, and awaited a reply.

“I don’t want to ruin anybody,” puffed old “Beef” Bissell, whose cattle overran most of the range between the Gray Bull and the Big Horn. “But I allow as how them sheep of yours had better stay down Nebrasky way where they come from.”

“In other words,” snapped Larkin, “I had better give up the idea of bringing them north altogether. Is that it?”

“Just about.”

“Well, now, see here, Mr. Bissell, you forget one or two things. The first is, that my sheep ranch is in Montana and not Wyoming, and that I want to run my southern herds onto the northern range before fall sets in. The second is, that, while your homestead may be three hundred and twenty acres, the range that has made you rich is free. My sheep have as much right there as your cattle. It is all government land and open to everybody.”

“Possession is eleven points out here where there isn’t any law,” replied Bissell imperturbably. “It’s a case of your sheep against my cattle, and, you see, I stand up reg’lar for my cows.”

Bud rolled a cigarette and pondered.

He was in the rather bare and unornamental living-room of the Bar T ranch. In the center was a rough-hewn table supporting an oil-lamp and an Omaha newspaper fully six months old. The chairs, except one, were rough and heavy and without rockers. This one was a gorgeous plush patent-rocker so valued a generation ago, and evidently imported at great expense.

A square of carpet that had lost all claims to pattern had become a soft blur, the result of age and alkali. However, it was one of the proudest possessions of the Bar T outfit and showed that old Beef Bissell knew what the right thing was. A calico shroud hid a large, erect object against the wall farthest away from the windows; an object that was the last word in luxury and reckless expense – a piano. The walls were of boards whitewashed, and the ceiling was just plain boards.

It had not taken Bud Larkin long to discern that there was a feminine cause for these numerous unusual effects; but he did not for a minute suppose it to be the thin, sharp-tongued woman who had been washing behind the cook-house as he rode up to the corral. Now, as he pondered, he thought again about it. But only for a minute; other things of vaster importance held him.

Although but two men had spoken during the conversation, three were in the room. The third was a man of medium height, lowering looks, and slow tongue. His hair was black, and he had the appearance of always needing a shave. He was trained down to perfect condition by his years on the plains, and was as wiry and tough as the cow pony he rode. He was Black Mike Stelton, foreman of the Bar T.

“What do you think, Mike?” asked Bissell, when Larkin made no attempt to continue the argument.

“Same’s you, boss,” was the reply in a heavy voice. “I wouldn’t let them sheep on the range, not noways. Sheep is the ruination of any grass country.”

“There you see, Mr. Larkin,” said Bissell with an expressive motion of his hand. “Stelton’s been out here in the business fifteen years and says the same as I do. How long did you say you had been in the West?”

“One year,” replied Larkin, flushing to the roots of his hair beneath his tanned but not weather-beaten skin. “Came from Chicago.”

“From down East, eh? Well, my woman was to St. Paul once, and she’s never got over it; but it don’t seem to have spoiled you none.”

Larkin grinned and replied in kind, but all the time he was trying to determine what stand to take. He had expected to meet opposition to “walking” his sheep north – in fact, had met it steadily – but up to this point had managed to get his animals through. Now he was fifty miles ahead of the first flock and had reached the Bar T ranch an hour before dinner.

Had he been a suspected horse-thief, the unwritten social etiquette of the plains would have provided him with food and lodging as long as he cared to stay. Consequently when he had caught the reflection of the setting sun against the walls of the ranch house, he had turned Pinte’s head in the direction of the corral.

Then, in the living-room, though no questions had been asked, Larkin had brought up the much-dreaded subject himself, as his visit was partly for that purpose.

He had much to contend with. In the first place, being a sheepman, he was absolutely without caste in the cattle country, where men who went in for the “woolly idiots,” as someone has aptly called them, was considered for the most part as a degenerate, and only fit for target practice. This side of the matter troubled him not at all, however.

What did worry him was the element of right in the cattlemen’s attitude! a right that was still a wrong. For he had to acknowledge that when sheep had once fed across a range, that range was ruined for cattle for the period of at least a year.

