Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

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"Great thing to be alive night like this," opened the Senator. Then he
pulled down his waist coat and pulled up his limp spine and wheeled on
the slab seat facing the Ranger. Very quietly, in a soft even voice he
was reasoning--

"We have been fighting each other for four years now?"

"We certainly have, Mr. Senator."

"You're a good fighter, Wayland! I like the way you fight! You fight
square; and you fight hard; and you never let up."

No answer from the Forest Ranger.

"I wouldn't really have enough respect for you to say what I am going
to say, if you hadn't fought exactly as you have fought--"

What Wayland was saying to himself was what Moyese would not have
understood: it was a foolish, quotation about the Greeks when they come
bearing gifts.

"But my dear fellow, we differ on fundamentals. You are for Federal
authority. I am for the Federal authority everlastingly minding its
own business most _severely_, and the States managing their own
business! I am for States Rights. The Federal Government is an
expensive luxury, Wayland. It wastes two dollars for every dollar it
gives back to the country. There's an army of petty grafters and party
heelers to be paid off at every turn! All the States want is to be let
alone.

"For three years, Wayland, you have been fighting over those
two-thousand acres of coal land where the Smelter stands. You say it
was taken illegally. I know that; but they didn't take it! It was
jugged through by an English promoter--"

"Just as foreign immigrants are jugging through timber steals to-day,"
thought Wayland; but he answered; "I acknowledge all that, Senator; but
when goods are stolen, the owner has the right to take them back where
found; and that land was stolen from the U. S. Reserves--ninety-million
dollars worth of it."

"I know! I know! But what have _you_ gained? _That_ is what I ask!
Federal Government has blocked every move you have made to take action
for these lands, hasn't it? Very soon, the Statute of Limitations will
block _you_ altogether."

The Senator shifted a knee. Wayland waited.

"You have gained nothing--less than nothing: you have laid up a lot of
ill will for yourself that will block your promotion. Been four years
here, haven't you, at seventy-five dollars a month? I pay my cow men
more; and _they_ haven't spent five years at Yale. Now take the timber
cases. You hold the Smelter shouldn't take free timber from the
Forests?"

"No more than the poorest thief who steals a stick of wood from a
yard--"

"Pah! Poor man! Dismiss that piffle from your brain! What does the
poor man do for the Valley? Why does any man stay poor in this land?
Because he is no good! We've brought in thousands of workmen. We've
built up a city. We have developed this State."

"All for your own profit--"

"Exactly! What else does the poor man work for? But I'm not going to
argue that kindergarten twaddle of the college highbrows, Wayland. I'm
out for all I can make; so is the Smelter; so are you; but the point is
you've fought this timber thing; you have filed and filed and filed
your recommendations for suit to be instituted; so have the Land Office
men; have they done any good, Wayland? Has your boasted Federal
Government, so superior to the State, taken any action?"

"No," answered Wayland, "somebody has monkeyed with the wheels of
justice."

"Then, why do you distress yourself? You have played a losing game for
four years, cut your fingers on those same wheels of justice. Quit it,
Wayland! What good does it do? Come over to the right side and build
up big industries, big development! I've watched you fighting for four
years, Wayland! You are the squarest, pluckiest fighter I've ever
known. But you can't do a thing! You can't get anywhere! You're
wasting the best years of your life mouthing up here in the Mountains
at the moon; and who of all the public you are fighting for, my boy,
who of all the public gives one damn for right or wrong? If we turn
you down, who is going to raise a finger for you? Answer that my boy!
They are paying you poorer wages now than we pay any ignorant foreigner
down in the Smelter; that's a way the dear people have of caring for
their ownest! Chuck it, Wayland! Chuck it! Waken up, man; look out
for number one; and, in the words of the illustrious Vanderbilticus,
let the public be d--ee--d! Come down to my ranch where you'll have a
chance to carry out your fine ideas of Range and Forest! Hell, what
are you gaining here, man? A sort o' moral hysterics--that's all!
It's all very well for those Down Easterners, who have lots of money
and are keen on the lime light, to go spouting all over the country
about running the Government the way you'd run a Sunday School." The
Senator had become so tense that he had raised his voice. "Chuck those
damfool theories, Wayland! Chuck them, I tell you! Get down to
business, man! What are you howling about timber for posterity for?
If you don't look alive, you'll go lean frying fat for posterity! Oh,
rot, the thing makes me so tired I can't talk about it! Come down to
my ranch. I want a thorough man! I want a man who can fight like the
devil if he has to and handle that gang in the cow camp with branding
irons! I want 'em run out, do you hear? They're blackguards! I want
a man that's a man; and, for pay, you can name your own price. I'll
want a partner as I grow older. And don't you do any fool rash thing
that I'll have to fight and down you for! I like _you_, Wayland--"

