Kitabı oku: «The Free Range», sayfa 10
Jimmie Welsh was undisturbed and unhurt. He and Newt were sheltered behind one rock, while Tip and Lem defended another, and Chuck Durstine held a third by the side of his dead partner, Red. The fourth charge found them lying on the ground, contrary to their former practice of standing, and they escaped unhurt, although their ability to shoot the mounted punchers above the wall was not diminished. Again they wrought terrible havoc.
“I sure wish I could’ve cleaned up on that straight flush, Billy,” remarked Jimmie Welsh to Speaker.
“So do I, Jimmie,” returned the other; “yore bad luck was just breakin’. But, look here. Suppose you fellers quit this business now. I don’t relish yore all bein’ slaughtered this-a-way, and it’s shore a comin’ to yuh if yuh don’t quit.”
“Yuh talk like a Sunday-school class had stampeded on yuh, Billy. I’m surprised!” gibed Welsh. “Mebbe yuh don’t like yore flowery bed of ease out there, what?”
“All horsin’ aside, I mean it,” insisted Speaker. “Yuh better quit now before they come ag’in.”
“Yeah, an’ get strung up to the nearest tree fer my pains, eh? Oh, no; I like this better; but, of course, if any o’ the boys – ”
“Naw! What the deuce are yuh talkin’ about?” demanded an aggrieved voice, instantly joined by the other three.
“You’re wrong, Jimmie; of course, I don’t mean that. If yuh’ll quit I’ll see that yuh don’t get strung up.”
“You’re shore some friendly, Billy,” said Jimmie, shaking his head; “but I couldn’t never look my boss in the face if I even thought o’ quittin’. That ain’t what he pays me fer.”
“I’ll give yuh a job as foreman on the Circle Arrow. I see one of you hellions got my foreman; he’s layin’ out there kickin’ still. What d’ye say?”
“I’m plumb regretful, Billy,” returned Welsh, without hesitation; “but I can’t do it. Mebbe one o’ the boys – ”
“Naw!” said the boys in unified contempt.
“Well, yuh pig-headed sons o’ misery, go on an’ die, then!” cried Speaker, quite out of patience.
“Jest a minute an’ we’ll oblige yuh, Billy,” rejoined Welsh, as the dreaded drumming of hoofs foretold the next charge.
There was a tense moment of waiting, and then the fusillade began again, pitifully weak from the sheepmen. When the horsemen had whirled out of sight Lem and Newt lay groaning on the ground, while Tip O’Niell lay strangling in a torrent of blood that rushed from what had once been his face.
Welsh took one look at the tortured man, and with a crack over the head from the butt of his pistol, rendered him unconscious and stilled his blood-curdling agonies. Then he walked over to the cowmen.
“Anybody got the makin’s?” he asked. “One o’ them punchers spilt mine out o’ my pocket last time.”
Nonchalantly he showed the clean rent on the left side of his flannel shirt, just over his heart, where his pocket had been.
Somebody handed up the paper and tobacco, and he rolled a cigarette, tossing the materials back to Chuck Durstine, who sauntered up, examining his gun curiously.
Durstine, from his appearance, had no right to be alive. His cheek bled where a bullet had grazed him, his left arm was scratched, and there were three holes in his clothes. His revolver was so hot he could hardly hold it.
When they had finished their smoke they started back to their shelter, the middle rock of the enclosure.
“Well, good-by, boys,” said Jimmie. “I allow it’s pretty near my turn an’ Chuck’s.”
“Good-by!” came the chorus from the owners, all of whom had pleaded steadily with the two to give up the unequal struggle. These men were hard and brave men, and they appreciated genuine grit as nothing else in the world, for it was a great factor in their own make-up.
“I’ll tell yuh this, Jimmie,” called out Beef Bissell, whose conceptions had been undergoing a radical change for the last two hours, “if you an’ Chuck are sheepmen, I take off my hat to yuh, that’s all! I never seen better fighters anywhere.”
“Yuh ought to see us when we ain’t dry-nursin’ a dozen cattle-owners,” retorted Welsh, amid a great guffaw of laughter.
Suddenly again sounded the roar of the galloping horses.
“Well, so-long, boys!” yelled Chuck, his voice barely audible.
“So-long.”
The chorused response was cut short by the spitting of weapons. Chuck faced to the left, Welsh to the right. Both pumped two guns as fast as they could. Presently Chuck dropped one and leaned against the rock, his face distorted, but the other gun going. Jimmie felt a stab of fire, and found his weight all resting on one foot. Dropping their pistols, they drew others from holsters and fought on.
