The Free Range
“All right,” he said, hopelessly; “I’ll be gone by that time.”
And, without further words, he wheeled his horse slowly and rode back to the camp. As he rode he maintained his dejected attitude, but his mind was actively laying plans for the overthrow of Bissell. Under the mask of seeming defeat he sought to find means for an unexpected victory.
Though his whole being rose in revolt against the arbitrary claims of the cattle king, he had become so hardened to this injustice everywhere that he no longer wasted his time or strength in vain railings against it. Instinctively he felt that this was to be a struggle of strength against cunning, for the very thought of physical resistance to thirty fighting cowboys by half a dozen herders was ridiculous.
Many similar skirmishes, both on his home ranch and on the trail, had sharpened Larkin’s wits for emergencies, and it was with really no spirit of humble complaisance that he faced the future. Much, however, depended on the result of Sim’s explorations.
By the time Larkin arrived at the camp the visiting cowmen had disappeared. But this did not mean for a moment that they had all returned to the Bar T ranch house. Merely to top the first hill would have been to see a horse with hanging bridle, and a cow-puncher near by camped on the trail that led to the north.
As fortune would have it, Sims slunk into camp just at the dinner hour.
“What’d they say to yuh?” he asked abruptly. “I seen the confab from over on that hogback yonder.”
The herder’s respect for his employer sometimes diminished to the vanishing point.
“Got to clear out in twenty-four hours or take what’s comin’.”
“What’d’ye tell ’em?”
“I said we would.”
The lank herder started back in amazement.
“Oh, blazes!” he grieved. “That I should’ve ever took on with a milksop boss. I’m plumb disgraced – ” His voice trailed off into silence as he recognized the twinkle in Larkin’s eye. “Oh, I see what yuh mean,” he apologized, with a wide grin. “We’ll clear out all right. Oh, yes! Sure!”
He sat down.
“Depends on you a good deal,” remarked Bud, shoving the beans toward him. “What did you find this morning?”
“Found a new way north,” was the muffled and laconic reply. “Yaas,” he continued presently, after regarding his reflection in the bottom of a tin cup that had been full of coffee the moment before, “an’ it’s over on that hogback.”
A “hogback,” be it understood, is a rugged rocky mound, carved by weather erosion. It is the result of the level rock strata of the plains suddenly bending upward and protruding out of the earth.
“That ridge runs north for about two mile, and at the end seems to turn east into the Big Horn foothills. So far as I can see, no man or critter has ever been there, for there ain’t any water in that crotch, and nothin’ else but heat and rattlers. The point of the thing is this: Spring rains for a couple of million years have wore a regular watercourse down that crotch, and I think we can run the sheep over it, single file.”
“Yes, but won’t they be out on the open Bar T range when we get them over?”
“No, boss. D’ye think I’d do a thing like that? Honest, the way you misjudge a man! Well, across that hogback, where it turns to the east, there is a string of range hills covered with good feed, and leadin’ north, for twenty miles. My idea’s this:
“I’ll send Pedro with about a hundred rams and wethers directly north from here, as they’re expecting we will. All of them will have bells on, and Pedro’ll have to prod ’em some to make ’em bawl. While he is drawing all the trouble, we’ll hustle the rest of the flock along behind the hogback, over the pass, and north behind the shelter of the hills.”
“Fine, Sims; just the thing!” exclaimed Larkin, taking up with the idea enthusiastically. “It will be a thundering brute of a man who won’t let the flock north once it has gone twenty miles.”
“I allow that perhaps the Bar T punchers will be watchin’ that hogback, although I couldn’t find tracks there, new or old. If they ever catch the sheep in that gully, you’re due to wish you’d stayed East.”
“Well, that’s our risk, and we’ve got to take it. Now, I think we’d better roll up for a few hours this afternoon, for we didn’t sleep last night, and I don’t believe we will to-night. Have Pedro call us at half-past four, and have him round up the sheep about five.”
Sheep, because of some perverse twist in their natures, cannot graze standing still. They must walk slowly forward a few steps every few moments. To-day, however, because of the luxuriant grass along the river, the progress of the flock had been comparatively slow. Their day’s “walk” would bring them, Larkin figured, to a point less than a mile distant from the hogback, and an ideal spot from which to start the march.
