The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound
"Don't the game laws prevent that, sir?" Frank asked.
"They limit a man to so many head of this and that, and in a general way he brings no more out with him, but it doesn't by any means follow that he hasn't killed a bear or a deer that he doesn't mention in some lonely ravine. The sport who hasn't a conscience is as big a pest in a game country as the horn and hide hunter used to be, and we have to thank him for practically exterminating several of the finest beasts in North America."
"Wouldn't the clearing of virgin country and the way the farms and ranches spring up account for it?"
"Only to some extent. It's my opinion that there are more deer and bears about the smaller ranches than you could find anywhere else. All this is no reason why you shouldn't learn to shoot; that is, to hit your game just where you want to and kill it there and then."
He walked out with his rifle and the boys followed him across the clearing. Here Harry fixed a piece of white paper about two feet square with a black dab in the middle of it on the trunk of a big fir, after which he came back to where the others were standing.
"How far do you make it?" his father asked.
"About a hundred yards."
Mr. Oliver now turned to Frank.
"As I think you told me you couldn't shoot, I'll give you a short lecture on the principles of the thing. When they're after birds most men use a scatter gun. It will spread an ounce of shot – several hundred pellets – over a six-foot circle at a distance of about forty yards; but the rifle is the great weapon of western America. Take this one and open the breach – now look up the barrel."
"I can see little grooves twisting round it like a screw," said Frank.
"That's the rifling. It serves two purposes. The bullet – you use only one – has to screw round and round to get out, and that gives the explosion time to act upon it. It increases the muzzle velocity. Then it gives the bullet a rotary motion, and anything spinning on its axis travels very much straighter than it would do otherwise. It's the twisting motion that keeps a top from falling over."
Frank could readily understand this, and he remembered what he had read about the gyroscope.
"Now," continued Mr. Oliver, "we have to consider the pull of the earth upon the bullet, which would bring it down, and to counteract this you have to direct it rather upward. The slight curve it makes before it reaches its mark is called the trajectory, and it naturally varies with the distance. You arrange it by the sights. There are two of them, one on the muzzle and one near the breach. The last one slides up and down like this. The farther off the mark is the higher it must go. As you have to get them both in line, it's evident that pushing the back one up will raise the muzzle. You can understand that?"
Frank said that he could, and Mr. Oliver pushed the rearsight down and snapped a lever.
"It's cocked, though it hasn't a shell in it. At a hundred yards or less the sight goes down about the limit." He handed Frank the rifle. "Stand straight, left foot a little to the left and forward – that will do. Now bring the rifle to your shoulder – left hand under the barrel near the rearsight, elbow well down, right hand round the small of the butt, thumb on the top. Try to hold it steady."
Frank found it difficult. The rifle was heavy and the muzzle seemed to want to drop, but Mr. Oliver stopped him when he let his left elbow fall in toward his side.
"Bring it down and wait a moment before you throw it up again," he advised.
Frank did so once or twice, and at length his instructor seemed satisfied.
"Now we'll aim," he said. "Drop your left cheek on the stock – you'd better shut your left eye. Try to see the target through the hollow of the rearsight, with the front one right in the middle of it."
It seemed singularly difficult. The square of paper now looked exceedingly small and the sights would wobble across it. After several attempts, however, Frank got them comparatively steady.
"Put your forefinger on the trigger," Mr. Oliver directed. "Don't pull, but squeeze it slowly and steadily, holding your breath in the meanwhile."
This was worst of all, for Frank found that he pulled the sight off the target when he tightened his forefinger. After he had made an attempt or two, Mr. Oliver told him to put the rifle down.
"See what you can do, Harry," he said.
"Standing?"
"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, turning to Frank again. "Standing's hardest, kneeling easier, and lying down easiest of all, but when you're hunting in thick bush you generally have to stand."
Harry slipped a shell into his rifle, and pitched it to his shoulder. It wobbled for a moment and then grew still. After that there was a spitting of red sparks from the muzzle, which suddenly jerked, followed by a sharp detonation. A second or two later there was a thud, and Harry laughed as he stood gazing at the mark while a little blue smoke curled out of the muzzle and the opened breach.
