Kitabı oku: «The Free Range», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XV
COWLAND TOPSY-TURVY
To Bud Larkin enough had already happened to make him as philosophical as Socrates. Epictetus remarks that our chief happiness should consist in knowing that we are entirely indifferent to calamity; that disgrace is nothing if our consciences are right and that death, far from being a calamity is, in fact, a release.
But the world only boasts of a few great minds capable of believing these theories, and Larkin’s was not one of them. He was distinctly and completely depressed at the prospect ahead of him.
It was about ten o’clock at night and he sat in the chair beside his table, upon which a candle was burning, running over the pages of an ancient magazine.
The knowledge of what the cowmen had decided to do with him had been brought by a committee of three of the men just before the supper hour and since that time Larkin had been fuming and growling with rage.
There seems to be something particularly shameful in a whipping that makes it the most dreaded of punishments. It was particularly so at the time in which this story is laid, for echoes of ’65 were still to be heard reverberating from one end of the land to the other. In the West whippings were of rare occurrence, if not unknown, except in penitentiaries, where they had entirely too great a vogue.
Larkin’s place of captivity was now changed. Some enterprising cowboy, at Bissell’s orders, had fashioned iron bars and these were fixed vertically across the one window. The long-unused lock of the door had been fitted with a key and other bars fastened across the doorway horizontally so that should Larkin force the lock he would still meet opposition.
Since Juliet’s unpleasant episode with her father Bud had seen her just once – immediately afterward. Then, frankly and sincerely, she had told him what had happened and why, and Larkin, touched to the heart, had pleaded with her for the greatest happiness of his life.
The realization of their need for each other was the natural outcome of the position of each, and the fact that, whatever happened, Juliet found herself forced to espouse Bud’s cause.
In that interview with her father she had come squarely to the parting of the ways, and had chosen the road that meant life and happiness to her. The law that human intellects will seek their own intellectual level, providing the person is sound in principle, had worked out in her case, and, once she had made her decision, she clung to it with all the steadfastness of a strong and passionate nature.
It was Bissell’s discovery of a new and intimate relation between his daughter and the sheepman that had resulted in the latter’s close confinement, and from the time that this occurred the two had seen nothing of each other except an occasional glimpse at a distance when Bud was taken out for a little exercise.
To-night, therefore, as Larkin sat contemplating the scene to be enacted at dawn, his sense of shame increased a hundredfold, for he knew that, as long as she lived, Julie could not forget the occurrence.
It should not be thought that all this while he had not formulated plans of escape. Many had come to him, but had been quickly dismissed as impracticable. Day and night one of the Bar T cowboys watched him. And even though he had been able to effect escape from his room, he knew that without a horse he was utterly helpless on the broad, level stretches of prairie. And to take a horse from the Bar T corral would lay him open to that greatest of all range crimes – horse-stealing.
To-night his guards had been doubled. One paced up and down outside his window and the other sat in the dining-room on which his door opened.
Now, at ten o’clock the entire Bar T outfit was asleep. Since placing the bunk-house at the disposal of the cowmen from other ranches, the punchers slept on the ground – rolled in their blankets as they always did when overtaken by night on the open range.
At ten-thirty Bud put out his candle, undressed, and went to bed. But he could not sleep. His mind reverted to Hard-winter Sims and the sheep camp by the Badwater. He wondered whether the men from Montana had arrived there yet, and, most intensely of all, he wondered whether Ah Sin had got safely through with his message.
He calculated that the Chinaman must have arrived three days before unless unexpectedly delayed, and he chafed at the apparent lack of effort made on his behalf. The only explanation that offered itself was – that Sims, taking advantage of the events happening at the Bar T, had seized the opportunity to hurry the gathering sheep north across the range. If such was the case, Larkin resigned himself to his fate, since he had given Sims full power to do as he thought best.
At about midnight he was dimly conscious of a scuffling sound outside his window, and, getting softly out of bed, went to the opening. In a few minutes the head of a man rose gradually above the window-sill close to the house, and a moment later he was looking into the face of Hard-winter Sims.
