CHAPTER 14. JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER
A gray clarity of the air told that daylight was near. The skyline retreated, the hills came out of the duskiness like a photograph in the developer tray. Irish dipped down the steep slope into Antelope Coulee, cursing the sprinkle of new shacks that stood stark in the dawn on every ridge and every hilltop, look where one might. He loped along the winding trail through the coulee's bottom and climbed the hill beyond. At the top he glanced across the more level upland to the east and his eyes lightened. Far away stood a shack—Patsy's, that was. Beyond that another, and yet another. Most of the boys had built in the coulees where was water. They did not care so much about the view—over which Miss Allen had grown enthusiastic.
He pulled up in a certain place near the brow of the hill, and looked down into the narrower gulch where huddled the shacks they had moved. He grinned at the sight. His hand went involuntarily to his pocket and the grin widened. He hurried on that he might the sooner tell the boys of their good luck; all the material for that line fence bought and paid for—there would certainly laugh when they heard where the money had come from!
First he thought that he would locate the cattle and tell his news to the boys on guard. He therefore left the trail and rode up on a ridge from which he could overlook the whole benchland, with the exception of certain gulches that cut through. The sky was reddening now, save where banked clouds turned purple. A breeze crept over the grass and carried the fresh odor of rain. Close beside him a little brown bird chittered briskly and flew away into the dawn.
He looked away to where the Bear Paws humped, blue-black against the sky, the top of Old Baldy blushing faintly under the first sun rays. He looked past Wolf Butte, where the land was blackened with outcroppings of rock. His eyes came back leisurely to the claim country. A faint surprise widened his lids, and he turned and sent a glance sweeping to the right, toward Flying U Coulee. He frowned, and studied the bench land carefully.
This was daybreak, when the cattle should be getting out for their breakfast-feed. They should be scattered along the level just before him. And there were no cattle anywhere in sight. Neither were there any riders in sight. Irish gave a puzzled grunt and turned in his saddle, looking back toward Dry Lake. That way, the land was more broken, and he could not see so far. But as far as he could see there were no cattle that way either. Last night when he rode to town the cattle of the colonists had been feeding on the long slope three or four miles from where he stood, across Antelope Coulee where he had helped the boys drive them.
He did not waste many minutes studying the empty prairie from the vantage point of that ridge, however. The keynote of Irish's nature was action. He sent his horse down the southern slope to the level, and began looking for tracks, which is the range man's guide-book. He was not long in finding a broad trail, in the grass where cattle had lately crossed the coulee from the west. He knew what that meant, and he swore when he saw how the trail pointed straight to the east—to the broken, open country beyond One Man Coulee. What had the boys been thinking of, to let that nester stock get past them in the night? What had the line-riders been doing? They were supposed to guard against just such a move as this.
Irish was sore from his fight in town, and he had not had much sleep during the past forty-eight hours, and he was ravenously hungry. He followed the trail of the cattle until he saw that they certainly had gotten across the Happy Family claims and into the rough country beyond; then he turned and rode over to Patsy's shack, where a blue smoke column wobbled up to the fitful air-current that seized it and sent it flying toward the mountains.
There he learned that Dry Lake had not hugged to itself all the events of the night. Patsy, smoking a pipefull of Durham while he waited for the teakettle to boil, was wild with resentment. In the night, while he slept, something had heaved his cabin up at one corner. In a minute another corner heaved upward a foot or more. Patsy had yelled while he felt around in the darkness for his clothes, and had got no answer, save other heavings from below.
Patsy was not the man to submit tamely to such indignities. He had groped and found his old 45-70 riffle, that made a noise like a young cannon and kicked like a broncho cow. While the shack lurched this way and that, Patsy pointed the gun toward the greatest disturbance and fired. He did not think: he hit anybody, but he apologized to Irish for missing and blamed the darkness for the misfortune. Py cosh, he sure tried—witness the bullet holes which he had bored through the four sides of the shack; he besought Irish to count them; which Irish did gravely. And what happened then?
Then? Why, then the Happy Family had come; or at least all those who had been awake and riding the prairie had come pounding up out of the dark, their horses running like rabbits, their blood singing the song of battle. They had grappled with certain of the enemy—Patsy broke open the door and saw tangles of struggling forms in the faint starlight. The Happy Family were not the type of men who must settle every argument with a gun, remember. Not while their hands might be used to fight with. Patsy thought that they licked the nesters without much trouble. He knew that the settlers ran, and that the Happy Family chased them clear across the line and then came back and let the shack down where it belonged upon the rock underpining.
“Und py cosh! Dey vould move my shack off'n my land!” he grunted ragefully as he lived over the memory.
