Book: The Range Dwellers

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Dad looked at me till I began to feel squirmy. I've thought since that he
wasn't as surprised as I imagined, and that, on the whole, he was pleased.
But, if he was, he was mighty careful not to show it.

"You would better give me a list of your debts, then," he said
laconically. "I shall see that your allowance goes on just the same; you
may want to invest in--er--cattle."

"Thank you, dad," I said, and turned to go.

"And I wish to Heaven," he called after me, "that you'd take Rankin along
and turn him loose out there. He might do to herd sheep. I'm sick of that
hark-from-the-tombs face of his. I made a footman of him while you were
gone before, rather than turn him off; but I'm damned if I do it again."

I stopped just short of the door and grinned back at him. "Rankin,"
I said, "is one of the horrors I'm trying to leave behind, dad."

But dad had gone back to his correspondence. "In regard to that Clark,
Marsden, and Clark affair, I think, Crawford, it would be well--"

I closed the door quietly and left them. It was dad's way, and I laughed a
little to myself as I was going back to my room to round up Rankin and set
him to packing. I meant to stand over him with a club this time, if
necessary, and see that I got what I wanted packed.

The next evening I started again for Montana--and I didn't go in dad's
private car, either. Save for the fact that I had no grievance with him,
and that we ate dinner alone together and drank a bottle of extra dry to
the success of my pilgrimage, I went much as I had gone before: humbly and
unheralded except for a telegram for some one to meet me at Osage.

Rankin, I may say, did not go with me, though I did as dad had suggested
and offered to take him along and get him a job herding sheep. The memory
of Rankin's pained countenance lingers with me yet, and cheers me in many
a dark hour when there's nothing else to laugh over.




CHAPTER X.

I Shake Hands with Old Man King.


For the second time in my irresponsible career I stood on the station
platform at Osage and watched the train slide off to the East. It's a
blamed fool who never learns anything by experience, and I never have
accused myself of being a fool--except at odd times--so I didn't land
broke. I had money to pay for several meals, and I looked around for
somebody I knew; Frosty, I hoped.

For the sodden land I had looked upon with such disgust when first I had
seen it, the range lay dimpled in all the enticement of spring. Where
first I had seen dirty snow-banks, the green was bright as our lawn at
home. The hilltops were lighter in shade, and the jagged line of hills in
the far distance was a soft, soft blue, just stopping short of
reddish-purple. I'm not the sort of human that goes wading to his chin in
lights and shades and dim perspectives, and names every tone he can think
of--especially mauve; they do go it strong on mauve--before he's through.
But I did lift my hat to that dimply green reach of prairie, and thanked
God I was there.

I turned toward the hill that hid the town, and there came Frosty driving
the same disreputable rig that had taken me first to the Bay State.
I dropped my suit-case and gripped his hand almost before he had pulled up
at the platform. Lord! but I was glad to see that thin, brown face of his.

"Looks like we'd got to be afflicted with your presence another summer,"
he grinned. "I hope yuh ain't going to claim I coaxed yuh back, because
I took particular pains not to. And, uh course, the boys are just dreading
the sight of yuh. Where's your war-bag, darn yuh?"

How was that for a greeting? It suited me, all right. I just thumped
Frosty on the back and called him a name that it would make a lady faint
to hear, and we laughed like a couple of fools.

I'm not on oath, perhaps, but still I feel somehow bound to tell
all the truth, and not to pass myself off for a saint. So I will say
that Frosty and I had a celebration, that night; an Osage, Montana,
celebration, with all the fixings. Know the brand--because if you don't,
I'd hang before I'd tell just how many shots we put through ceilings,
or how we rent the atmosphere outside. You see, I was glad to get back,
and Frosty was glad to have me back; and since neither of us are
the fall-on-your-neck-and-put-a-ring-on-your-finger kind, we had
to exuberate some other way; and, as Frosty, would put it, "We sure did."

I can't say we felt quite so exuberant next morning, but we were willing
to take our medicine, and started for the ranch all serene. I won't say a
word about mauves and faint ambers and umbras, but I do want to give that
country a good word, as it looked that morning to me. It was great.

There are plenty of places can put it all over that Osage country for
straight scenery, but I never saw such a contented-looking place as that
big prairie-land was that morning. I've seen it with the tears running
down its face, and pretty well draggled and seedy; but when we started out
with the sun shining against our cheeks and the hills looking so warm and
lazy and the hollows kind of smiling to themselves over something, and the
prairie-dogs gossiping worse than a ladies' self-culture meeting, I tell
you, it all looked good to me, and I told Frosty so.

