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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flying U Ranch, by B. M. Bower
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Flying U Ranch
+
+Author: B. M. Bower
+
+Posting Date: August 20, 2008 [EBook #1206]
+Release Date: February, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLYING U RANCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anthony Matonak
+
+
+
+
+
+FLYING U RANCH
+
+By B. M. Bower
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     CHAPTER
+     I.   The Coming of a Native Son
+     II.  "When Greek Meets Greek"
+     III.  Bad News
+     IV.   Some Hopes
+     V.    Sheep
+     VI.   What Happened to  Andy
+     VII.  Truth Crushed to Earth, etc.
+     VIII. The Dot Outfit
+     IX.   More Sheep
+     X.    The Happy Family Herd Sheep
+     XI.   Weary Unburdens
+     XII.  Two of a Kind
+     XIII. The Happy Family Learn Something
+     XIV.  Happy Jack
+     XV.   Oleson
+     XVI.  The End of the Dots
+     XVII. Good News
+
+
+
+
+FLYING U RANCH
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. The Coming of a Native Son
+
+The Happy Family, waiting for the Sunday supper call, were grouped
+around the open door of the bunk-house, gossiping idly of things purely
+local, when the Old Man returned from the Stock Association at Helena;
+beside him on the buggy seat sat a stranger. The Old Man pulled up at
+the bunk-house, the stranger sprang out over the wheel with the agility
+which bespoke youthful muscles, and the Old Man introduced him with a
+quirk of the lips:
+
+"This is Mr. Mig-u-ell Rapponi, boys--a peeler straight from the Golden
+Gate. Throw out your war-bag and make yourself to home, Mig-u-ell; some
+of the boys'll show you where to bed down."
+
+The Old Man drove on to the house with his own luggage, and Happy Jack
+followed to take charge of the team; but the remainder of the Happy
+Family unobtrusively took the measure of the foreign element. From his
+black-and-white horsehair hatband, with tassels that swept to the very
+edge of his gray hatbrim, to the crimson silk neckerchief draped over
+the pale blue bosom of his shirt; from the beautifully stamped leather
+cuffs, down to the exaggerated height of his tan boot-heels, their
+critical eyes swept in swift, appraising glances; and unanimous
+disapproval was the result. The Happy Family had themselves an eye to
+picturesque garb upon occasion, but this passed even Pink's love of
+display.
+
+"He's some gaudy to look at," Irish murmured under his breath to Cal
+Emmett.
+
+"All he lacks is a spot-light and a brass band," Cal returned, in much
+the same tone with which a woman remarks upon a last season's hat on the
+head of a rival.
+
+Miguel was not embarrassed by the inspection. He was tall, straight,
+and swarthily handsome, and he stood with the complacence of a stage
+favorite waiting for the applause to cease so that he might speak his
+first lines; and, while he waited, he sifted tobacco into a cigarette
+paper daintily, with his little finger extended. There was a ring upon
+that finger; a ring with a moonstone setting as large and round as the
+eye of a startled cat, and the Happy Family caught the pale gleam of it
+and drew a long breath. He lighted a match nonchalantly, by the artfully
+simple method of pinching the head of it with his fingernails, leaned
+negligently against the wall of the bunk-house, and regarded the group
+incuriously while he smoked.
+
+"Any pretty girls up this way?" he inquired languidly, after a moment,
+fanning a thin smoke-cloud from before his face while he spoke.
+
+The Happy Family went prickly hot. The girls in that neighborhood were
+held in esteem, and there was that in his tone which gave offense.
+
+"Sure, there's pretty girls here!" Big Medicine bellowed unexpectedly,
+close beside him. "We're all of us engaged to `em, by cripes!"
+
+Miguel shot an oblique glance at Big Medicine, examined the end of his
+cigarette, and gave a lift of shoulder, which might mean anything
+or nothing, and so was irritating to a degree. He did not pursue the
+subject further, and so several belated retorts were left tickling
+futilely the tongues of the Happy Family--which does not make for
+amiability.
+
+To a man they liked him little, in spite of their easy friendliness with
+mankind in general. At supper they talked with him perfunctorily, and
+covertly sneered because he sprinkled his food liberally with cayenne
+and his speech with Spanish words pronounced with soft, slurred
+vowels that made them sound unfamiliar, and against which his English
+contrasted sharply with its crisp, American enunciation. He met their
+infrequent glances with the cool stare of absolute indifference to their
+opinion of him, and their perfunctory civility with introspective calm.
+
+The next morning, when there was riding to be done, and Miguel
+appeared at the last moment in his working clothes, even Weary, the
+sunny-hearted, had an unmistakable curl of his lip after the first
+glance.
+
+Miguel wore the hatband, the crimson kerchief tied loosely with the
+point draped over his chest, the stamped leather cuffs and the tan boots
+with the highest heels ever built by the cobbler craft. Also, the lower
+half of him was incased in chaps the like of which had never before been
+brought into Flying U coulee. Black Angora chaps they were; long-haired,
+crinkly to the very hide, with three white, diamond-shaped patches
+running down each leg of them, and with the leather waistband stamped
+elaborately to match the cuffs. The bands of his spurs were two inches
+wide and inlaid to the edge with beaten silver, and each concho was
+engraved to represent a large, wild rose, with a golden center. A dollar
+laid upon the rowels would have left a fringe of prongs all around.
+
+He bent over his sacked riding outfit, and undid it, revealing a
+wonderful saddle of stamped leather inlaid on skirt and cantle with
+more beaten silver. He straightened the skirts, carefully ignoring the
+glances thrown in his direction, and swore softly to himself when he
+discovered where the leather had been scratched through the canvas
+wrappings and the end of the silver scroll ripped up. He drew out his
+bridle and shook it into shape, and the silver mountings and the reins
+of braided leather with horsehair tassels made Happy Jack's eyes greedy
+with desire. His blanket was a scarlet Navajo, and his rope a rawhide
+lariat.
+
+Altogether, his splendor when he was mounted so disturbed the fine
+mental poise of the Happy Family that they left him jingling richly
+off by himself, while they rode closely grouped and discussed him
+acrimoniously.
+
+"By gosh, a man might do worse than locate that Native Son for a silver
+mine," Cal began, eyeing the interloper scornfully. "It's plumb wicked
+to ride around with all that wealth and fussy stuff. He must 'a' robbed
+a bank and put the money all into a riding outfit."
+
+"By golly, he looks to me like a pair uh trays when he comes bow-leggin'
+along with them white diamonds on his legs," Slim stated solemnly.
+
+"And I'll gamble that's a spot higher than he stacks up in the cow
+game," Pink observed with the pessimism which matrimony had given him.
+"You mind him asking about bad horses, last night? That Lizzie-boy never
+saw a bad horse; they don't grow 'em where he come from. What they don't
+know about riding they make up for with a swell rig--"
+
+"And, oh, mamma! It sure is a swell rig!" Weary paid generous tribute.
+"Only I will say old Banjo reminds me of an Irish cook rigged out in
+silk and diamonds. That outfit on Glory, now--" He sighed enviously.
+
+"Well, I've gone up against a few real ones in my long and varied
+career," Irish remarked reminiscently, "and I've noticed that a hoss
+never has any respect or admiration for a swell rig. When he gets real
+busy it ain't the silver filigree stuff that's going to help you hold
+connections with your saddle, and a silver-mounted bridle-bit ain't a
+darned bit better than a plain one."
+
+"Just take a look at him!" cried Pink, with intense disgust. "Ambling
+off there, so the sun can strike all that silver and bounce back in our
+eyes. And that braided lariat--I'd sure love to see the pieces if he
+ever tries to anchor anything bigger than a yearling!"
+
+"Why, you don't think for a minute he could ever get out and rope
+anything, do yuh?" Irish laughed. "That there Native Son throws on
+a-w-l-together too much dog to really get out and do anything."
+
+"Aw," fleered Happy Jack, "he ain't any Natiff Son. He's a dago!"
+
+"He's got the earmarks uh both," Big Medicine stated authoritatively. "I
+know 'em, by cripes, and I know their ways." He jerked his thumb toward
+the dazzling Miguel. "I can tell yuh the kinda cow-puncher he is; I've
+saw 'em workin' at it. Haw-haw-haw! They'll start out to move ten or a
+dozen head uh tame old cows from one field to another, and there'll be
+six or eight fellers, rigged up like this here tray-spot, ridin' along,
+important as hell, drivin' them few cows down a lane, with peach trees
+on both sides, by cripes, jingling their big, silver spurs, all wearin'
+fancy chaps to ride four or five miles down the road. Honest to grandma,
+they call that punchin' cows! Oh, he's a Native Son, all right. I've
+saw lots of 'em, only I never saw one so far away from the Promised Land
+before. That there looks queer to me. Natiff Sons--the real ones, like
+him--are as scarce outside Calyforny as buffalo are right here in this
+coulee."
+
+"That's the way they do it, all right," Irish agreed. "And then they'll
+have a 'rodeo'--"
+
+"Haw-haw-haw!" Big Medicine interrupted, and took up the tale, which
+might have been entitled "Some Cowpunching I Have Seen."
+
+"They have them rodeos on a Sunday, mostly, and they invite everybody to
+it, like it was a picnic. And there'll be two or three fellers to
+every calf, all lit up, like Mig-u-ell, over there, in chaps and silver
+fixin's, fussin' around on horseback in a corral, and every feller
+trying to pile his rope on the same calf, by cripes! They stretch 'em
+out with two ropes--calves, remember! Little, weenty fellers you could
+pack under one arm! Yuh can't blame 'em much. They never have more'n
+thirty or forty head to brand at a time, and they never git more'n a
+taste uh real work. So they make the most uh what they git, and go in
+heavy on fancy outfits. And this here silver-mounted fellow thinks he's
+a real cowpuncher, by cripes!"
+
+The Happy Family laughed at the idea; laughed so loud that Miguel left
+his lonely splendor and swung over to them, ostensibly to borrow a
+match.
+
+"What's the joke?" he inquired languidly, his chin thrust out and his
+eyes upon the match blazing at the end of his cigarette.
+
+The Happy Family hesitated and glanced at one another. Then Cal spoke
+truthfully.
+
+"You're it," he said bluntly, with a secret desire to test the temper of
+this dark-skinned son of the West.
+
+Miguel darted one of his swift glances at Cal, blew out his match and
+threw it away.
+
+"Oh, how funny. Ha-ha." His voice was soft and absolutely
+expressionless, his face blank of any emotion whatever. He merely spoke
+the words as a machine might have done.
+
+If he had been one of them, the Happy Family would have laughed at the
+whimsical humor of it. As it was, they repressed the impulse, though
+Weary warmed toward him slightly.
+
+"Don't you believe anything this innocent-eyed gazabo tells you, Mr.
+Rapponi," he warned amiably. "He's known to be a liar."
+
+"That's funny, too. Ha-ha some more." Miguel permitted a thin ribbon of
+smoke to slide from between his lips, and gazed off to the crinkled line
+of hills.
+
+"Sure, it is--now you mention it," Weary agreed after a perceptible
+pause.
+
+"How fortunate that I brought the humor to your attention," drawled
+Miguel, in the same expressionless tone, much as if he were reciting a
+text.
+
+"Virtue is its own penalty," paraphrased Pink, not stopping to see
+whether the statement applied to the subject.
+
+"Haw-haw-haw!" roared Big Medicine, quite as irrelevantly.
+
+"He-he-he," supplemented the silver-trimmed one.
+
+Big Medicine stopped laughing suddenly, reined his horse close to the
+other, and stared at him challengingly, with his pale, protruding eyes,
+while the Happy Family glanced meaningly at one another. Big Medicine
+was quite as unsafe as he looked, at that moment, and they wondered if
+the offender realized his precarious situation.
+
+Miguel smoked with the infinite leisure which is a fine art when it is
+not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide whether he was
+aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine. Weary was just on the
+point of saying something to relieve the tension, when Miguel blew the
+ash gently from his cigarette and spoke lazily.
+
+"Parrots are so common, out on the Coast, that they use them in cheap
+restaurants for stew. I've often heard them gabbling together in the
+kettle."
+
+The statement was so ambiguous that the Happy Family glanced at him
+doubtfully. Big Medicine's stare became more curious than hostile,
+and he permitted his horse to lag a length. It is difficult to fight
+absolute passivity. Then Slim, who ever tramped solidly over the flowers
+of sarcasm, blurted one of his unexpected retorts.
+
+"I was just wonderin', by golly, where yuh learnt to talk!"
+
+Miguel turned his velvet eyes sleepily toward the speaker. "From the
+boarders who ate those parrots, amigo," he smiled serenely.
+
+At this, Slim--once justly accused by Irish of being a "single-shot"
+when it came to repartee--turned purple and dumb. The Happy Family,
+forswearing loyalty in their enjoyment of his discomfiture, grinned and
+left to Miguel the barren triumph of the last word.
+
+He did not gain in popularity as the days passed. They tilted noses at
+his beautiful riding gear, and would have died rather than speak of it
+in his presence. They never gossiped with him of horses or men or the
+lands he knew. They were ready to snub him at a moment's notice--and
+it did not lessen their dislike of him that he failed to yield them an
+opportunity. It is to be hoped that he found his thoughts sufficient
+entertainment, since he was left to them as much as is humanly possible
+when half a dozen men eat and sleep and work together. It annoyed them
+exceedingly that Miguel did not seem to know that they held him at a
+distance; they objected to his manner of smoking cigarettes and staring
+off at the skyline as if he were alone and content with his dreams. When
+he did talk they listened with an air of weary tolerance. When he
+did not talk they ignored his presence, and when he was absent they
+criticized him mercilessly.
+
+They let him ride unwarned into an adobe patch one day--at least, Big
+Medicine, Pink, Cal Emmett and Irish did, for they were with him--and
+laughed surreptitiously together while he wallowed there and came out
+afoot, his horse floundering behind him, mud to the ears, both of them.
+
+"Pretty soft going, along there, ain't it?" Pink commiserated
+deceitfully.
+
+"It is, kinda," Miguel responded evenly, scraping the adobe off Banjo
+with a flat rock. And the subject was closed.
+
+"Well, it's some relief to the eyes to have the shine taken off him,
+anyway," Pink observed a little guiltily afterward.
+
+"I betche he ain't goin' to forget that, though," Happy Jack warned when
+he saw the caked mud on Miguel's Angora chaps and silver spurs, and the
+condition of his saddle. "Yuh better watch out and not turn your backs
+on him in the dark, none uh you guys. I betche he packs a knife. Them
+kind always does."