Irish went to the door and looked out. The wind had risen in the last half hour, so that his hat went sailing against the rear wall, but he did not notice that. He was wondering why the settlers had made this night move against Patsy. Was it an attempt to irritate the boys to some real act of violence—something that would put them in fear of the law? Or was it simply a stratagem to call off the night-guard so that they might slip their cattle across into the breaks? They must have counted on some disturbance which would reach the ears of the boys on guard. If Patsy had not begun the bombardment with his old rifle, they would very likely have fired a few shots themselves—enough to attract attention. With that end in view, he could see why Patsy's shack had been chosen for the attack. Patsy's shack was the closest to where they had been holding the cattle. It was absurdly simple, and evidently the ruse had worked to perfection.
“Where are the boys at now?” he asked abruptly, turning to Patsy who had risen and knocked the ashes from his pipe and was slicing bacon.
“Gone after the cattle. Dey stampede alreatty mit all der noise,” Patsy growled, with his back to Irish.
So it was just as Irish had suspected. He faced the west and the gathering bank of “thunder heads” that rode swift on the wind and muttered sullenly as they rode, and he hesitated. Should he go after the boys and help them round up the stock and drive it back, or should he stay where he was and watch the claims? There was that fence—he must see to that, too.
He turned and asked Patsy if all the boys were gone. But Patsy did not know.
Irish stood in the doorway until breakfast was ready whereupon he sat down and ate hurriedly—as much from habit as from any present need of haste. A gust of wind made the flimsy cabin shake, and Patsy went to close the door against its sudden fury.
“Some riders iss coming now,” he said, and held the door half closed against the wind. “It ain't none off der boys,” he added, with the certainty which came of his having watched, times without number, while the various members of the Happy Family rode in from the far horizons to camp. “Pilgrims, I guess—from der ridin'.”
Irish grunted and reached for the coffee pot, giving scarce a thought to Patsy's announcement. While he poured his third cup of coffee he made a sudden decision. He would get that fence off his mind, anyway.
“Say, Patsy, I've rustled wire and posts—all we'll need. I guess I'll just turn this receipt over to you and let you get busy. You take the team and drive in today and get the stuff headed out here pronto. The nesters are shipping in more stock—I heard in town that they're bringing in all they can rustle, thinkin' the stock will pay big money while the claims are getting ready to produce. I heard a couple of marks telling each other just how it was going to work out so as to put 'em all on Easy Street—the darned chumps! Free grass—that's what they harped on; feed don't cost anything. All yuh do is turn 'em loose and wait till shippin' season, and then collect. That's what they were talking.
“The sooner that fence is up the better. We can't put in the whole summer hazing their cattle around. I've bought the stuff and paid for it. And here's forty dollars you can use to hire it hauled out here. Us fellows have got to keep cases on the cattle, so you 'tend to this fence.” He laid the money and Fred's receipt upon the table and set Patsy's plate over them to hold them safe against the wind that rattled the shack. He had forgotten all about the three approaching riders, until Patsy turned upon him sharply.
“Vot schrapes you been into now?” he demanded querulously. “Py cosh you done somet'ings. It's der conshtable comin' alreatty. I bet you be pinched.”
“I bet I don't,” Irish retorted, and made for the one window, which looked toward the hills. “Feed 'em some breakfast, Patsy. And you drive in and tend to that fencing right away, like I told you.”
He threw one long leg over the window sill, bent his lean body to pass through the square opening, and drew the other leg outside. He startled his horse, which had walked around there out of the wind, but he caught the bridle-reins and led him a few steps farther where he would be out of the direct view from the window. Then he stopped and listened.
He heard the three ride up to the other side of the shack and shout to Patsy. He heard Patsy moving about inside, and after a brief delay open the door. He heard the constable ask Patsy if he knew anything about Irish, and where he could be found; and he heard Patsy declare that he had enough to do without keeping track of that boneheaded cowpuncher who was good for nothing but to fight and get into schrapes.
After that he heard Patsy ask the constable if they had had any breakfast before leaving town. He heard certain saddle-sounds which told of their dismounting in response to the tacit invitation. And then, pulling his hat firmly down upon his head, Irish led his horse quietly down into a hollow behind the shack, and so out of sight and hearing of those three who sought him.
He did not believe that he was wanted for anything very serious; they meant to arrest him, probably, for laying out those two gamblers with a chair and a bottle of whisky respectively. A trumped-up charge, very likely, chiefly calculated to make him some trouble and to eliminate him from the struggle for a time. Irish did not worry at all over their reason for wanting him, but he did not intend to let them come close enough to state their errand, because he did not want to become guilty of resisting an officer—which would be much worse than fighting nesters with fists and chairs and bottles and things.
In the hollow he mounted and rode down the depression and debouched upon the wide, grassy coulee where lay a part of his own claim. He was not sure of the intentions of that constable, but he took it for granted that he would presently ride on to Irish's cabin in search of him; also that he would look for him further, and possibly with a good deal of persistence; which would be a nuisance and would in a measure hamper the movements and therefore the usefulness of Irish. For that reason he was resolved to take no chance that could be avoided.