A bullet furrowed Chuck’s scalp, and the blood blinded him so that he could not shoot. He stepped out from behind the rock, “fanning” one gun and clearing his eyes with the other hand. Three bullets hit him at once, and he dropped dead, firing three shots before he reached the ground.
He had scarcely fallen when Welsh’s other leg and both arms were broken, and he tumbled in a heap just as the last of the charging cowboys swept past. When they had gone there was a moment’s silence. Then:
“Hello, anybody!” called Speaker.
There was a pause.
“Hello!” came a muffled voice. “Come an’ git me. I cain’t fight no more.” And with a great shout the owner of the Circle Arrow outfit ran to where Jimmie Welsh, the indomitable, lay helpless, disabled by six bullets, but still full of fight.
“Stick me up on that wall, Billy,” he said faintly, “an’ put a gun in each hand. I can’t shoot ’em, but them punchers’ll think I can and finish me.”
“You go to Hell!” remarked Speaker joyfully.
“Don’t call yore ranch names,” admonished Jimmie with a grin, and fainted.
CHAPTER XIX
AN INDIAN COULEE
By four o’clock in the morning the fifteen hundred head of cattle had crossed the ford of the Big Horn and were bedded down on the other side. When this hazardous business had been completed, Bud Larkin ordered the sheep brought up and kept on the eastern bank among the cool grass of the bottoms.
The captive rustlers, under guard, were being held until daylight, when, it had been decided, they would be taken to the almost deserted Bar T ranch, and kept there until further action could be determined on in regard to them.
When dawn finally came Bud looked at the stolid faces of the men, and recognized most of them as having belonged to the party that had so nearly ended his earthly career. He called them by their names, and some of them grinned a recognition.
“Hardly expected to meet yuh again,” said one amiably. “Thought it might be t’other side of Jordan, but not this side of the Big Horn.”
“That’s one advantage of raising sheep,” retorted Bud. “Mine are so well trained they stampede in time to save my life. You fellows ought to have joined me in the business then.”
“Wisht we had,” remarked another gloomily. “’Tain’t so hard on the neck in the end.”
Bud wondered at the hardihood of a man who, facing sure death, could still joke grimly about it.
Directly after breakfast the rustlers were mounted on their horses, with their arms tied behind them, and, under a guard of six men, started on their journey to the Bar T. In charge of the outfit was a gray-haired sheep-owner from Montana, and to his care Bud entrusted a long letter to Juliet that he had added to day by day with a pencil as opportunity offered.
It was such a letter as a lonely girl in love likes to get, and Bud’s only thought in sending it was to prove that she was ever in his mind, and that he was still safe and well.
Weary and sleepless, Bud then prepared for the ordeal with Stelton. From Sims, who seemed to know the country thoroughly, he learned that Indian Coulee was almost thirty miles south-east, and could be distinguished by the rough weather-sculpture of an Indian head on the butte that formed one side of the ravine.
Lest there be a misunderstanding, it should be said here that this was the second day after the battle of Welsh’s Butte, as it came to be known. The first day the punchers had been busy burying the dead and attending to the numerous things to which such an occasion gives rise. It was on the morning of this day that Stelton, giving as an excuse his urgent desire to return to the Bar T, had ridden away, commanding his cowboys to remain and do their portion of the work.
Late in the afternoon he had met Smithy Caldwell in a secret place, and given him a note to the leader of the band of rustlers. This Caldwell, with his usual tricky foresight, did not deliver, giving the message by word of mouth, and keeping the piece of paper as evidence in case Stelton should turn against him.
Stelton, anxious to hear how the commencement of the drive fared before returning to the Bar T ranch, camped in the hills that night, and moved on to Indian Coulee the next morning to await the messenger.
Just previous to starting on the long ride, Larkin called Sims to him.
“Now, I’ll tell you why I want these cows,” he said. “We’ve got to rush the sheep up the range. As soon as I’m gone start ’em, but surround the sheep with a line of cows, and keep a good bunch ahead. From a distance it will look like a cattle-drive, and may serve to throw the punchers off the track if they’re anywhere in sight.”
“By Michaeljohn! That’s a good idea!” exclaimed Sims; “but I don’t allow either of them will feed much.”