"It's well up on the left top corner," he said.
Frank was blankly astonished. He could certainly see the square of paper, but it seemed impossible that anybody could tell whether there was a mark on it. As a matter of fact, very few people who had not been taught how to use their eyes could have done so.
Then Mr. Oliver took up his rifle, and Frank noticed that his whole body and limbs seemed to fall into the best position for holding it steady without any visible effort on the man's part. The blue barrel did not seem to move at all until at length it jerked, and Harry grinned exultantly at Frank when a thin streak of smoke drifted past them.
"That's the pot-hunter's way. He's about two inches off the center."
Mr. Oliver gave Frank the rifle, and this time he slipped in a shell.
"If you can't get the sights right bring it down," he directed. "Don't dwell too long on your aim."
Frank held his breath and stiffened his muscles, but the foresight would wobble and the target seemed to dance up and down in a most exasperating manner. At length he pressed the trigger. He felt a sharp jar upon his shoulder, but to his astonishment he heard no report. After what seemed quite a long time there was a faint thud in the forest.
"You've got something, but I guess it's the wrong tree," laughed Harry.
After that Frank tried several shots, finally succeeding in hitting the tree a couple of feet above the mark. Mr. Oliver, who had taken out his pipe in the meanwhile, nodded at him encouragingly.
"You only need to practice steadily," he said. "For the rest, anything that tends toward a healthy life will make you shoot well. Whisky and tobacco most certainly won't."
Harry's eyes twinkled as he glanced at his father's pipe.
"One of them hasn't much effect on him. I don't know whether I told you about the bag the two sports who were round here last fall nearly made. I got the tale from Webster on the next ranch."
Frank said that he would like to hear it, and Harry laughed.
"Well," he began, "Webster was sitting on a log in the bush just outside his slashing, looking around kind of sorrowful at the trees. It seemed to him they looked so big and nice it would be a pity to spoil them. When I've been chopping until my hands are sore I sometimes feel like that."
"It doesn't lead to riches," interrupted his father dryly.
"By and by," Harry continued, "Webster heard a smashing in the underbrush. It kept coming nearer, but it wasn't in the least like the sound a bear makes or a jumping deer. You don't know they're around unless they're badly scared. Anyway, Webster sat still wondering what it could be, until he saw a man crawling on the ground. He was coming along very cautiously, but you couldn't have heard him more than half a mile away. By and by he disappeared behind a big tree, and as there hadn't been a deer about for a week Webster wondered if the man was mad, until there was a blaze of repeater firing in the bush. Then Fremont, his logging ox, came out of it like a locomotive and headed for the range so fast that Webster couldn't see how he went. He grabbed his logging handspike, and found a sport abusing another for missing in the bush.
"'What in the name of wonder are you after?' he asked.
"'We've been trailing a deer two hours,' one of them declared. 'A mighty big deer. Must have been an elk.'
"'An elk, sure. I saw it,' added the other.
"'There isn't a blamed elk in the country,' said Webster.
"'You'll see,' persisted the other. 'I tell you I pumped the cylinder full into him.'
"'Quite sure of that?' Webster asked.
"The other man said that he was, and Webster waved his handspike.
"'Then it's going to cost you sixty dollars, and I'll take a deposit now,' he said. 'It's my ox Fremont you've been after.'"
"Did they give it to him?" Frank broke in.
"Five dollars," Harry answered. "Webster looked big and savage, and they compromised on that."
"But had they hit the ox?"
Harry chuckled. "Give a man who isn't a hunter a repeater and he'll never hit anything – unless it's what he isn't shooting at."
"Anyway, it's better to stick to the single shot at first," Mr. Oliver remarked. "Then you take time and care, and it's more likely that when you shoot you kill. No humane person has any use for the man who leaves badly wounded beasts wandering about the woods."
He rose, and shook out his pipe.
"We'll be getting back," he added. "There's only one way of making it easy to rise at sun-up."