The sun slid behind the scurrying forerunners of the storm and struggled unavailingly to shine through upon the prairie land. From where he was Irish could not see the full extent of the storm-clouds, and while he had been on high land he had been too absorbed in other matters to pay much attention. Even now he did no more than glance up casually at the inky mass above him, and decided that he would do well to ride on to his cabin and get his slicker.
By the time he reached his shack the storm was beating up against the wind which had turned unexpectedly to the northeast. Mutterings of thunder grew to sharper booming. It was the first real thunderstorm of the season, but it was going to be a hard one, if looks meant anything. Irish went in and got his slicker and put it on, and then hesitated over riding on in search of the cattle and the men in pursuit of them.
Still, the constable might take a notion to ride over this way in spite of the storm. And if he came there would be delay, even if there were nothing worse. So Irish, being one to fight but never to stand idle, mounted again and turned his long-suffering horse down the coulee as the storm swept up.
First a few large drops of rain pattered upon the earth and left blobs of wet where they fell. His horse shook its head impatiently and went sidling forward until an admonitory kick from Irish sent him straight down the dim trail. Then the clouds opened recklessly the headgates and let the rain down in one solid rush of water that sluiced the hillsides and drove muddy torrents down channels that had been dry since the snow left.
Irish bent his head so that his hat shielded somewhat his face, and rode doggedly on. It was not the first time that he had been out in a smashing, driving thunderstorm, and it would not be his last if his life went on logically as he had planned it. But it was not the more comfortable because it was an oft-repeated experience. And when the first fury had passed and still it rained steadily and with no promise of a let-up, his optimism suffered appreciably.
His luck in town no longer cheered him. He began to feel the loss of sleep and the bone-weariness of his fight and the long ride afterwards. His breakfast was the one bright spot, and saved him from the gnawing discomfort of an empty stomach—at first.
He went into One Man Coulee and followed it to the arm that would lead to the rolling, ridgy open land beyond, where the “breaks” of the Badlands reached out to meet the prairie. He came across the track of the herd, and followed it to the plain. Once out in the open, however, the herd had seemed to split into several small bunches, each going in a different direction. Which puzzled Irish a little at first. Later, he thought he understood.
The cattle, it would seem, had been driven purposefully into the edge of the breaks and there made to scatter out through the winding gulches and canyons that led deeper into the Badlands. It was the trick of range-men—he could not believe that the strange settlers, ignorant of the country and the conditions, would know enough to do this. He hesitated before several possible routes, the rain pouring down upon him, a chill breeze driving it into his face. If there had been hoofprints to show which way the boys had gone, the rain had washed them so that they looked dim and old and gave him little help.
He chose what seemed to him the gorge which the boys would be most likely to follow—especially at night and if they were in open pursuit of those who had driven the cattle off the benchland; and that the cattle had been driven beyond this point was plain enough, for otherwise he would have overtaken stragglers long before this.
It was nearing noon when he came out finally upon a little, open flat and found there Big Medicine and Pink holding a bunch of perhaps a hundred cattle which they had gleaned from the surrounding gulches and little “draws” which led into the hills. The two were wet to the skin, and they were chilled and hungry and as miserable as a she-bear sent up a tree by yelping, yapping dogs.
Big Medicine it was who spied him first through the haze of falling water, and galloped heavily toward him, his horse flinging off great pads of mud from his feet as he came.
“Say!” he bellowed when he was yet a hundred yards away. “Got any grub with yuh?”
“No!” Irish called back.
“Y'AIN'T” Big Medicine's voice was charged with incredulous reproach. “What'n hell yuh doin' here without GRUB? Is Patsy comin' with the wagon?”
“No. I sent Patsy on in to town after—”
“Town? And us out here—” Big Medicine choked over his wrongs.
Irish waited until he could get in a word and then started to explain. But Pink rode up with his hatbrim flapping soggily against one dripping cheek when the wind caught it, and his coat buttoned wherever there were buttons, and his collar turned up, and looking pinched and draggled and wholly miserable.
“Say! Got anything to eat?” he shouted when he came near, his voice eager and hopeful.
“No!” snapped Irish with the sting of Big Medicine's vituperations rankling fresh in his soul.
“Well why ain't yuh? Where's Patsy?” Pink came closer and eyed the newcomer truculently.
“How'n hell do I know?” Irish was getting a temper to match their own.
“Well, why don't yuh know? What do yuh think you're out here for? To tell us you think it's going to rain? If we was all of us like you, there'd be nothing to it for the nester-bunch. It's a wonder you come alive enough to ride out this way at all! I don't reckon you've even got anything to drink!” Pink paused a second, saw no move toward producing anything wet and cheering, and swore disgustedly. “Of course not! You needed it all yourself! So help me Josephine, if I was as low-down ornery as some I could name I'd tie myself to a mule's tail and let him kick me to death! Ain't got any grub! Ain't got—”
Irish interrupted him then with a sentence that stung. Irish, remember, distinctly approved of himself and his actions. True, he had forgotten to bring anything to eat with him, but there was excuse for that in the haste with which he had left his own breakfast. Besides how could he be expected to know that the cattle had been driven away down here, and scattered, and that the Happy Family would not have overtaken them long before? Did they think he was a mind-reader?
