Cow-Country by B. M. Bower (best color ereader txt) 📗

Just how soon the chance would come, Bud had not realized. He had no more than come within shouting distance of the herd when a big, rollicky steer broke from the milling cattle and headed straight out past him, running like a deer. Stopper, famed and named for his prowess with just such cattle, wheeled in his tracks and lengthened his stride to a run.

“Tie 'im down!” someone yelled behind Bud. And “Catch 'im and tie 'im down!” shouted another.

For answer Bud waved his hand, and reached in his pocket for his knife. Stopper was artfully circling the steer, forcing it back toward the herd, and in another hundred yards or so Bud must throw his loop He sliced off a saddle-string and took it between his teeth, jerked his rope loose, flipped open the loop as Stopper raced up alongside, dropped the noose neatly, and took his turns while Stopper planted his forefeet and braced himself for the shock. Bud's right leg was over the cantle, all his weight on the left stirrup when the jerk came and the steer fell with a thump. By good luck—so Bud afterwards asserted—he was off and had the steer tied before it had recovered its breath to scramble up. He remounted, flipped off the loop and recoiled his rope while he went jogging up to meet a rider coming out to him.

If he expected thanks for what he had done, he must have received a shock. Other riders had left their posts and were edging up to hear what happened, and Bud reined up in astonishment before the most amazing string of unseemly epithets he had ever heard. It began with: “What'd you throw that critter for?”—which of course is putting it mildly—and ended in a choked phrase which one man may not use to another's face and expect anything but trouble afterwards.

Bud unbuckled his gun and hung the belt on his saddle horn, and dismounted. “Get off your horse and take the damnedest licking you ever had in your life, for that!” He invited vengefully. “You told me to tie down that steer, and I tied him down. You've got no call to complain—and there isn't a man on earth I'll take that kinda talk from. Crawl down, you parrot-faced cow-eater—and leave your gun on the saddle.”

The man remained where he was and looked Bud over uncertainly. “Who are you, and where'd yuh come from?” he demanded more calmly. “I never saw yuh before.”

“Well, I never grew up with your face before me, either!” Bud snapped. “If I had I'd probably be cross-eyed by now. You called me something! Get off that horse or I'll pull you off!”

“Aw, yuh don't want to mind—” began a tall, lean man pacifically; but he of the high nose stopped him with a wave of the hand, his eyes still measuring the face, the form and the fighting spirit of one Bud Birnie, standing with his coat off, quivering with rage.

“I guess I'm in the wrong, young fellow—I DID holler 'Tie 'im down.' But if you'd ever been around this outfit any you 'd have known I didn't mean it literal.” He stopped and suddenly he laughed. “I've been yellin' 'Tie 'im down' for two years and more, when a critter breaks outa the bunch, and nobody was ever fool enough to tackle it before. It's just a sayin' we've got, young man. We—”

“What about the name you called me?” Bud was still advancing slowly, not much appeased by the explanation. “I don't give a darn about the steer. You said tie him, and he's tied. But when you call me—”

“My mistake, young feller. When I get riled up I don't pick my words.” He eyed Bud sharply. “You're mighty quick to obey orders,” He added tentatively.

“I was brought up to do as I'm told,” Bud retorted stiffly. “Any objections to make?”

“Not one in the world. Wish there was more like yuh. You ain't been in these parts long?” His tone made a question of the statement.

“Not right here.” Bud had no reason save his temper for not giving more explicit information, but Bart Nelson—as Bud knew him afterwards—continued to study him as if he suspected a blotched past.

“Hunh. That your horse?”

“I've got a bill of sale for him.”

“You don't happen to be wanting a job, I s'pose?”

“I wouldn't refuse to take one.” And then the twinkle came back to Bud's eyes, because all at once the whole incident struck him as being rather funny. “I'd want a boss that expected to have his orders carried out, though. I lack imagination, and I never did try to read a man's mind. What he says he'd better mean—when he says it to me.”

Bart Nelson gave a short laugh, turned and sent his riders back to their work with oaths tingling their ears. Bud judged that cursing was his natural form of speech.

“Go let up that steer, and I'll put you to work,” he said to Bud afterwards. “That's a good rope horse you're riding. If you want to use him, and if you can hold up to that little sample of roping yuh gave us, I'll pay yuh sixty a month. And that's partly for doing what you're told,” he added with a quick look into Bud's eyes. “You didn't say where you're from——”

“I was born and raised in cow-country, and nobody's looking for me,” Bud informed him over his shoulder while he remounted, and let it go at that. From southern Wyoming to Idaho was too far, he reasoned, to make it worth while stating his exact place of residence. If they had never heard of the Tomahawk outfit it would do no good to name it. If they had heard of it, they would wonder why the son of so rich a cowman as Bob Birnie should be hiring out as a common cowpuncher so far from home. He had studied the matter on his way north, and had decided to let people form their own conclusions. If he could not make good without the name of Bob Birnie behind him, the sooner he found it out the better.

He untied the steer, drove it back into the herd and rode over to where the high-nosed man was helping hold the “Cut.”

“Can you read brands? We're cuttin' out AJ and AJBar stuff; left ear-crop on the AJ, and undercut on the AJBar.”

Bud nodded and eased into the herd, spied an AJ two-year-old and urged it toward the outer edge, smiling to himself when he saw how Stopper kept his nose close to the animal's rump. Once in the milling fringe of the herd, Stopper nipped it into the open, rushed it to the cut herd, wheeled and went back of his own accord. From the corner of his eye, as he went, Bud saw that Bart Nelson and one or two others were watching him. They continued to eye him covertly while he worked the herd with two other men. He was glad that he had not travelled far that day, and that he had ridden Smoky and left Stopper fresh and eager for his favorite pastime, which was making cattle do what they particularly did not want to do. In that he was adept, and it pleased Bud mightily to see how much attention Stopper was attracting.

Not once