They walked toward the house together, and it seemed to Frank that there was a good deal to be said for this rancher's views. He did not tell tall stories and boast of what he had shot, but Frank had seen enough to realize that it was most unlikely that he left any sorely wounded animal to die in misery. It was not often that Mr. Oliver molested the beautiful wild creatures of the woods, but when he fixed the sights on one of them he killed it clean.
CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERIOUS SCHOONER
Three or four weeks slipped by uneventfully, and Frank was commencing to like the simple, laborious life at the ranch. He and Harry were standing together one evening on the shingle down in the cove. It was close upon high water and a long swell worked in, breaking noisily upon the pebbles, while they could see the blue undulations burst into snowy froth about the dark rocks at the entrance. The sun had just dipped; it was wonderfully fresh and cool, and a sweet resinous smell drifted out of the forest behind them.
Harry glanced at a canoe which lay close by. It was about fourteen feet long and just wide enough to sit in, and had been hollowed out of a cedar log by a Siwash Indian. The bow, which swept sharply upward, had been rudely cut into the likeness of a bird's head. The craft was kept there so that anybody who wished to reach the sloop could go off in her.
"I don't think it's quite high water yet, and the breeze is dropping," Harry was saying. "There's just enough to take us a mile or two down the beach over the tide with the spritsail set. Then we could lower the mast and paddle home."
"Wouldn't she sail back?" Ray asked.
"No," was the answer, "only with a fair wind. You can't beat a thing like that to windward. There's not enough of her in the water."
Frank said that he would like to go, and after running the canoe down they lifted the short mast into place and set the little sail. It filled when a few strokes of the paddle had driven them out of the cove, and they slid away, rising and falling smoothly, with the swell running after them. Harry took hold of the rope that held the foot of the sail fast to a peg.
"You want to keep the sheet handy in a very small craft," he instructed. "Then if a hard puff of wind strikes her you can slack it up, or let it go altogether, when the sail will blow out loose. There's more weight in this breeze than I expected."
It seemed to Frank from the gurgle at the bows and the way the foam slipped by them that they were sailing very fast, but for a while he watched the rocky heads that dipped to the water open out one after another and then close in again behind them. The woods that crept between them down to the strips of shingle were rapidly growing shadowy, and the ridges of water that followed them seemed to be getting darker, though here and there one of them was flecked with bright wisps of froth. At length Harry let the sheet go and brought the canoe around.
"We'll have the mast down and get back," he said.
They had no trouble in rolling up the sail and laying the mast in the bottom of the craft, but when they dipped the paddles, Harry kneeling in the stern and Frank toward the bow, the latter realized that their next task would not be quite so easy. A chilly wind which seemed considerably stronger than before they turned struck his face, the bows splashed noisily, throwing up little spurts of spray, and now and then the narrow craft lurched rather wildly over the top of a swell. He worked hard for about twenty minutes, and then glancing astern was a little astonished to see that a rock which had been opposite them was now a remarkably small distance behind. Harry, who had evidently followed his glance, scowled disapprovingly.
"We'll have to paddle, that's a cold fact," he declared. "The tide seems to have turned quite a while before it ought to have, and the breeze is getting up again. We might find slacker water right inshore."
They edged close in to the rocks, the sight of which did not add to Frank's comfort, though the boat crept on a little faster. The swell broke in long white swirls about their feet, and it was evident that any attempt to land there was out of the question. Besides, even if they managed to reach the bush, there was no trail to the ranch, and he had no desire to struggle through the tangle of fallen branches and dense thickets in the darkness. His knees and hands were getting sore, but he toiled on patiently with the single-ended paddle, while the canoe lurched more viciously and little showers of spray flew in over her bow. It was becoming exceedingly hard work to drive the craft into the rising head sea. The foam-girt rocks were, however, slowly crawling by, and at length, after laboring, panting and breathless, around a somewhat larger head, Harry suddenly stopped paddling.
"Hold on!" he exclaimed. "Just keep her from swinging, and look yonder!"
Frank, glad of a brief rest, gazed astern. It was neither light nor dark, for a pale moon hung low in the sky, casting a faint silvery track upon the water, which was now flecked with white froth a little off shore. Across the sweep of radiance there moved a tall black spire of slanting canvas, with the foam leaping up about the shadowy strip of hull beneath.