"I'd rather be a forty-dollar puncher in this man's land," I enthused,
"than a lily-of-the-field somewhere in civilization."

"In other words," Frosty retorted sarcastically, "you _think_ you prefer
the canned vegetables and contentment, as the Bible says, to corn-fed
beefsteak and homesickness thereby. But you wait till yuh get to the ranch
and old Perry Potter puts yuh through your paces. You'll thank the Lord
every Sundown that yuh _ain't_ a forty-dollar man that has got to drill
right along or get fired; you'll pat yourself on the back more than once
that you've got a cinch on your job and can lay off whenever yuh feel like
it. From all the signs and tokens, us Ragged H punchers'll be wise to
trade our beds off for lanterns to ride by. Your dad's bought a lot more
cattle, and they've drifted like hell; we've got to cover mighty near the
whole State uh Montana and part uh South Africa to gather them in."

"You're a blamed pessimist," I told him, "and you can't give me cold feet
that easy. If you knew how I ache to get a good horse under me--"

"Thought they had horses out your way," Frosty cut in.

"A range-horse, you idiot, and a range-saddle. I did ride some on a
fancy-gaited steed with a saddle that resembled a porus plaster and
stirrups like a lady's bracelet; it didn't fill the aching void a little
bit."

"Well, maybe yuh won't feel any aching void out here," he said, "but if
yuh follow round-up this season you'll sure have plenty of other brands of
ache."

I told him I'd be right with them at the finish, and he needn't to worry
any about me. Pretty soon I'll show you how well I kept my word. We rode
and rode, and handed out our experiences to each other, and got to
Pochette's that night. I couldn't help remembering the last time I'd been
over that trail, and how rocky I felt about things. Frosty said he wasn't
worried about that walk of his into Pochette's growing dim in his memory,
either.

Well, then, we got to Pochette's--I think I have remarked the fact. And at
Pochette's, just unharnessing his team, limped my friend of White Divide,
old King. Funny how a man's view-point will change when there's a girl
cached somewhere in the background. Not even the memory of Shylock's
stiffening limbs could bring me to a mood for war. On the contrary, I felt
more like rushing up and asking him how were all the folks, and when did
Beryl expect to come home. But not Frosty; he drove phlegmatically up so
that there was just comfortable space for a man to squeeze between our rig
and King's, hopped out, and began unhooking the traces as if there wasn't
a soul but us around. King was looping up the lines of his team, and he
glared at us across the backs of his horses as if we were--well,
caterpillars at a picnic and he was a girl with nice clothes and a fellow
and a set of nerves. His next logical move would be to let out a squawk
and faint, I thought; in which case I should have started in to do the
comforting, with a dipper of water from the pump. He didn't faint, though.

I walked around and let down the neck-yoke, and his eyes followed me with
suspicion. "Hello, Mr. King," I sang out in a brazen attempt to hypnotize
him into the belief we were friends. "How's the world using you, these
days?"

"Huh!" grunted the unhypnotized one, deep in his chest.

Frosty straightened up and looked at me queerly; he said afterward that he
couldn't make out whether I was trying to pull off a gun fight, or had
gone dippy.

But I was only in the last throes of exuberance at being in the country at
all, and I didn't give a damn what King thought; I'd made up my mind to be
sociable, and that settled it.

"Range is looking fine," I remarked, snapping the inside checks back into
the hame-rings. "Stock come through the winter in good shape?" Oh, I had
my nerve right along with me.

"You go to hell," advised King, bringing out each word fresh-coined and
shiny with feeling.

"I was headed that way," I smiled across at him, "but at the last minute
I gave Montana first choice; I knew you were still here, you see."

He let go the bridle of the horse he was about to lead away to the stable,
and limped around so that he stood within two feet of me. "Yuh want to--"
he began, and then his mouth stayed open and silent.

I had reached out and got him by the hand, and gave him a grip--the grip
that made all the fellows quit offering their paws to me in Frisco.

"Put it there, King!" I cried idiotically and as heartily as I knew how.
"Glad to see you. Dad's well and busy as usual, and sends regards. How's
your good health?"

