Book: The Range Dwellers

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Perry Potter's horse, that had shown unmistakable symptoms of disgust at
the endless gallop he had been called upon to maintain, shied sharply away
from the sound, stumbled from leg-weariness, and fell heavily; for the
second time that night I had need to show my dexterity--but, in this case,
with Perry Potter's stirrups swinging somewhere in the vicinity of my
knees, the danger of getting caught was not so great. I stood there in the
dark loneliness of the silent hills and the howling wolf, and looked down
at the brute with little pity and a good deal of resentment. I applied my
toe tentatively to his ribs, and he just grunted. Frosty got down and led
Spikes closer, and together we surveyed the heavily breathing, gray bulk
in the sand at our feet.

"If he was the _Yellow Peril_, instead of one of your much-vaunted
steeds," I remarked tartly, "I could go at him with a wrench and have him
in working order again in five minutes; as it is--" I felt that the
sentence was stronger uncompleted.

"As it is," finished Frosty calmly, "you'll just step up on Spikes and go
on to Pochette's. It's only about ten miles, now; Spikes is good for it,
if you ease him on the hills now and then. He isn't the _Yellow Peril_,
maybe, but he's a good little horse, and he'll sure take yuh through the
best he knows."

I don't know why, but a lump came up in my throat at the tone of him.
I put out my hand and laid it on Spikes' wet, sweat-roughened neck. "Yes,
he's a good little horse, and I beg his pardon for what I said," I owned,
still with the ache just back of my palate. "But he can't carry us both,
Frosty; I'll just have to tinker up this old skate, and make him go on."

"Yuh can't do it; he's reached his limit. Yuh can't expect a common cayuse
like him to do more than eighty miles in one shift--at the gait we've been
traveling. I'm surprised he's held out so long. Yuh take Spikes and go on;
I'll walk in. Yuh know the way from here, and I can't help yuh out any
more than to let yuh have Spikes. Go on--it's breaking day, and yuh
haven't got any too much time to waste."

I looked at him, at Spikes standing wearily on three legs but with his
ears perked gamily ahead, and down at the gray, worn-out horse of Perry
Potter's. They have done what they could--and not one seemed to regret the
service. I felt, at that moment, mighty small and unworthy, and tempted
to reject the offer of the last ounce of endurance from either--for which
I was not as deserving as I should have liked to be.

"You worked all day, and you've ridden all night, and gone without a
mouthful of supper for me," I protested hotly. "And now you want to walk
ten beastly miles of sand and hills. I won't--"

"Your dad cared enough to send for you--" he began, but I would not let
him finish.

"You're right, Frosty," and I wrung his hand. "You're the real thing, and
I'd do as much for you, old pal. I'll make that Frenchman rub Spikes down
for an hour, or I'll kill him when I get back."

"You won't come back," said Frosty bruskly. "See that streak uh yellow,
over there? Get a move on, if yuh don't want to miss that train--but ease
Spikes up the hills!"

I nodded, pulled my hat down low over my eyes, and rode away; when I did
get courage to glance back, Frosty still stood where I had left him,
looking down at the gray horse.

An hour after sunrise I slipped off Spikes and watched them lead him away
to the stable; he staggered like a man when he has drunk too long and
deeply. I swallowed a cup of coffee, mounted a little buckskin, and went
on, with Pochette's assurance, "Don't be afraid to put heem through,"
ringing in my ears. I was not afraid to put him through. That last
forty-eight miles I rode mercilessly--for the demon of hurry was again
urging me on. At ten o'clock I rolled stiffly off the buckskin at the
Osage station, walked more stiffly into the office, and asked for a
message. The operator handed me two, and looked at me with much
curiosity--but I suppose I was a sight. The first was to tell me that a
special would be ready at ten-thirty, and that the road would be cleared
for it. I had not thought about a special--Osage being so far from Frisco;
but Crawford was a wonder, and he had a long arm. My respect for Crawford
increased amazingly as I read that message, and I began at once to bully
the agent because the special was not ready at that minute to start. The
second message was a laconic statement that dad was still alive; I folded
it hurriedly and put it out of sight, for somehow it seemed to say a good
many nasty things between the words.

I wired Crawford that I was ready to start and waiting for the special,
and then I fumed and continued my bullying of the man in the office; he
was not to blame for anything, of course, but it was a tremendous relief
to take it out of somebody just then.