“Let ’em starve, then; but keep ’em moving,” said Bud. “We win or bust on this effort. Fact is, we’ve got to keep those cows anyhow, to return them to their owners if possible, and you might as well make some good use of them.”
Mike Stelton, meanwhile, who had often used the place as a rendezvous before, went into the usual shady spot, dropped the reins over his horse’s head, and lay down.
Stelton’s heart was at peace, for the sheepmen he considered defeated at every angle. Jimmie Welsh, half dead and delirious, was on his way to the Circle Arrow ranch under Billy Speaker’s care. Consequently, it was impossible that Bud Larkin should know anything of the battle at Welsh’s Butte.
Larkin would go on about his plans, dreaming the cowmen still in captivity, and the pursuing punchers on a false trail, Stelton calculated. Then he chuckled at the surprise in store for the ambitious sheepmen, for the remaining cowboys under Beef Bissell had already begun to talk of a war of extermination and revenge.
When he had disposed of Larkin to his satisfaction, the foreman recollected with delight that the rustlers must have the fifteen hundred cows well up the range by this morning. The chance of their being intercepted by the cowboys was small, and the probabilities were that they would be at the northern shipping-point and well out of the way before the punchers had finished with the miserable sheep.
Two things Mike Stelton had not counted on. One was the prompt and daring action of Larkin in risking his all on one forced march up the range; the other was the treachery of Smithy Caldwell in not burning the note according to instructions.
From the first Stelton had “doped” Caldwell out all wrong. He took him for a really evil character supplied with a fund of sly cunning and clever brains that would benefit the rustlers immensely, and for that reason had warmly supported his application for membership. Somehow he did not see the cowardly streak and dangerous selfishness that were the man’s two distinguishing traits.
Now, as Stelton lay in the shade with his hat over his face, steeped in roseate dreams, the weariness of a week of long marches and an afternoon’s hard fighting oppressed him. He had been riding nights of late, and just to lie down was to feel drowsy. He would like to get a nap before the sun got directly above and left no shade whatever, but he did not permit himself this luxury, although, like all men with uneasy consciences, he was a very light sleeper.
He figured that he could hear the trotting of a horse in plenty of time to prepare for any possible danger, and remained flat on his back in the warm sun, half-asleep, but yet keenly alert.
Bud Larkin, sighting the coulee and Stelton’s horse at a considerable distance, dismounted and promptly got out of range. Then he continued stealthily to approach, wondering why Stelton did not put in an appearance somewhere and start hostilities.
A quarter of a mile from the spot where Stelton’s horse stood dejectedly Larkin left his own animal and proceeded on foot. Nearer and nearer he approached, and still there was no sign of Stelton.
Bud unslung his glasses, and scanning the rocks near the horse carefully, at last made out the small outline of a booted foot along the ground. Then he drew his revolver and crept forward, choosing every step with care.
At a distance of thirty yards his foot unconsciously crunched a bit of rotten stone. There was a scrambling behind the rock, and a moment later Stelton’s head appeared. Bud had him covered with two revolvers, and on sight of the dark face ran forward to finish the job.
But the foreman was no mollycoddle, and with one lightning-like motion unlimbered his .45 and began to shoot. Like most Western gun-handlers, his revolver commenced to spit as soon as its mouth was out of the holster, and the bullets spurted up the sand twice in front of Bud before the muzzle had reached a dangerous angle, so swiftly was it fired.
But the sheepman was not idle, and had both guns working so accurately that at last Stelton drew in his head, but left his hand around the corner of the rock, still pulling the trigger. He would never have done this with any other man, but he still considered Larkin a “dude” and a sheepman, and knew that neither was much of a shot.
With a ball through his right foot, Bud hopped out of the path of the stream of lead and discharged each revolver once at the same spot. The result was a broken hand and a wrecked gun for Stelton, who, unfortunately, did not know that Larkin, on occasions, had split the edges of playing cards with dueling pistols.
Before the Bar T foreman could reach his Winchester, Bud was around the rock, and had him covered. Stelton gave one look at the hard, determined eyes of the sheepman and thought better of the impulse to bolt for the rifle on a chance. He slowly hoisted his hands.
“Well, darn it, what do yuh want?” he snarled.
“First I want you to back up against that rock and keep your hands in the air until I tell you to take ’em down,” said Bud, in a tone that meant business.
Stelton obeyed the command sullenly. Then Larkin, keeping him covered, picked up the Winchester and found another .45 in an extra holster thrown over the pommel of the saddle. Next he took down Stelton’s rope.