Pedro called the two men at the appointed hour, and they reached the flock just in time for the bedding down. Immediately all hands went through the sheep, removing bells from the animals that usually wore them, and fastening them about the necks of those delegated to act as a blind and cover the advance of the main body.
To a Bar T cow-puncher who knew anything about sheep, the evening scene would have exhibited nothing out of the ordinary. From the reclining hundreds came the soft bleating of ewes calling their young, which is only heard at the daily bedding, the low-toned blethering of the others of the flock, and the tinkle of bells.
Beside the cook wagon the fire glowed in the trench, and everything seemed to be progressing normally.
Twilight came early among the trees and brush near the river, but it was not until absolute darkness had descended over the vast expanse of prairie that Larkin gave the order to march. Then the main body of the herd, with Sims at its head, the dogs flanking and Bud bringing up the rear on horseback, moved silently out toward the unknown hazards of the hogback pass.
Pedro and his hundred had been ordered to wait fifteen minutes, until the head of the column should have almost reached the shelter of the hogback. This he did, and then headed his small flock straight up the open prairie of the range, amid a chorus of bells and loud-voiced protest. Larkin, half a mile away, heard these sounds and smiled grimly, for the flocks before him made scarcely any sound at all.
In the darkness ahead he could hear the low voices of the men talking to the dogs and encouraging the unresponsive sheep. Overhead were the brilliant, low-swinging stars that gave just enough light to show him the trend of the long, heaving line.
For another half-hour there was silence. The sounds of Pedro and his flock became fainter as the two bodies diverged from each other. Now the dark wall of the hogback rose up on Larkin’s left; the last of the flock was behind shelter. The going was rough and Pinte chose each step carefully, but the sheep made good progress, because there was no grass to tempt them.
After another long space, broken only by the clatter of hard little feet on stone, distant shots rang out, accompanied by faint yells, and Larkin knew that Pedro had met with the first of the Bar T outfit.
The sheepman was resigned to losing the hundred, just as cattlemen do not hesitate to cut out and abandon all weak animals on a long drive. It is a loss credited to the ultimate good of the business, but Bud had not consented to this sacrifice if it meant also the sacrifice of the herder.
Pedro had, however, with many winks and glintings of teeth, made it clear that he did not expect to depart this life yet a while, hinting mysteriously at certain charms, amulets and saints that made it a business to keep him among the living.
Pedro, to Bud’s knowledge, had been in numerous seamy affairs before, and had always reappeared, rather the worse for wear, but perfectly sound in all respects. He did not doubt but what the Spaniard would turn up at the cook wagon for breakfast.
The sounds of distant conflict continued for perhaps five or ten minutes, at the end of which time perfect silence reigned again. Larkin wondered how many of the animals had been killed, or whether they had been merely scattered – the equivalent of death, for a sheep is unable to find water, and if frightened, will back against a face of rock and starve to death.
Another half-hour passed, and now Larkin could see the dim white backs of the herd rising before him as they climbed the steep watercourse. He judged that more than half the flock must be down the precipitous other side, and his heart beat with exultation at the success of Sim’s strategy. The plan was to hide the sheep in some little green valley during the day and march them at night until discovered or until the upper range was reached.
Suddenly, just as the last of the flock was mounting the ascent, Larkin drew Pinte up short and listened intently. Then he quickly dismounted and placed his ear to the ground only to leap into the saddle again, swing his horse quickly and ride back along the trail.
He had heard the unmistakable pounding of feet, and an instant’s sickening fear flashed before him the possibility that the Bar T cowboys had discovered the ruse after all; either that or they had extorted the secret of it from Pedro.
Larkin loosened the pistol in his holster, one of those big, single-action wooden-handled forty-fives that have settled so many unrecorded disputes, and prepared to cover the rear of the herd until it had safely crossed the hogback.
Pinte’s ears twitched forward. The sound of galloping feet was nearer now. Larkin clapped on spurs and trotted to meet it.
Closer and closer it came, a mingled clatter of hoofs. Then suddenly there rang out the frightened bawl of a bewildered calf.