This was due to the fact that the sheep, cropping into the very roots of the gray grass itself, destroyed it. Moreover, the animals on their slow marches, herded so close together that they left an offensive trail rather than follow which the cattle would stand and starve.

On the other hand, the range was free and the sheep had as much right to graze there as the cattle, a fact that the cattlemen, with all their strict code of justice, refused to recognize.

Larkin knew that he had come to the parting of the ways at the Bar T ranch.

Old Beef Bissell was what was known at that time as a cattle king. His thousands of steers, wealth on the hoof, grazed far and wide over the fenceless prairies. His range riders rarely saw the ranch house for a month at a time, so great was his assumed territory; his cowboys outnumbered those of any owner within three hundred miles. Aside from this, he was the head of a cattlemen’s association that had banded together against rustlers and other invaders of the range.

Larkin returned to the conversation.

“Try to see it from my standpoint,” he said to Bissell. “If you had gone in for sheep as I have – ”

“I wouldn’t go in for ’em,” interrupted the other contemptuously, and Stelton grunted.

“As you like about that. Every gopher to his own hole,” remarked Bud. “But if you had, and I guess you would if you thought there was more money in it, you would certainly insist on your rights on the range, wouldn’t you?”

“I might try.”

“And if you tried you’d be pretty sure to succeed, I imagine.”

“It’s likely; I allow as how I’m a pretty good hand at succeedin’.”

“Well, so am I. I haven’t got very far yet, but I am on my way. I didn’t come out here to make a failure of things, and I don’t intend to. Now, all I want is to run my sheep north on to the Montana range where my ranch is.”

“How many are there?” This from Stelton.

“Five flocks of about two thousand each.”

Bissell snorted and turned in his chair.

“I won’t allow it, young man, an’ that’s all I’ve got to say. D’ye think I’m a fool?”

“No, but neither am I. And I might as well tell you first and last that those sheep are coming north. Now, if you do the fair thing you will tell your cowboys the fact so they won’t make any mistakes. I have given you fair warning, and if anything happens to those sheep you will be held responsible.”

“Is that all you got to say?” asked Bissell, sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I’ll do the talkin’. I’d as leave see Indians stampedin’ my cows into the river as have your sheep come over the range. Since you’ve given me what you call a fair warning, I’ll give you one. Leave your critters where they are. If you don’t do it you’ll be a sight wiser and also a mighty sight poorer before I get through with ’em.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” asked Larkin.

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ more than that now, because I’m a slow hand at makin’ ornery promises, seein’ I always keep ’em. But I’m just tellin’ you, that’s all.”

“Is that your last word on the subject?” asked Larkin.

“It is, an’ I want Stelton here to remember I said it.”

“Then we won’t say anything more about the matter,” replied Bud calmly, as he rose. “I’ll go outside and look to my horse.”

“You’ll stay the night with us, won’t you?” asked Bissell anxiously.

“Yes, thanks. I’ve heard so much about the Bar T I should like to see a little more of it.”

When Larkin had left the room, Bissell, with a frown on his face, turned to Stelton.

“Tell all the boys what’s happened to-day,” he said, “and tell ’em to be on the watch for this young feller’s first herd. He’ll plenty soon find out he can’t run riot on my range.”

CHAPTER II

A LATE ARRIVAL

After visiting the corral, Larkin paid his respects to the pump and refreshed himself for supper. Then he strolled around the long, rambling ranch house. Across the front, which faced southwest, had been built a low apology for a veranda on which a couple of uninviting chairs stood. He appropriated one of these and settled back to think.

The late sun, a red-bronze color, hung just above the horizon and softened the unlovely stretches of prairie into something brooding and beautiful. Thirty miles away the Rockies had become a mass of gray-blue fleeced across the top with lines of late snow – for it was early June.

The Bar T ranch house itself stood on a rise of ground back from a cold, greenish-blue river that made a bend at this point, and that rose and had its being in the melting whiteness of those distant peaks. Between the willows of the river bottoms, Larkin could see the red reflection of the sun on the water, and could follow the stream’s course across the prairie by the snake-like procession of cottonwoods that lined its banks.