Then three things happened instantaneously. Wayland glanced up.
Eleanor MacDonald was looking straight into his eyes. And the sheep
rancher's choppy voice was saying to the Missionary, "Some men go up in
the mountains to fish for trout; but others stay right down in the
Valley and grow rich catching suckers."

"We can't cross that gully," shouted the boy. "We, can't cross it
nohow! We got to cross the ranch trail to go up to them Rim Rocks."

"Why, all right, Fordie," the Senator rose, kicking the folds from the
knees of his trousers, "if you boss the job, Fordie, I'll let you cross
the ranch! You'll take a few of the herders up with you? And you'll
not let the sheep spread over the fields? Better do it towards evening
when it's cool for the climb! All right, we'll call that a bargain!
Fordie's on the job to pass the sheep up the trail; and just to show
you I'm fair, here is Miss Eleanor for my witness, you can drive the
whole bunch over my ranch! Good night, all! Everybody coming now?
Come on! We'll lead the way, Miss Eleanor. It's getting dark. I'll
pad the fall if anybody behind trips. Good night, Wayland; think that
offer of mine over? Not coming, Brydges? All right, give Wayland a
piece of your mind, as a newspaper man, about this business! Night!
Good night, Calamity!"




CHAPTER IV

STACKING THE CARDS

Bat straddled the slab and lighted his pipe.

"Old man been giving you some good advice?"

"I don't know whether you'd call it good or not. Let's heap the logs
on, Brydges, and make the shadows dance."

Brydges did some hard thinking and let the Ranger do the heaping.

"Sort of razzle-dazzler, MacDonald's daughter; she's a winner; but you
can't get at her! Sort of feel when she's talking to you as if her
other self was 'way down East. Wonder what the old curmudgeon brought
her back here for? If she'd let down her high airs a peg, she'd have
every fellow in the Valley on a string. She could have Moyese's scalp
now if she wanted it--all that's left of it?"

"You can bunk inside! I'll take the hammock." Wayland emerged from
the cabin trailing a gray blanket and a lynx skin robe. Bat continued
to emit smoke in puffs and curls and wreaths at the top of the trees.

"How many acres do you patrol, Dickie?"

"About a hundred-thousand."

"Is that all? How many horses does the Govment allow?"

"None! Buy our own!"

"Great Guns! And you're loyal to that kind of Service? It's bally
loyal I'd be! Why, Moyese allows me the use of any bronch on his
ranch; and, when there's a quick turn to be made, it's a motor car.
Why don't you let me send you up a couple of Moyese's nags? You could
pasture 'em here and get their use for nothing. I could do that right
off my own responsibility. Need be no connection with the old man."

"Bat," said the Ranger, "did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"I don't know whether I did or not; but, now that I _am_ here, I say it
anyway; and I say a whole lot more--don't be a bally fool and buck into
a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What
are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten
feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves,
and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and all that? You
can't buck the combination, Dick! It isn't only Moyese! He's a mere
tool himself in this game. It's the Ring you're up against, and you
can chase yourself all your life round that Ring, and never get
anywhere. The big dubs at Washington, the politicians, they are only
spokes themselves in that wheel. If you buck into that wheel, you get
yourself tangled into a pulp; and if any of those dubs down in
Washington thinks he won't fit into the Ring, why he'll find himself
broken and jerked out so quick he won't know what has happened till he
sees the Wheel going round again with a new spoke in his place."

"Bat, did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"No, I did not." With a twig Bat pushed down the tobacco in his pipe.
"I stayed up here, if you want to know, because we were on our way to
the cow camp when the parson and his kid joined us. I guess every man
has his limit. That cow-camp gang is mine. I want to live a little
longer; and I don't want to know things that might make it useful for
me to die. When Moyese wants to deal with that gang, he can go it
alone."