He was squirming good and plenty, by that time, and I let him go. I acted
the fool, all right, and I don't tell it to have any one think I was a
smart young sprig; I'm just putting it out straight as it happened.

Frosty stood back, and I noticed, out of the tail of my eye, that he was
ready for trouble and expecting it to come in bunches; and I didn't know,
myself, but what I was due for new ventilators in my system.

But King never did a thing but stand and hold his hand and look at me.
I couldn't even guess at what he thought. In half a minute or less he got
his horse by the bridle again--with his left hand--and went limping off
ahead of us to the stable, saying things in his collar.

"You blasted fool," Frosty muttered to me. "You've done it real pretty,
this time. That old Siwash'll cut your throat, like as not, to pay for all
those insulting remarks and that hand-shake."

"First time I ever insulted a man by shaking hands and telling him I was
glad to see him," I retorted. "And I don't think it will be necessary for
you to stand guard over my jugular to-night, either. That old boy will
take a lot of time to study out the situation, if I'm any judge. You won't
hear a peep out of him, and I'll bet money on it."

"All right," said Frosty, and his tone sounded dubious. "But you're the
first Ragged H man that has ever walked up and shook hands with the old
devil. Perry Potter himself wouldn't have the nerve."

Now, that was a compliment, but I don't believe I took it just the way
Frosty meant I should. I was proud as thunder to have him call me a
"Ragged H man" so unconsciously. It showed that he really thought of me
simply as one of the boys; that the "son and heir" view-point--oh, that
had always rankled, deep down where we bury unpleasant things in our
memory--had been utterly forgotten. So the tribute to my nerve didn't go
for anything beside that. I was a "Ragged H man," on the same footing as
the rest of them. It's silly owning it, but it gave me a little tingle of
pleasure to have one of dad's men call dad's son and heir "a blasted
fool." I don't believe the Lord made me an aristocrat.

We didn't see anything more of King till supper was called. At Pochette's
you sit down to a long table covered with dark-red mottled oilcloth and
sprinkled with things to eat, and watch that your elbow doesn't cause your
nearest neighbor to do the sword-swallowing act involuntarily and
disastrously with his knife, or--you don't eat. Frosty and I had walked
down to the ferry-crossing while we waited, and then were late getting
into the game when we heard the summons.

We went in and sat down just as the Chinaman was handing thick cups of
coffee around rather sloppily. From force of habit I looked for my napkin,
remembered that I was in a napkinless region, and glanced up to see if any
one had noticed.

Just across from me old King was pushing back his chair and getting
stiffly upon his feet. He met my eyes squarely--friend or enemy, I like a
man to do that--and scowled.

"Through already?" I reached for the sugar-bowl.

"What's it to you, damn yuh?" he snapped, but we could see at a glance
that King had not begun his meal.

I looked at Frosty, and he seemed waiting for me to say something. So
I said: "Too bad--we Ragged H men are such mighty slow eaters. If it's on
my account, sit right down and make yourself comfortable. I don't mind;
I dare say I've eaten in worse company."

He went off growling, and I leaned back and stirred my coffee as leisurely
as if I were killing time over a bit of crab in the Palace, waiting for my
order to come. Frosty, I observed, had also slowed down perceptibly; and
so we "toyed with the viands" just like a girl in a story--in real life,
I've noticed, girls develop full-grown appetites and aren't ashamed of
them. King went outside to wait, and I'm sure I hope he enjoyed it; I know
we did. We drank three cups of coffee apiece, ate a platter of fried fish,
and took plenty of time over the bones, got into an argument over who was
Lazarus with the fellow at the end of the table, and were too engrossed to
eat a mouthful while it lasted. We had the bad manners to pick our teeth
thoroughly with the wooden toothpicks, and Frosty showed me how to balance
a knife and fork on a toothpick--or, perhaps, it was two--on the edge of
his cup. I tried it several times, but couldn't make it work.

The others had finished long ago and were sitting around next the wall
watching us while they smoked. About that time King put his head in at the
door, and looked at us.

"Just a minute," I cheered him. Frosty began cracking his prune-pits and
eating the meats, and I went at it, too. I don't like prune-pits a little
bit.

The pits finished, Frosty looked anxiously around the table. There was
nothing more except some butter that we hadn't the nerve to tackle
single-handed, and some salt and a bottle of ketchup and the toothpicks.
We went at the toothpicks again; until Frosty got a splinter stuck
between his teeth, and had a deuce of a time getting it out.