The aspects of the situation took on another hue. If these had been cattle stampeded by the shots and shouting on the plain, they would have made a vastly different thundering along the earth. Cattle never ran this way by themselves; therefore the obvious inference was that they were driven.
Again, the Bar T punchers had no call to drive cattle at night, particularly this night. Who, then, was driving them? In an instant Larkin’s mind had leaped these various steps of reasoning and recalled old Beef Bissell’s vehement arraignment of rustlers in the State. The answer was plain. The calves were being driven off the range into concealment by cattle-thieves.
Larkin knew that all the sheep had not yet passed the top of the hogback. It was absolutely necessary that their passage be unknown and unobserved. There was but one thing to do.
Spurring his horse, he charged toward the oncoming animals, whose dark forms he could now discern a hundred yards away. As he rode, he shouted and drew his revolver, firing into their faces. When at last it seemed that he must come into violent collision with them, they turned, snorting, to the east and made off in the direction of the river.
His purpose accomplished, Larkin wheeled Pinte sharply and dug in his spurs, but at that instant two dark forms loomed close, one on each side, and seized the bridle.
“Hands up!” said a gruff voice. “You’re covered.”
CHAPTER VI
UGLY COMPANY
Larkin’s revolver was empty, and his hands mechanically went up.
The captor on his right relieved him of the useless weapon, and, in a trice, produced a rope, with which he bound the sheepman’s arms tightly behind him. With the other end of the rope turned about the pommel of his saddle, he dropped back into the darkness, while his companion rode to a position ahead of Larkin.
At a growled word from behind, the little cavalcade advanced, Larkin mystified, uncertain and fuming with impotent rage. Never in his life had he been so needed as he was at that time by Sims and the herdsmen; never in his life had he so ardently desired liberty and freedom of action.
Why these men had captured him he did not know; what they intended doing with him he had no idea – although his knowledge of plainsmen’s character supplied him with two or three solutions hardly calculated to exhilarate the victim. Where they were taking him was almost as much of a puzzle, for Bud, after the first few turns of his captors, completely lost his sense of direction, except for the general compass of the stars.
No longer the friendly loom of the hogback was on his left. He felt the free wind of the plains on his face, and calculated that they must have returned to the open range.
Who his captors were was another puzzle. If these men had been driving the cattle why did they not continue to drive them instead of turning aside to make prisoner a harmless sheepman? If they were not driving the cattle —
A horrible suspicion crossed Bud’s mind. If these were punchers from the Bar T outfit he was indeed in a bad way, for no one knew better than Larkin (by hearsay) the wild stories told of Beef Bissell’s methods in a cattle war.
The young man told himself calmly that if he got away with a few head of sheep and an entire body he would consider himself fortunate in the extreme.
For seemingly endless ages the leader trotted on ahead – so far, in fact, did he ride that Larkin’s arms and elbow joints were racked with pain from being held so long in an unnatural position. At the end of what was probably three hours, a small fiery glow made itself evident at some distance across the plain, and the sheepman knew by this camp-fire that the goal of his ride was in sight.
A solitary man sat by the fire, rolling and smoking a continuous stream of cigarettes. Dimly seen in the near-by shadows were the long figures of other men rolled in their blankets. Bud knew that not far off the hobbled horses grazed, or had lain down to rest.
“Kick up the boys, Bill,” said the man who held the rope. “Got somethin’ queer to look into this time.”
“Aw, let ’em sleep, chief,” drawled Bill without moving. “Some of ’em ain’t closed their eyes in nigh on three days. What’s the matter?”
“Got a young captain here who ’lows he’s some brave man, I reckon. Leastways he come drivin’ at us with fire a-poppin’ out of his gun, an’ Shorty and me thinks we better investigate. So we nabs him when his gun’s empty and brings him in. A man that’ll shoot around reckless the way this feller did is plumb dangerous to have runnin’ loose.
“But I guess you’re right about the boys, Bill. I’ll let ’em sleep an’ we’ll talk to this maverick in the mornin’. Keep him under your eye.”
Things were clearing up for Larkin. These men evidently thought that he was some ambitious puncher on the lookout for rustlers. Up to this time he had kept silent, borrowing no trouble and trusting to his ability to identify himself. But now at the prospect of idling here all night and part of the day he protested.