"Brydges," said Wayland, "you have given me some frank advice. _I'm_
going to reciprocate. You know what is going on out here. You know
why that Arizona gang comes up here. You know why we can't touch
them--they are off the Range of the Forest. You know about the stolen
coal for the Smelter Ring, thousands of acres of it; and the stolen
timber limits for the Lumber Ring, millions of acres of them. If the
public knew, Bat, we'd win our fight. It would be a walk over. Every
man jack of them would lie down, and stay put. Why don't you tell in
your paper? Why don't you tell the truth when you send the dispatches
East? If you did, Bat, we could clean out the gang in a month. Why
don't you play the game a man should play? Every newspaper man likes a
clean sporty fight; and no knifing in the back. Why don't you put up
that fight for us, now, Brydges, and stop giving us side jabs?"

Brydges' pipe fell from his teeth.

"Wayland--what in hell--do you think--I'm working for?"


There was a big silence.

The look of masterdom came back to Wayland's face; but he paused,
looking straight ahead in space. Perhaps he was looking for the hard
grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of
clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his
eye became a blank.

"You are at least sincere, Brydges," he said. Bat gathered up his
shattered pipe.

"I'm not a past-master, _yet_," he said. "I haven't reached the point
where I can believe my own lies; so I don't tell 'em and get caught.
I've dug down in the mortuaries of other men too often--long as a man
doesn 't believe his own lies, he's on guard and doesn't get caught.
It's when he comes ping against a buzz-saw and finds it's a fact that
he has to pay or back down or lose out. You can't budge a fact, damn
it! Thing always shows the same!"

Bat had found the pieces of his pipe. Fitting the meerschaum to the
wood, he had gained confidence and was going ahead full steam.

"Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place
where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the
beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If
he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did
do it all the same, he wouldn't have believed his own lie and got all
tangled up. One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his
paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying
himself: do it and go ahead! Fact is, Dick, I look on a newspaper man
same as I do a lawyer: he has his price; and he finds his market for
his wares; and it's none of his business what his private convictions
are of the right or wrong. He's paid to defend or attack like a
lawyer; and he goes ahead--"

"And doesn't pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat?
Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me if I grin."

"Who's the old party talking to your road gang down by the white tent?"
asked Brydges, pointing where the Range sloped down to the Homestead
Settlement and a long canvass bunk house marked the domicile of the
road hands for the Forests.

"Oh, no, you don't get away from the argument so easily, Bat! You make
the Senator's job and your job and public service all round a bunco
game, a bunco game with marked cards; while we Service and Land fellows
act the decent sign for a blind pig--"

"Hullo, he's coming up," interrupted Brydges. "Seems your night for
deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know
Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing
like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know--he looks like a
peddler--has a pack horse--"

"Peddler o' th' Gospel, Son! Good ee-vening to you, Gentlemen."

The newcomer sang out greeting in a high thin falsetto that belied the
ruddy youth of shaven cheeks and accorded more with his masses of white
hair.

"Is this the Ranger place perched on top o' th' warld? Y'r workmen in
the white tent told me A'd find a short trail here-by t' th' next
Valley. 'Tis y'r Missionary Williams A'm seekin'; A thought if A'd
push on, push on, an' cat-er-corner y'r mountain here, A'd strike y'r
River by moonlight! So A have! So A have! But it's Satan's own waste
o' windfall 'mong these big trees! Such a leg-breakin' trail A have
na' beaten since A peddled Texas tickler done up in Gospel hymn books
filled wi' whiskey--"

"Well--I'll--be--hanged," slowly ejaculated Mr. Bat Brydges. "Come
far?" he asked aloud, fumbling his brain for a clue.

The old man, emerging from the timbers, took off his hat and swabbed
the sweat from his brow. Then he righted the saddle on his broncho.

"Eh, woman, do A scare y'?" This to Calamity, just turning down the
Ridge trail with a dun gray blanket filled with odds and ends on her
shoulders, when the padded thud of the pack horse coming through the
heavy timber was followed by the stalwart form of the newcomer. Face
and form were frontiersman; vesture, clerical; but Old Calamity trotted
back to the Range cabin.