+
+"Haw-haw-haw!" bellowed Big Medicine uproariously. "I'd love to see him
+git out an' try to use it, by cripes!"
+
+"I wish Andy was here," Pink sighed. "Andy'd take the starch outa him,
+all right."
+
+"Wouldn't he be pickings for old Andy, though? Gee!" Cal looked around
+at them, with his wide, baby-blue eyes, and laughed. "Let's kinda jolly
+him along, boys, till Andy gets back. It sure would be great to watch
+'em. I'll bet he can jar the eternal calm outa that Native Son. That's
+what grinds me worse than his throwin' on so much dog; he's so blamed
+satisfied with himself! You snub him, and he looks at yuh as if you was
+his hired man--and then forgets all about yuh. He come outa that 'doby
+like he'd been swimmin' a river on a bet, and had made good and was
+a hee-ro right before the ladies. Kinda 'Oh, that's nothing to what I
+could do if it was worth while,' way he had with him."
+
+"It wouldn't matter so much if he wasn't all front," Pink complained.
+"You'll notice that's always the way, though. The fellow all fussed
+up with silver and braided leather can't get out and do anything.
+I remember up on Milk river--" Pink trailed off into absorbing
+reminiscence, which, however, is too lengthy to repeat here.
+
+"Say, Mig-u-ell's down at the stable, sweatin from every pore trying to
+get his saddle clean, by golly!" Slim reported cheerfully, just as Pink
+was relighting the cigarette which had gone out during the big scene of
+his story. "He was cussin' in Spanish, when I walked up to him--but he
+shut up when he seen me and got that peaceful look uh hisn on his face.
+I wonder, by golly--"
+
+"Oh, shut up and go awn," Irish commanded bluntly, and looked at Pink.
+"Did he call it off, then? Or did you have to wade in--"
+
+"Naw; he was like this here Native Son--all front. He could look sudden
+death, all right; he had black eyes like Mig-u-ell--but all a fellow had
+to do was go after him, and he'd back up so blamed quick--"
+
+Slim listened that far, saw that he had interrupted a tale evidently
+more interesting than anything he could say, and went off, muttering to
+himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. "When Greek Meets Greek"
+
+The next morning, which was Sunday, the machinations of Big Medicine
+took Pink down to the creek behind the bunk-house. "What's hurtin' yuh?"
+he asked curiously, when he came to where Big Medicine stood in the
+fringe of willows, choking between his spasms of mirth.
+
+"Haw-haw-haw!" roared Big Medicine; and, seizing Pink's arm in a
+gorilla-like grip, he pointed down the bank.
+
+Miguel, seated upon a convenient rock in a sunny spot, was painstakingly
+combing out the tangled hair of his chaps, which he had washed quite as
+carefully not long before, as the cake of soap beside him testified.
+
+"Combing--combing--his chaps, by cripes!" Big Medicine gasped,
+and waggled his finger at the spectacle. "Haw-haw-haw!
+C-combin'--his--chaps!"
+
+Miguel glanced up at them as impersonally as if they were two cackling
+hens, rather than derisive humans, then bent his head over a stubborn
+knot and whistled La Paloma softly while he coaxed out the tangle.
+
+Pink's eyes widened as he looked, but he did not say anything. He backed
+up the path and went thoughtfully to the corrals, leaving Big Medicine
+to follow or not, as he chose.
+
+"Combin'--his chaps, by cripes!" came rumbling behind him. Pink turned.
+
+"Say! Don't make so much noise about it," he advised guardedly. "I've
+got an idea."
+
+"Yuh want to hog-tie it, then," Big Medicine retorted, resentful because
+Pink seemed not to grasp the full humor of the thing. "Idees sure seems
+to be skurce in this outfit--or that there lily-uh-the-valley couldn't
+set and comb no chaps in broad daylight, by cripes; not and get off with
+it."
+
+"He's an ornament to the Flying U," Pink stated dreamily. "Us boneheads
+don't appreciate him, is all that ails us. What we ought to do is--help
+him be as pretty as he wants to be, and--"
+
+"Looky here, Little One." Big Medicine hurried his steps until he was
+close alongside. "I wouldn't give a punched nickel for a four-horse load
+uh them idees, and that's the truth." He passed Pink and went on ahead,
+disgust in every line of his square-shouldered figure. "Combin' his
+chaps, by cripes!" he snorted again, and straightway told the tale
+profanely to his fellows, who laughed until they were weak and
+watery-eyed as they listened.
+
+Afterward, because Pink implored them and made a mystery of it, they
+invited Miguel to take a hand in a long-winded game--rather, a series
+of games--of seven-up, while his chaps hung to dry upon a willow by the
+creek bank--or so he believed.
+
+The chaps, however, were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also
+the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the
+Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling
+laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little
+Doctor and those of the Countess besides.
+
+"It's a shame, and I just hope Miguel thrashes you both for it," the
+Little Doctor told them more than once; but she laughed, nevertheless,
+and showed Pink how to give the twist which made of each lock a
+corkscrew ringlet. The Countess stopped, with her dishcloth dangling
+from one red, bony hand, while she looked. "You boys couldn't sleep
+nights if you didn't pester the life outa somebody," she scolded. "Seems
+to me I'd friz them diamonds, if I was goin' to be mean enough to do
+anything."
+
+"You would, eh?" Pink glanced up at her and dimpled. "I'll find you
+a rich husband to pay for that." He straightway proceeded to friz the
+diamonds of white.
+
+"Why don't you have a strip of ringlets down each leg, with tight little
+curls between?" suggested the Little Doctor, not to be outdone by any
+other woman.
+
+"Correct you are," praised Irish.
+
+"And, remember, you're not heating branding-irons, mister man," she
+added. "You'll burn all the hair off, if you let the tongs get red-hot.
+Just so they'll sizzle; I've told you five times already." She picked
+up the Kid, kissed many times the finger he held up for sympathy--the
+finger with which he had touched the tongs as Pink was putting them
+back into the grate of the kitchen stove, and spoke again to ease her
+conscience. "I think it's awfully mean of you to do it. Miguel ought to
+thrash you both."
+
+"We're dead willing to let him try, Mrs. Chip. We know it's mean. We're
+real ashamed of ourselves." Irish tested his tongs as he had been told
+to do. "But we'd rather be ashamed than good, any old time."
+
+The Little Doctor giggled behind the Kid's tousled curls, and reached
+out a slim hand once more to give Pink's tongs the expert twist he was
+trying awkwardly to learn. "I'm sorry for Miguel; he's got lovely eyes,
+anyway."
+
+"Yes, ain't he?" Pink looked up briefly from his task. "How's your leg,
+Irish? Mine's done."
+
+"Seems to me I'd make a deep border of them corkscrew curls all around
+the bottoms, if I was doin' it," said the Countess peevishly, from the
+kitchen sink. "If I was that dago I'd murder the hull outfit; I never
+did see a body so hectored in my life--and him not ever ketchin' on. He
+must be plumb simple-minded."
+
+When the curling was done to the hilarious satisfaction of Irish and
+Pink, and, while Pink was dancing in them to show them off, another
+entered with mail from town. And, because the mail-bearer was Andy Green
+himself, back from a winter's journeyings, Cal, Happy Jack and Slim
+followed close behind, talking all at once, in their joy at beholding
+the man they loved well and hated occasionally also. Andy delivered the
+mail into the hands of the Little Doctor, pinched the Kid's cheek,
+and said how he had grown good-looking as his mother, almost, spoke a
+cheerful howdy to the Countess, and turned to shake hands with Pink. It
+was then that the honest, gray eyes of him widened with amazement.
+
+"Well, by golly!" gasped Slim, goggling at the chaps of Miguel.
+
+"That there Natiff Son'll just about kill yuh for that," warned Happy
+Jack, as mournfully as he might with laughing. "He'll knife yuh, sure."
+
+Andy, demanding the meaning of it all, learned all about Miguel
+Rapponi--from the viewpoint of the Happy Family. At least, he learned as
+much as it was politic to tell in the presence of the Little Doctor; and
+afterward, while Pink was putting the chaps back upon the willow, where
+Miguel had left them, he was told that they looked to him, Andy Green,
+for assistance.
+
+"Oh, gosh! You don't want to depend on me, Pink," Andy expostulated
+modestly. "I can't think of anything--and, besides, I've reformed. I
+don't know as it's any compliment to me, by gracious--being told soon as
+I land that I'm expected to lie to a perfect stranger."
+
+"You come on down to the stable and take a look at his saddle and
+bridle," urged Cal. "And wait till you see him smoking and looking past
+you, as if you was an ornery little peak that didn't do nothing but
+obstruct the scenery. I've seen mean cusses--lots of 'em; and I've seen
+men that was stuck on themselves. But I never--"
+
+"Come outa that 'doby," Pink interrupted, "mud to his eyebrows, just
+about. And he knew darned well we headed him in there deliberate. And
+when I remarks it's soft going, he says: 'It is, kinda,'--just like
+that." Pink managed to imitate the languid tone of Miguel very well.
+"Not another word outa him. Didn't even make him mad! He--"
+
+"Tell him about the parrots, Slim," Cal suggested soberly. But Slim only
+turned purple at the memory, and swore.
+
+"Old Patsy sure has got it in for him," Happy Jack observed. "He asked
+Patsy if he ever had enchiladas. Patsy won't speak to him no more. He
+claims Mig-u-ell insulted him. He told Mig-u-ell--"
+
+"Enchiladas are sure fine eating," said Andy. "I took to 'em like a
+she-bear to honey, down in New Mexico this winter. Your Native Son is
+solid there, all right."
+
+"Aw, gwan! He ain't solid nowhere but in the head. Maybe you'll love him
+to death when yuh see him--chances is you will, if you've took to eatin'
+dago grub."
+
+Andy patted Happy Jack reassuringly on the shoulder. "Don't get
+excited," he soothed. "I'll put it all over the gentleman, just to show
+my heart's in the right place. Just this once, though; I've reformed.
+And I've got to have time to size him up. Where do you keep him when he
+ain't in the show window?" He swung into step with Pink. "I'll tell you
+the truth," he confided engagingly. "Any man that'll wear chaps like
+he's got--even leaving out the extra finish you fellows have given
+'em--had ought to be taught a lesson he'll remember. He sure must be a
+tough proposition, if the whole bunch of yuh have had to give him up. By
+gracious--"
+
+"We haven't tried," Pink defended. "It kinda looked to us as if he was
+aiming to make us guy him; so we didn't. We've left him strictly alone.
+To-day"--he glanced over his shoulder to where the becurled chaps swung
+comically from the willow branch--"to-day's the first time anybody's
+made a move. Unless," he added, as an afterthought, "you count yesterday
+in the 'doby patch--and even then we didn't tell him to ride into it; we
+just let him do it."
+
+"And kinda herded him over towards it," Cal amended slyly.
+
+"Can he ride?" asked Andy, going straight to the main point, in the mind
+of a cowpuncher.
+
+"W-e-ell-he hasn't been piled, so far. But then," Pink qualified
+hastily, "he hasn't topped anything worse than Crow-hop. He ain't hard
+to ride. Happy Jack could--"
+
+"Aw, I'm gittin' good and sick of' hearin' that there tune," Happy
+growled indignantly. "Why don't you point out Slim as the limit, once in
+a while?"
+
+"Come on down to the stable, and let's talk it over," Andy suggested,
+and led the way. "What's his style, anyway? Mouthy, or what?"
+
+With four willing tongues to enlighten him, it would be strange, indeed,
+if one so acute as Andy Green failed at last to have a very fair mental
+picture of Miguel. He gazed thoughtfully at his boots, laughed suddenly,
+and slapped Irish quite painfully upon the back.
+
+"Come on up and introduce me, boys," he said. "We'll make this Native
+Son so hungry for home--you watch me put it on the gentleman. Only it
+does seem a shame to do it."
+
+"No, it ain't. If you'd been around him for two weeks, you'd want to
+kill him just to make him take notice," Irish assured him.
+
+"What gets me," Andy mused, "is why you fellows come crying to me for
+help. I should think the bunch of you ought to be able to handle one
+lone Native Son."
+
+"Aw, you're the biggest liar and faker in the bunch, is why," Happy Jack
+blurted.
+
+"Oh, I see." Andy hummed a little tune and pushed his hands deep into
+his pockets, and at the corners of his lips there flickered a smile.
+
+The Native Son sat with his hat tilted slightly back upon his head and a
+cigarette between his lips, and was reaching lazily for the trick which
+made the fourth game his, when the group invaded the bunk-house. He
+looked up indifferently, swept Andy's face and figure with a glance
+too impersonal to hold even a shade of curiosity, and began rapidly
+shuffling his cards to count the points he had made.
+
+Andy stopped short, just inside the door, and stared hard at Miguel,
+who gave no sign. He turned his honest, gray eyes upon Pink and Irish
+accusingly--whereat they wondered greatly.
+
+"Your deal--if you want to play," drawled Miguel, and shoved his cards
+toward Big Medicine. But the boys were already uptilting chairs to
+grasp the quicker the outstretched hand of the prodigal, so that Miguel
+gathered up the cards, evened their edges mechanically, and deigned
+another glance at this stranger who was being welcomed so vociferously.
+Also he sighed a bit--for even a languid-eyed stoic of a Native Son may
+feel the twinge of loneliness. Andy shook hands all round, swore amiably
+at Weary, and advanced finally upon Miguel.
+
+"You don't know me from Adam's off ox," he began genially, "but I know
+you, all right, all right. I hollered my head off with the rest of 'em
+when you played merry hell in that bull-ring, last Christmas. Also, I
+was part of your bodyguard when them greasers were trying to tickle you
+in the ribs with their knives in that dark alley. Shake, old-timer! You
+done yourself proud, and I'm glad to know yuh!"
+
+Miguel, for the first time in two weeks, permitted himself the luxury
+of an expressive countenance. He gave Andy Green one quick, grateful
+look--and a smile, the like of which made the Happy Family quiver
+inwardly with instinctive sympathy.
+
+"So you were there, too, eh?" Miguel exclaimed softly, and rose to greet
+him. "And that scrap in the alley--we sure had a hell of a time there
+for a few minutes, didn't we? Are you that tall fellow who kicked that
+squint-eyed greaser in the stomach? Muchos gracios, senor! They were
+piling on me three deep, right then, and I always believed they'd have
+got me, only for a tall vaquero I couldn't locate afterward." He smiled
+again that wonderful smile, which lighted the darkness of his eyes as
+with a flame, and murmured a sentence or two in Spanish.