The special came, on time to a second, and I swung on and told the
conductor to put her through for all she was worth--but he had already got
his instructions as to speed, I fancy; we ripped down the track a mile a
minute--and it wasn't long till we bettered that more than I'd have
believed possible. The superintendent's car had been given over to me,
I learned from the porter, and would carry me to Ogden, where dad's own
car, the _Shasta_, would meet me. There, too, I saw the hand of Crawford;
it was not like dad or him to borrow anything unless the necessity was
absolute.

I hope I may never be compelled to take another such journey. Not that
I was nervous at the killing pace we went--and it was certainly
hair-raising, in places; but every curve that we whipped around on two
wheels--approximately--told me that dad was in desperate case indeed, and
that Crawford was oiling every joint with gold to get me there in time. At
every division the crack engine of the shops was coupled on in seconds,
rather than minutes, bellowed its challenge to all previous records, and
scuttled away to the west; a new conductor swung up the steps and answered
patiently the questions I hurled at him, and courteously passed over the
invectives when I felt that we were crawling at a snail's pace and wanted
him to hurry a bit.

At Ogden I hustled into the _Shasta_ and felt a grain of comfort in its
familiar atmosphere, and a sense of companionship in the solemn face of
Cromwell Jones, our porter. I had taken many a jaunt in the old car, with
Crom, and Rankin, and Tony, the best cook that ever fed a hungry man, and
it seemed like coming home just to throw myself into my pet chair again,
with Crom to fetch me something cold and fizzy.

From him I learned that it was pneumonia, and that if I got there in time
it would be considered a miracle of speed and a triumph of faultless
railroad system. If I had been tempted to take my ease and to sleep a bit,
that settled it for me. The _Shasta_ had no more power to lull my fears or
to minister to my comfort. I refused to be satisfied with less than a
couple of hundred miles an hour, and I was sore at the whole outfit
because they refused to accommodate me.

Still, we got over the ground at such a clip that on the third day, with
screech of whistle and clang of bell, we slowed at Oakland pier, where a
crowd was cheering like the end of a race--which it was--and kodak fiends
were underfoot as if I'd been somebody.

A motor-boat was waiting, and the race went on across the bay, where
Crawford met me with the _Yellow Peril_ at the ferry depot. I was told
that I was in time, and when I got my hand on the wheel, and turned the
_Peril_ loose, it seemed, for the first time since leaving home, that fate
was standing back and letting me run things.

Policemen waved their arms and said things at the way we went up Market
Street, but I only turned it on a bit more and tried not to run over any
humans; a dog got it, though, just as we whipped into Sacramento Street.
I remember wishing that Frosty was with me, to be convinced that motors
aren't so bad after all.

It was good to come tearing up the hill with the horn bellowing for a
clear track, and to slow down just enough to make the turn between our
bronze mastiffs, and skid up the drive, stopping at just the right instant
to avoid going clear through the stable and trespassing upon our
neighbor's flower-beds. It was good--but I don't believe Crawford
appreciated the fact; imperturbable as he was, I fancied that he looked
relieved when his feet touched the gravel. I was human enough to enjoy
scaring Crawford a bit, and even regretted that I had not shaved closer to
a collision.

Then I was up-stairs, in an atmosphere of drugs and trained nurses and
funeral quiet, and knew for a certainty that I was still in time, and that
dad knew me and was glad to have me there. I had never seen dad in bed
before, and all my life he had been associated in my mind with calm
self-possession and power and perfect grooming. To see him lying there
like that, so white and weak and so utterly helpless, gave me a shock that
I was quite unprepared for. I came mighty near acting like a woman with
hysterics--and, coming as it did right after that run in the _Peril_,
I gave Crawford something of a shock, too, I think. I know he got me by the
shoulders and hustled me out of the room, and he was looking pretty shaky
himself; and if his eyes weren't watery, then I saw exceedingly, crooked.

A doctor came and made me swallow something, and told me that there was a
chance for dad, after all, though they had not thought so at first. Then
he sent me off to bed, and Rankin appeared from somewhere, with his
abominably righteous air, and I just escaped making another fool scene.
But Rankin had the sense to take me in hand just as he used to do when I'd
been having no end of a time with the boys, and so got me to bed. The
stuff the doctor made me swallow did the rest, and I was dead to the world
in ten minutes.