"The schooner!" said Harry significantly. "She's beating up over the tide and she'll probably stand close in, but I don't think they could see us against the land."
He spoke as if he did not wish to be seen, and for no very clear reason Frank felt glad that they lay in the shadow of a big black head. The schooner was coming on very fast, rising, it seemed to him, bodily, until he could make out the curl of piled-up water that flowed away beneath her depressed side. The mass of straining sailcloth hid most of her slanted deck, and he could see nobody on board her, but it seemed curious that she carried no lights. Then it occurred to him that she was heading straight for them, and he was about to dip his paddle when Harry stopped him.
"Keep still!" he commanded. "They'll have to come round before they reach us."
Frank could now hear the roar of water about the bow of the vessel, and in a minute or two she swayed suddenly upright and there was a great thrashing of canvas as, shooting forward, she came round. She was very near them and as her boom-foresail and mainsail swung across, leaving clear the side of the deck they had shrouded, he saw two or three shadowy figures busy forward. They became more distinct as she drove back into the moonlight, which fell upon the form of her helmsman. Frank could see him clearly, and there was, he fancied, something peculiar about the man.
The splashing top of a sea slopped into the canoe as they got way on her, and they taxed their strength to the utmost during the next hour. The craft bucked and jumped as they laboriously drove her over the confused swell, which was rapidly getting higher, and there was already a good deal of water washing about inside her. Once or twice Frank held his breath as a threatening mass of water heaved up ahead, but in each case she lurched across it safely, and presently they found smoother water under another crag. He gave a sigh of relief when at length they reached the cove and beached her upon the shingle. They turned her over to empty before they ran her up, and then Harry sat down upon a boulder. Frank already had discovered that he seldom talked of anything they had done as though it were an exploit.
"I'm quite puzzled about that schooner," he said presently.
"Why?"
Harry paused and thought a moment. "Well, it's a sure thing she's the vessel that crept past us the morning we were lying beneath the point, and though she's been seen three or four times now there's no notice in the papers of any arrival that seems to fit her. She has the look of being built for the Canadian sealing trade, and most of the craft in that business are mighty smart vessels."
"Doesn't a ship have to carry papers saying where she's from and where she's going?"
"Oh, yes," assented Harry. "Still, she might clear from somewhere in Canada, say for the halibut fishing – I've heard they're trying to start it there – or something that would keep her out a month or so. Then, as there is no end of quiet inlets in British Columbia and a good many here, she could run up and down from one to another and go back with a few fish, and there'd be nothing to show what she had been doing in the meanwhile."
"You think it's something illegal?"
"If it is anything honest I don't see why she was beating up without her lights in the strength of the tide, when she'd have slacker water over toward the other side, only there'd be a chance of her being seen from the Seattle boat if she ran across yonder. Now it's a general idea that there's a good deal of dope – that's opium – smuggled into this country, and now and then Chinamen, too. Our people won't have any more of them, but though they have no trouble in getting into Canada, they seem to like the States better. I guess wages are higher."
"Have you talked to your father about it?"
"I told him what we'd seen the other time and he looked kind of amused, or as if he didn't want to be bothered about the thing; though that may not have been it, either. Unless he tells you right out, you can never figure on what he's thinking. Anyway, I'll say nothing more to him unless there's some particular reason."
Harry was afterward sorry that he had arrived at this decision, and, for that matter, so was his father, but it was the next morning before this came about. In the meanwhile the boys went back to the ranch, and soon afterward retired to rest in the room they now shared. Frank went to sleep at once, and it was some time later when, awaking suddenly, he fancied that Harry had left his bed, which was fixed against the opposite wall. A faint light from outside crept into the room, and Frank made out a black figure standing by the open window. Slipping softly to the floor he moved toward it and Harry raised his hand warningly when he joined him.
"What are you doing here?" Frank inquired.
"Well," answered Harry, "since you ask me, I don't quite know, but I fancied I heard somebody about the ranch. Keep still and listen."