+
+"Did you get the spurs me and my friends sent you afterward?" asked Andy
+eagerly. "We heard about the Arizona boys giving you the saddle--and we
+raked high and low for them spurs. And, by gracious, they were beauts,
+too--did yuh get 'em?"
+
+"I wear them every day I ride," answered Miguel, a peculiar, caressing
+note in his voice.
+
+"I didn't know--we heard you had disappeared off the earth. Why--"
+
+Miguel laughed outright. "To fight a bull with bare hands is one thing,
+amigo," he said. "To take a chance on getting a knife stuck in your
+back is another. Those Mexicans--they don't love the man who crosses the
+river and makes of their bull-fights a plaything."
+
+"That's right; only I thought, you being a--"
+
+"Not a Mexican." Miguel's voice sharpened a trifle. "My father was
+Spanish, yes. My mother"--his eyes flashed briefly at the faces of the
+gaping Happy Family--"my mother was born in Ireland."
+
+"And that sure makes a hard combination to beat," cried Andy heartily.
+He looked at the others--at all, that is, save Pink and Irish, who had
+disappeared. "Well, boys, I never thought I'd come home and find--"
+
+"Miguel Rapponi," supplied the Native Son quickly. "As well forget that
+other name. And," he added with the shrug which the Happy Family had
+come to hate, "as well forget the story, also. I am not hungry for the
+feel of a knife in my back." He smiled again engagingly at Andy Green.
+It was astonishing how readily that smile had sprung to life with the
+warmth of a little friendship, and how pleasant it was, withal.
+
+"Just as you say," Andy agreed, not trying to hide his admiration. "I
+guess nobody's got a better right to holler for silence. But--say, you
+sure delivered the goods, old boy! You musta read about it, you fellows;
+about the American puncher that went over the line and rode one of
+their crack bulls all round the ring, and then--" He stopped and looked
+apologetically at Miguel, in whose dark eyes there flashed a warning
+light. "I clean forgot," he confessed impulsively. "This meeting you
+here unexpectedly, like this, has kinda got me rattled, I guess. But--I
+never saw yuh before in my life," he declared emphatically. "I don't
+know a darn thing about--anything that ever happened in an alley in
+the city of--oh, come on, old-timer; let's talk about the weather, or
+something safe!"
+
+After that the boys of the Flying U behaved very much as do children
+who have quarreled foolishly and are trying shamefacedly to re-establish
+friendly relations without the preliminary indignity of open repentance.
+They avoided meeting the velvet-eyed glances of Miguel, and at the same
+time they were plainly anxious to include him in their talk as if that
+had been their habit from the first. A difficult situation to meet, even
+with the fine aplomb of the Happy Family to ease the awkwardness.
+
+Later Miguel went unobtrusively down to the creek after his chaps; he
+did not get them, just then, but he stood for a long time hidden behind
+the willow-fringe, watching Pink and Irish feverishly combing out
+certain corkscrew ringlets, and dampening their combs in the creek to
+facilitate the process of straightening certain patches of rebellious
+frizzes. Miguel did not laugh aloud, as Big Medicine had done. He stood
+until he wearied of the sight, then lifted his shoulders in the gesture
+which may mean anything, smiled and went his way.
+
+Not until dusk did Andy get a private word with him. When he did find
+him alone, he pumped Miguel's hand up and down and afterward clutched at
+the manger for support, and came near strangling. Miguel leaned beside
+him and smiled to himself.
+
+"Good team work, old boy," Andy gasped at length, in a whisper. "Best I
+ever saw in m'life, impromptu on the spot, like that. I saw you had the
+makings in you, soon as I caught your eye. And the whole, blame bunch
+fell for it--woo-oof!" He laid his face down again upon his folded arms
+and shook in all the long length of him.
+
+"They had it coming," said Miguel softly, with a peculiar relish. "Two
+whole weeks, and never a friendly word from one of them--oh, hell!"
+
+"I know--I heard it all, soon as I hit the ranch," Andy replied weakly,
+standing up and wiping his eyes. "I just thought I'd learn 'em a
+lesson--and the way you played up--say, my hat's off to you, all right!"
+
+"One learns to seize opportunities without stuttering," Miguel observed
+calmly--and a queer look came into his eyes as they rested upon the face
+of Andy. "And, if the chance comes, I'll do as much for you. By the way,
+did you see the saddle those Arizona boys sent me? It's over here. It's
+a pip-pin--almost as fine as the spurs, which I keep in the bunk-house
+when they're not on my heels. And, if I didn't say so before, I'm sure
+glad to meet the man that helped me through that alley. That big, fat
+devil would have landed me, sure, if you hadn't--"
+
+"Ah--what?" Andy leaned and peered into the face of Miguel, his jaw
+hanging slack. "You don't mean to tell me--it's true?"
+
+"True? Why, I thought you were the fellow--" Miguel faced him steadily.
+His eyes were frankly puzzled.
+
+"I'll tell you the truth, so help me," Andy said heavily. "I don't know
+a darned thing about it, only what I read in the papers. I spent the
+whole winter in Colorado and Wyoming. I was just joshing the boys."
+
+"Oh," said Miguel.
+
+They stood there in the dusk and silence for a space, after which Andy
+went forth into the night to meditate upon this thing. Miguel stood and
+looked after him.
+
+"He's the real goods when it comes to lying--but there are others," he
+said aloud, and smiled a peculiar smile. But for all that he felt that
+he was going to like Andy very much indeed. And, since the Happy Family
+had shown a disposition to make him one of themselves, he knew that he
+was going to become quite as foolishly attached to the Flying U as was
+even Slim, confessedly the most rabid of partisans.
+
+In this wise did Miguel Rapponi, then, become a member of Jim Whitmore's
+Happy Family, and play his part in the events which followed his
+adoption.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. Bad News
+
+Andy Green, that honest-eyed young man whom everyone loved, but whom
+not a man believed save when he was indulging his love for more or less
+fantastic flights of the imagination, pulled up on the brow of Flying U
+coulee and stared somberly at the picture spread below him. On the porch
+of the White House the hammock swung gently under the weight of the
+Little Doctor, who pushed her shipper-toe mechanically against a post
+support at regular intervals while she read.
+
+On the steps the Kid was crawling laboriously upward, only to descend
+again quite as laboriously when he attained the top. One of the boys was
+just emerging from the blacksmith shop; from the build of him Andy knew
+it must be either Weary or Irish, though it would take a much closer
+observation, and some familiarity with the two to identify the man more
+exactly. In the corral were a swirl of horses and an overhanging cloud
+of dust, with two or three figures discernible in the midst, and away
+in the little pasture two other figures were galloping after a fleeing
+dozen of horses. While he looked, old Patsy came out of the messhouse,
+and went, with flapping flour-sack apron, to the woodpile.
+
+Peaceful it was, and home-like and contentedly prosperous; a little
+world tucked away in its hills, with its own little triumphs and
+defeats, its own heartaches and rejoicings; a lucky little world,
+because its triumphs had been satisfying, its defeats small, its
+heartaches brief, and its rejoicings untainted with harassment or guilt.
+Yet Andy stared down upon it with a frown; and, when he twitched the
+reins and began the descent, he sighed impatiently.
+
+Past the stable he rode with scarcely a glance toward Weary, who shouted
+a casual "Hello" at him from the corral; through the big gate and up the
+trail to the White House, and straight to the porch, where the Little
+Doctor flipped a leaf of her magazine and glanced at him with a smile,
+and the Kid turned his plump body upon the middle step and wrinkled his
+nose in a smile of recognition, while he threw out an arm in welcome,
+and made a wobbling effort to get upon his feet.
+
+Andy smiled at the Kid, but his smile did not reach his eyes, and faded
+almost immediately. He glanced at the Little Doctor, sent his horse past
+the steps and the Kid, and close to the railing, so that he could lean
+and toss the mail into the Little Doctor's lap. There was a yellow
+envelope among the letters, and her fingers singled it out curiously.
+Andy folded his hands upon the saddle-horn and watched her frankly.
+
+"Must be from J. G.," guessed the Little Doctor, inserting a slim finger
+under the badly sealed flap. "I've been wondering if he wasn't going
+to send some word--he's been gone a week--Baby! He's right between
+your horse's legs, Andy! Oh-h--baby boy, what won't you do next?" She
+scattered letters and papers from her lap and flew to the rescue. "Will
+he kick, Andy? You little ruffian." She held out her arms coaxingly from
+the top of the steps, and her face, Andy saw when he looked at her, had
+lost some of its color.
+
+"The horse is quiet enough," he reassured her. "But at the same time I
+wouldn't hand him out as a plaything for a kid." He leaned cautiously
+and peered backward.
+
+"Oh--did you ever see such a child! Come to mother, Baby!" Her voice was
+becoming strained.
+
+The Kid, wrinkling his nose, and jabbering unintelligibly at her, so
+that four tiny teeth showed in his pink mouth, moved farther backward,
+and sat down violently under the horse's sweat-roughened belly. He
+wriggled round so that he faced forward, reached out gleefully, caught
+the front fetlocks, and cried "Dup!" while he pulled. The Little Doctor
+turned white.
+
+"He's all right," soothed Andy, and, leaning with a twist of his slim
+body, caught the Kid firmly by the back of his pink dress, and lifted
+him clear of danger. He came up with a red face, tossed the Kid into the
+eager arms of the Little Doctor, and soothed his horse with soft words
+and a series of little slaps upon the neck. He was breathing unevenly,
+because the Kid had really been in rather a ticklish position; but the
+Little Doctor had her face hidden on the baby's neck and did not see.
+
+"Where's Chip?" Andy turned to ride back to the stable, glancing toward
+the telegram lying on the floor of the porch; and from it his eyes went
+to the young woman trying to laugh away her trembling while she scolded
+adoringly her adventurous man-child. He was about to speak again, but
+thought better of it, and sighed.
+
+"Down at the stables somewhere--I don't know, really; the boys can tell
+you. Mother's baby mustn't touch the naughty horses. Naughty horses hurt
+mother's baby! Make him cry!"
+
+Andy gave her a long look, which had in it much pity, and rode away.
+He knew what was in that telegram, for the agent had told him when he
+hunted him up at Rusty Brown's and gave it to him; and the horse of Andy
+bore mute testimony to the speed with which he had brought it to the
+ranch. Not until he had reached the coulee had he slackened his pace.
+He decided, after that glance, that he would not remind her that she
+had not read the telegram; instead, he thought he ought to find Chip
+immediately and send him to her.
+
+Chip was rummaging after something in the store-house, and, when Andy
+saw him there, he dismounted and stood blotting out the light from
+the doorway. Chip looked up, said "Hello" carelessly, and flung an old
+slicker aside that he might search beneath it. "Back early, aren't you?"
+he asked, for sake of saying something.
+
+Andy's attitude was not as casual as he would have had it.
+
+"Say, maybe you better go on up to the house," he began diffidently. "I
+guess your wife wants to see yuh, maybe."
+
+"Just as a good wife should," grinned Chip. "What's the matter? Kid fall
+off the porch?"
+
+"N-o-o--I brought out a wire from Chicago. It's from a doctor
+there--some hospital. The--Old Man got hurt. One of them cussed
+automobiles knocked him down. They want you to come."
+
+Chip had straightened up and was hooking at Andy blankly. "If you're
+just--"
+
+"Honest," Andy asserted, and flushed a little. "I'll go tell some one to
+catch up the team--you'll want to make that 11:20, I take it." He added,
+as Chip went by him hastily, "I had the agent wire for sleeper berths on
+the 11:20 so--"
+
+"Thanks. Yes, you have the team caught up, Andy." Chip was already well
+on his way to the house.
+
+Andy waited till he saw the Little Doctor come hurriedly to the end of
+the porch overlooking the pathway, with the telegram fluttering in her
+fingers, and then led his horse down through the gate and to the stable.
+He yanked the saddle off, turned the tired animal into a stall, and went
+on to the corral, where he leaned elbows on a warped rail and peered
+through at the turmoil within. Close beside him stood Weary, with his
+loop dragging behind him, waiting for a chance to throw it over the head
+of a buckskin three-year-old with black mane and tail.
+
+"Get in here and make a hand, why don't you?" Weary bantered, his eye
+on the buckskin. "Good chance to make a 'rep' for yourself, Andy.
+Gawd greased that buckskin--he sure can slide out from under a rope as
+easy--"
+
+He broke off to flip the hoop dexterously forward, had the reward of
+seeing the buckskin dodge backward, so that the rope barely flicked him
+on the nose, and drew in his rope disgustedly. "Come on, Andy--my hands
+are up in the air; I can't land him--that's the fourth throw."
+
+Andy's interest in the buckskin, however, was scant. His face was sober,
+his whole attitude one of extreme dejection.
+
+"You got the tummy-ache?" Pink inquired facetiously, moving around so
+that he got a fair look at his face.
+
+"Naw--his girl's went back on him!" Happy Jack put in, coiling his rope
+as he came up.
+
+"Oh, shut up!" Andy's voice was sharp with trouble. "Boys, the Old
+Man's--well, he's most likely dead by this time. I brought out a
+telegram--"
+
+"Go on!" Pink's eyes widened incredulously. "Don't you try that kind of
+a load, Andy Green, or I'll just about--"
+
+"Oh, you fellows make me sick!" Andy took his elbows off the rail and
+stood straight. "Dammit, the telegram's up at the house--go and read it
+yourselves, then!"
+
+The three stared after him doubtfully, fear struggling with the caution
+born of much experience.
+
+"He don't act, to me, like he was putting up a josh," Weary stated
+uneasily, after a minute of silence. "Run up to the house and find out,
+Cadwalloper. The Old Man--oh, good Lord!" The tan on Weary's face took a
+lighter tinge. "Scoot--it won't take but a minute to find out for sure.
+Go on, Pink."
+
+"So help me Josephine, I'll kill that same Andy Green if he's lied about
+it," Pink declared, while he climbed the fence.
+
+In three minutes he was back, and before he had said a word, his face
+confirmed the bad news. Their eyes besought him for details, and he
+gave them jerkily. "Automobile run over him. He ain't dead, but they
+think--Chip and the Little Doctor are going to catch the night train.
+You go haze in the team, Happy. And give 'em a feed of oats, Chip said."
+
+Irish and Big Medicine, seeing the three standing soberly together
+there, and sensing something unusual, came up and heard the news in
+stunned silence. Andy, forgetting his pique at their first disbelief,
+came forlornly back and stood with them.