On the plains themselves there was still a fading hue of green. The buffalo grass had already begun to wither under the increasing heat, and in a month would have become the same gray, cured fodder that supported millions of buffalo centuries before a steer was on the range.

For Bud Larkin, only a year in the West, this evening scene had not lost its charm. He loved this hour when the men washed up at the pump. There were enticing sounds from the cook house and enticing odors in the air. Sometimes it seemed as though it almost made up for a day’s failure and discouragement.

His quick eye suddenly noted a dark speck moving rapidly across the prairie toward the ranch house. It seemed to skim the ground and in five minutes had developed into a cow pony and its rider. A quarter of an hour later and the pony proved himself of “calico” variety, while the rider developed into a girl who bestrode her mount as though she were a part of the animal itself.

The front rim of her broad felt hat was fastened upward with a thong and exposed her face. Bud watched her idly until she dashed up to the front of the house, fetched her horse back on its haunches with a jerk on the cruel Spanish bridle, and leaped to the ground before he had fairly lost headway. Then with a slap on the rump she sent him trotting to Stelton, who had appeared around the end of the veranda as though expecting her.

Occupied with pulling off her soft white buckskin gauntlets, she did not notice the young man on the low porch until, with an exclamation, he had sprung to his feet and hurried toward her.

“Juliet Bissell!” gasped Larkin, holding out a hand to her. “What are you doing here?”

“Of all people, Bud Larkin!” cried the girl, flushing with pleasure. “Why, I can’t believe it! Did you drop out of the sky somewhere?”

“If the sky is heaven, I’ve just dropped into it,” he returned, trying to confine his joy to intelligible speech, and barely succeeding.

“That sounds like the same old Bud,” she laughed, “and it’s a pleasure to hear it. For if there is one thing a cowboy can’t do, and it’s the only one, it is to pay a woman a compliment. That speech brands you a tenderfoot.”

“Never! I’ve been out a year and can nearly ride a cow pony, providing it is lame and blind.”

So, bantering each other unmercifully, they reached the front door.

“Wait a few minutes, Bud, and I will be out again. I must dress for dinner.”

When she had gone Larkin understood at once the presence of the carpet, the patent rocker, and the piano.

“What a double-barreled idiot I am,” he swore, “to talk turkey to old Bissell and never connect him with Juliet. All the sheep in the world couldn’t get me away from here to-night.” And he ejaculated the time-worn but true old phrase that the world is a mighty small place.

Juliet Bissell had been a very definite personage in Bud Larkin’s other life – the life that he tried to forget. The eldest son of a rich Chicago banker, his first twenty-five years had been such years as a man always looks back upon with a vast regret.

From the mansion on Sheridan Drive he had varied his time among his clubs, his sports, and his social duties, and generally made himself one of many in this world that humanity can do without. In other words, he added nothing to himself, others, or life in general, and was, therefore, without a real excuse for existing.

Of one thing he was ever zealous, now that he had left it behind, and this was that his past should not pursue him into the new life he had chosen. He wished to start his career without stigma, and end it without blame.

Strangely enough, the person who had implanted this ambition and determination in him was Juliet Bissell. Three winters before, he had met her at the charity ball, and at the time she was something of a social sensation, being described as “that cowgirl from Wyoming.” However, that “cowgirl” left her mark on many a gilded youth, and Bud Larkin was one.

He had fallen in love with her, as much as one in his position is capable of falling in love, had proposed to her, and been rejected with a grace and gentleness that had robbed the blow of all hurt – with one exception. Bud’s pride, since his wealth and position had meant nothing in the girl’s eyes, had been sorely wounded, and it had taken six months of the vast mystery of the plains to reduce this pettiness to the status of a secret shame.

When Juliet refused him she had told him with infinite tact that her husband would be a man more after the pattern of her father, whom she adored, and who, in turn, worshiped the very air that surrounded her; and it was this fact that had turned Bud’s attention to the West and its opportunities.