Controlling the shock this apparition gave him, Larkin placed his finger on his lips and whispered in a tone so low it was scarcely more than a breath:
“Did you get the fellow outside?”
Sims nodded.
“There’s another one in the dining-room just outside my door. He ought to be relieved at one o’clock, but he’ll have to go out and wake up his relief. He’ll go out the kitchen door, and when he does nab him, but don’t let him yell. Now pass me a gun.”
Without a sound, Sims inserted a long .45 between the clumsy bars, and followed it with a cartridge belt.
“How’ll we get yuh out?” he whispered.
“After fixing the man inside come out again and loosen these bars; the door is barred, too.”
“Where are the cowmen?” asked Sims.
“All in the bunk-house, and the punchers are sleeping out near the corral.”
“Yes, I seen ’em. Now you go back to bed an’ wait till I hiss through the window. Then we’ll have yuh out o’ here in a jiffy.”
The herder’s form vanished in the darkness, and Larkin, his heart beating high with hope and excitement, returned to his bed. Before lying down, however, he dressed himself completely and strapped on the cartridge belt and gun.
The minutes passed like hours. Listening with every nerve fiber on the alert, Bud found the night peopled with a multitude of sounds that on an ordinary occasion would have passed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting under the night coolness seemed to him almost like a pistol shot.
When at last it appeared that Sims must have failed and that dawn would surely begin to break, he heard a heavy sound in the dining-room and sat bolt upright. It was merely the cow-puncher there preparing to go out and waken his successor. Although the man made as little noise as possible, it seemed to Bud that his footsteps must wake everybody in the house.
The man went out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys, closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was out of the prisoner’s ken.
After a while, however, Bud’s ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were prying at the bars of the window with instruments muffled in cloth.
“Did you get him?” asked Bud.
“Shore! He won’t wake up for a week, that feller,” answered Sims placidly.
For a quarter of an hour the two worked at the clumsy bars, assisted by Bud from the inside. At the end of that time two of them came loose at the lower ends and were bent upward. Then the combined efforts of the three men were centered on the third bar, which gave way in a few minutes.
Handing his boots out first, Larkin crawled headforemost out of the window and put his arms around the shoulders of his rescuers, resting most of his weight upon their bent backs. Then they walked slowly away from the house and Bud’s feet and legs came out noiselessly. Still in the shadow of the walls they set him down and he drew on his boots.
It was not until then that Sims’s assistant made himself known.
“Hello, boss,” he said and took off his broad hat so that Larkin could see his face.
“Jimmie Welsh, by George!” whispered Bud joyfully, wringing his hand. “Did you bring many of the boys down with you?”
“Fifty,” replied the other.
“Bully for you! I don’t know what would become of me if it weren’t for you and Hard-winter.”
As they talked they were moving off toward the little river that wound past the Bar T house.
“Got a horse for me?” asked Bud.
“Yes,” said Sims, “over here in the bottoms where the rest of the boys are.”
“What do you plan to do now?”
Sims told him and Bud grinned delightedly at the same time that his face hardened with the triumph of a revenge about to be accomplished.
“Let’s get at it,” he said.
“Wait here and I’ll get the rest of the bunch.”
Hard-winter left them, and in a few minutes returned with a dozen brawny sheepmen, mostly recruited from Larkin’s own ranch in Montana. When greetings had been exchanged they moved off quietly toward the ranch-house.
The corral of the Bar T was about fifty yards back of the cook’s shanty and as you faced it had a barn on the right-hand side, where the family saddle horses were kept in winter, as well as the small amount of hay that Bissell put up every year.
To the left of the corral the space was open, and here the Bar T punchers had made their camp since leaving their former quarters. The bunk-house on the other hand stood perhaps fifty feet forward of the barn. It was toward this building that the expedition under Sims took its way.
Silently the rough door swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, with a revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remained outside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursing that grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver butt coming in contact with a human skull. After that there was practically no noise whatever.
The men outside watched anxiously, fearful that the single outcry had raised an alarm. But there was no sound from either the house or the cowboys’ camp. Presently Welsh stuck his head out of the door.