+
+The Old Man--the thing could not be true! To every man of them his
+presence, conjured by the impending tragedy, was almost a palpable
+thing. His stocky figure seemed almost to stand in their midst;
+he looked at them with his whimsical eyes, which had the radiating
+crows-feet of age, humor and habitual squinting against sun and wind;
+the bald spot on his head, the wrinkling shirt-collar that seldom knew
+a tie, the carpet slippers which were his favorite footgear because they
+were kind to his bunions, his husky voice, good-naturedly complaining,
+were poignantly real to them at that moment. Then Irish mentally
+pictured him lying maimed, dying, perhaps, in a far-off hospital among
+strangers, and swore.
+
+"If he's got to die, it oughta be here, where folks know him and--where
+he knows--" Irish was not accustomed to giving voice to his deeper
+feelings, and he blundered awkwardly over it.
+
+"I never did go much on them darned hospitals, anyway," Weary observed
+gloomily. "He oughta be home, where folks can look after him. Mam-ma! It
+sure is a fright."
+
+"I betche Chip and the Little Doctor won't get there in time," Happy
+Jack predicted, with his usual pessimism. "The Old Man's gittin' old--"
+
+"He ain't but fifty-two; yuh call that old, consarn yuh? He's younger
+right now than you'll be when you're forty."
+
+"Countess is going along, too, so she can ride herd on the Kid," Pink
+informed then. "I heard the Little Doctor tell her to pack up, and
+'never mind if she did have sponge all set!' Countess seemed to think
+her bread was a darned sight more important than the Old Man. That's the
+way with women. They'll pass up--"
+
+"Well, by golly, I like to see a woman take some interest in her own
+affairs," Slim defended. "What they packin' up for, and where they
+goin'?" Slim had just ridden up to the group in time to overhear Pink's
+criticism.
+
+They told him the news, and Slim swallowed twice, said "By golly!" quite
+huskily, and then rode slowly away with his head bowed. He had worked
+for the Flying U when it was strictly a bachelor outfit, and with the
+tenacity of slow minds he held J. G. Whitmore, his beloved "Old Man,"
+as but a degree lower than that mysterious power which made the sun to
+shine--and, if the truth were known, he had accepted him as being quite
+as eternal. His loyalty adjusted everything to the interests of the
+Flying U. That the Old Man could die--the possibility stunned him.
+
+They were a sorry company that gathered that night around the long table
+with its mottled oil-cloth covering and benches polished to a glass-like
+smoothness with their own vigorous bodies. They did not talk much about
+the Old Man; indeed, they came no nearer the subject than to ask Weary
+if he were going to drive the team in to Dry Lake. They did not talk
+much about anything, for that matter; even the knives and forks seemed
+to share the general depression of spirits, and failed to give forth the
+cheerful clatter which was a daily accompaniment of meals in that room.
+
+Old Patsy, he who had cooked for J. G. Whitmore when the Flying U
+coulee was a wilderness and the brand yet unrecorded and the irons
+unmade--Patsy lumbered heavily about the room and could not find his
+dish-cloth when it was squeezed tight in one great, fat hand, and
+unthinkingly started to fill their coffee cups from the tea-kettle.
+
+"Py cosh, I vould keel der fool vot made her first von of der
+automo-beels, yet!" he exclaimed unexpectedly, after a long silence, and
+cast his pipe vindictively toward his bunk in one corner.
+
+The Happy Family looked around at him, then understandingly at one
+another.
+
+"Same here, Patsy," Jack Bates agreed. "What they want of the damned
+things when the country's full uh good horses gits me."
+
+"So some Yahoo with just sense enough to put goggles on to cover up
+his fool face can run over folks he ain't good enough to speak to, by
+cripes!" Big Medicine glared aggressively up and down the table.
+
+Weary got up suddenly and went out, and Slim followed him, though his
+supper was half-uneaten.
+
+"This goin' to be hard on the Little Doctor--only brother she's got,"
+they heard Happy Jack point out unnecessarily; and Weary, the equable,
+was guilty of slamming the door so that the whole building shook, by way
+of demonstrating his dislike of speech upon the subject.
+
+They were a sorry company who waved hands at the Little Doctor and
+the Kid and the Countess, just when the afterglow of a red sunset
+was merging into the vague, purple shadows of coming dusk. They stood
+silent, for the most part, and let them go without the usual facetious
+advice to "Be good to yourselves," and the hackneyed admonition to Chip
+to keep out of jail if he could. There must have been something very
+wistful in their faces, for the Little Doctor smiled bravely down upon
+then from the buggy seat, and lifted up the Kid for a four-toothed smile
+and an ecstatic "Bye!" accompanied by a vigorous flopping of hands,
+which included then all.
+
+"We'll telegraph first thing, boys," the Little Doctor called back, as
+the rig chucked into the pebbly creek crossing. "We'll keep you posted,
+and I'll write all the particulars as soon as I can. Don't think the
+worst--unless you have to. I don't." She smiled again, and waved her
+hand hastily because of the Kid's contortions; and, though the smile
+had tears close behind it, though her voice was tremulous in spite of
+herself, the Happy Family took heart from her courage and waved their
+hats gravely, and smiled back as best they could.
+
+"There's a lot uh cake you boys might just as well eat up," the Countess
+called belatedly. "It'll all dry out, if yuh don't--and there ain't no
+use wastin' it--and there's two lemon pies in the brown cupboard, and
+what under the shinin' sun--" The wheels bumped violently against a
+rock, and the Happy Family heard no more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. Some Hopes
+
+On the third day after the Happy Family decided that there should be
+some word from Chicago; and, since that day was Sunday, they rode in a
+body to Dry Lake after it. They had not discussed the impending tragedy
+very much, but they were an exceedingly Unhappy Family, nevertheless;
+and, since Flying U coulee was but a place of gloom, they were not
+averse to leaving it behind them for a few hours, and riding where every
+stick and stone did not remind then of the Old Man.
+
+In Dry Lake was a message, brief but heartening:
+
+"J. G. still alive. Some hopes".
+
+They left the station with lighter spirits after reading that; rode to
+the hotel, tied their horses to the long hitching pole there and went
+in. And right there the Happy Family unwittingly became cast for the
+leading parts in one of those dramas of the West which never is heard
+of outside the theater in which grim circumstance stages it for a single
+playing--unless, indeed, the curtain rings down on a tragedy that brings
+the actors before their district judge for trial. And, as so frequently
+is the case, the beginning was casual to the point of triviality.
+
+Sary, Ellen, Marg'reet, Sybilly and Jos'phine Denson (spelled in
+accordance with parental pronunciation) were swinging idly upon the
+hitching pole, with the self-conscious sang froid of country children
+come to town. They backed away from the Happy Family's approach, grinned
+foolishly in response to their careless greeting, and tittered openly
+at the resplendence of the Native Son, who was wearing his black Angora
+chaps with the three white diamonds down each leg, the gay horsehair
+hatband, crimson neckerchief and Mexican spurs with their immense
+rowels and ornate conchos of hand-beaten silver. Sary, Ellen, Marg'reet,
+Jos'phine and Sybilly were also resplendent, in their way. Their carroty
+hair was tied with ribbons quite aggressively new, their freckles
+shone with maternal scrubbing, and there was a hint of home-made
+"crochet-lace" beneath each stiffly starched dress.
+
+"Hello, kids," Weary greeted them amiably, with a secret smile over the
+memory of a time when they had purloined the Little Doctor's pills and
+had made reluctant acquaintance with a stomach pump. "Where's the circus
+going to be at?"
+
+"There ain't goin' to be no circus," Sybilly retorted, because she was
+the forward one of the family. "We're going away; on the train. The next
+one that comes along. We're going to be on it all night, too; and we'll
+have to eat on it, too."
+
+"Well, by golly, you'll want something to eat, then!" Slim was feeling
+abstractedly in his pocket for a coin, for these were the nieces of the
+Countess, and therefore claimed more than a cursory interest from
+Slim. "You take this up to the store and see if yuh can't swop it for
+something good to eat." Because Sary was the smallest of the lot he
+pressed the dollar into her shrinking, amazed palm.
+
+"Paw's got more money'n that," Sybilly announced proudly. "Paw's got
+a million dollars. A man bought our ranch and gave him a lot of money.
+We're rich now. Maybe paw'll buy us a phony-graft. He said maybe he
+would. And maw's goin' to have a blue silk dress with green onto it.
+And--"
+
+"Better haze along and buy that grub stake," Slim interrupted the family
+gift for profuse speech. He had caught the boys grinning, and fancied
+that they were tracing a likeness between the garrulity of Sybilly and
+the fluency of her aunt, the Countess. "You don't want that train to go
+off and leave yuh, by golly."
+
+"Wonder who bought Denson out?" Cal Emmett asked of no one in
+particular, as the children went strutting off to the store to spend the
+dollar which little Sary clutched so tightly it seemed as if the goddess
+of liberty must surely have been imprinted upon her palm.
+
+When they went inside and found Denson himself pompously "setting 'em up
+to the house," Cal repeated the question in a slightly different form to
+the man himself.
+
+Denson, while he was ready to impress the beholders with his
+unaccustomed affluence, became noticeably embarrassed at the inquiry,
+and edged off into vague generalities.
+
+"I jest nacherlly had to sell when I got m' price," he told the Happy
+Family in a tone that savored strongly of apology. "I like the country,
+and I like m' neighbors fine. Never'd ask for better than the Flyin' U
+has been t' me. I ain't got no kick comin' there. Sorry to hear the Old
+Man's hurt back East. Mary was real put out at not bein' able to
+see Louise 'fore she went away"--Louise being the Countess' and Mary
+Denson's sister--"but soon as I sold I got oneasy like. The feller
+wanted p'session right away, too, so I told Mary we might as well start
+b'fore we git outa the notion. I wouldn't uh cared about sellin', maybe,
+but the kids needs to be in school. They're growin' up in ign'rance
+out here, and Mary's folks wants us to come back 'n' settle close handy
+by--they been at us t' sell out and move fer the last five years, now,
+and I told Mary--"
+
+Even Cal forgot, eventually, that he had asked a question which remained
+unanswered; what interest he had felt at first was smothered to death
+beneath that blanket of words, and he eagerly followed the boys out
+and over to Rusty Brown's place, where Denson, because of an old grudge
+against Rusty, might be trusted not to follow.
+
+"Mamma!" Weary commented amusedly, when they were crossing the street,
+"that Denson bunch can sure talk the fastest and longest, and say the
+least, of any outfit I ever saw."
+
+"Wonder who did buy him out?" Jack Bates queried. "Old ginger-whiskers
+didn't pass out any facts, yuh notice. He couldn't have got much; his
+land's mostly gravel and 'doby patches. He's got a water right on Flying
+U creek, you know--first right, at that, seems to me--and a dandy fine
+spring in that coulee. Wonder why our outfit didn't buy him out--seeing
+he wanted to sell so bad?"
+
+"This wantin' to sell is something I never heard of b'fore," Slim said
+slowly. "To hear him tell it, that ranch uh hisn was worth a dollar an
+inch, by golly. I don't b'lieve he's been wantin' to sell out. If he
+had, Mis' Bixby woulda said something about it. She don't know about
+this here sellin' business, or she'd a said--"
+
+"Yeah, you can most generally bank on the Countess telling all she
+knows," Cal assented with some sarcasm; at which Slim grunted and turned
+sulky afterward.
+
+Denson and his affairs they speedily forgot for a time, in the diversion
+which Rusty Brown's familiar place afforded to young men with unjaded
+nerves and a zest for the primitive pleasures. Not until mid-afternoon
+did it occur to them that Flying U coulee was deserted by all save old
+Patsy, and that there were chores to be done, if all the creatures of
+the coulee would sleep in comfort that night. Pink, therefore, withdrew
+his challenge to the bunch, and laid his billiard cue down with a sigh
+and the remark that all he lacked was time, to have the scalps of every
+last one of them hanging from his belt. Pink was figurative in his
+speech, you will understand; and also a bit vainglorious over beating
+Andy Green and Big Medicine twice in succession.
+
+It occurred to Weary then that a word of cheer to the Old Man and
+his anxious watchers might not cone amiss. Therefore the Happy Family
+mounted and rode to the depot to send it, and on the way wrangled over
+the wording of the message after their usual contentious manner.
+
+"Better tell 'em everything is fine, at this end uh the line," Cal
+suggested, and was hooted at for a poet.
+
+"Just say," Weary began, when he was interrupted by the discordant
+clamor from a trainload of sheep that had just pulled in and stopped.
+"'Maa-aa, Ma-a-aaa,' darn yuh," he shouted derisively, at the peering,
+plaintive faces, glimpsed between the close-set bars. "Mamma, how I do
+love sheep!" Whereupon he put spurs to his horse and galloped down to
+the station to rid his ears of the turbulent wave of protest from the
+cars.
+
+Naturally it required some time to compose the telegram in a style
+satisfactory to all parties. Outside, cars banged together, an engine
+snorted stertorously, and suffocating puffs of coal smoke now and
+then invaded the waiting-room while the Happy Family were sending that
+message of cheer to Chicago. If you are curious, the final version of
+their combined sentiments was not at all spectacular. It said merely:
+
+"Everything fine here. Take good care of the Old Man. How's the Kid
+stacking up?"
+
+It was signed simply "The Bunch."
+
+"Mary's little lambs are here yet, I see," the Native Son remarked
+carelessly when they went out. "Enough lambs for all the Marys in the
+country. How would you like to be Mary?"
+
+"Not for me," Irish declared, and turned his face away from the stench
+of them.
+
+Others there were who rode the length of the train with faces averted
+and looks of disdain; cowmen, all of them, they shared the range
+prejudice, and took no pains to hide it.
+
+The wind blew strong from the east, that day; it whistled through the
+open, double-decked cars packed with gray, woolly bodies, whose voices
+were ever raised in strident complaint; and the stench of them smote
+the unaccustomed nostrils of the Happy Family and put them to disgusted
+flight up the track and across it to where the air was clean again.
+
+"Honest to grandma, I'd make the poorest kind of a sheepherder," Big
+Medicine bawled earnestly, when they were well away from the noise and
+smell of the detested animals. "If I had to herd sheep, by cripes, do
+you know what I'd do? I'd haze 'em into a coulee and turn loose with a
+good rifle and plenty uh shells, and call in the coyotes to git a square
+meal. That's the way I'd herd sheep. It's the only way you can shut 'em
+up. They just 'baa-aa, baa-aa, baa-aa' from the time they're dropped
+till somebody kills 'em off. Honest, they blat in their sleep. I've
+heard 'em."
