The Range Dwellers by B. M. Bower (best books to read all time txt) 📗

Peril looked pretty sick when I picked myself out of the mess and found I wasn't hurt except in my feelings. Barney's car only had the lamps smashed, and as he had run into me, that made me sore. We said things, and I caught a street-car back to town. Barney drove in, about as hot as I was, I guess.

So, when I got home and found a letter from Frosty, my mind was open for something new. The letter was short, but it did the business and gave me a hunger for the old days that nothing but a hard gallop over the prairie-lands, with the wind blowing the breath out of my nostrils, could satisfy. He said the round-up would start in about a week. That was about all, but I got up and did something I'd never done before.

I took the letter and went straight down to dad's private den and interrupted him when he was going over his afternoon letters with Crawford. Dad was very particular not to be interrupted at such times; his mail-hours were held sacred, and nothing short of a life-or-death matter would have taken me in there—in any normal state of mind.

Crawford started out of his chair—if you knew Crawford that one action would tell you a whole lot—and dad whirled toward me and asked what had happened. I think they both expected to hear that the house was on fire.

"The round-up starts next week, dad," I blurted, and then stopped. It just occurred to me that it might not sound important to them.

Dad matched his finger-tips together. "Since I first bought a bunch of cattle," he drawled, "the round-up has never failed to start some time during this month. Is it vitally important that it should not start?"

"I've got to start at once, or I can't catch it." I fancied, just then, that I detected a glimmer of amusement on Crawford's face. I wanted to hit him with something.

"Is there any reason why it must be caught?" dad wanted to know, in his worst tone, which is almost diabolically calm.

"Yes," I rapped out, growing a bit riled, "there is. I can't stand this do-nothing existence any longer. You brought me up to it, and never let me know anything about your business, or how to help you run it—"

"It never occurred to me," drawled dad, "that I needed help to run my business."

"And last spring you rose up, all of a sudden, and started in to cure me of being a drone. The medicine you used was strong; it did the business pretty thoroughly. You've no kick coming at the result. I'm going to start to-morrow."

Dad looked at me till I began to feel squirmy. I've thought since that he wasn't as surprised as I imagined, and that, on the whole, he was pleased. But, if he was, he was mighty careful not to show it.

"You would better give me a list of your debts, then," he said laconically. "I shall see that your allowance goes on just the same; you may want to invest in—er—cattle."

"Thank you, dad," I said, and turned to go.

"And I wish to Heaven," he called after me, "that you'd take Rankin along and turn him loose out there. He might do to herd sheep. I'm sick of that hark-from-the-tombs face of his. I made a footman of him while you were gone before, rather than turn him off; but I'm damned if I do it again."

I stopped just short of the door and grinned back at him. "Rankin," I said, "is one of the horrors I'm trying to leave behind, dad."

But dad had gone back to his correspondence. "In regard to that Clark, Marsden, and Clark affair, I think, Crawford, it would be well—"

I closed the door quietly and left them. It was dad's way, and I laughed a little to myself as I was going back to my room to round up Rankin and set him to packing. I meant to stand over him with a club this time, if necessary, and see that I got what I wanted packed.

The next evening I started again for Montana—and I didn't go in dad's private car, either. Save for the fact that I had no grievance with him, and that we ate dinner alone together and drank a bottle of extra dry to the success of my pilgrimage, I went much as I had gone before: humbly and unheralded except for a telegram for some one to meet me at Osage.

Rankin, I may say, did not go with me, though I did as dad had suggested and offered to take him along and get him a job herding sheep. The memory of Rankin's pained countenance lingers with me yet, and cheers me in many a dark hour when there's nothing else to laugh over.

CHAPTER X. I Shake Hands with Old Man King.

For the second time in my irresponsible career I stood on the station platform at Osage and watched the train slide off to the East. It's a blamed fool who never learns anything by experience, and I never have accused myself of being a fool—except at odd times—so I didn't land broke. I had money to pay for several meals, and I looked around for somebody I knew; Frosty, I hoped.

For the sodden land I had looked upon with such disgust when first I had seen it, the range lay dimpled in all the enticement of spring. Where first I had seen dirty snow-banks, the green was bright as our lawn at home. The hilltops were lighter in shade, and the jagged line of hills in the far distance was a soft, soft blue, just stopping short of reddish-purple. I'm not the sort of human that goes wading to his chin in lights and shades and dim perspectives, and names every tone he can think of—especially mauve; they do go it strong on mauve—before he's through. But I did lift my hat to that dimply green reach of prairie, and thanked God I was there.

I turned toward the hill that hid the town, and there came Frosty driving the same disreputable rig that had taken me first to the Bay State. I dropped my suit-case and gripped his hand almost before he had pulled up at the platform. Lord! but I was glad to see that thin, brown face of his.