Larkin was satisfied with his investigations. “Turn around and face the rock, and hold your hands out behind you!” he ordered.
With the wicked glitter of an animal at bay in his eye, Stelton did as he was told, and in a moment Larkin had him bound and helpless, and on the end of a tether. Still covering his man, he mounted Stelton’s horse and told him to march ahead.
In this manner they traveled the quarter-mile to Bud’s animal. There they exchanged beasts, and started on the long ride back to the sheep camp.
“What’re yuh doin’ this for?” stormed Stelton, at a loss to explain the sudden appearance of Larkin in Caldwell’s place, but beginning to have a terrible fear.
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t.” His tone was convincing.
“Well, I’ll tell you. All the rustlers are taken, and I have absolute proof that you are their leader,” replied Bud coolly. “I allow old Bissell will be glad to see you when you’re brought in, eh?”
Stelton laughed contemptuously.
“What proof?” he demanded.
“A note to Smithy Caldwell that he forgot to burn. He tried to swallow it when I captured him, but I saw him first.”
Stelton stood the blow well and made no answer, but Larkin, watching him, saw his head drop a trifle as though he were crushed by some heavy weight.
“What’re yuh goin’ to do with me now?” he asked at last.
“Ship you under guard to the Bar T ranch, where the rest have gone. Then the cattlemen can settle your case when they come back from their vacation.”
For an instant it was on Stelton’s tongue to blurt out what had happened two days previous, but an instinctive knowledge that Larkin would profit by the information restrained him, and he continued riding on in silence, a prey to dismal thoughts better imagined than described.
CHAPTER XX
SOMEBODY NEW TURNS UP
Utterly exhausted with his day’s riding and the stress of his other labors, Bud Larkin, driving his captive, arrived at the sheep camp shortly before sundown. Faint with hunger – for he had not eaten since morning – he turned Stelton over to the eager sheepmen who rode out to meet him.
Things had gone well that day with the drive, for the animals, under pressure, had made fifteen miles. The cattle, at first hard to manage, had finally been induced to lead and flank the march, but neither they nor the sheep had grazed much.
When Larkin arrived they had just reached a stream and had been separated from the sheep that both might drink untainted water. Sims had set his night watchers, and these were beginning to circle the herd. The sheep were bedding down on a near-by rise of ground.
Larkin, having eaten, cooled and bathed himself in the stream and returned to the camp for rest. Shortly thereafter a single horseman, laden with a bulky apparatus, was seen approaching from a distance. Immediately men mounted and rode out to meet him, and returned with him to camp when he had proved himself harmless and expressed a desire to remain all night in the camp.
It was Ed Skidmore, the photographer, who had just completed a profitable day at Red Tarken’s ranch, the M Square.
Larkin, who was lying on the ground, heard the excitement as the newcomer rode into camp, and got up to inspect him. Skidmore had dismounted, and had his back turned when Bud approached, but suddenly turned so that the two came face to face.
As their eyes met, both started back as though some terrible thing had come between them.
“Bud! My Heavens!” cried Skidmore, turning pale under his tan.
“Lester!” was all that Larkin said as he stared with starting eyes and sagging jaw at the man before him. Then, as one in a dream, he put out his hand, and the other, with a cry of joy, seized and wrung it violently.
For a moment the two stood thus looking amazedly at each other, while the sheepmen, suddenly stricken into silence, gazed curiously at the episode. Then, one by one, they turned and walked away, leaving the two together.
It was Bud who found his voice first.
“What under heaven are you doing out here, Lester?” he asked at last.
“Earning a living making pictures,” returned the other with a short laugh. “It must be quite a shock to you to see me actually working.”
“I can’t deny it,” said Bud as he smiled a bit. “But when did you come out?”
“Six months after you did.”
“But why on earth didn’t you let me know? I would have given you a job on the ranch.”
“That’s just why I didn’t let you know. I didn’t want a job on the ranch. I wanted to do something for myself. I concluded I had been dependent on other people about long enough. I’m not mushy, or converted, or anything like that, Bud, but I figured that when the governor died and left me without a cent I had deserved everything I got and was a disgrace to the family and myself.”
“Same with me, Lester,” acknowledged Bud. “If you had only told me how you felt about things we could have struck out here together.”
“And you with all the money? I guess not,” and Lester spoke bitterly.
“I’d have divided with you in a minute, if you had talked to me the way you’re doing now. We always used to divide things when we were kids, you know.”