“How is she? Safe?” he asked.
“Yes, bring ’em out,” answered Bud, and the next minute a strange procession issued from the bunk-house.
The cowmen, gagged, and with their hands bound behind them, walked single file, accompanied by one of the sheepmen. Without a word the line turned in the direction of the river bottoms, where the rest of the band and the horses were waiting.
To do this it was necessary to pass behind the cook-house. Bud leaned over and spoke to Sims.
“Can’t we get Bissell in this party? He’s the fellow that has made all the trouble.”
“Sure, Jimmy and I will go in and get him. I had forgotten all about him.”
But they were saved the trouble, for just as they were opposite the cook-house, Larkin saw a burly form outlined for an instant in the doorway of the cowboys’ dining-room. With three bounds he was upon this form and arrived just in time to seize a hand that was vainly tugging at a revolver strapped on beneath his night clothes.
Had fortune not tangled Bissell’s equipment that night Bud Larkin would have been a dead man. Snatching off his hat, he smashed it over the cattle king’s mouth, and an instant later Bissell, writhing and struggling, but silent, was being half-carried out to join his friends.
Matters now proceeded with speed and smoothness. The prisoners were hurried to where the remainder of the band awaited them. Then, still bound and gagged, they were mounted on spare horses.
Only thirty of Welsh’s raiders had come on this trip, the rest remaining to help with the sheep, but their horses had been brought so that there might be ample provision for everybody.
With a feeling of being once more at home, Larkin climbed into a deep saddle, and a wave of triumph surged over him. He was again free, and at the head of a band of brave men. He had the ascendency at last over his misfortune, and he intended to keep it. Then when everything was finished he could come back and he would find Juliet —
The remembrance of her brought him to a pause. Must he go away without as much as a word from her, the one for whom he cared more than all the rest of the world? Quietly he dismounted.
“Let Jimmie go on with the prisoners and the rest of the boys,” he said to Sims. “You wait here with me. I must leave one message.”
A minute later the cavalcade stole away, following the winding river bank for a mile before setting foot on the plain.
Then, with Sims crouching, armed, behind the nearest protection, Bud Larkin walked softly to the house. He knew which was her window and went straight there, finding it open as he had expected. Listening carefully he heard no sound from within. Then he breathed the one word, “Julie,” and immediately there came a rustling of the bed as she rose.
Knowing that she had been awake and was coming to him, he turned away his eyes until he felt her strong little hand on his shoulder. Then he looked up to find her in an overwrap with her luxuriant hair falling down over her shoulders, her eyes big and luminously dusky.
“Darling,” she said, “I have heard everything, and I am so glad.”
“Then you could have given the alarm at any time?”
“Yes.”
“God bless your faithful little heart!” he said fervently, and, reaching up, drew down her face to his and kissed her.
It was their second kiss and they both thrilled from head to foot with this tantalization of the hunger of their love. All the longing of their enforced separation seemed to burst the dam that had held it, and, for a time, they forgot all things but the living, moving tide of their own love.
At last the girl disengaged herself from his eager hands, with hot cheeks and bright, flame-lit eyes. Her breath came fast, and it was a moment before she could compose herself.
“Where are you going now, Bud?” she asked.
“Back to the sheep.”
“Can I do anything to help you?”
“I can only think of one thing, and that is to marry me.”
“Everything in time, sir!” she reproved him. “Get your muttons out of the way and then you can have me.”
Larkin groaned. Then he said:
“If anything comes for me or anybody wants me, I want you to do as I would do if I were here. Things are coming to a climax now and I must know all that goes on. Watch Stelton especially. He is crooked somewhere, and I’m going to get him if it takes me the rest of my life.”
Suddenly there was a loud knock from outside the girl’s bedroom door, and they both listened, hardly daring to breathe.
“Julie, let me in!” cried Mrs. Bissell’s querulous voice. “Where’s your father?”
“Run, dear boy, for your life!” breathed the girl.
Larkin kissed her swiftly and hurried back to the underbrush, where Sims was awaiting him in an access of temper.