He spoke in a low and rather strained voice, and Frank, who was uneasily impressed by it, leaned out of the window. There was a moon somewhere in the sky, but it was obscured by clouds, and only a dim, uncertain light filtered down. It showed the great black firs which rose, a rampart of impenetrable darkness, beyond the rather less shadowy clearing, across part of which the fruit trees stretched. Then ran back, in regular rows, little clumps of deeper obscurity which presently grew blurred and faded into one another. The wind had apparently dropped again, for it was impressively still.
"I can't hear anything," whispered Frank.
"I'm not sure that I did," rejoined Harry. "It may be that seeing that schooner put the thing into my head, but we'll wait a little now that we're up."
For a couple of minutes they waited in silence. Then Harry suddenly gripped his companion's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "Across the clearing – yonder!"
Frank fancied that he could make out a shadowy object in the open space between the fruit trees and the forest. It was very dim and indistinct, and he realized that he would not have noticed it only that it moved. Shortly afterward it disappeared and a faint rattle like that made by two pieces of wood jarring together came out of the deep gloom beneath the firs.
"The fence," suggested Harry. "It sounded like the top rails going down."
The fence was made of split rails interlocked together in the usual manner without the use of nails, and it seemed to Frank very probable that anybody climbing over it in the darkness would be apt to knock one or two of them down. The question was who would be likely to climb over it, since there was no one living within some miles of the ranch. Then he caught another sound which seemed farther off. It suggested the crackle of rotten branches or torn-down undergrowth, but it ceased almost immediately.
"Slip on your things," whispered Harry. "I'm going down."
In a few moments they crept softly down the stairway barefooted, and Harry opened the outer door very cautiously. He picked up an ax outside, and they moved silently around the house, stopping now and then to listen. There was only a deep stillness. Nothing seemed to move; though Frank wished that he had at least a good thick stick in his hand. He had an uncomfortable feeling that they might come upon a man hiding in some strip of deeper gloom as they slowly crept along the wall. When at length they had satisfied themselves that there was nobody about, Harry sat down.
"I can't figure out this thing," he mused. "It seems to me that whoever those strangers were they haven't been near the house, and it's a quiet country, anyway." He glanced down at his bare feet. "I'd go along and look around the barn and stables only that I'd certainly stub my toes, and it wouldn't be any use. Nobody steals horses around here. They couldn't get rid of them if they did."
The outbuildings stood at some little distance from the house, and Frank, who remembered that they had strewn the trail to them with broken twigs in dragging some branches from the slashing, agreed with his companion that it would not be wise to traverse it in the darkness with unprotected feet.
"Couldn't you slip into the kitchen and get our boots?" he suggested.
"Not without waking dad," answered Harry. "He's in the next room, and he sleeps lightly. I'm not anxious to bring him out if no harm's been done."
"He'd get angry?"
"No, he'd only smile; and somehow that makes you feel quite cheap and small. Besides" – and he hesitated – "there was another time, when I roused them for nothing; and I don't want to do it again. You wouldn't either, if you had stood as much about it from Jake as I've had to ever since."
They decided to say nothing about the matter unless some reason for doing so appeared in the morning, and creeping back through the house as silently as possible they went to bed. They awoke a little later than usual, and going down found Mr. Oliver standing at one side of the kitchen table rather grave of face, with Jake, who also looked thoughtful, opposite him. A strip of paper with some writing on it lay between them. Mr. Oliver looked around as the boys came in.
"Did either of you hear anything suspicious last night?" he asked.
"Yes," said Harry hesitatingly. "In fact, we came down."
He briefly related why they had done so, and Jake broke in:
"Then why in the name of wonder didn't you call somebody?"
"It's a reasonable question," said Mr. Oliver.
Harry explained with some diffidence that they were afraid of being laughed at, and Frank felt a little uncomfortable under the rancher's steady gaze.
"Well," said the latter dryly, "I suppose your idea was natural, and we'll let it go at that. It's perhaps scarcely worth while to point out that most people get laughed at now and then, and there's no reason for believing that it hurts them. I wonder if you will be surprised to hear that my team has gone?"