+
+"When you and the dogs were shooting off coyotes?" asked Andy Green
+pointedly, and so precipitated dissension which lasted for ten miles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. Sheep
+
+Slim rising first from dinner on the next day but one opened the door
+of the mess-house, and stood there idly picking his teeth before he went
+about his work. After a minute of listening to the boys "joshing" old
+Patsy about some gooseberry pies he had baked without sugar, he turned
+his face outward, threw up his head like a startled bull, and began to
+sniff.
+
+"Say, I smell sheep, by golly!" he announced in the bellowing tone which
+was his conversational voice, and sniffed again.
+
+"Oh, that's just a left-over in your system from the dose yuh got in
+town Sunday," Weary explained soothingly. "I've smelled sheep, and
+tasted sheep, and dreamed sheep, ever since."
+
+"No, by golly, it's sheep! It ain't no memory. I--I b'hieve I hear
+'em, too, by golly." Slim stepped out away from the building and faced
+suspiciously down the coulee.
+
+"Slim, I never suspected you of imagination before," the Native Son
+drawled, and loitered out to where Slim stood still sniffing. "I wonder
+if you're catching it from Andy and me. Don't you think you ought to be
+vaccinated?"
+
+"That ain't imagination," Pink called out from within. "When anybody
+claims there's sheep in Flying U coulee, that's straight loco."
+
+"Come on out here and smell 'em yourself, then!" Slim bawled
+indignantly. "I never seen such an outfit as this is gittin' to be; you
+fellers don't believe nobody, no more. We ain't all Andy Greens."
+
+Upon hearing this Andy pushed back his chair and strolled outside. He
+clapped his hand down upon Slim's fat-cushioned shoulder and swayed him
+gently. "Never mind, Slim; you can't all be famous," he comforted. "Some
+day, maybe, I'll teach yuh the fine art of lying more convincingly than
+the ordinary man can tell the truth. It is a fine art; it takes a genius
+to put it across. Now, the only time anybody doubts my word is when I'm
+sticking to the truth hike a sand burr to a dog's tail."
+
+From away to the west, borne on the wind which swept steadily down the
+coulee, came that faint, humming sing-song, which can be made only by a
+herd of a thousand or more sheep, all blatting in different keys--or
+by a distant band playing monotonously upon the middle octave of their
+varied instruments.
+
+"Slim's right, by gracious! It's sheep, sure as yuh live." Andy did not
+wait for more, but started at a fast walk for the stable and his horse.
+After him went the Native Son, who had not been with the Flying U long
+enough to sense the magnitude of the affront, and Slim, who knew to a
+nicety just what "cowmen" considered the unpardonable sin, and the rest
+of the Happy Family, who were rather incredulous still.
+
+"Must be some fool herder just crossing the coulee, on the move
+somewhere," Weary gave as a solution. "Half of 'em don't know a fence
+when they see it."
+
+As they galloped toward the sound and the smell, they expressed freely
+their opinion of sheep, the men who owned them, and the lunatics who
+watched over the blatting things. They were cattlemen to the marrow
+in their bones, and they gloried in their prejudice against the woolly
+despoilers of the range.
+
+All these years had the Flying U been immune from the nuisance, save for
+an occasional trespasser, who was quickly sent about his business. The
+Flying U range had been kept in the main inviolate from the little, gray
+vandals, which ate the grass clean to the sod, and trampled with their
+sharp-pointed hoofs the very roots into lifelessness; which polluted the
+water-holes and creeks until cattle and horses went thirsty rather than
+drink; which, in that land of scant rainfall, devastated the range
+where they fed so that a long-established prairie-dog town was not more
+barren. What wonder if the men who owned cattle, and those who tended
+them, hated sheep? So does the farmer dread an invasion of grasshoppers.
+
+A mile down the coulee they came upon the band with two herders and four
+dogs keeping watch. Across the coulee and up the hillsides they spread
+like a noisome gray blanket. "Maa-aa, maa-aa, maa-aa," two thousand
+strong they blatted a strident medley while they hurried here and there
+after sweeter bunches of grass, very much like a disturbed ant-hill.
+
+The herders loitered upon either slope, their dogs lying close beside
+them. There was good grass in that part of the coulee; the Flying U
+had saved it for the saddle horses that were to be gathered and held
+temporarily at the ranch; for it would save herding, and a week in that
+pasture would put a keen edge on their spirits for the hard work of the
+calf roundup. A dozen or two that ranged close had already been driven
+into the field and were feeding disdainfully in a corner as far away
+from the sheep as the fence would permit.
+
+The Happy Family, riding close-grouped, stiffened in their saddles and
+stared amazed at the outrage.
+
+"Sheepherders never did have any nerve," Irish observed after a minute.
+"They keep their places fine! They'll drive their sheep right into your
+dooryard and tell 'en to help themselves to anything that happens to
+look good to them. Oh, they're sure modest and retiring!"
+
+Weary, who had charge of the outfit during Chip's absence, was making
+straight for the nearest herder. Pink and Andy went with him, as a
+matter of course.
+
+"You fellows ride up around that side, and put the run on them sheep,"
+Weary shouted back to the others. "We'll start the other side moving.
+Make 'em travel--back where they came from." He jerked his head toward
+the north. He knew, just as they all knew, that there had been no sheep
+to the south, unless one counted those that ranged across the Missouri
+river.
+
+As the three forced their horses up the steep slope, the herder, sitting
+slouched upon a rock, glanced up at them dully. He had a long stick,
+with which he was apathetically turning over the smaller stones within
+his reach, and as apathetically killing the black bugs that scuttled out
+from the moist earth beneath. He desisted from this unexciting pastime
+as they drew near, and eyed them with the sullenness that comes of
+long isolation when the person's nature forbids that other extreme of
+babbling garrulity, for no man can live long months alone and remain
+perfectly normal. Nature, that stern mistress, always exacts a penalty
+from us foolish mortals who would ignore the instincts she has wisely
+implanted within us for our good.
+
+"Maybe," Weary began mildly and without preface, "you don't know this is
+private property. Get busy with your dogs, and haze these sheep back on
+the bench." He waved his hand to the north. "And, when you get a good
+start in that direction," he added, "yuh better keep right on going."
+
+The herder surveyed him morosely, but he said nothing; neither did he
+rise from the rock to obey the command. The dogs sat upon their haunches
+and perked their ears inquiringly, as if they understood better than did
+their master that these men were not to be quite overlooked.
+
+"I meant to-day," Weary hinted, with the manner of one who deliberately
+holds his voice quiet.
+
+"I never asked yuh what yuh meant," the herder mumbled, scowling. "We
+got to keep 'em on water another hour, yet." He went back to turning
+over the small rocks and to pursuing with his stick the bugs, as if the
+whole subject were squeezed dry of interest.
+
+For a minute Weary stared unwinkingly down at him, uncertain whether to
+resent this as pure insolence, or to condone it as imbecility. "Mamma!"
+he breathed eloquently, and grinned at Andy and Pink. "This is a real
+talkative cuss, and obliging, too. Come on, boys; he's too busy to
+bother with a little thing like sheep."
+
+He led the way around to the far side of the band, the nearest sheep
+scuttling away from then as they passed. "I don't suppose we could work
+the combination on those dogs--what?" he considered aloud, glancing back
+at them where they still sat upon their haunches and watched the strange
+riders. "Say, Cadwalloper, you took a few lessons in sheepherding, a
+couple of years ago, when you was stuck on that girl--remember? Whistle
+'em up here and set 'en to work."
+
+"You go to the devil," Pink's curved hips replied amiably to his boss.
+"I've got loss-uh-memory on the sheep business."
+
+Whereat Weary grinned and said no more about it.
+
+On the opposite side of the coulee, the boys seemed to be laboring
+quite as fruitlessly with the other herder. They heard Big Medicine's
+truculent bellow, as he leaned from the saddle and waved a fist close to
+the face of the herder, but, though they rode with their eyes fixed upon
+the group, they failed to see any resultant movement of dogs, sheep or
+man.
+
+There is, at times, a certain safety in being the hopeless minority.
+Though seven indignant cowpunchers surrounded him, that herder was
+secure from any personal molestation--and he knew it. They were seven
+against one; therefore, after making some caustic remarks, which
+produced as little effect as had Weary's command upon the first man, the
+seven were constrained to ride here and there along the wavering, gray
+line, and, with shouts and swinging ropes, themselves drive the sheep
+from the coulee.
+
+There was much clamor and dust and riding to and fro. There was language
+which would have made the mothers of then weep, and there were faces
+grown crimson from wrath. Eventually, however, the Happy Family faced
+the north fence of the Flying U boundary, and saw the last woolly back
+scrape under the lower wire, leaving a toll of greasy wool hanging from
+the barbs.
+
+The herders had drawn together, and were looking on from a distance, and
+the four dogs were yelping uneasily over their enforced inaction. The
+Happy Family went back and rounded up the herders, and by sheer weight
+of numbers forced them to the fence without laying so much as a finger
+upon then. The one who had been killing black bugs gave then an ugly
+look as he crawled through, but even he did not say anything.
+
+"Snap them wires down where they belong," Weary commanded tersely.
+
+The man hesitated a minute, then sullenly unhooked the barbs of the two
+lower strands, so that the wires, which had thus been lifted to permit
+the passing of the sheep, twanged apart and once more stretched straight
+from post to post.
+
+"Now, just keep in mind the fact that fences are built for use. This is
+a private ranch, and sheep are just about as welcome as smallpox. Haze
+them stinking things as far north as they'll travel before dark, and at
+daylight start 'em going again. Where's your camp, anyhow?"
+
+"None of your business," mumbled the bugkiller sourly.
+
+Weary scanned the undulating slope beyond the fence, saw no sign of a
+camp, and glanced uncertainly at his fellows. "Well, it don't matter
+much where it is; you see to it you don't sleep within five miles of
+here, or you're liable to have bad dreams. Hit the trail, now!"
+
+They waited inside the fence until the retreating sheep lost their
+individuality as blatting animals, ambling erratically here and there,
+while they moved toward the brow of the hill, and merged into a great,
+gray blotch against the faint green of the new grass--a blotch from
+which rose again that vibrant, sing-song humming of many voices mingled.
+Then they rode back down the coulee to their own work, taking it
+for granted that the trespassing was an incident which would not be
+repeated--by those particular sheep, at any rate.
+
+It was, therefore, with something of a shock that the Happy Family
+awoke the next morning to hear Pink's melodious treble shouting in the
+bunk-house at sunrise next morning:
+
+"'G'wa-a-y round' 'em, Shep! Seven black ones in the coulee!" Men who
+know well the West are familiar with that facetious call.
+
+"Ah, what's the matter with yuh?" Irish raised a rumpled, brown head
+from his pillow, and blinked sleepily at him. "I've been dreaming I was
+a sheepherder, all night."
+
+"Well, you've got the swellest chance in the world to 'make every dream
+cone true, dearie,'" Pink retorted. "The whole blamed coulee's full uh
+sheep. I woke up a while ago and thought I just imagined I heard 'en
+again; so I went out to take a look--or a smell, it was--and they're
+sure enough there!"
+
+Weary swung one long leg out from under his blankets and reached for his
+clothes. He did not say anything, but his face portended trouble for the
+invaders.
+
+"Say!" cried Big Medicine, coming out of his bunk as if it were afire,
+"I tell yuh right now then blattin' human apes wouldn't git gay around
+here if I was runnin' this outfit. The way I'd have of puttin' them
+sheep on the run wouldn't be slow, by cripes! I'll guarantee--"
+
+By then the bunk-house was buzzing with voices, and there was none to
+give heed to Big Medicine s blatant boasting. Others there were who
+seemed rather inclined to give Weary good advice while they pulled
+on their boots and sought for their gloves and rolled early-morning
+cigarettes, and otherwise prepared themselves for what Fate might have
+waiting for then outside the door.
+
+"Are you sure they're in the coulee, Cadwalloper?" Weary asked, during a
+brief lull. "They could be up on the hill--"
+
+"Hell, yes!" was Pink's forceful answer. "They could be on the hill, but
+they ain't. Why, darn it, they're straggling into the little pasture! I
+could see 'em from the stable. They--"
+
+"Come and eat your breakfast first, boys, anyway." Weary had his hand
+upon the door-knob. "A few minutes more won't make any difference, one
+way or the other." He went out and over to the mess-house to see if
+Patsy had the coffee ready; for this was a good three-quarters of an
+hour earlier than the Flying U outfit usually bestirred themselves on
+these days of preparation for roundup and waiting for good grass.
+
+"I'll be darned if I'd be as calm as he is," Cal Emmett muttered while
+the door was being closed. "Good thing the Old Man ain't here, now. He'd
+go straight up in the air. He wouldn't wait for no breakfast."
+
+"I betche there'll be a killin' yet, before we're through with them
+sheep," gloomed Happy Jack. "When sheepherders starts in once to be
+ornery, there ain't no way uh stoppin' 'em except by killin' 'em off.
+And that'll mean the pen for a lot of us fellers--"
+
+"Well, by golly, it won't be me," Slim declared loudly. "Yuh wouldn't
+ketch me goin' t' jail for no doggone sheepherder. They oughta be a
+bounty on 'en by rights."
+
+"Seems queer they'd be right back here this morning, after being hazed
+out yesterday afternoon," said Andy Green thoughtfully. "Looks like
+they're plumb anxious to build a lot of trouble for themselves."
+
+Patsy, thumping energetically the bottom of a tin pan, sent them
+trooping to the mess-house. There it was evident that the breakfast had
+been unduly hurried; there were no biscuits in sight, for one thing,
+though Patsy was lumbering about the stove frying hot-cakes. They were
+in too great a hurry to wait for them, however. They swallowed their
+coffee hurriedly, bolted a few mouthfuls of meat and fried eggs, and let
+it go at that.
+
+Weary looked at then with a faint smile. "I'm going to give a few of you
+fellows a chance to herd sheep to-day," he announced, cooling his coffee
+so that it would not actually scald his palate. "That's why I wanted
+you to get some grub into you. Some of you fellows will have to take the
+trail up on the hill, and meet us outside the fence, so when we chase
+'em through you can make a good job of it this time. I wonder--"
+
+"You don't need to call out the troops for that job; one man is
+enough to put the fear uh the Lord into then herders," Andy remarked
+slightingly. "Once they're on the move--"
+
+"All right, my boy; we'll let you be the man," Weary told him promptly.