“Great Michaeljohn, boss!” he growled as they rode along the bank, “ain’t yuh got no consideration fer me? From the way yuh go on a person’d think yuh were in love with the girl.”
CHAPTER XVI
A MESSAGE BY A STRANGE HAND
What were the feelings of Mr. Mike Stelton that dawn had better be imagined than described. The first he knew of any calamity was when Mrs. Bissell, unable to find her husband near the house, shook him frantically by the shoulder.
“Get up, Mike,” she cried into his ear. “Somethin’s wrong here. Henry’s nowhere around.”
Dazed with sleep, unable to get the proper focus on events, the foreman blundered stupidly about the place searching cursorily, and cursing the helplessness of Beef Bissell.
Presently he got awake, however, and perceived that dawn was coming up in the east. Then he reveled in the delightful anticipation of what was to occur out under the old cottonwood along the river bank. Mentally he licked his chops at the prospect of this rare treat. He intended if possible to make Juliet witness her lover’s degradation.
After vainly hunting some valid excuse for Bissell’s untimely departure, Stelton thought he would call the boys, which he did. Then he turned his attention to the bunk-house, for he knew the cowmen were in a hurry to get away and would want to be called early.
“All out!” he bawled jovially, thrusting his head in at the door.
Not a sound came in response. Then for the first time Stelton had a premonition of trouble. He walked into the bunk-house and took quick note of the ten tumbled but empty bunks. Also of the ten belts and revolvers that hung on wooden pegs along the wall – the sign of Western etiquette.
In those days, and earlier, if a man rode by at meal-time or evening he was your guest. He might take dinner with his hat on, and get his knife and fork mixed, but if he hung up his belt and revolver he was satisfied that all the amenities had been observed, whether you thought so or not.
The one other unspoken law was that every man’s business was his own business and no questions were allowed. You might be entertaining a real bad man like Billy the Kid, and you might suspect his identity, but you never made inquiries, and for three reasons.
The first was, that it was bad plains etiquette; the second, that if you were mistaken and accused the wrong man, punishment was sure and swift; and the third was, that if you were right the punishment was still surer and swifter, for an escaping criminal never left any but mute witnesses behind him.
Looking at these ten indications of good-will along the bunk-house wall, Stelton’s alarm was once more lulled. Perhaps the men had all gone for a paddle in the stream before breakfast, he thought. If so, they would take care of themselves, and turn up when the big bell rang. He couldn’t waste any more time this way.
Now to relieve the man who was guarding Larkin outside the window.
He hurried around the house and came upon the prone figure of a cow-puncher, rolled close against the house. The man’s head was bloody, his hands were tied behind him, and his neckerchief had been stuffed into his mouth and held there by another. He was half-dead when Stelton, with a cry of surprise, bent over him and loosened his bonds.
With a prolonged yell the foreman brought all hands running to him and, giving the hurt man into the care of a couple of them, ran along the house to Bud’s window. The bent bars showed how the bird had flown. Stelton was about to give way to his fury when another cry from the rear of the cook-house told of the discovery of the second watchman’s body, that had lain hidden in the long grass which grew up against the walls.
Then didn’t Stelton curse! Never had he been so moved to profane eloquence, and never did he give such rein to it. He cursed everything in sight, beginning with the ranch house; and he took that from chimney to cellar, up and down every line and angle, around the corners and out to the barn. Then he began on the barn and wound up with the corral. The cowboys listened in admiration and delight, interjecting words of approval now and then.
But once having delivered himself of this relief, the foreman’s face set into its customary ugly scowl, and he snapped out orders to saddle the horses. Presently a man rode up from the river bottoms and told of the discovery of many hoof tracks there, and the place where they had waited a long while.
“I’ve got it!” bawled Stelton, pounding his thigh. “Larkin’s men have been here and carried off all the owners. Oh, won’t there be the deuce to pay?”
Then he picked out the cowboys who had come with their bosses and added:
“Crowd yore grub and ride home like blazes. Get yore punchers an’ bring grub for a week. Then we’ll all meet at the junction of the Big Horn and Gooseberry Creek. If yuh punchers like a good job you’ll get yore owners out o’ this. And I’m plumb shore when we get through there won’t be a sheepman left in this part of the State. To-morrer night at Gooseberry!”