"I've heard," he sighed, when the splinter lay in his palm, "that some
state dinners last three or four hours; blamed if I see how they work it.
I'm through. I lay down my hand right here--unless you're willing to
tackle the ketchup. If you are, I stay with you, and I'll eat half." He
sighed again when he promised.

For answer I pushed back my chair. Frosty smiled and followed me out. For
the satisfaction of the righteous I will say that we both suffered from
indigestion that night, which I suppose was just and right.




CHAPTER XI.

A Cable Snaps.


Our lazy land smiling and dreaming to itself had disappeared; in its
stead, the wind howled down the river from the west and lashed the water
into what would have looked respectable waves to one who had not been on
the ocean and seen the real thing. The new grass lay flat upon the
prairies, and chunks of dirt rattled down from the roof of Pochette's
primitive abiding-place. It is true the sun shone, but I really wouldn't
have been at all surprised if the wind had blown it out, 'most any time.

Pochette himself looked worried when we trooped in to breakfast. (By the
way, old King never showed up till we were through; then he limped in and
sat down to the table without a glance our way.) While we were smoking,
over by the fireplace, Pochette came sidling up to us. He was a little
skimpy man with crooked legs, a real French cut of beard, and an
apologetic manner. I think he rather prided himself upon his familiarity
with the English language--especially that part which is censored so
severely by editors that only a half-dozen words are permitted to appear
in cold type, and sometimes even they must hide their faces behind such
flimsy veils as this: d----n. So if I never quote Mr. Pochette verbatim,
you'll know why.

"I theenk you will not wish for cross on the reever, no?" he began
ingratiatingly. "The weend she blow lak ---- ---- ----, and my boat, she
zat small, she ---- ----."

I caught King looking at us from under his eyebrows, so I was airily
indifferent to wind or water. "Sure, we want to cross," I said. "Just as
soon as we finish our smoke, Pochette."

"But, mon Dieu!" (Ever hear tell of a Frenchman that didn't begin his
sentences that way? In this case, however, Pochette really said just
that.) "The weend, she blow lak ----"

"'A hurricane; bimeby by she blaw some more,'" I quoted bravely. "It's
all right, Pochette; let her howl. We're going to cross, just the same.
It isn't likely you'll have to make the trip for any body else to-day."
I didn't mean to, but I looked over toward King, and caught the glint of
his unfriendly eyes upon me. Also, the corners of his mouth hunched up
for a second in what looked like a sneer. But the Lord knows I wasn't
casting any aspersions on _his_ nerve.

He must have taken it that way, though; for he went out when we did and
hooked up, and when we drove down to where the little old scow they called
a ferry was bobbing like a decoy-duck in the water, he was just behind us
with his team. Pochette looked at him, and at us, and at the river; and
his meager little face with its pointed beard looked like a perturbed
gnome--if you ever saw one.

"The leetle boat, she not stand for ze beeg load. The weend, she--"

"Aw, what yuh running a ferry for?" Frosty cut in impatiently. "There's a
good, strong current on, to-day; she'll go across on a high run."

Pochette shook his head still more dubiously, till I got down and
bolstered up his courage with a small piece of gold. They're all alike;
their courage ebbs and flows on a golden tide, if you'll let me indulge in
a bit of unnecessary hyperbole. He worked the scow around end on to the
bank, so that we could drive on. The team wasn't a bit stuck on going, but
Frosty knows how to handle horses, and they steadied when he went to their
heads and talked to them.

We were so busy with our own affairs that we didn't notice what was going
on behind us till we heard Pochette declaiming bad profanity in a high
soprano. Then I turned, and he was trying to stand off old King. But King
wasn't that sort; he yelled to us to move up and make room, and then took
down his whip and started up. Pochette pirouetted out of the way, and
stood holding to the low plank railing while he went on saying things
that, properly pronounced, must have been very blasphemous.

King paid about as much attention to him as he would to a good-sized
prairie-dog chittering beside its burrow. I reckon he knew Pochette pretty
well. He got his rig in place and climbed down and went to his horses'
heads.

"Now, shove off, dammit," he ordered, just as if no one had been near
bursting a blood-vessel within ten feet of him.

Pochette gulped, worked the point of his beard up and down like a villain
in a second-rate melodrama, and shoved off. The current and the wind
caught us in their grip, and we swashed out from shore and got under way.