Pink, with biting sarcasm, retorted that they did not. That it took a mind to read a mind. He added that, from the looks of Irish, he must have started home drunk, anyway, and his horse had wandered this far of his own accord. Then three or four cows started up a gulch to the right of them and Pink, hurling insults over his shoulder, rode off to turn them back. So they did not actually come to blows, those two, though they were near it.
Big Medicine lingered to bawl unforgivable things at; Irish, and Irish shouted back recklessly that they had all acted like a bunch of sheepherders, or the cattle would never have been driven off the bench at all. He declared that anybody with the brains of a sick sage hen would have stopped the thing right in the start. He said other things also.
Big Medicine said things in reply, and Pink, returning to the scene with his anger grown considerably hotter from feeding upon his discomfort, made a few comments pertinent to the subject of Irish's shortcomings.
You may scarcely believe it, unless you have really lived, and have learned how easily small irritations grow to the proportions of real trouble, and how swiftly—but this is a fact: Irish and Big Medicine became so enraged that they dismounted simultaneously and Irish jerked off his slicker while Big Medicine was running up to smash him for some needless insult.
They fought, there in the rain and the mud and the chill wind that whipped their wet cheeks. They fought just as relentlessly as though they had long been enemies, and just as senselessly as though they were not grown men but schoolboys. They clinched and pounded and smashed until Pink sickened at the sight and tore them apart and swore at them for crazy men and implored them to have some sense. They let the cattle that had been gathered with so much trouble drift away into the gulches and draws where they must be routed out of the brush again, or perhaps lost for days in that rough country.
When the first violence of their rage had like the storm settled to a cold steadiness of animosity, the two remounted painfully and turned back upon each other.
Big Medicine and Pink drew close together as against a common foe, and Irish cursed them both and rode away—whither he did not know nor care.
CHAPTER 15. THE KID HAS IDEAS OF HIS OWN
The Old Man sat out in his big chair on the porch, smoking and staring dully at the trail which led up the bluff by way of the Hog's Back to the benchland beyond. Facing him in an old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of leisurely enjoyment which belongs to the man who knows and can afford to burn good tobacco and who has the sense to, burn it consciously, realizing in every whiff its rich fragrance. The Honorable Blake flicked a generous half-inch of ash from his cigar upon a porch support and glanced shrewdly at the Old Man's abstracted face.
“No, it wouldn't do,” he observed with the accent of a second consideration of a subject that coincides exactly with the first. “It wouldn't do at all. You could save the boys time, I've no doubt—time and trouble so far as getting the cattle back where they belong is concerned. I can see how they must be hampered for lack of saddle-horses, for instance. But—it wouldn't do, Whitmore. If they come to you and ask for horses don't let them have them. They'll manage somehow—trust them for that. They'll manage—” “But doggone it, Blake, it's for—”
“Sh-sh—” Blake held up a warning hand. “None of that, my dear Whitmore! These young fellows have taken claims in—er—good faith.” His bright blue eyes sparkled with a sudden feeling. “In the best of good faith, if you ask me. I—admire them intensely for what they have started out to do. But—they have certain things which they must do, and do alone. If you would not thwart them in accomplishing what they have set out to do, you must go carefully; which means that you must not run to their aid with your camp-wagons and your saddle-horses, so they can gather the cattle again and drive them back where they belong. You would not be helping them. They would get the cattle a little easier and a little quicker—and lose their claims.”
“But doggone it, Blake, them boys have lived right here at the Flying U—why, this has been their home, yuh might say. They ain't like the general run of punchers that roam around, workin' for this outfit and for that; they've stuck. Why, doggone it, what they done here when I got hurt in Chicago and they was left to run themselves, why, that alone puts me under obligations to help 'em out in this scrape. Anybody could see that. Ain't I a neighbor? Ain't neighbors got a right to jump in and help each other? There ain't no law agin—”
“Not against neighbors—no.” Blake uncrossed his perfectly trousered legs and crossed them the other way, after carefully avoiding any bagging tendency. “But this syndicate—or these contestants—will try to prove that you are not a neighbor only, but a—backer of the boys in a land-grabbing scheme. To avoid—”
“Well, doggone your measly hide, Blake, I've told you fifty times I ain't!” The Old Man sat forward in his chair and shook his fist unabashed at his guest. “Them boys cooked that all up amongst themselves, and went and filed on that land before ever I knowed a thing about it. How can yuh set there and say I backed 'em? And that blonde Jezebel—riding down here bold as brass and turnin' up her nose at Dell, and callin' me a conspirator to my face!”