CHAPTER IX.

The Old Life--and the New.


Now that I was there, I was no good to anybody. The nurse wouldn't let me
put my nose inside dad's door for a week, and I hadn't the heart to go out
much while he was so sick. Rankin was about all the recreation I had, and
he palled after the first day or two. I told him things about Montana that
made him look painful because he hardly liked to call me a liar to my
face; and the funny part was that I was telling him the truth.

Then dad got well enough so the nurse had no excuse for keeping me out,
and I spent a lot of time sitting beside his bed and answering questions.
By the time he was sitting up, peevish at the restraint of weakness and
doctor's orders, we began to get really acquainted and to be able to talk
together without a burdensome realization that we were father and son--and
a mighty poor excuse for the son. Dad wasn't such bad company,
I discovered. Before, he had been mostly the man that handled the
carving-knife when I dined at home, and that wrote checks and dictated
letters to Crawford in the privacy of his own den--he called it his study.

Now I found that he could tell a story that had some point to it, and
could laugh at yours, in his dry way, whether it had any point or not.
I even got to telling him some of the scrapes I had got into, and about
Perry Potter; dad liked to hear about Perry Potter. The beauty of it was,
he could understand everything; he had lived there himself long enough to
get the range view-point. I hate telling a yarn and then going back over
it explaining all the fine points.

I remember one night when the fog was rolling in from the ocean till you
could hardly see the street-lamps across the way, we sat by the fire--dad
was always great for big, wood fires--and smoked; and somehow I got strung
out and told him about that Kenmore dance, and how the boys rigged up in
my clothes and went. Dad laughed harder than I'd ever heard him before;
you see, he knew the range, and the picture rose up before him all
complete. I told that same yarn afterward to Barney MacTague, and there
was nothing to it, so far as he was concerned. He said: "Lord! they must
have been an out-at-heels lot not to have any clothes of their own." Now,
what do you think of that?

Well, I went on from that and told dad about my flying trips through
King's Highway, too--with the girl left out. Dad matched his finger-tips
together while I was telling it, and afterward he didn't say much; only:
"I knew you'd play the fool somehow, if you stayed long enough." He didn't
explain, however, just what particular brand of fool I had been, or what
he thought of old King, though I hinted pretty strong. Dad has got a
smooth way of parrying anything he doesn't want to answer straight out,
and it takes a fellow with more nerve than I've got to corner him and just
make him give up an opinion if he doesn't want to. So I didn't find out a
thing about that old row, or how it started--more than what I'd learned at
the Ragged H, that is.

Frosty had written me, a week or two after I left, that our fellows had
really burned King's sheds, and that Perry Potter had a bullet just scrape
the hair off the top of his head, where he hadn't any to spare. It made
him so mad, Frosty said, that he wanted to go back and kill, slay, and
slaughter--that is Frosty's way of putting it. Another one of the boys had
been hit in the arm, but it was only a flesh wound and nothing serious. So
far as they could find out, King's men had got off without a scratch,
Frosty said; which was another great sorrow to Perry Potter, who went
around saying pointed things about poor markmanship and fellows who
couldn't hit a barn if they were locked inside--that kept the boys stirred
up and undecided whether to feel insulted or to take it as a joke.
I wished that I was back there--until I read, down at the bottom of the
last page, that Beryl King and her Aunt Lodema had gone back to the East.

The next day I learned the same thing from another source. Edith Loroman
had kept her promise--as I remembered her, she wasn't great at that sort
of thing, either--and sent me a picture of White Divide just before I left
the ranch. Somehow, after that, we drifted into letter-writing. I wrote to
thank her for the picture, and she wrote back to say "don't mention
it"--in effect, at least, though it took three full pages to get that
effect--and asked some questions about the ranch, and the boys, and Frosty
Miller. I had to answer that letter and the questions--and that's how it
began. It was a good deal of a nuisance, for I never did take much to pen
work, and my conscience was hurting me half the time over delayed answers;
Edith was always prompt; she liked to write letters better than I did,
evidently.

But when she wrote, the day after I got that letter from Frosty, and said
that Beryl and Aunt Lodema had just returned and were going to spend the
winter in New York and join the Giddy Whirl, I will own that I was a much
better--that is, prompt--correspondent. Edith is that kind of girl who
can't write two pages without mentioning every one in her set; like those
Local Items from little country towns; a paragraph for everybody.