I can't say that trip looked good to me, from the first rod out. Of
course, the river couldn't rear up and get real savage, like the ocean,
but there were choppy little waves that were plenty nasty enough, once you
got to bucking them with a blum-nosed old scow fastened to a cable that
swayed and sagged in the wind that came howling down on us. And with two
rigs on, we filled her from bow to stern; all but about four feet around
the edges.

Frosty looked across to the farther shore, then at the sagging cable, and
then at me. I gathered that he had his doubts, too, but he wouldn't say
anything. Nobody did, for that matter. Even Pochette wasn't doing anything
but chew his whiskers and watch the cable.

Then she broke, with a snap like a rifle, and a jolt that came near
throwing us off our feet. Pochette gave a yell and relapsed into French
that I'd hate to translate; it would shock even his own countrymen. The
ferry ducked and bobbed, now there was nothing to hold its nose steady to
the current, and went careering down river with all hands aboard and
looking for trouble.

We didn't do anything, though; there wasn't anything to do but stay right
where we were and take chances. If she stayed right side up we would
probably land eventually. If she flopped over--which she seemed trying to
do, we'd get a cold bath and lose our teams, if no worse.

Soon as I thought of that, I began unhooking the traces of the horse
nearest. The poor brutes ought at least to have a chance to swim for it.
Frosty caught on, and went to work, too, and in half a minute we had them
free of the wagon and stripped of everything but their bridles. They would
have as good a show as we, and maybe better.

I looked back to see what King was doing. He was having troubles of his
own, trying to keep one of his cayuses on all its feet at once. It was
scared, poor devil, and it took all his strength on the bit to keep it
from rearing and maybe upsetting the whole bunch. Pochette wasn't doing
anything but lament, so I went back and unhooked King's horses for him,
and took off the harness and threw it in the back of his wagon so they
wouldn't tangle their feet in it when it came to a show-down.

I don't think he was what you could call grateful; he never looked my way
at all, but went on cussing the horse he was holding, for acting up just
when he should keep his wits. I went back to Frosty, and we stood elbows
touching, waiting for whatever was coming.

For what seemed a long while, nothing came but wind and water. But
I don't mind saying that there was plenty of that, and if either one had
been suddenly barred out of the game we wouldn't any of us have called the
umpire harsh names. We drifted, slippety-slosh, and the wind ripped holes
in the atmosphere and made our eyes water with the bare force of it when
we faced the west. And none of us had anything to say, except Pochette; he
said a lot, I remember, but never mind what. I don't suppose he was
mentally responsible at the time.

Then, a long, narrow, yellow tongue of sand-bar seemed to reach right out
into the river and lap us up. We landed with a worse jolt than when we
broke away from the cable, and the gray-blue river went humping past
without us. Frosty and I looked at each other and grinned; after all, we
were coming out of the deal better than we had expected, for we were still
right side up and on the side of the river toward home. We were a mile or
so down river from the trail, but once we were on the bank with our rig,
that was nothing.

We had landed head on, with the nose of the scow plowed high and dry.
Being at the front, we went at getting our team off, and our wagon. There
was a four or five-foot jump to make, and the horses didn't know how about
it, at first. But with one of us pulling, and the other slashing them over
the rump, they made it, one at a time. The sand was soft and acted
something like quicksand, too, and we hustled them to shore and tied them
to some bushes. The bank was steep there, and we didn't know how we were
going to make the climb, but we left that to worry over afterward; we
still had our rig to get ashore, and it began to look like quite a
contract.

We went back, with our boot tracks going deep, and then filling up and
settling back almost level six steps behind us. Frosty looked back at them
and scowled.

"For sand that isn't quicksand," he said, "this layout will stand about as
little monkeying with as any sand I ever met up with. Time we make a few
trips over it, she's going to be pudding without the raisins. And that's
a picnic, with our rig on the main deck, as you might say."

We went back and sat swinging our legs off the free board end of the ferry
boat, and rolled us a smoke apiece and considered the next move. King was
somewhere back between our rig and his, cussing Pochette to a
fare-you-well for having such a rotten layout and making white men pay
good money for the privilege of risking their lives and property upon it.

"We'll have to unload and take the wagon to pieces and pack everything
ashore--I guess that's our only show," said Frosty. We had just given up
my idea of working the scow up along the bar to the bank. We couldn't
budge her off the sand, and Pochette warned us that if we did the wind
would immediately commence doing things to us again.

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