“I sticked a pin in her saddle blanket, Uncle Gee-gee. I'll bet she wished she'd stayed away from here when her horse bucked her off.” The Kid looked up from trying to tie a piece of paper to the end of a brindle kitten's switching tail, and smiled his adorable smile—that had a gap in the middle.
“Hey? You leave that cat alone or he'll scratch yuh. Blake, if you can't see—”
“He! He's a her and her name's Adeline. Where's the boys, Uncle Gee-gee?”
“Hey? Oh, away down in the breaks after their cattle that got away. You keep still and never mind where they've gone.” His mind swung back to the Happy Family, combing the breaks for their stock and the stock of the nesters, with an average of one saddle-horse apiece and a camp outfit of the most primitive sort—if they had any at all, which he doubted. The Old Man had eased too many roundups through that rough country not to realize keenly the difficulties of the Happy Family.
“They need horses,” he groaned to Blake, “and they need help. If you knowed the country and the work as well as I do you'd know they've got to have horses and help. And there's their claims—fellers squatting down on every eighty—four different nesters fer every doggoned one of the bunch to handle! And you tell me I got to set here and not lift a hand. You tell me I can't put men to work on that fence they want built. You tell me I can't lend 'em so much as a horse!”
Blake nodded. “I tell you that, and I emphasize it,” he assured the other, brushing off another half inch of ash from his cigar. “If you want to help those boys hold their land, you must not move a finger.”
“He's wiggling all of 'em!” accused the Kid sternly, and pointed to the Old Man drumming irritatedly upon his chair arms. “He don't want to help the boys, but I do. I'll help 'em get their cattle, Mr. Blake. I'm one of the bunch anyway. I'll lend 'em my string.”
“You've been told before not to butt in to grownup talk,” his uncle reproved him irascibly. “Now you cut it out. And take that string off'n that cat!” he added harshly. “Dell! Come and look after this kid! Doggone it, a man can't talk five minutes—”
The Kid giggled irrepressibly. “That's one on you, old man. You saw Doctor Dell go away a long time ago. Think she can hear yuh when she's away up on the bench?”
“You go on off and play!” commanded the Old Man. “I dunno what yuh want to pester a feller to death for—and say! Take that string off'n that cat!”
“Aw gwan! It ain't hurting the cat. She likes it.” He lifted the kitten and squeezed her till she yowled. “See? She said yes, she likes it.”
The Old Man returned to the trials of the Happy Family, and the Kid sat and listened, with the brindle kitten snuggled uncomfortably, head downward in his arms.
The Kid had heard a good deal, lately, about the trials of his beloved “bunch.” About the “nesters” who brought cattle in to eat up the grass that belonged to the cattle of the bunch. The Kid understood that perfectly—since he had been raised in the atmosphere of range talk. He had heard about the men building shacks on the claims of the Happy Family—he understood that also; for he had seen the shacks himself, and he had seen where there had been slid down hill into the bottom of Antelope Coulee. He knew all about the attack on Patsy's cabin and how the Happy Family had been fooled, and the cattle driven off and scattered. The breaks—he was a bit hazy upon the subject of breaks. He had heard about them all his life. The stock got amongst them and had to be hunted out. He thought—as nearly as could be put in words—that it must be a place where all the brakes grow that are used on wagons and buggies. These were of wood, therefore they must grow somewhere. They grew where the Happy Family went sometimes, when they were gone for days and days after stock. They were down there now—it was down in the breaks, always—and they couldn't round up their cattle because they hadn't horses enough. They needed help, so they could hurry back and slide those other shacks off their claims and into Antelope Coulee where they had slid the others. On the whole, the Kid had a very fair conception of the state of affairs. Claimants and contestants—those words went over his head. But he knew perfectly well that the nesters were the men that didn't like the Happy Family, and lived in shacks on the way to town, and plowed big patches of prairie and had children that went barefooted in the furrows and couldn't ride horses to save their lives. Pilgrim kids, that didn't know what “chaps” were—he had talked with a few when he went with Doctor Dell and Daddy Chip to see the sick lady.
After a while, when the Honorable Blake became the chief speaker and leaned forward and tapped the Old Man frequently on a knee with his finger, and used long words that carried no meaning, and said contestant and claimant and evidence so often that he became tiresome, the Kid slid off the porch and went away, his small face sober with deep meditations.
He would need some grub—maybe the bunch was hungry without any camp-wagons. The Kid had stood around in the way, many's the time, and watched certain members of the Happy Family stuff emergency rations into flour sacks, and afterwards tie the sack to their saddles and ride off. He knew all about that, too.
He hunted up a flour sack that had not had all the string pulled out of it so it was no longer a sack but a dish-towel, and held it behind his back while he went cautiously to the kitchen door. The Countess was nowhere in sight—but it was just as well to make sure. The Kid went in, took a basin off the table, held it high and deliberately dropped it on the floor. It, made a loud bang, but it did not elicit any shrill protest from the Countess; therefore the Countess was nowhere around. The Kid went in boldly and filled his four-sack so full it dragged on the floor when he started off.