When she returned to the porch Juliet had on a plain white dress with pink ribbons at elbows, neck, and waist. Larkin, who had always thrilled at her splendid physical vigor, found himself more than ever under the spell of her luxuriant vitality.

Her great dark eyes were remarkably lustrous and expressive, her black hair waved back from her brown face into a great braided coil, her features were not pretty so much as noble. Her figure, with its limber curves, was pliant and graceful in any position or emergency – the result of years in the saddle. Her feet and hands were small, the latter being firm but infinitely gentle in their touch.

“Well, have you forgotten all your Eastern education?” Larkin asked, smiling, as she sat down. “Have you reverted to your original untamed condition?”

“No, indeed, Bud. I have a reputation to keep up in that respect. The fact that I have had an Eastern education has made our punchers so proud that they can’t be lived with when they go to town, and lord it over everybody.”

“I suppose they all want to marry you?”

“Yes, singly or in lots, and sometimes I’m sorry it can’t be done, I love them all so much. But tell me, Bud, what brings you out West in general and here in particular?”

“Probably you don’t know that a year and a half ago my father died,” and Larkin’s face shadowed for a moment with retrospection. “Well, he did, and left me most of his estate. I was sick of it there, and I vowed I would pull up stakes and start somewhere by myself. So I went up to Montana in the vicinity of the Musselshell Forks and bought a ranch and some stock.”

“Cattle?”

“No, sheep. The best merino I ever saw – ”

“Bud Larkin! You’re not a sheepman?”

“Yes, ma’am, and a menace to a large number of cowmen, your father among them.”

The girl sank back and allowed him to relate the story of his adventures up to the present time, including the interview with Beef. At the description of that she smiled grimly; and he, noting the fact, told himself that it would take a masterly character to subdue that free, wild pride.

“Now, Julie,” he concluded, “do me the favor of instilling reason into your father. I’ve done my best and we have parted without murder, but that’s all. I’ve got to have a friend at court or I will be ruined before I commence.”

The girl was silent for a few minutes and sat looking down at her slippered feet.

“Bud,” she said at last, “you’ve never known me to tell anything but the truth, and I’m going to tell it to you now. I will be your friend in everything except where you ask me to yield my loyalty to my father and his interests. He is the most wonderful father a girl ever had, and if he were to say that black was white, I should probably swear to it if he asked me to.”

“I admire you for that,” said Bud genuinely, although all his hopes in this powerful ally went glimmering. “Let’s not talk shop any longer. It’s too good just to see you to think about anything but that.”

So, for a while, they reminisced of the days of their former friendship, by tacit agreement avoiding any reference to intimate things. And Larkin felt spring up in him the old love that he had convinced himself was dead; so that he added to his first resolution to succeed on the range, a second, that he would, in the end, conquer Juliet Bissell.

The thought was pleasing, for it meant another struggle, another outlet for the energies and activities that had so long lain dormant in him. And with the undaunted courage of youth he looked eagerly toward the battle that should win this radiant girl.

But for the present he knew he must not betray himself by word, look or action; other things of greater moment must be settled.

At last, as they talked, the cook, a long-suffering Chinaman, seized a huge brass bell and rang it with all his might, standing in the door of the cook house.

There was an instant response in the wild whoop of the cowboys who had been suffering the pangs of starvation for the past half-hour.

“Of course you must come to our private table, Bud,” said Juliet. “I want you to see father’s other side.” So they rose and went in the front way.

The ranch house had been planned so that to the right of the entrance was the living-room, and back of that the dining-room. To the left three smaller rooms had been made into sleeping apartments. At the back of the structure and extending across the width of it was a large room that, in the early days of the Bar T, had served as the bunk-house for the cow punchers.

This had now been changed to the mess-room for them, while the family, with the addition of Stelton, the foreman, used the smaller private room. Owing to the large increase in the number of Bar T punchers a special bunk-house had been built in the rear of the main structure.

At table Larkin for the first time met Mrs. Bissell, who proved to be a typical early cowman’s wife, thin, overworked, and slightly vinegary of disposition, despite the fact that she had at one time in her life been the belle of a cowtown, and had been won from beneath the ready .45’s of a number of rivals.