So, having a strange and unwholesome hankering to hear all I could about
Beryl, I encouraged Edith to write long and often by setting her an
example. I didn't consider that I was taking a mean advantage of her,
either, for she's the kind of girl who boasts about the number of her
proposals and correspondents. I knew she'd cut a notch for me on the stick
where she counted her victims, but it was worth the price, and I'm
positive Edith didn't mind.

The only drawback was the disgusting frequency with which the words "Beryl
and Terence Weaver" appeared; that did rather get on my nerves, and I did
ask Edith once if Terence Weaver was the only man in New York. In fact,
I was at one time on the point of going to New York myself and taking it
out of Mr. Terence Weaver. I just ached to give him a run for his money.
But when I hinted it--going to New York, I mean--dad looked rather hurt.

"I had expected you'd stay at home until after the holidays, at least," he
remarked. "I'm old-fashioned enough to feel that a family should be
together Christmas week, if at no other time. It doesn't necessarily
follow that because there are only two left--" Dad dropped his glasses
just then, and didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. I'd have
stayed, then, no matter what string was pulling me to New York. It's so
seldom, you see, that dad lowers his guard and lets you glimpse the real
feeling there is in him. I felt such a cur for even wanting to leave him,
that I stayed in that evening instead of going down to the Olympic, where
was to be a sort of impromptu boxing-match between a couple of our
swiftest amateurs.

Talking to dad was virtuous, but unexciting. I remember we discussed the
profit, loss, and risk of cattle-raising in Montana, till bedtime came for
dad. Then I went up and roasted Rankin for looking so damned astonished at
my wanting to go to bed at ten-thirty. Rankin is unbearably
righteous-looking, at times. I used often to wish he'd do something
wicked, just to take that moral look off him; but the pedestal of his
solemn virtue was too high for mere human temptations. So I had to content
myself with shying a shoe his way and asking him what there was funny
about me.

After dad got well enough to go back to watching his millions grow, and
didn't seem to need me to keep him cheered up, life in our house dropped
back to its old level--which means that I saw dad once a day, maybe. He
gave me back my allowance and took to paying my bills again, and I was
free to get into the old pace--which I will confess wasn't slow. The
Montana incident seemed closed for good, and only Frosty's letters and a
rather persistent memory was left of it.

In a month I had to acknowledge two emotions I hadn't counted on: surprise
and disgust. I couldn't hit the old pace. Somehow, things were
different--or I was different. At first I thought it was because Barney
MacTague was away cruising around the Hawaii Islands, somewhere, with a
party.

I came near having the _Molly Stark_ put in commission and going after
him; but dad wouldn't hear of that, and told me I'd better keep on dry
land during the stormy months. So I gave in, for I hadn't the heart to go
dead against his wishes, as I used to do. Besides, he'd have had to put up
the coin, which he refused to do.

So I moped around the clubs, backed the light-weight champion of the hour
for a big match, put up a pile of money on him, and saw it fade away and
take with it my trust in champions. Dad was good about it, and put up what
I'd gone over my allowance without a whimper. Then I chased around the
country in the _Yellow Peril_ and won three races down at Los Angeles,
touring down and back with a fellow who had slathers of money, wore blue
ties, and talked through his nose. I leave my enjoyment of the trip to
your imagination.

When I got back, I had the _Yellow Peril_ refitted and the tonneau put
back on, and went in for society. I think that spell lasted as long as
three weeks; I quit immensely popular with a certain bunch of widows and
the like, and with a system so permeated with tea and bridge that it took
a stiff course of high-balls and poker to take the taste out of my mouth.

I think it was in March that Barney came back; but he came back an engaged
young man, so that in less than a week Barney began to pall. His fiancee
had got him to swear off on poker and prize-fighting and smokers and
everything. And I leave it to you if there would be much left of a fellow
like Barney. All he was free to do--or wanted to do--was sit in a retired
corner of the club with _Shasta_ water and cigarettes for refreshments,
and talk about Her, and how It had happened, and the pangs of uncertainty
that shot through his heart till he knew for sure. Barney's full as tall
as I am, and he weighs twenty-five pounds more; and to hear a great,
hulking brute like that talking slush was enough to make a man forswear
love in all forms forever. He'd show me her picture regular, every time
I met him, and expect me to hand out a jolly. She wasn't so much, either.
Her nose was crooked, and she didn't appear to have any eyebrows to speak
of. I'd like to have him see--well, a certain young woman with eyelashes
and--Oh, well, it wasn't Barney's fault that he'd never seen a real
beauty, and so was satisfied with his particular Her. I began to shy at
Barney, and avoided him as systematically as if I owed him money; which
I didn't. I just couldn't stand for so much monologue with a girl with no
eyebrows and a crooked nose for the never-failing subject.