“Turn my arms loose, will you?” he demanded. “They’re about broke off.”
Joe, the chief, after carefully searching him for additional weapons, complied with his request, in so far that he bound his wrists together in front.
“Now, boys,” said Bud, crisply, “I wish you’d tell me what this all means. If you want to question me, do it now and let me go, for I’ve got mighty important business up the line a way.”
“I allow yuh have,” remarked Joe, dryly. “Yuh also got some mighty important business right here, if yuh only knowed it.”
“What business.”
“Fannin’ yore gun at us that-a-way. Yore plumb careless, young feller. But look here, I’m not a-goin’ to stay up all night talkin’ to yuh. You’ll have to talk to all the boys in the mornin’.”
“But I can’t wait till morning, I tell you,” cried Bud, exasperated. “Every minute I sit here I may be losing thousands of dollars. For Heaven’s sake let me go to-night, and I’ll come back any other time you say. I give you my word for it.”
“Can’t wait till to-morrer! Stranger, you may wait till the crack o’ doom before you ever get back to that business o’ yourn.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Larkin, made strangely ill at ease by some veiled meaning in the other’s tone.
“Got to leave it to the boys,” was Joe’s evasive reply. “Better lay down and git some sleep; likely to be busy all day to-morrer.”
And Larkin, finding that all argument was as futile as trying to crack Gibraltar with a cold chisel, relapsed into silence, and prepared to get what rest he could until daylight.
Morning disclosed the fact that the group of men numbered about ten, each with a horse near by, and all fully supplied with arms. In fact, there was not a man among them who could not have “rolled a gun” with both hands if necessary, and at the same time carried a knife between his teeth. This matter of complete armament, together with Joe’s ambiguous speeches of the night before, wholly convinced Larkin that he had fallen in with a band of rustlers.
Breakfast was prepared for himself by each man, Joe attending to the wants of the prisoner, but no attempt was made to rope or saddle the horses. They were evidently waiting for something. What this was became evident shortly when another group of five men appeared around a distant rise and loped to the rendezvous. Larkin reasoned that these must be the men who continued the cattle drive after Joe and Pike had captured him.
The sheepman could not but admire the natural advantages of the place chosen by his captors for the meeting. Rolling hills surrounded the little pocket on all sides, and here and there a red scoria butte thrust its ugly height out of the plain. The chances of discovery were infinitesimal.
The evolution of the rustler was logical but rapid, and started with the general law that any ranch-owner was at liberty to brand with his mark any maverick found on his range. As it was the cowboy who discovered these strays, he was usually provided with a branding-iron and put the seal of his employer on the animal wherever found.
From this it was but a step for unscrupulous punchers, or those with a shrewd eye for business, to drive off unbranded cattle and ship them independently to market, or to mark them with a private brand of their own. All this was before the introduction of brand inspectors at the stockyards of Omaha, Kansas City, or Chicago.
Therefore, among the men at this rendezvous Larkin noted types of cowmen equal to any on the range for horsemanship and ability to handle cattle. With his naturally quick eye, the sheepman observed them closely, but failed to recognize any of them.
His case came up quickly.
By various papers in his possession he proved his identity.
“What were you doing out on the range last night?” asked Joe.
Bud hesitated for a minute and then, deciding that his safest and quickest course would be to make a clean breast of things, replied:
“I was driving two thousand head of sheep north on the Bar T.”
“Then you’re not a cattleman?”
“No.” Larkin produced his bills of sale for the sheep and these were handed gravely about from one to another, although it was certain that some of the men could not read them.
“How long are you going to stay in this country?”
“Just as long as it takes to get my sheep north. I come from Montana.”
Joe beckoned a number of the men aside out of Larkin’s hearing.
“We’re plumb lucky,” he announced. “If I know my book, old Bissell will forget all about a few missin’ calves when he knows this feller has sent sheep up his range. Now we’ve got to run off about a hundred more head to that railroad camp north of here, and I think we can use this Larkin.”
A dark, sullen-looking puncher shook his head slowly.