+"I was going to have a bunch of you take a packadero outfit down toward
+Boiler Bottom and comb the breaks along there for horses--and I sure
+do hate to spend the whole day chasing sheepherders around over the
+country. So we'll haze 'em through the fence again, and, seeing you feel
+that way about it, I'll let you go around and keep 'em going. And, if
+you locate their camp, kinda impress it on the tender, if you can round
+him up, that the Flying U ain't pasturing sheep this spring. No matter
+what kinda talk he puts up, you put the run on 'em till you see 'em
+across One-Man coulee. Better have Patsy put you up a lunch--unless
+you're fond of mutton."
+
+Andy twisted his mouth disgustedly. "Say, I'm going to quit handing out
+any valuable advice to you, Weary," he expostulated.
+
+"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" laughed Big Medicine, and slapped Andy on the
+shoulder so that his face almost came in contact with his plate.
+"Yuh will try to work some innercent man into sheepherdin', will yuh?
+Haw-haw-haw-w! You'll come in tonight blattin'--if yuh don't stay out
+on the range tryin' t' eat grass, by cripes! Andy had a little lamb that
+follered him around--"
+
+"Better let Bud take that herdin' job, Weary," Andy suggested. "It won't
+hurt him--he's blattin' already."
+
+"If you think you're liable to need somebody along," Weary began,
+soft-heartedly relenting, "why, I guess--"
+
+"If I can't handle two crazy sheepherders without any help, by gracious,
+I'll get me a job holdin' yarn in an old ladies' hone," Andy cut in
+hastily, and got up from the table. "Being a truthful man, I can't say
+I'm stuck on the job; but I'm game for it. And I'll promise you there
+won't be no more sheep of that brand lickin' our doorsteps. What darned
+outfit is it, anyway? I never bumped into any Dot sheep before, to my
+knowledge."
+
+"It's a new one on me," Weary testified, heading the procession down
+to the stable. "If they belonged anywhere in this part of the country,
+though, they wouldn't be acting the way they are. They'd be wise to the
+fact that it ain't healthy."
+
+Even while he spoke his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a
+fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the
+nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma
+which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and
+which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will carry a long way.
+
+They slapped saddles on their horses in record time that morning, and
+raced down the coulee ironically shouting commiserating sentences to
+the unfortunate Andy, who rode slowly up to the mess-house for the lunch
+which Patsy had waiting for him in a flour sack, and afterward climbed
+the grade and loped along outside the line fence to a point opposite
+the sheep and the shouting horsemen, who forced them back by weight of
+numbers.
+
+This morning the herders were not quite so passive. The bug-killer still
+scowled, but he spoke without the preliminary sulky silence of the day
+before,
+
+"We're goin' across the coulee," he growled. "Them's orders. We range
+south uh here."
+
+"No, you don't," Weary dissented calmly. "Not by a long shot, you don't.
+You're going back where you come from--if you ask me. And you're going
+quick!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. What Happened to Andy
+
+With the sun shining comfortably upon his back, and with a cigarette
+between his lips, Andy sat upon his horse and watched in silent glee
+while the irate Happy Family scurried here and there behind the band,
+swinging their ropes down upon the woolly backs, and searching their
+vocabularies for new and terrible epithets. Andy smiled broadly as a
+colorful phrase now and then boomed across the coulee in that clear,
+snappy atmosphere, which carries sounds so far. He did not expect to
+do much smiling upon his own account, that day, and he was therefore
+grateful for the opportunity to behold the spectacle before him.
+
+There was Slim, for instance, unwillingly careening down hill toward
+home, because, in his zeal to slap an old ewe smartly with his rope, he
+drove her unexpectedly under his horse, and so created a momentary panic
+that came near standing both horse and rider upon their heads. And there
+was Big Medicine whistling until he was purple, while the herder, with a
+single gesture, held the dog motionless, though a dozen sheep broke
+back from the band and climbed a slope so steep that Big Medicine was
+compelled to go after them afoot, and turn them with stones and profane
+objurgations.
+
+It was very funny--when one could sit at ease upon the hilltop and smoke
+a cigarette while others risked apoplexy and their souls' salvation
+below. By the time they panted up the last rock-strewn slope of the
+bluff, and sent the vanguard of the invaders under the fence, Andy's
+mood was complacent in the extreme, and his smile offensively wide.
+
+"Oh, you needn't look so sorry for us," drawled the Native Son, jingling
+over toward him until only the fence and a few feet of space divided
+them. "Here's where you get yours, amigo. I wish you a pleasant day--and
+a long one!" He waved his hand in mocking adieu, touched his horse with
+his silver spurs, and rode gaily away down the coulee.
+
+"Here, sheepherder's your outfit. Ma-aa-a-a!" jeered Big Medicine.
+"You'll wisht, by cripes, you was a dozen men just like yuh before
+you're through with the deal. Haw-haw-haw-w!"
+
+There were others who, seeing Andy's grin, had something to say upon the
+subject before they left.
+
+Weary rode up, and looked undecidedly from Andy to the sheep, and back
+again.
+
+"If you don't feel like tackling it single-handed, I'll send--"
+
+"What do yuh think I am, anyway?" Andy interrupted crisply, "a
+Montgomery Ward two-for-a-quarter cowpuncher? Don't you fellows waste
+any time worrying over me!"
+
+The herders stared at Andy curiously when he swung in behind the
+tail-end of the band and kept pace with their slow moving, but they did
+not speak beyond shouting an occasional command to their dogs. Neither
+did Andy have anything to say, until he saw that they were swinging
+steadily to the west, instead of keeping straight north, as they had
+been told to do. Then he rode over to the nearest herder, who happened
+to be the bug-killer.
+
+"You don't want to get turned around," he hinted quietly. "That's north,
+over there."
+
+"I'm workin' fer the man that pays my wages," the fellow retorted
+glumly, and waved an arm to a collie that was waiting for orders. The
+dog dropped his head, and ran around the right wing of the band, with
+sharp yelps and dartings here and there, turning them still more to the
+west.
+
+Andy hesitated, decided to leave the man alone for the present, and rode
+around to the other herder.
+
+"You swing these sheep north!" he commanded, disdaining preface or
+explanation.
+
+"I'm workin' for the man that pays my wages," the herder made answer
+stolidly, and chewed steadily upon a quid of tobacco that had stained
+his lips unbecomingly.
+
+So they had talked the thing over--had those two herders--and were
+following a premeditated plan of defiance! Andy hooked at the man a
+minute. "You turn them sheep, damn you," he commanded again, and laid a
+hand upon his saddle-horn suggestively.
+
+"You go to the devil, damn yuh," advised the herder, and cocked a wary
+eye at him from under his hat-brim. Not all herders, let it be said
+in passing, take unto themselves the mental attributes of their sheep;
+there are those who believe that a bold front is better than weak
+compliance, and who will back that belief by a very bold front indeed.
+
+Andy appraised him mentally, decided that he was an able-bodied man
+and therefore fightable, and threw his right leg over the cantle with a
+quite surprising alacrity.
+
+"Are you going to turn them sheep?" Andy was taking off his coat when he
+made that inquiry.
+
+"Not for your tellin'. You keep back, young feller, or I'll sick the
+dogs on yuh." He turned and whistled to the nearest one, and Andy hit
+him on the ear.
+
+They clinched and pummeled when they could and where they could. The
+dog came up, circled the gyrating forms twice, then sat down upon his
+haunches at a safe distance, tilted his head sidewise and lifted his
+ears interestedly. He was a wise little dog; the other dog was also
+wise, and remained phlegmatically at his post, as did the bug-killer.
+
+"Are you going to turn them sheep?" Andy spoke breathlessly, but with
+deadly significance.
+
+"N-yes."
+
+Andy took his fingers from the other's Adam's apple, his knee from the
+other's diaphragm, and went over to where he had thrown down his coat,
+felt in a pocket for his handkerchief, and, when he had found it,
+applied it to his nose, which was bleeding profusely.
+
+"Fly at it, then," he advised, eyeing the other sternly over the
+handkerchief. "I'd hate to ask you a third time."
+
+"I'd hate to have yuh," conceded the herder reluctantly. "I was sure I
+c'd lick yuh, or I'd 'a' turned 'em before." He sent the dog racing down
+the south line of the band.
+
+Andy got thoughtfully back upon his horse, and sat looking hard at the
+herder. "Say, you're grade above the general run uh lamb-hickers," he
+observed, after a minute. "Who are you working for, and what's your
+object in throwing sheep on Flying U land? There's plenty of range to
+the north."
+
+"I'm workin'," said the herder, "for the Dot outfit. I thought you could
+read brands."
+
+"Don't get sassy--I've got a punch or two I haven't used yet. Who owns
+these woollies?"
+
+"Well--Whittaker and Oleson, if yuh want to know."
+
+"I do." Andy was keeping pace with him around the band, which edged
+off from then and the dogs. "And what makes you so crazy about Flying U
+grass?" he pursued.
+
+"We've got to cross that coulee to git to where we're headed for; we got
+a right to, and we're going to do it." The herder paused and glanced up
+at Andy sourly. "We knowed you was a mean outfit; the boss told us so.
+And he told us you was blank ca'tridges and we needn't back up just
+'cause you raised up on your hind legs and howled a little. I've had
+truck with you cowmen before. I've herded sheep in Wyoming." He walked a
+few steps with his head down, considering.
+
+"I better go over and talk some sense into the other fellow," he said,
+looking up at Andy as if all his antagonism had oozed in the fight. "You
+ride along this edge, so they won't scatter--we ought to be grazin' 'em
+along, by rights; only you seem to be in such an all-fired rush--"
+
+"You go on and tell that loco son-of-a-gun over there what he's up
+against," Andy urged. "Blank cartridges--I sure do like that! If you
+only knew it, high power dum-dums would be a lot closer to our brand.
+Run along--I am in a kinda hurry, this morning."
+
+Andy, riding slowly upon the outskirts of the grazing, blatting band,
+watched the two confer earnestly together a hundred yards or so
+away. They seemed to be having some sort of argument; the bug-killer
+gesticulated with the long stick he carried, and the sheep, while
+the herders talked, scattered irresponsibly. Andy wondered what made
+sheepmen so "ornery," particularly herders. He wondered why the fellow
+he had thrashed was so insultingly defiant at first, and, after
+the thrashing, so unresentful and communicative, and so amenable to
+authority withal. He felt his nose, and decided that it was, all
+things considered, a cheap victory, and yet one of which he need not be
+ashamed.
+
+The herder cane back presently and helped drive the sheep over the edge
+of the bluff which bordered Antelope coulee. The bug-killer, upon his
+side, also seemed imbued with the spirit of obedience; Andy heard him
+curse a collie into frenzied zeal, and smiled approvingly.
+
+"Now you're acting a heap more human," he observed; and the man from
+Wyoming grinned ruefully by way of reply.
+
+Antelope coulee, at that point, was steep; too steep for riding, so that
+Andy dismounted and dug his boot-heels into the soft soil, to gain a
+foothold on the descent. When he was halfway down, he chanced to look
+back, straight into the scowling gaze of the bug-killer, who was sliding
+down behind him.
+
+"Thought you were hazing down the other side of 'em," Andy called back,
+but the herder did not choose to answer save with another scowl.
+
+Andy edged his horse around an impracticable slope of shale stuff and
+went on. The herder followed. When he was within twelve feet or so
+of the bottom, there was a sound of pebbles knocked loose in haste, a
+scrambling, and then came the impact of his body. Andy teetered, lost
+his balance, and went to the bottom in one glorious slide. He landed
+with the bug-killer on top--and the bug-killer failed to remove his
+person as speedily as true courtesy exacted.
+
+Andy kicked and wriggled and tried to remember what was that
+high-colored, vituperative sentence that Irish had invented over a
+stubborn sheep, that he might repeat it to the bug-killer. The herder
+from Wyoming ran up, caught Andy's horse, and untied Andy's rope from
+the saddle.
+
+"Good fer you, Oscar," he praised the bug-killer. "Hang onto him while
+I take a few turns." He thereupon helped force Andy's arms to his side,
+and wound the rope several times rather tightly around Andy's outraged,
+squirming person.
+
+"Oh, it ain't goin' to do yuh no good to buck 'n bawl," admonished
+the tier. "I learnt this here little trick down in Wyoming. A bunch uh
+punchers done it to me--and I've been just achin' all over fer a chance
+to return the favor to some uh you gay boys. And," he added, with
+malicious satisfaction, while he rolled Andy over and tied a perfectly
+unslippable knot behind, "it gives me great pleasure to hand the dose
+out to you, in p'ticular. If I was a mean man, I'd hand yuh the boot a
+few times fer luck; but I'll save that up till next time."
+
+"You can bet your sweet life there'll be a next time," Andy promised
+earnestly, with embellishments better suited to the occasion than to a
+children's party.
+
+"Well, when it arrives I'm sure Johnny-on-the-spot. Them Wyoming
+punchers beat me up after they'd got me tied. I'm tellin' yuh so you'll
+see I ain't mean unless I'm drove to it. Turn him feet down hill, Oscar,
+so he won't git a rush uh brains to the head and die on our hands. Now
+you're goin' to mind your own business, sonny. Next time yuh set out to
+herd sheep, better see the boss first and git on the job right."
+
+He rose to his feet, surveyed Andy with his hands on his hips, mentally
+pronounced the job well done, and took a generous chew of tobacco, after
+which he grinned down at the trussed one.
+
+"That the language uh flowers you're talkin'?" he inquired banteringly,
+before he turned his attention to the horse, which he disposed of by
+tying up the reins and giving it a slap on the rump. When it had trotted
+fifty yards down the coulee bottom, and showed a disposition to go
+farther, he whistled to his dogs, and turned again to Andy.
+
+"This here is just a hint to that bunch you trot with, to leave us and
+our sheep alone," he said. "We don't pick no quarrels, but we're goin'
+to cross our sheep wherever we dern please, to git where we want to go.
+Gawd didn't make this range and hand it over to you cowmen to put in yer
+pockets--I guess there's a chance fer other folks to hang on by their
+eyebrows, anyway."
+
+Andy, lying there like a very good presentation of a giant cocoon, roped
+round and round, with his arms pinned to his sides, had the doubtful
+pleasure of seeing that noisome, foolish-faced band trail down Antelope
+coulee and back upon the level they had just left, and of knowing to a
+gloomy certainty that he could do nothing about it, except swear; and
+even that palls when a man has gone over his entire repertoire three
+times in rapid succession.
+
+Andy, therefore, when the last sheep had trotted out of sight, hearing
+and smell, wriggled himself into as comfortable a position as his bonds
+would permit, and took a nap.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. Truth Crushed to Earth, etc.