At Bud’s entrance Stelton grunted and scowled, and generally showed himself ill-pleased that Juliet should have known the visitor. On the other hand, as the girl had promised, Beef Bissell, for years the terror of the range, displayed a side that the sheepman would never have suspected. His voice became gentle, his laugh softened, his language purified, and he showed, by many little attentions, the unconscious chivalry that worship of a good woman brings to the surface.

For her part, the girl appraised this devotion at its true value and never failed in the little feminine thoughtfulnesses that appeal so strongly to a worried and busy man.

That Stelton should be at the table at all surprised Bud, for it was not the habit of foremen to eat away from the punchers. But here the fact was the result of a former necessity when Bissell, hard-pressed, had called his foreman into consultation at meal times.

Old Bissell proved himself a more genial host than business rival, and when he had learned of Larkin and his daughter’s former friendship, he forgot sheep for the moment and took an interest in the man. Mrs. Bissell sat open-mouthed while Bud told of the glories of Chicago in the early eighties, and never once mentioned her famous visit to St. Paul, so overcome was she with the tales this young man related.

Everyone was at his or her ease when the rapid tattoo of hoofs was heard, and a horse and rider drew up abruptly at the corral. One of the punchers from the rear dining-room went out to meet him and presently appeared sheepishly in the doorway where Bissell could see him.

“Is there a Mr. Larkin here?” asked the puncher.

“Yes,” said Bud, pushing back his chair.

“There’s a stranger out here that ’lows he wants to see you.”

“Send him in here and give him something to eat, Shorty,” sang out Bissell. “If he’s a friend of Larkin’s, he’d better have dinner with him. And, Shorty, tell that Chinaman to rustle another place here pronto!”

As for Bud Larkin, he was at a total loss to know who his visitor might be. With a sudden twinge of fear he thought that perhaps Hard-winter Sims, his chief herder, had pursued him with disastrous information from the flocks. Wondering, he awaited the visitor’s appearance.

The stranger presently made a bold and noisy entrance, and, when his face came into view, Bud sank back in his chair weakly, his own paling a trifle beneath the tan. For the man was Smithy Caldwell, a shifty-eyed crook from Chicago, one who had dogged him before, and whom he had never expected to see again. How the villain had tracked him to the Bar T outfit Bud could not imagine.

Seeing the eyes of the others upon him, Larkin recovered himself with an effort and introduced Caldwell; but to the eyes of even the most unobservant it was plain that a foreign element of disturbing nature had suddenly been projected into the genial atmosphere. The man was coarse in manner and speech and often addressed leering remarks to Juliet, who disregarded them utterly and confined her attention to Bud.

“Who is this creature?” she asked sotto voce. “What does he want with you?”

Bud hesitated, made two or three false starts, and finally said:

“I am sure his business with me would not interest you.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the girl, rebuffed. “I seem to have forgotten myself.”

“I wish I could,” ejaculated Bud bitterly, and refused to explain further.

CHAPTER III

AN UNSETTLED SCORE

As soon after dinner as possible Larkin disengaged himself from the rest of the party and motioned Caldwell to follow him. He led the way around the house and back toward the fence of the corral. It was already dark, and the only sounds were those of the horses stirring restlessly, or the low bellow of one of the ranch milch cows.

“What are you doing out here?” demanded Bud.

“I came to see you.” The other emitted an exasperating chuckle at his own cheap wit.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.” This time there was no chuckle, and Bud could imagine the close-set, greedy eyes of the other, one of them slightly crossed, boring into him in the dark.

“Money, I suppose, you whining blood-sucker,” suggested Bud, his voice quiet, but holding a cold, unpleasant sort of ring that was new to Caldwell.

“‘The boy guessed right the very first time,’” quoted Smithy, unabashed.

“What became of that two thousand I gave you before I left Chicago?”

“I got little enough of that,” cried Caldwell. “You know how many people there were to be hushed up.”

“Many!” snapped Larkin. “You can’t come any of that on me. There were just three; yourself, your wife, and that red-headed fellow, – I forget his name.”