"Looks like we'd got to be afflicted with your presence another summer," he grinned. "I hope yuh ain't going to claim I coaxed yuh back, because I took particular pains not to. And, uh course, the boys are just dreading the sight of yuh. Where's your war-bag, darn yuh?"

How was that for a greeting? It suited me, all right. I just thumped Frosty on the back and called him a name that it would make a lady faint to hear, and we laughed like a couple of fools.

I'm not on oath, perhaps, but still I feel somehow bound to tell all the truth, and not to pass myself off for a saint. So I will say that Frosty and I had a celebration, that night; an Osage, Montana, celebration, with all the fixings. Know the brand—because if you don't, I'd hang before I'd tell just how many shots we put through ceilings, or how we rent the atmosphere outside. You see, I was glad to get back, and Frosty was glad to have me back; and since neither of us are the fall-on-your-neck-and-put-a-ring-on-your-finger kind, we had to exuberate some other way; and, as Frosty, would put it, "We sure did."

I can't say we felt quite so exuberant next morning, but we were willing to take our medicine, and started for the ranch all serene. I won't say a word about mauves and faint ambers and umbras, but I do want to give that country a good word, as it looked that morning to me. It was great.

There are plenty of places can put it all over that Osage country for straight scenery, but I never saw such a contented-looking place as that big prairie-land was that morning. I've seen it with the tears running down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture meeting, I tell you, it all looked good to me, and I told Frosty so.

"I'd rather be a forty-dollar puncher in this man's land," I enthused, "than a lily-of-the-field somewhere in civilization."

"In other words," Frosty retorted sarcastically, "you think you prefer the canned vegetables and contentment, as the Bible says, to corn-fed beefsteak and homesickness thereby. But you wait till yuh get to the ranch and old Perry Potter puts yuh through your paces. You'll thank the Lord every Sundown that yuh ain't a forty-dollar man that has got to drill right along or get fired; you'll pat yourself on the back more than once that you've got a cinch on your job and can lay off whenever yuh feel like it. From all the signs and tokens, us Ragged H punchers'll be wise to trade our beds off for lanterns to ride by. Your dad's bought a lot more cattle, and they've drifted like hell; we've got to cover mighty near the whole State uh Montana and part uh South Africa to gather them in."

"You're a blamed pessimist," I told him, "and you can't give me cold feet that easy. If you knew how I ache to get a good horse under me—"

"Thought they had horses out your way," Frosty cut in.

"A range-horse, you idiot, and a range-saddle. I did ride some on a fancy-gaited steed with a saddle that resembled a porus plaster and stirrups like a lady's bracelet; it didn't fill the aching void a little bit."

"Well, maybe yuh won't feel any aching void out here," he said, "but if yuh follow round-up this season you'll sure have plenty of other brands of ache."

I told him I'd be right with them at the finish, and he needn't to worry any about me. Pretty soon I'll show you how well I kept my word. We rode and rode, and handed out our experiences to each other, and got to Pochette's that night. I couldn't help remembering the last time I'd been over that trail, and how rocky I felt about things. Frosty said he wasn't worried about that walk of his into Pochette's growing dim in his memory, either.

Well, then, we got to Pochette's—I think I have remarked the fact. And at Pochette's, just unharnessing his team, limped my friend of White Divide, old King. Funny how a man's view-point will change when there's a girl cached somewhere in the background. Not even the memory of Shylock's stiffening limbs could bring me to a mood for war. On the contrary, I felt more like rushing up and asking him how were all the folks, and when did Beryl expect to come home. But not Frosty; he drove phlegmatically up so that there was just comfortable space for a man to squeeze between our rig and King's, hopped out, and began unhooking the traces as if there wasn't a soul but us around. King was looping up the lines of his team, and he glared at us across the backs of his horses as if we were—well, caterpillars at a picnic and he was a girl with nice clothes and a fellow and a set of nerves. His next logical move would be to let out a squawk and faint, I thought; in which case I should have started in to do the comforting, with a dipper of water from the pump. He didn't faint, though.

I walked around and let down the neck-yoke, and his eyes followed me with suspicion. "Hello, Mr. King," I sang out in a brazen attempt to hypnotize him into the belief we were friends. "How's the world using you, these days?"

"Huh!" grunted the unhypnotized one, deep in his chest.

Frosty straightened up and looked at me queerly; he said afterward that he couldn't make out whether I was trying to pull off a gun fight, or had gone dippy.

But I was only in the last throes of exuberance at being in the country at all, and I didn't give a damn what King thought; I'd made up my mind to be sociable, and that settled it.

"Range is looking fine," I remarked, snapping the inside checks back into the hame-rings. "Stock come through the winter in good shape?" Oh, I had my nerve right along with me.

"You go to hell," advised King, bringing out each word fresh-coined