+
+Andy, only half awake, tried to obey both instinct and habit and reach
+up to pull his hat down over his eyes, so that the sun could not shine
+upon his lids so hotly; when he discovered that he could do no more than
+wiggle his fingers, he came back with a jolt to reality and tried to sit
+up. It is surprising to a man to discover suddenly just how important a
+part his arms play in the most simple of body movements; Andy, with his
+arms pinioned tightly the whole length of them, rolled over on his face,
+kicked a good deal, and rolled back again, but he did not sit up, as he
+had confidently expected to do.
+
+He lay absolutely quiet for at least five minutes, staring up at the
+brilliant blue arch above him. Then he began to speak rapidly and
+earnestly; a man just close enough to hear his voice sweeping up to a
+certain rhetorical climax, pausing there and commencing again with a
+rhythmic fluency of intonation, might have thought that he was repeating
+poetry; indeed, it sounded like some of Milton's majestic blank
+verse, but it was not. Andy was engaged in a methodical, scientific,
+reprehensibly soul-satisfying period of swearing.
+
+A curlew, soaring low, with long beak outstretched before him, and
+long legs outstretched behind cast a beady eye upon him, and shrilled
+"Cor-reck! Cor-reck!" in unregenerate approbation of the blasphemy.
+
+Andy stopped suddenly and laughed. "Glad you agree with me, old sport,"
+he addressed the bird whimsically, with a reaction to his normally
+cheerful outlook. "Sheepherders are all those things I named over,
+birdie, and some that I can't think of at present."
+
+He tried again, this time with a more careful realization of his
+limitations, to assume an upright position; and being a persevering
+young man, and one with a ready wit, he managed at length to wriggle
+himself back upon the slope from which he had slid in his sleep, and, by
+digging in his heels and going carefully, he did at last rise upon his
+knees, and from there triumphantly to his feet.
+
+He had at first believed that one of the herders would, in the course
+of an hour or so, return and untie him, when he hoped to be able to
+retrieve, in a measure, his self-respect, which he had lost when the
+first three feet of his own rope had encircled him. To be tied and
+trussed by sheepherders! Andy gritted his teeth and started down the
+coulee.
+
+He was hungry, and his lunch was tied to his saddle. He looked eagerly
+down the coulee, in the faint hope of seeing his horse grazing somewhere
+along its length, until the numbness of his arms and hands reminded him
+that forty lunches, tied upon forty saddles at his side, would be of no
+use to him in his present position. His hands he could not move from his
+thighs; he could wiggle his fingers--which he did, to relieve as much
+as possible that unpleasant, prickly sensation which we call a "going to
+sleep" of the afflicted members. When it occurred to him that he could
+not do anything with his horse if he found it, he gave up looking for it
+and started for the ranch, walking awkwardly, because of his bonds, the
+sun shining hotly upon his brown head, because his hat had been knocked
+off in the scuffle, and he could not pick it up and put it back where it
+belonged.
+
+Taking a straight course across the prairie, he struck Flying U coulee
+at the point where the sheep had left it. On the way there he had
+crossed their trail where they went through the fence farther along
+the coulee than before, and therefore with a better chance of passing
+undetected; especially since the Happy Family, believing that he was
+forcing them steadily to the north, would not be watching for sheep. The
+barbed wire barrier bothered him somewhat. He was compelled to lie down
+and roll under the fence, in the most undignified manner, and, when he
+was through, there was the problem of getting upon his feet again. But
+he managed it somehow, and went on down the coulee, perspiring with the
+heat and a bitter realization of his ignominy. What the Happy Family
+would have to say when they saw him, even Andy Green's vivid imagination
+declined to picture.
+
+He knew by the sun that it was full noon when he came in sight of the
+stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of facing that
+derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins and their barbed
+tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had reached the limit of
+prickly sensations and were numb to his shoulders. He shook his hair
+back from his beaded forehead, cast a wary glance at the silent stables,
+set his jaw, and went on up the hill to the mess-house, wishing tardily
+that he had waited until they were off at work again, when he might
+intimidate old Patsy into keeping quiet about his predicament.
+
+Within the mess-house was the clatter of knives and forks plied by
+hungry men, the sound of desultory talk and a savory odor of good
+things to eat. The door was closed. Andy stood before it as a
+guilty-conscienced child stands before its teacher; clicked his teeth
+together, and, since he could not open the door, lifted his right foot
+and gave it a kick to strain the hinges.
+
+Within were exclamations of astonishment, silence and then a heavy
+tread. Patsy opened the door, gasped and stood still, his eyes popping
+out like a startled rabbit.
+
+"Well, what's eating you?" Andy demanded querulously, and pushed past
+him into the room.
+
+Not all of the Happy Family were there. Cal, Jack Bates, Irish and
+Happy Jack had gone into the Bad Lands next to the river; but there were
+enough left to make the soul of Andy quiver forebodingly, and to send
+the flush of extreme humiliation to his cheeks.
+
+The Happy Family looked at him in stunned surprise; then they glanced at
+one another in swift, wordless inquiry, grinned wisely and warily, and
+went on with their dinner. At least they pretended to go on with
+their dinner, while Andy glared at them with amazed reproach in his
+misleadingly honest gray eyes.
+
+"When you've got plenty of time," he said at last in a choked tone,
+"maybe one of you obliging cusses will untie this damned rope."
+
+"Why, sure!" Pink threw a leg over the bench and got up with cheerful
+alacrity. "I'll do it now, if you say so; I didn't know but what that
+was some new fad of yours, like--"
+
+"Fad!" Andy repeated the word like an explosion.
+
+"Well, by golly, Andy needn't think I'm goin' to foller that there
+style," Slim stated solemnly. "I need m' rope for something else than to
+tie n' clothes on with."
+
+"I sure do hate to see a man wear funny things just to make himself
+conspicuous," Pink observed, while he fumbled at the knot, which was
+intricate. Andy jerked away from him that he might face him ragefully.
+
+"Maybe this looks funny to you," he cried, husky with wrath. "But I
+can't seem to see the joke, myself. I admit I let then herders make
+a monkey of me.... They slipped up behind, going down into Antelope
+coulee, and slid down the bluff onto me; and, before I could get up,
+they got me tied, all right. I licked one of 'en before that, and
+thought I had 'en gentled down--"
+
+Andy stopped short, silenced by that unexplainable sense which warns us
+when our words are received with cold disbelief.
+
+"Mh-hm--I thought maybe you'd run up against a hostile jackrabbit, or
+something," Pink purred, and went back to his place on the bench.
+
+"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" came Big Medicine's tardy bellow. "That's more
+reasonable than the sheepherder story, by cripes!"
+
+Andy looked at them much as he had stared up at the sky before he began
+to swear--speechlessly, with a trembling of the muscles around his
+mouth. He was quite white, considering how tanned he was, and his
+forehead was shiny, with beads of perspiration standing thickly upon it.
+
+"Weary, I wish you'd untie this rope. I can't." He spoke still in that
+peculiar, husky tone, and, when the last words were out, his teeth went
+together with a snap.
+
+Weary glanced inquiringly across at the Native Son, who was regarding
+Andy steadily, as one gazes upon a tangled rope, looking for the end
+which will easiest lead to an untangling.
+
+Miguel's brown eyes turned languidly to meet the look. "You'd better
+untie him," he advised in his soft drawl. "He may not be in the habit of
+doing it--but he's telling the truth."
+
+"Untie me, Miguel," begged Andy, going over to him, "and let me at this
+bunch."
+
+"I'll do it," said Weary, and rose pacifically. "I kinda believe you
+myself, Andy. But you can't blame the boys none; you've fooled 'em till
+they're dead shy of anything they can't see through. And, besides, it
+sure does look like a plant. I'd back you single-handed against a dozen
+sheepherders like then two we've been chasing around. If I hadn't felt
+that way I wouldn't have sent yuh out alone with 'em."
+
+"Well, Andy needn't think he's goin' to stick me on that there story,"
+Slim declared with brutal emphasis. "I've swallered too many baits,
+by golly. He's figurin' on gettin' us all out on the war-path, runnin'
+around in circles, so's't he can give us the laugh. I'll bet, by golly,
+he paid then herders to tie him up like that. He can't fool me!"
+
+"Say, Slim, I do believe your brains is commencin' to sprout!" Big
+Medicine thumped him painfully upon the back by way of accenting the
+compliment. "You got the idee, all right."
+
+Andy stood quiet while Weary unwound the rope; lifted his numbed arms
+with some difficulty, and displayed to the doubters his rope-creased
+wrists, and purple, swollen hands.
+
+"I couldn't fight a caterpiller right now," he said thickly. "Look at
+them hands! Do yuh call that a josh? I've been tied up like a bed-roll
+for five hours, you--" Well, never mind, he merely repeated a part of
+what he had recited aloud in Antelope coulee, the only difference being
+that he applied the vitriolic utterances to the Happy Family instead of
+to sheepherders, and that with the second recitation he gained much in
+fluency and dramatic delivery.
+
+It is not nice for a man to swear; to swear the way Andy did, at any
+rate. But the result perhaps atoned in a measure for the wickedness, in
+that the Happy Family were absolutely convinced of his sincerity, and
+the feelings of Andy greatly relieved, so that, when he had for the
+third time that day completely exhausted his vocabulary, he sat down and
+began to eat his dinner with a keen appetite.
+
+"I don't suppose you know where your horse is at, by this tine," Weary
+observed, as casually as possible, breaking a somewhat constrained
+silence.
+
+"I don't--and I don't give a darn," Andy snapped back. He ate a few
+mouthfuls, and added less savagely: "He wasn't in sight, as I came
+along. I didn't follow the trail; I struck straight across and came down
+the coulee. He may be at the gate, and he may be down toward Rogers'."
+
+Pink reached for a toothpick, eyeing Andy side-long; dimpled his cheeks
+disarmingly, and cleared his throat. "Please don't kill me off when you
+get that pie swallowed," he began pacifically. "Strange as it may seem,
+I believe you, Andy. What I want to know is this: Who owns them Dots?
+And what are they chasing all over the Flying U range for? It looks
+plumb malicious, to me. Did you find out anything about 'en, Andy, while
+you--er--while they--" His eyes twinkled and betrayed him for an arrant
+pretender. (Pink was not afraid of anything on earth--least of all Andy
+Green.)
+
+"I will kill yuh by inches, if I hear any remarks out of yuh that
+ain't respectful," Andy promised, thawing to his normal tone, which was
+pleasant to the ear. "I didn't find out much about 'em. The fellow I
+licked told me that Whittaker and Oleson owned the sheep. He didn't
+say--"
+
+"Well--by--golly!" Shin thrust his head forward belligerently.
+"Whittaker! Well, what d'yuh think uh that!" He glared from one face
+to the other, his gaze at last resting upon Weary. "Say, do yuh reckon
+it's--Dunk?"
+
+Weary paid no heed to Slim. He leaned forward, his face turned to Andy
+with that concentration of attention which means so much more than mere
+exclamation. "You're sure he said Whittaker?" he asked.
+
+His tone and his attitude arrested Andy's cup midway to his mouth.
+"Sure--Whittaker and Oleson. I never heard of the outfit--who's this
+Whittaker person?"
+
+Weary settled back in his place and smiled, but his eyes had quite lost
+their habitually sunny expression.
+
+"Up until four years ago," he explained evenly, "he was the Old Man's
+partner. We caught him in some mighty dirty work, and--well, he sold
+out to the Old Man. The old party with the hoofs and tail can't be
+everywhere at once, the way I've got it sized up, so he turns some of
+his business over to other folks. Dunk Whittaker's his top hand."
+
+"Why, by golly, he framed up a job on the Gordon boys, and railroaded
+'em to the pen, just--"
+
+"Oh, that's the gazabo!" Andy's eyes shone with enlightenment. "I've
+heard a lot about Dunk, but I didn't know his last name--"
+
+"Say! I'll bet they're the outfit that bought out Denson. That's why old
+Denson acted so queer, maybe. Selling to a sheep outfit would make the
+old devil feel kinda uneasy, talking to us--" Pink's eyes were big and
+purple with excitement. "And that train-load of sheep we saw Sunday,
+I'll bet is the same identical outfit."
+
+"Dunk Whittaker'd better not try to monkey with me, by golly!" Slim's
+face was lowering. "And he'd better not monkey with the Flying U either.
+I'd pump him so full uh holes he'd look like a colander, by golly!"
+
+Weary got up and started to the door, his face suddenly grown careworn.
+"Slim, you and Miguel better go and hunt up Andy's horse," he said with
+a hint of abstraction in his tone, as though his mind was busy with more
+important things. "Maybe Andy'll feel able to help you set those posts,
+Bud--and you'd better go along the upper end of the little pasture with
+the wire stretchers and tighten her up; the top wire is pretty loose, I
+noticed this morning." His fingers fumbled with the door-knob.
+
+"Want me to do anything?" Pink asked quizzically just behind him. "I
+thought sure we'd go and remonstrate with then gay--"
+
+Weary interrupted him. "The herders can wait--and, anyway, I've kinda
+got an idea Andy wants to hand out his own brand of poison to that
+bunch. You and I will take a ride over to Denson's and see what's going
+on over there. Mamma!" he added fervently, under his breath, "I sure do
+wish Chip and the Old Man were here!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. The Dot Outfit
+
+Before he laid him down to sleep, that night, Weary had repeated to
+himself many times and fervently that wish for old J. G. Whitmore and
+the stout staff upon which he was beginning more and more to lean, his
+brother-in-law, Chip Bennett. As matters stood, Weary could not even
+bring himself to let then know anything about his trouble--and that the
+thing was beginning to assume the form and shape and general malevolent
+attributes of Trouble, Weary was forced to admit to himself.
+
+Just at present an unthinking, unobserving person might pass over
+this sheep outfit as a mere unsavory incident; but Weary was neither
+unobserving nor unthinking--nor, for the matter of that, were the
+rest of the Happy Family. It needed no Happy Jack, with his foreboding
+nature, to point out the unpleasant possibilities that night when the
+committee of two made their informal report at the supper table.
+
+They had ridden to Denson coulee, which was in reality a meandering
+branch of Flying U coulee itself. To reach it one rode out of Flying
+U coulee and over a wide hill, and down again to Denson's. But the
+creek--Flying U creek--followed the devious turnings from Denson coulee
+down to the Flying U. A long mile of Flying U coulee J. G. Whitmore
+owned outright. Another mile he held under no other title save a fence.