"Come far, did y' ask? More or less, more or less. A've come farther
on unholier missions. We'd call it a nice bit snow-shoe run in the old
days. Two months since A left Saskatchewan! We've taken our time,
Bessie an' me--" caressing the mare with resounding slaps. "We're not
so young as we were, Bessie an' me, when we sarved Satan hot-foot back
an' forth these same trails till by the Grace o' God we broke halter
from Hell for holier trail--"

"Better loosen up and berth here for to-night," suggested the Ranger.
"The Ridge trail is steep going, down grade, after dark for a
stranger--"

"Stranger?" The old man trumpeted a laugh that would have done credit
to a megaphone. "Stranger, my kiddie boy? A've known these Rocky
Mountain States when, if ye owned these pairts an' had a homestead in
Hell, y'd rent y'r residence here and take up quiet life the other
place! A knew these trails before y' were born, from Mexico to
MacKenzie River, wherever men had a thirst. A've travelled these
trails wi' cook stoves packed full o' Scotch dew, an' the Mounted
Police hangin' t' m' tail till A scuttled the Boundary. Good days--rip
roaring days for the makin' of strong men! We were none o' y'r cold
blooded reptile calculatin' kind! May we fight valiant for God now as
we wrestled for the Devil then! Oh, to be young again an' not spill
life in wassail! to give the blows for right instead of wrong! Man,
what a view y' have here--what a view! Minds me of the days A was
bridge building in the Rockies--"

"Then you've been in these mountains before?" asked Brydges; but the
old frontiersman refused to take the bait and rambled on in his reverie.

"What a view! Th' vera kingdom of earth at y'r feet! The river
wimplin'--wimplin'--wimplin' wi' a silver laugh over the stones, an'
the light violet as a Scotch lass's eye! An' the green fields of
alfalfa--Have y' ever noticed how th' light above the alfalfa turns
purple? An' y'r Rim Rocks roasted fire red by the heat. 'Tis the same
view A've gazed on many a time when A was young." He drew a deep sigh
of the longing that only the passing frontiersman knows. "'Tis like if
the Devil came tempting to-day, 't would be such a place as this!
Many's the time He came to us in them old days, lawless days! 'Tis
different to-day. He'd not bait men savage naked now. The kingdoms of
the earth, he'd offer--wealth an' success--wealth an' success--the
fetish o' sons o' men to-day. 'Twould not be simple cards for drink
y'd play! Bigger stakes--bigger stakes, boys! He'd bait men's souls
wi' bigger stakes! If I were young I'd take his bet an' play for the
biggest stakes outside o' Hell--"

"Hey? What is that?" queried Brydges; and he winked at Wayland. "We'd
been talking of a bunco game when you came up."

"Y' had, had you?" The old frontiersman measured Brydges through and
through. "Well, judging from y'r brass an' the up-and-coming kind of
it, A'm thinking y'r stakes would be pea-nuts under little shells!
'Tis bigger stakes I'd play for if I had m' life to live over--"

"What?" asked Wayland curiously.

Mr. Bat Brydges was revising his inventory of the old "duffer."
Wayland was laughing openly. The old man had become oblivious of both,
with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and
tense compression of the lips--

"The--fate--o'--this--land," he ripped out in hammer raps, "the fate of
this land, boys, with all time lookin' on since ever Time began! Y're
the fiery furnace of all the world's hopes and fears, of all earth's
people, of all poets' dreams; an' God only knows what a mess o' slag
y're turning out! Y'r muck rakers are belching y'r failures to the
four corners of earth! Justice perverted! Courts in fee to the
highest bidder! More murders--murders in this fresh new clean land
than all the stew pots o' filth the old nations have brewed in a
thousand years; and murders unpunished! Y'r Government--the great
world experiment--is it the wull o' the people, or the wull of a gilded
clique o' tricksters?"

The old man stretched out his hands above the Valley. "What are ye
doing with y'r freedom, the freedom that the children o' light prayed
for and fought for and died for? When there's one law for the rich and
another for the poor, when ye have to bribe y'r own self-elected rulers
to do y'r wull, where is y'r freedom different from the freedom in
France before the Revolution? Is it not written 'my house shall be for
all nations; but ye have made it a den of thieves?' Ye have what all
the nations of the earth have bled for, what prophets have prayed for,
and patriots died for; and all the world is looking on asking,
sneering, scoffing, saying ye pervert the Ark o' the Covenant of God,
saying lawlessness stalks under y'r banners, saying y' wrest the
judgment to the highest bidder, aye to the supreme fountain head o' y'r
courts! The fate o' this land, boys! Them's the stakes I'd play for,
if I had lusty blows to spare. I'd up--I'd up--I'd strip me naked of
every back-thought and expediency and self-interest and hold-back! I'd
hurl the lie--in the teeth--of a scoffing world--I'd show all nations
o' time that the people, the plain common good people, can keep the law
sound as the Ark o' the Covenant of God; and--and--I'd hurl y'r traitor
leaders--y'r Judas Iscariots huckstering the land's good for paltry
silver--I'd hurl y'r grafters an' y'r heelers an' y'r bosses an' y'r
strumpet justices, who sell a verdict like a harlot, I'd hurl them to
the bottom of Hell! An' may Hell be both deep and hot--old fashioned
extra for the pack of them!"