“It’s takin’ chances,” he growled. “String him up, I say. He knows us all now, and I’d sooner he’d look through a rope than me.”
“You shore are ornery, Pete,” said a third, “an’ plumb set on stretchin’ yore neck. Cain’t yuh see that if yuh hang this feller we’ll have both the sheep and cattlemen ag’in us?”
“Shore, that’s sense,” broke in another. “Less hear Joe’s scheme.”
“’Tain’t so blame much, boys,” countered the chief modestly. “We’ll make this Larkin swear never to give word agin us if we don’t kill him. Then we’ll run him off into the hills for four or five days with a guard, finish our own drive, and clear out, lettin’ him go. What d’ye think of that?”
“It’s a reg’lar hum-dinger, Joe,” said one man, and the others concurred in the laudatory opinion.
But at the first sentence to Larkin, that young man upset their well-laid plans.
“Larkin,” said Joe, “we allow as how we’d like to make a bargain with yuh?”
“If you are going to bargain with me to break the law, you had better not say anything about it,” was the reply.
“I was jest about startin’ one of them mutual protective, benefit and literary sassieties,” suggested Joe tactfully as a feeler, while his comrades grinned.
“Don’t want to hear about it,” retorted Bud, divining the intention. “You can do anything you like with me, but don’t tell me your bargains. I’ve got troubles enough with my sheep without signing on any more. Now, look here, men, I don’t want to interfere with you, and it only wastes your time to bother with me. Suppose you let me go about my business and you go about yours.”
“Swear on oath never to recognize or bear witness against us?”
“No. What kind of a crook do you think I am? If I were put under oath by a sheriff, I would have to accuse you, and I’d do it.”
Joe Parker’s face lost its expression of genial amiability and he looked about on a circle of dark countenances.
“I’m plumb sorry you act this-a-way,” he said aggrievedly. “Boys, where’s the nearest tree?”
“Ten miles.”
“After dinner everybody saddle up,” came the order.
CHAPTER VII
PRAIRIE BELL
When Juliet Bissell rode back to the Bar T ranch after her parting with Larkin at the fork of Grass Creek, she was a decidedly more thoughtful and sober young woman than she had been at the same hour the day previous.
Although blessed with an adoring father and a rather eccentric mother, she had, for the last year, begun to feel the stirrings of a tiny discontent.
Her life was a good example of the familiar mistake made by many a wealthy cattle-owner. Her parents, realizing their crudity and lack of education, had seen to it that she should be given all the advantages denied them, and had sent her East to Chicago for eight consecutive years.
During this time, while hating the noise and confinement of the city, she had absorbed much of its glamour, and enjoyed its alluring pleasures with a keen appreciation. Music had been her chief study, and her very decided talent had opened a busy career for her had she chosen to follow it.
But Julie was true to her best instincts, and refused to consider such a thing. Her father and mother had done all in their power for her, she reasoned, and therefore it was but fair that she should return to them and make the closing years of their lives happy.
Though nothing had ever been said, the girl knew that when she had left the ranch house, even for a week’s visit with a girl friend two hundred miles away, the sun might as well have fallen from the heavens, considering the gloom that descended upon the Bar T.
It was this knowledge of their need for her that had brought her back to fulfill what she considered her greatest happiness and duty in life.
Now, a monkey cannot wear clothes, smoke cigarettes, perform before applauding audiences and return to the jungle without a certain feeling of hateful unfitness among his gibbering brethren.
No more could this wild, lovely creature of the plains become one of the most sought-after girls of Chicago’s North Shore set, and return to the painful prose of the Bar T ranch without paying the penalty.
With the glory of health and outdoor life, she had failed to realize this, but since the sudden appearance of Bud Larkin she had done little else.
He had brought back to her a sudden powerful nostalgia for the life she had once known. And had old Beef Bissell been aware of this nostalgia, he would have realized for the first time that in his desire to give his daughter everything he had created a situation that was already unfortunate and might, with very little prompting, be unhappy.
But this knowledge was not vouchsafed to him, and Julie certainly would never make it plain.
The evening after Bud’s departure, that same evening, in fact, when he was fighting toward water with his flocks, the cattleman and his daughter sat outside on the little veranda that ran across the front of the ranch house.