At the door he went down the steps ahead of the sack, and bent his small back from the third step and pulled the sack upon his shoulders. It wobbled a good deal, and the Kid came near falling sidewise off the last step before he could balance his burden. But he managed it, being the child of his parents and having a good deal of persistence in his makeup; and he went, by a roundabout way, to the stable with the grub-sack bending him double. Still it was not so very heavy; it was made bulky by about two dozen fresh-made doughnuts and a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a glass of wild-currant jelly and a pound or so of raw, dried prunes which the Kid called nibblin's because he liked to nibble at them, like a prairie dog at a grass root.
Getting that sack tied fast to the saddle after the saddle was on Silver's back was no easy task for a boy who is six, even though he is large for his age. Still, being Chip's Kid and the Little Doctor's he did it—with the help of the oats box and Silver's patient disposition.
There were other things which the bunch always tied on their saddles; a blanket, for instance, and a rope. The Kid made a trip to the bunk-house and pulled a gray blanket off Ole's bed, and spent a quarter of an hour rolling it as he had seen the boys roll blankets The oats box, with Silver standing beside it, came in handy again. He found a discarded rope and after much labor coiled it crudely and tied it beside the saddle-fork.
The Kid went to the door, stood beside it and leaned away over so that he could peek out and not be seen Voices came from the house—the voice of the Old Man; to be exact, high-pitched and combative. The Kid looked up the bluff, and the trail lay empty in the afternoon sun. Still, he did not like to take that trail. Doctor Dell might come riding down there almost any minute. The Kid did not want to meet Doctor Dell just right then.
He went back, took Silver by the bridle reins and led him out of the barn and around the corner where he could not be seen from the White House. He thought he had better go down the creek, and out through the wire gate and on down the creek that way. He was sure that the “breaks” were somewhere beyond the end of the coulee, though he could not have explained why he was sure of it. Perhaps the boys, in speaking of the breaks, had unconsciously tilted heads in that direction.
The Kid went quickly down along the creek through the little pasture, leading Silver by the reins. He was terribly afraid that his mother might ride over the top of the hill and see him and call him back. If she did that, he would have to go, of course. Deliberate, open disobedience had never yet occurred to the Kid as a moral possibility. If your mother or your Daddy Chip told you to come back, you had to come; therefore he did not want to be told to come. Doctor Dell had told him that he could go on roundup some day—the Kid had decided that this was the day, but that it would be foolish to mention the decision to anyone. People had a way of disagreeing with one's decisions—especially Doctor Dell, she always said one was too little. The Kid thought he was getting pretty big, since he could stand on something and put the saddle on Silver his own self, and cinch it and everything; plenty big enough to get out and help the bunch when they needed help.
He did not look so very big as he went trudging down alongside the creek, stumbling now and then in the coarse grass that hid the scattered rocks. He could not keep his head twisted around to look under Silver's neck and watch the hill trail, and at the same time see where he was putting his feet. And if he got on Silver now he would be seen and recognized at the first glance which Doctor Dell would give to the coulee when she rode over the brow of the hill. Walking beside Silver's shoulder, on the side farthest from the bluff, he might not be seen at all; Doctor Dell might look and think it was just a horse walking along the creek his own self.
The Kid was extremely anxious that he should not be seen. The bunch needed him. Uncle Gee-gee said they needed help. The Kid thought they would expect him to come and help with his “string”, He helped Daddy Chip drive the horses up from the little pasture, these days; just yesterday he had brought the whole bunch up, all by his own self, and had driven them into the big corral alone, and Daddy Chip had stood by the gate and watched him do it. Daddy Chip had lifted him down from Silver's back, and had squeezed him hard, and had called him a real, old cowpuncher. The Kid got warm all inside him when he, thought of it.
When a turn in the narrow creek-bottom hid him completely from the ranch buildings and the hill trail, the Kid led Silver alongside a low bank, climbed into the saddle. Then he made Silver lope all the way to the gate.
He had some trouble with that gate. It was a barbed wire gate, such as bigger men than the Kid sometimes swear over. It went down all right, but when he came to put it up again, that was another matter. He simply had to put it up before he could go on. You always had to shut gates if you found them shut—that was a law of the range which the Kid had learned so long ago he could not remember when he had learned And there was another reason—he did not want em to know he had passed that way, if they took a notion to call him back. So he worked and he tugged and he grew so red in the face it looked as if he were choking. But he got the gate up and the wire loop over the stake—though he had to hunt up an old piece of a post to stand on, and even then had to stand on his toes to reach the loop—since he was Chip's Kid and the Little Doctor's.
He even remembered to scrape out the tell-tale prints of his small feet in the bare earth there, and the prints of Silver's feet where he went through. Yarns he had heard the Happy Family tell, in the bunk-house on rainy days, had taught him these tricks. He was extremely thorough in all that he did—being a good deal like his dad—and when he went the grass, no one would have suspected that he had passed that way.