He shook his trembling fist at the vacuous air. "Fight--right--might!
I'd paint the words in letters o' blood till they awakened this land
like the fiery cross of old! I'd fight--fight--fight till they had to
kill every man o' my kind before I'd down! Before I'd see y'r law
outraged, y'r courts perverted, y'r justice bartered and hawked and
peddled from huckster to trickster, from heeler to headman, from
blackmailer to high judge--but A didna mean to break loose. Y'r fair
scene stirred m' blood; and A'm an old man; and A love the land. A was
born West. A'm none of y'r immigration boomsters who goes in a Pullman
car, then tells the world all about--Now, which way to y'r Missionary
Williams?"

Bat flushed; but he did not laugh. Oddly enough, he forgot the
feature-story. Wayland rose and came forward and involuntarily held
out his hand.

"I wish you'd stay for the night," he said. "A good many of us feel
the way you do; but like you, we're all up in air. Sawing the air
doesn't saw wood. A good many of us are in the fight right now; but,
unless we get somewhere, we're going to feel as if we were carving wind
mills. Suppose you put up here for the night? Besides, it's pretty
late to go down. Trail switches sharply--"

The old frontiersman heard absently.

"An old man's broodings," he ruminated.

"I'd call 'em D. T.'s," muttered Brydges.

"Don't fear for my bones on the trail." He came back from his reverie
as from a journey. "A'm the old breed that doesn't break. 'Tis you
young brittle fellows all bred to pace and speed and style needs look
to y'r goin's. Which way do A turn at the foot of the Ridge?
One--two--three--A see four lights. Which is the Mission?"

"If you insist on leaving, Sir, there is an Indian woman here going
down to the MacDonald ranch--"

"MacDonald, did you say?"

"The next place along the River is the Mission. Here, Calamity, show
this stranger which way to go, will you?"

But Calamity had already bolted for the Ridge trail.

"Stranger? She doesn't look to me exactly like a stranger. Looks
precious like one of our Saskatchewan half-breeds! Haven't A seen you
before, my good woman? A'm Jack Matthews, who carried the mail for the
Company at the Big House; by an' by contractor, then by the Grace o'
God missionary to the Cree! Haven't A seen you, girl? Was it '85 at
the Agency House when Wandering Spirit--"

"Non sabe," snapped Calamity, setting off down the trail at a run paced
to keep the reverend traveller behind till she reached the last loop.
Drawing her shawl over her face, she paused with her back to the
frontiersman. To the left blinked the lights of the sheep ranch house
and the Mission, to the right the cow-boy camp and the dead glare of
the white buildings belonging to the Senator.

"Viola! dat vay!" The woman deliberately pointed to the cow-boy camp;
then vanished in the darkness.

"Mighty quick wench! A have seen you before, my sly minx, and A'll see
you some more," he said staring after the fading form.


Then he headed his mare for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a
dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out
the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle
of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the
necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on
the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, an old white pack
horse nosing windward of the smoke; one figure with sheepskin chaps to
his waist, thumbs in his belt, standing erect with back to the trail;
and face in light, a shaven face with a strong jaw and oily geniality,
a corpulent form in a white vest, putting a pocket book in a breast
pocket.

The old frontiersman took hold of his mare's bridle.

"'Tis hardly what you'd look for in a Missionary outfit, Bessie."

"You'll leave for the South at once?"

The question commanded. The old frontiersman listened.

"Hoof express, Sir," promised the sheep-skin leggings.

"And mind you I know nothing about it, Jim. I'm not to be told. I
take care of you without you knowing about it. I _expect you_ to take
care of us--" the white waist coat became at once impressive and
anxious.

"That's all right, Colonel. I understand! We'll crowd 'em to beat
Hell; and they'll go it blind. If it's coming dark, they'll shut their
eyes and go over blind. I defy Sheriff Flood, himself, if he's
standing on the spot to make a case--"

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