My next unaccountable notion was manifested in an unreasoning dislike of
Rankin. He got to going to some mission-meetings, somewhere down near the
Barbary Coast; I got out of him that much, and that he sometimes led the
meetings. Rankin can't lie--or won't--so he said right out that he was
doing what little he could to save precious souls. That part was all
right, of course; but he was so beastly solemn and sanctimonious that he
came near sending my soul--maybe it isn't as precious as those he was
laboring with--straight to the bad place.

Every morning when he appeared like the ghost of a Puritan ancestor's
remorse at my bedside, I swore I'd send him off before night. To look at
him you'd think I had done a murder and he was an eye-witness to the deed.
Still, it's pretty raw to send a man off just because he's the embodiment
of punctiliousness and looks virtuously grieved for your sins. In his
general demeanor, I admit that Rankin was quite irreproachable--and that's
why I hated him so.

Besides, Montana had spoiled me for wanting to be dressed like a baby, and
I would much rather get my own hat and stick; I never had the chance,
though. I'd turn and find him just back of my elbow, with the things in
his hands and that damned righteous look on his face, and generally I'd
swear he did get on my nerves so.

I'm afraid I ruined him for a good servant, and taught him habits of
idleness he'll never outgrow; for every morning I'd send him below--I
won't state the exact destination, but I have reasons for thinking he
never got farther than the servants' hall--with strict--and for the most
part profane--orders not to show his face again unless I rang. Even at
that, I always found him waiting up for me when I came home. Oh, there was
no changing the ways of Rankin.

I think it was about the middle of May when my general discontent with
life in the old burgh took a virulent form. I'd been losing a lot one way
and another, and Barney and I had come together literally and with much
force when we were having a spurt with our cars out toward Ingleside. The
Yellow Peril looked pretty sick when I picked myself out of the mess and
found I wasn't hurt except in my feelings. Barney's car only had the lamps
smashed, and as he had run into me, that made me sore. We said things, and
I caught a street-car back to town. Barney drove in, about as hot as
I was, I guess.

So, when I got home and found a letter from Frosty, my mind was open for
something new. The letter was short, but it did the business and gave me
a hunger for the old days that nothing but a hard gallop over the
prairie-lands, with the wind blowing the breath out of my nostrils, could
satisfy. He said the round-up would start in about a week. That was about
all, but I got up and did something I'd never done before.

I took the letter and went straight down to dad's private den and
interrupted him when he was going over his afternoon letters with
Crawford. Dad was very particular not to be interrupted at such times; his
mail-hours were held sacred, and nothing short of a life-or-death matter
would have taken me in there--in any normal state of mind.

Crawford started out of his chair--if you knew Crawford that one action
would tell you a whole lot--and dad whirled toward me and asked what had
happened. I think they both expected to hear that the house was on fire.

"The round-up starts next week, dad," I blurted, and then stopped. It just
occurred to me that it might not sound important to them.

Dad matched his finger-tips together. "Since I first bought a bunch of
cattle," he drawled, "the round-up has never failed to start some time
during this month. Is it vitally important that it should _not_ start?"

"_I've_ got to start at once, or I can't catch it." I fancied, just then,
that I detected a glimmer of amusement on Crawford's face. I wanted to hit
him with something.

"Is there any reason why it must be caught?" dad wanted to know, in his
worst tone, which is almost diabolically calm.

"Yes," I rapped out, growing a bit riled, "there is. I can't stand this
do-nothing existence any longer. You brought me up to it, and never let me
know anything about your business, or how to help you run it--"

"It never occurred to me," drawled dad, "that I needed help to run my
business."

"And last spring you rose up, all of a sudden, and started in to cure me
of being a drone. The medicine you used was strong; it did the business
pretty thoroughly. You've no kick coming at the result. I'm going to
start to-morrow."

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