After a while he left that winding creek-bottom and climbed a long ridge. Then he went down hill and pretty soon he climbed another hill that made old Silver stop and rest before he went on to the top. The Kid stood on the top for a few minutes and stared wistfully out over the tumbled mass of hills, and deep hollows, and hills, and hill and hills—till he could not see where they left off. He could not see any of the bunch; but then, he could not see any brakes growing anywhere, either. The bunch was down in the brakes—he had heard that often enough to get it fixed firmly in his mind. Well, when he came to where the brakes grew—and he would know them, all right, when he saw them!—he would find the bunch. He thought they'd be s'prised to see him ride up! The bunch didn't know that he could drive stock all his own self, and that he was a real, old cowpuncher now. He was a lot bigger. He didn't have to hunt such a big rock, or such a high bank, to get on Silver now. He thought he must be pretty near as big as Pink, any way. They would certainly be s'prised!
The brakes must be farther over. Maybe he would have to go over on the other side of that biggest hill before he came to the place where they grew. He rode unafraid down a steep, rocky slope where Silver picked his way very, very carefully, and sometimes stopped and smelt of a ledge or a pile of rocks, and then turned and found some other way down.
The Kid let him choose his path—Daddy Chip had taught him to leave the reins loose and let Silver cross ditches and rough places where he wanted to cross. So Silver brought him safely down that hill where even the Happy Family would have hesitated to ride unless the need was urgent.
He could not go right up over the next hill—there was a rock ledge that was higher than his head when he sat on Silver. He went down a narrow gulch—ah, an awfully narrow gulch! Sometimes he was afraid Silver was too fat to squeeze through; but Silver always did squeeze through somehow. And still there were no brakes growing anywhere. Just choke-cherry trees, and service-berries, and now and then a little flat filled with cottonwoods and willows—familiar trees and bushes that he had known all his six years of life.
So the Kid went on and on, over hills or around hills or down along the side of hill. But he did not find the Happy Family, and he did not find the brakes. He found cattle that had the Flying U brand—they had a comfortable, homey look. One bunch he drove down a wide coulee, hazing them out of the brush and yelling “HY-AH!” at them, just the way the Happy Family yelled. He thought maybe these were the cattle the Happy Family were looking for; so he drove them ahead of him and didn't let one break back on him and he was the happiest Kid in all Montana with these range cattle, that had the Flying U brand, galloping awkwardly ahead of him down that big coulee.
CHAPTER 16. “A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER”
The hills began to look bigger, and kind of chilly and blue in the deep places. The Kid wished that he could find some of the boys. He was beginning to get hungry, and he had long ago begun to get tired. But he was undismayed, even when he heard a coyote yap-yap-yapping up a brushy canyon. It might be that he would have to camp out all night. The Kid had loved those cowboy yarns where the teller—who was always the hero—had been caught out somewhere and had been compelled to make a “dry camp.” His favorite story of that type was the story of how Happy Jack had lost his clothes and had to go naked through the breaks. It was not often that he could make Happy Jack tell him that story—never when the other boys were around. And there were other times; when Pink had got lost, down in the breaks, and had found a cabin just—in—TIME, with Irish sick inside and a blizzard just blowing outside, and they were mad at each other and wouldn't talk, and all they had to eat was one weenty, teenty snow-bird, till the yearling heifer came and Pink killed it and they had beefsteak and got good friends again. And there were other times, that others of the boys could tell about, and that the Kid thought about now with pounding pulse. It was not all childish fear of the deepening shadows that made his eyes big and round while he rode slowly on, farther and farther into the breaks.
He still drove the cattle before him; rather, he followed where the cattle led. He felt very big and very proud—but he did wish he could find the Happy Family! Somebody ought to stand guard, and he was getting sleepy already.
Silver stopped to drink at a little creek of clear, cold water. There was grass, and over there was a little hollow under a rock ledge. The sky was all purple and red, like Doctor Dell painted in pictures, and up the coulee, where he had been a little while ago, it was looking kind of dark. The Kid thought maybe he had better camp here till morning. He reined Silver against a bank and slid off, and stood looking around him at the strange hills with the huge, black boulders that looked like houses unless you knew, and the white cliffs that looked—queer—unless you knew they were just cliffs.
For the first time since he started, the Kid wished guiltily that his dad was here or—he did wish the bunch would happen along! He wondered if they weren't camped, maybe, around that point. Maybe they would hear him if he hollered as loud as he could, which he did, two or three times; and quit because the hills hollered back at him and they wouldn't stop for the longest time—it was just like people yelling at him from behind these rocks.