Then was such a scene of hurry and bustle and excitement as the Bar T had seldom witnessed. The parting injunctions were to bring extra horses and plenty of rope, with the accent on the rope, and a significant look thrown in.
By seven o’clock, the time that Larkin, bloody, humiliated and suffering, would already have paid his penalty, there was scarcely a soul at the Bar T ranch, for the cowboys had disappeared across the plains at a hard trot.
The Bar T punchers were sent out on the range to scour for tracks of the fugitives, but, after following them some distance from the river bottom, gave up in despair when a night herder admitted that the Bar T horses had been feeding in the vicinity the night before, thus entangling the tracks. Meantime the cook was preparing food for the punchers to carry, guns were being oiled and overhauled, knives sharpened, and ropes carefully examined.
Yet as the men went about their duties there was a kind of dazed, subdued air in all they did, for it was, indeed, hard to realize that the ranch owners of nearly a quarter of Wyoming’s best range had disappeared into the empty air apparently without a sound or protest.
The following afternoon the entire Bar T outfit, excepting a couple of punchers who were incapacitated from former round-up injuries, swept out of the yard and headed almost directly east across the plain.
Julie and her mother watched them go and waved them farewell, the former with a clutch of fear at her heart for her lover and the latter in tears for her husband, thus unconsciously taking opposite sides in the struggle that they knew must ensue.
It must not be thought that Juliet had turned against her father since their final difference. After her first outbreak against his narrow views and unjust treatment of Larkin, the old love that had been paramount all her life returned, and with it a kind of pity. She knew that in a man of her father’s age his nature could not be made over immediately, if ever; the habits of a rough lifetime were too firmly ingrained. But at the same time there was something gone from the sweet and intimate affection that had formerly characterized their relations.
Lovers or married folk who declare for the efficacy of a quarrel as a renewer of love are wrong in the last analysis. Loss of control always entails loss of respect, and fervent “making up” after such an outbreak cannot efface the picture of anger-distorted features or remove the acid of bitter words. Thus it was with Juliet and her love for her father.
As to his safety she was not worried, for she knew that Bud would not allow any harm to come to him as he was in command of the men who had effected the taking-off. What Larkin’s plans were she did not fully realize, but she knew this sudden coup had been executed to further his own ends in the imperative matter of getting his sheep north. And of this she finally convinced her mother, although that lady wept copiously before the thing was accomplished.
The evening following the departure of Mike Stelton and his punchers was made notable by the arrival of a man on horseback, who carried across his saddle a black box, and in thongs at his side a three-legged standard of yellow wood. His remaining equipment was a square of black cloth.
Without invitation he turned his dejected animal into the Bar T corral and made himself at home for the evening. At the supper table he revealed his identity and explained his purpose.
“I’m Ed Skidmore,” he announced, “and I take photographs. This thing I’ve got is a camera.” He had already mounted the instrument on his tripod. “I’ve been going around from ranch to ranch and the pictures have been selling like hot cakes.”
Juliet, listening, noted that his conversation was that of a comparatively well-educated man and that he had none of the characteristic drawl or accent of the plainsmen. To her a camera was nothing out of the ordinary, although she had not seen one since her final return West, but her mother was vastly interested.
In those days photography was not a matter of universal luxury as it is now, and the enterprising Skidmore was practically the first to introduce it as a money-maker in the widely scattered ranches of the cow country.
“How do yuh sell ’em?” asked Martha Bissell, fluttering with the possibilities of the next morning, the time the young man had set for his operation. Martha had not been “took” since that far-off trip “East” to St. Paul, when she and Henry had posed for daguerreotypes.
“Five dollars apiece, ma’am,” said Skidmore, “and they’re cheap at the price.” And they were, since the cost of something universally desired is dependent on the supply rather than the demand.
After supper Martha retired to her bedroom to overhaul her stock of “swell” dresses, a stock that had not been disturbed in fifteen years except for the spring cleaning and airing. This left Skidmore and Juliet alone. She civilly invited him out on the veranda, seeing he was a man of some quality.