“That’s square of you, Bud, but I really don’t want the money now. I’m making a good go of my pictures; I don’t owe anybody, and I haven’t an enemy that I know of. What have you done with your money?”
Larkin turned around and motioned toward the thousands of sheep dotted over the hills.
“There’s all my available cash. Of course there was some in securities I couldn’t realize on by the terms of father’s will, and if I go to the wall I can always get enough to live on out of that. But my idea is to get a living out of this, and just now I am in the very devil of a fix.”
“How?”
Bud narrated briefly the stormy events that had led up to this final stroke by which he hoped to defeat the cowmen and save his own fortune; and as he did so he observed his brother closely.
Lester Larkin was three years younger than Bud, was smaller, and had grown up with a weak and vacillating character. The youngest child in the wealthy Larkin family, he had been spoiled and indulged until when a youth in his teens he had become the despair of them all.
Even now, despite the tanned look of health he had acquired, it could still be seen that he was by no means the strong, virile young man that Bud had become. His face was rather delicate than rugged in outline; his brown hair was inclined to curl, and his blue eyes were large and beautiful.
The sensitive mouth was still wilful, though character was beginning to show there. He was, in fact, a grand mistake in upbringing. With all the instincts of a lover of beauty he had been raised by a couple of dull parents to a rule-of-thumb existence that started in a business office late one morning and ended in a café early the next.
It was the kind of life to which the poor laborer looks up with consuming envy, and which makes him what he thinks is a socialist. Given a couple of sharp pencils and some blocks of paper, along with sympathy and encouragement, Lester Larkin might have become a writer or an artist of no mean ability.
But the elder Larkin, believing that what had made one generation would make another, had started young Lester on a high stool in his office with a larger percentage of dire results than he had ever imagined could accrue to the employment of one individual. With the high stool went a low wage and a lot of wholesome admonitions – and this, after a boyhood and early youth spent in the very lap of luxury.
Thus, when the father died, the boy, at nineteen, knew more ways to spend a dollar than his father had at thirty-nine, and less ways to earn it than his father at nine. So much for Lester.
“Well, if I can help you in any way, Bud, let me know,” he said when his brother had finished his story of the range war that was now reaching its climax. “I rather imagine I would like a jolly good fight for a change.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt, kid,” replied Bud, smiling at the other’s enthusiasm, “but I have an idea that I can use you somehow. Just stick around for a day or two and I’ll show you how to ’walk’ sheep so your eyes’ll pop out.”
“It’s purely a matter of business with me,” rejoined Lester. “Pictures of seventy men at five dollars apiece, selling only one to each, will be three hundred and fifty dollars. I think I’ll stick.”
“Suppose I get ’em all in one group so you can’t take individuals, then what will you do?”
“I’ll make more money still,” retorted the other promptly. “I’ll sell seventy copies of the same picture at five apiece and only have to do one developing. What are you tryin’ to do, kid me?”
Bud laughed and gave up the attempt to confuse the boy.
During the next two days Bud saw more sheep-walking than he had seen since going into the business, and Lester amused himself profitably by taking pictures of the embarrassed plainsmen, many of whom would not believe it possible that an exact image of them could be reproduced in the twinkling of an eye, but who were willing to pay the price if the feat were accomplished.
When he had filled all his private orders, the picturesqueness of the life and outfit with which he traveled so appealed to Lester that he made nearly a hundred plates depicting the daily events of the drive and the camp. And these hundred plates, three-quarters of which were excellent, form by far the best collection of actual Western scenes of that time and are still preserved in the old Larkin ranch house in Montana.
At the end of the two days the Gray Bull River was still twenty miles away and would require an equal amount of time to be reached and crossed. During this period Bud Larkin knew nothing whatever of the fate of Jimmie Welsh and his companions, believing that they still held the repentant cowmen captive, and that the punchers in pursuit were still searching the bad lands for them – an almost endless task.
He was in a state of high good humor that his plans had carried out so well, and looked forward with almost feverish impatience to the glorious hour when the last of his bawling merinos should stand dripping, but safe, on the other side of the Gray Bull. The nearer approach to the stream brought a greater nervous tension and scouts at a five-mile radius rode back and forth all day searching for any signs of spying cowpunchers.
The thought that he might effect the passage without hindrance or loss was stretching the improbable in Bud’s mind, and he devoted much time every day to an inspection of his supplies and accouterments.