The Kid knew, of course, who they were; they were Echo-boys, and they wouldn't hurt, and they wouldn't let you see them. They just ran away and hollered from some other place. There was an Echo-boy lived up on the bluff somewhere above the house. You could go down in the little pasture and holler, and the Echo-boy would holler back The Kid was not afraid—but there seemed to be an awful lot of Echo-boys down in these hills. They were quiet after a minute or so, and he did not call again.
The Kid was six, and he was big for his age; but he looked very little, there alone in that deep coulee that was really more like a canyon—very little and lonesome and as if he needed his Doctor Dell to take him on her lap and rock him. It was just about the time of day when Doctor Dell always rocked him and told him stories—about the Happy Family, maybe. The Kid hated to be suspected of baby ways, but he loved these tunes, when his legs were tired and his eyes wanted to go shut, and Doctor Dell laid her cheek on his hair and called him her baby man. Nobody knew about these times—that was most always in the bed room and the boys couldn't hear.
The Kid's lips quivered a little. Doctor Dell would be surprised when he didn't show up for supper, he guessed. He turned to Silver and to his man ways, because he did not like to think about Doctor Dell just right now.
“Well, old feller, I guess you want your saddle off, huh?” he quavered, and slapped the horse upon the shoulder. He lifted the stirrup—it was a little stock saddle, with everything just like a big saddle except the size; Daddy Chip had had it made for the Kid in Cheyenne, last Christmas—and began to undo the latigo, whistling self-consciously and finding that his lips kept trying to come unpuckered all the time, and trying to tremble just the way they did when he cried. He had no intention of crying.
“Gee! I always wanted to camp out and watch the stars,” he told Silver stoutly. “Honest to gran'ma, I think this is just—simply—GREAT! I bet them nester kids would be scared. Hunh!”
That helped a lot. The Kid could whistle better after that. He pulled of the saddle, laid it down on its side so that the skirts would not bend out of shape—oh, he had been well-taught, with the whole Happy Family for his worshipful tutors!—and untied the rope from beside the fork. “I'll have to anchor you to a tree, old-timer,” he told the horse briskly. “I'd sure hate to be set afoot in this man's country!” And a minute later—“Oh, funder! I never brought you any sugar!”
Would you believe it, that small child of the Flying U picketed his horse where the grass was best, and the knots he tied were the knots his dad would have tied in his place. He unrolled his blanket and carried it to the sheltered little nook under the ledge, and dragged the bag of doughnuts and the jelly and honey and bread after it. He had heard about thievish animals that will carry off bacon and flour and such. He knew that he ought to hang his grub in a tree, but he could not reach up as far as the fox who might try to help himself, so that was out of the question.
The Kid ate a doughnut while he studied the matter out for himself. “If a coyote or a skink came pestering around ME, I'd frow rocks at him,” he said. So when he had finished the doughnut he collected a pile of rocks. He ate another doughnut, went over and laid himself down on his stomach the way the boys did, and drank from the little creek. It was just a chance that he had not come upon water tainted with alkali—but fate is kind sometimes.
So the Kid, trying very, very hard to act just like his Daddy Chip and the boys, flopped the blanket vigorously this way and that in an effort to get it straightened, flopped himself on his knees and folded the blanket round and round him until he looked like a large, gray cocoon, and cuddled himself under the ledge with his head on the bag of doughnuts and his wide eyes fixed upon the first pale stars and his mind clinging sturdily to his mission and to this first real, man-sized adventure that had come into his small life.
It was very big and very empty—that canyon. He lifted his yellow head and looked to see if Silver were there, and was comforted at the sight of his vague bulk close by, and by the steady KR-UP, KR-UP of bitten grasses.
“I'm a rell ole cowpuncher, all right,” he told himself bravely; but he had to blink his eyelashes pretty fast when he said it. A “rell ole cowpuncher” wouldn't cry! He was afraid Doctor Dell would be AWFULLY s'prised, though...
An unexpected sob broke loose, and another. He wasn't afraid—but... Silver, cropping steadily at the grass which must be his only supper, turned and came slowly toward the Kid in his search for sweeter grass-tufts. The Kid choked off the third sob and sat up ashamed. He tugged at the bag and made believe to Silver that his sole trouble was with his pillow.
“By cripes, that damn' jelly glass digs right into my ear,” he complained aloud, to help along the deception. “You go back, old-timer—I'm all right. I'm a—rell—ole cowpuncher; ain't I, old-timer? We're makin' a dry-camp, just like—Happy Jack. I'm a rell—ole—” The Kid went to sleep before he finished saying it. There is nothing like the open air to make one sleep from dusk till dawn. The rell ole cowpuncher forgot his little white bed in the corner of the big bedroom. He forgot that Doctor Dell would be awfully s'prised, and that Daddy Chip would maybe be cross—Daddy Chip was cross, sometimes. The rell ole cowpuncher lay with his yellow curls pillowed on the bag of doughnuts and the gray blanket wrapped tightly around him, and slept soundly; and his lips were curved in the half smile that came often to his sleeping place and made him look ever so much like his Daddy Chip.