“I had a queer experience to-day,” he remarked after a few commonplaces. “I was riding to the Bar T from the Circle-Arrow and was about twenty miles away, rounding a butte, when a man rode out to me from some place of concealment.
“When he reached me he suddenly pulled his gun and covered me.
“‘Where are you goin’?’ he said. I told him I was on my way here and why. He examined my outfit suspiciously and let me go. But first he said:
“‘Take this letter to the Bar T and give it to Miss Bissell.’” Skidmore reached inside his shirt and pulled forth a square envelope, which he handed to Juliet. “The whole thing was so strange,” the photographer went on, “that I have waited until I could see you alone so that I could tell you about it.”
Juliet, surprised and startled, turned the missive over in her hands, hopeful that it was a letter from Bud and yet fearful of something that she could not explain. When Skidmore had finished she excused herself and went into her room, closing the door behind her.
On the envelope was the simple inscription, “Miss Bissell,” written in a crabbed, angular hand. This satisfied her that the message was not from Bud, and with trembling fingers she opened it. Inside was an oblong sheet of paper filled with the same narrow handwriting. Going to the window to catch the dying light, she read:
Miss:
This is to tell yuh that Mr. Larkin who yuh love is already merried. It ain’t none of my biznis, but I want yuh to no it. An’ that ain’t all. The U. s. oficers are looking for him on another charge, tu. Nobody noes this but me an’ yuh, an’ nobody will as long as the monie keeps comin’ in. If yuh doant bileeve this, axe him.
Yurs Truly,A Friend.
In the difficulty of translating the words before her into logical ideas the full import of the statements made did not penetrate Juliet’s mind at first. When they did she merely smiled a calm, contemptuous smile.
With the usual fatuous faith of a sweetheart, she instantly consigned to limbo anything whatever derogatory to her beloved. Then in full possession of herself, she returned to the veranda, where Skidmore was smoking a cigarette.
“No bad news I hope?” he asked politely, scrutinizing her features.
“Oh, no, thanks,” she replied, laughing a little unnaturally. “Not really bad, just disturbing,” and they continued their interrupted conversation.
But that night when she was in bed the crude letters of that missive appeared before her eyes in lines of fire. Of late the old mystery of Bud’s past life had not been much in her thoughts; love, the obliterator, had successfully wiped away the last traces of uneasiness that she had felt, and like all true and good women, she had given him the priceless treasure of her love, not questioning, not seeking to discern what he would have shown her had it seemed right in his mind that she should see.
But this scrawled letter to-night brought back with stunning force all the distress and doubts that had formerly assailed her. She guessed, and rightly, that Smithy Caldwell was the author of it, but she could not analyze the motives that had inspired his pen.
She told herself with fatal logic that if all this were a lie, Caldwell would not dare write it; that Larkin had paid this man five hundred dollars on another occasion not so far gone; and that it was avowedly a case of impudent blackmail. She knew, furthermore, that Bud carefully avoided all references to Caldwell even when she had brought forward the name, and that in the conversation overheard by Stelton there had been mention of someone by the name of Mary.
What if this money were going to another woman!
The thought overwhelmed her as she lay there, and she sat up gasping for breath, but in a moment the eternal defense of the man, inherent in every woman who loves, came to the rescue, and she told herself vehemently that Bud was honorable, if nothing else. Then the sentence concerning the United States officers wanting him on another charge recurred to her, and she found her defense punctured at the outset. If he were honorable, how could it be that the officers were after him?
In despair at the quandary, but still clinging to her faith, she fell back on the unanswerable fact of feminine intuition. Bud seemed good and true; it was in his eyes, in his voice, in his very manner. He looked at the world squarely, but with a kind of patient endurance that bespoke some deep trouble.
Then for the first time the thought came to Juliet that perhaps he was shielding someone else.
But who? And, if so, why did Caldwell write this letter?
Unable to answer these questions, but confronted by the thought that Bud’s love was the sweetest thing in the world to her, she at last fell asleep with a smile upon her lips.