+The creek flowed through it all--but that creek had its source somewhere
+up near the head of Denson coulee. J. G. Whitmore had, to his regret,
+been unable to claim the whole earth--or at least that portion of
+it--for his own; so, when he was constrained to make a choice, he
+settled himself in the wider, more fertile coulee, which he thereafter
+called the Flying U. While it is good policy to locate as near as
+possible to the source of those erratic little creeks which water
+certain garden spots of the northern range land, it is also well to
+choose land that will grow plenty of hay. J. G. Whitmore chose the hay
+land, and trusted that providence would insure the water supply. Through
+all these years Flying U creek had never once disappointed him. Denson,
+who settled in the tributary coulee, had not made any difference in the
+water supply, and his stock had consisted of thirty or forty head of
+cattle and horses.
+
+When Denson sold, however, things might be different. And, if he had
+sold to a sheepman, the change might be unpleasant If he had sold to
+Dunk Whittaker--the Flying U boys faced that possibility just as they
+would face any other disaster, undaunted, but grim and unsmiling.
+
+It was thus that Pink and Weary rode slowly down into Denson coulee. Two
+miles back they had passed the band of Dot sheep, feeding leisurely
+just without the Flying U fence, which was the southern boundary. The
+bug-killer and the other were there, and they noted that the features
+of that other bore witness to the truth of Andy's story of the fight. He
+regarded them with one perfectly good eye and one which was considerably
+swollen, and grinned a swollen grin.
+
+The two had ridden ten paces past him when Pink pulled up suddenly. "I'm
+going to get off and lick that son-of-a-gun myself, just for luck," he
+stated dispassionately. "I'm going to lick 'em both," he revised while
+he dismounted.
+
+"Oh, come on, Cadwalloper," Weary dissuaded. "You'll likely have all the
+excitement you need, without that."
+
+"Here, you hold this fool cayuse. No." He shook his head, cutting short
+further protest. "You're the boss, and you don't want to mix in, and
+that part is all right. But I ain't responsible--and I sure am going
+to take a fall or two out of these geesers. They're a-w-l together too
+stuck on themselves to suit me." Pink did not say that he was thinking
+of Andy, but nevertheless a vivid recollection of that unfortunate young
+man's rope-creased wrists and swollen hands sent him toward the herder
+with long, eager strides.
+
+Pink was not tall, and he was slight and boyish of build; also, his
+cherubic face, topped by tawny curls and lighted by eyes as deeply blue
+and as innocent as a baby's, probably deceived that herder, just as
+they had deceived many another. For Pink was a good deal like a stick
+of dynamite wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with blue ribbon;
+and Weary was not at all uneasy over the outcome, as he watched Pink go
+clanking back, though he loved him well.
+
+Pink did not waste any time or words on the preliminaries. With a
+delightful frankness of purpose he pulled off his coat and threw it
+on the ground, as he came up, sent his hat after it, and arrived fist
+first.
+
+The herder had waited grinning, and he had shouted something to Weary
+about spanking the kid if Weary didn't make him behave. Speedily he
+became a very surprised herder, and a distressed one as well.
+
+"All right," Pink remarked, a little quick-breathed, when the herder
+decided for the third time to get up. "A friend of mine worked yuh over
+a little, this morning, and I just thought I'd make a better job than he
+did. Your eyes didn't match. They will, now."
+
+The herder mumbled maledictions after him, but Pink would not even give
+him the satisfaction of resenting it.
+
+"I'd like to have broken a knuckle against his teeth, darn him," he
+observed ruefully when he was in the saddle again. "Come on, Weary. It
+won't take but a minute to hand a punch or two to that bug-killer,
+and then I'll feel better. They've both got it coming--come on!" This
+because Weary showed a strong inclination to take the trail and keep it
+to his destination. "Well, I'll go alone, then. I've got to kinda square
+myself for the way I threw it into Andy; and you know blamed well,
+Weary, they played it low-down on him, or they'd never have got that
+rope on him. And I'm going to lick that--"
+
+"Mamma! You sure are a rambunctious person when you feel that way,"
+Weary made querulous comment; but he rode over with Pink to where the
+bug-killer was standing with his long stick held in a somewhat menacing
+manner, and once more he held Pink's horse for him.
+
+Pink was gone longer this time, and he came back with a cut lip and a
+large lump on his forehead; the bug-killer had thrown a small rock with
+the precision which comes of much practice--such as stoning disobedient
+dogs, and the like--and, when Pink rushed at him furiously, the herder
+caught him very neatly alongside the head with his stick. These little
+amenities serving merely to whet Pink's appetite for battle, he stopped
+long enough to thrash that particular herder very thoroughly and to his
+own complete satisfaction.
+
+"Well, I guess I'm ready to go on now," he observed, dimpling rather
+one-sidedly as he got back on his horse.
+
+"I thought maybe you'd want to whip the dogs, too," Weary told him
+dryly; which was the nearest he came to expressing any disapproval
+of the incident. Weary was a peace-loving soul, whenever peace was
+compatible with self-respect; and it would never have occurred to him to
+punish strange men as summarily as Pink had done.
+
+"I would, if the dogs were half as ornery as the men," Pink retorted.
+"Say, they hang together like bull snakes and rattlers, don't they? If
+they was human, they'd have helped each other out--but nothing doing! Do
+you reckon a man could ride up to a couple of our bunch, and thrash one
+at a time without the other fellow having something to say about it?" He
+turned in the saddle and looked back. "So help me, Josephine, I've got a
+good mind to go back and lick them again, for not hanging together like
+they ought to." But the threat was an idle one, and they went on to
+Denson's, Weary still with that anxious look in his eyes, and Pink quite
+complacent over his exploit.
+
+In Denson coulee was an unwonted atmosphere of activity; heretofore the
+place had been animated chiefly by young Densons engaged in the pursuit
+of pleasure, but now a covered buggy, evidently just arrived, bore mute
+witness to the new order of things. There were more horses about the
+place, a covered wagon or two, three or four men working upon the
+corral, and, lastly, there was one whom Weary recognized the moment he
+caught sight of him.
+
+"Looks like a sheep outfit, all right," he said somberly. "And, if that
+ain't old Dunk himself, it's the devil, and that's next thing to him."
+
+Dunk, they judged, had just arrived with another man whom they did not
+know: a tall man with light hair that hung lank to his collar, a thin,
+sharp-nosed face and a wide mouth, which stretched easily into a smile,
+but which was none the pleasanter for that. When he turned inquiringly
+toward them they saw that he was stoop-shouldered; though not from any
+deformity, but from sheer, slouching lankness. Dunk gave them a swift,
+sour look from under his eyebrows and went on.
+
+Weary rode straight past the lank man, whom he judged to be Oleson, and
+overtook Dunk Whittaker himself.
+
+"Hello, Dunk," he said cheerfully, sliding over in the saddle so that a
+foot hung free of the stirrup, as men who ride much have learned to do
+when they stop for a chat, thereby resting while they may. "Back on the
+old stamping ground, are you?"
+
+"Since you see me here, I suppose I am," Dunk made churlish response.
+
+"Do you happen to own those Dot sheep, back there on the hill?" Weary
+tilted his head toward home.
+
+"I happen to own half of them." By then they had reached the gate and
+Dunk passed through and started on to the house.
+
+"Oh, don't be in a rush--come on back and be sociable," Weary called
+out, in the mildest of tones, twisting the reins around his saddle-horn
+so that he might roll a cigarette at ease.
+
+Dunk remembered, perhaps, certain things he had learned when he was
+J. G. Whitmore's partner, and had more or less to do with the charter
+members of the Happy Family. He came back and stood by the gate,
+ungraciously enough, to be sure; still, he came back. Weary smiled under
+cover of lighting his cigarette. Dunk, by that reluctant compliance,
+betrayed something which Weary had been rather anxious to know.
+
+"We've been having a little trouble with those sheep of yours," Weary
+remarked between puffs. "You've got some poor excuses for humans herding
+them. They drove the bunch across our coulee just exactly three times.
+There ain't enough grass left in our lower field to graze a prairie
+dog." He glanced back to see where Pink was, saw that he was close
+behind, as was the lank man, and spoke in a tone that included them all.
+
+"The Flying U ain't pasturing sheep, this spring," he informed them
+pleasantly. "But, seeing the grass is eat up, we'll let yuh pay for it.
+Why didn't you bring them in along the trail, anyway?"
+
+"I didn't bring them in. I just came down from Butte to-day. I suppose
+the herders brought them out where the feed was best; they did if
+they're worth their wages."
+
+"They happened to strike some feed that was pretty expensive. And,"
+he smiled down at Whittaker misleadingly, "you ought to keep an eye
+on those herders, or they might let you in for another grass bill. The
+Flying U has got quite a lot of range, right around here, you recollect.
+And we've got plenty of cattle to eat it. We don't need any help to keep
+the grass down so we can ride through it."
+
+"Now, look here," began the lank man with that sort of persuasiveness
+which can turn instantly into bluster, "all this is pure foolishness,
+you know. We're here to stay. We've bought this place, and some other
+land to go with it, and we expect to stay right here and make a living.
+It happens that we expect to make a living off of sheep. Now, we don't
+want to start in by quarreling with our neighbors, and we don't want our
+neighbors to start any quarrel with us. All we want--"
+
+"Mamma! You're taking a fine way to make us love yuh," Weary cut in
+ironically. "I know what you want. You want the same as every other meek
+and lovely sheepman wants. You want it all--core, seeds and peeling.
+Dunk," he said with a more impatient disgust than he was in the habit
+of showing for his fellowmen, "this man's a stranger; but I should think
+you'd know better than to come in here with sheep."
+
+"I don't know why a sheep outfit isn't exactly as good as a cow outfit,
+and I don't know why they haven't as much right here. You're welcome to
+what land you own, but it always seemed to me that public land is open
+to the use of the public. Now, as Oleson says, we expect to raise sheep
+here, and we expect your outfit to leave us alone. As far as our sheep
+crossing your coulee is concerned--I don't know that they did. But, if
+they did, and, if they did any damage, let J. G. do the talking about
+that. I deal with the owners--not with the hired men."
+
+Weary, you must understand, was never a bellicose young man. But, for
+all that, he leaned over and gave Dunk a slap on the jaw which must have
+stung considerably--and the full reason for his violence lay four years
+behind the two, when Dunk was part owner of the Flying U, and when his
+sneering arrogance had been very hard to endure.
+
+"Are you going to swallow that--from a hired man?" Weary inquired,
+after a minute during which nothing whatever occurred beyond the slow
+reddening of Dunk's face.
+
+"I'm not going to fight, if that's what you mean," Dunk sneered. "I
+decline to bring myself down to your level. One doesn't expect anything
+from a jackass but a bray, you know--and one doesn't feel compelled to
+bray because the jackass does." He smiled that supercilious smile which
+Weary had hated of old, and which, he knew, was well used to covering
+much treachery and small meannesses of various sorts.
+
+"As I said, if the Flying U has any claim against us, let the owner
+present it in the usual way." Dunk drew down his black brows, lifted a
+corner of his lip and turned his back deliberately upon them.
+
+Oleson let himself through the gate, which he closed somewhat hastily
+behind him. "I'm sorry you fellows seem to want to make trouble," he
+said, without looking up from the latch, which seemed somewhat out of
+repair, like the rest of the Denson property. "That's a poor way
+to start in with new neighbors." He lifted his hat with what Pink
+considered insulting politeness, and followed Dunk into the house.
+
+Weary waited there until they had gone in and closed the door, then
+turned and rode back home again, frowning thoughtfully at the trail
+ahead of them all the way, and making no reply to Pink's importunings
+for war.
+
+"I'd hate to say you've lost your nerve, Weary," Pink cried at last, in
+sheer desperation. "But why the devil didn't you get down and thump the
+daylights out of that black son-of-a-gun? I came pretty near walking
+into him myself, only I hate to butt into another fellow's scrap. But,
+if I'd known you were going to set there and let him walk off with that
+sneer on his face--"
+
+"I can't fight a man that won't hit back," Weary protested. "You
+couldn't either, Cadwalloper. You'd have done just what I did; you'd
+have let him go."
+
+"He will hit back, all right enough," Pink retorted passionately. "He'll
+do it when you ain't looking, though. He--"
+
+"I know it," Weary sighed. "I'm kinda sorry, now, I slapped him. He'll
+hit back--but he won't hit me; he'll aim at the outfit. If the Old Man
+was here, or Chip, I'd feel a whole lot easier in my mind."
+
+"They couldn't do anything you can't do," Pink assured him loyally,
+forgetting his petulance when he saw the careworn look in Weary's
+face. "All they can do is gobble all the range around here--and I guess
+there's a few of us that will have a word or two to say about that."
+
+"What makes me sore," Weary confided, "is knowing that Dunk isn't
+thinking altogether of the dollar end of it. He's tickled to death to
+get a whack at the outfit. And I hate to see him get away with it; but I
+guess we'll have to stand for it."
+
+That sentiment did not please Pink; nor, when Weary repeated it later
+that evening in the bunk-house, did it please the Happy Family. The less
+pleasing it was because it was perfectly true and every man of them knew
+it. Beyond keeping the sheep off Flying U land, there was nothing they
+could do without stepping over the line into lawlessness--and, while
+they were not in any sense a meek Happy Family, they were far more
+law-abiding than their conversation that night made them appear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. More Sheep
+
+The next week was a time of harassment for the Flying U; a week
+filled to overflowing with petty irritations, traceable, directly or
+indirectly, to their new neighbors, the Dot sheepmen. The band in charge
+of the bug-chaser and that other unlovable man from Wyoming fed just as
+close to the Flying U boundary as their guardians dared let them feed; a
+great deal closer than was good for the tempers of the Happy Family, who
+rode fretfully here and there upon their own business and at the same
+time tried to keep an eye upon their unsavory neighbors--a proceeding as
+nerve-racking as it was futile.
+
+The Native Son, riding home in jingling haste from Dry Lake, whither
+he had hurried one afternoon in the hope of cheering news from Chicago,
+reported another trainload of Dots on the wide level beyond Antelope
+coulee. There were, he said, four men in charge of the band, and he
+believed they carried guns, though he was not positive of that. They
+were moving slowly, and he thought they would not attempt to cross
+Flying U coulee before the next day; though, from the course they were
+taking, he was sure they meant to cross.
+
+Coupled with that bit of ill-tidings, the brief note from Chip, saying
+very little about the Old Man, but implying a good deal by its very
+omissions, would have been enough to send the Happy Family to sleepless
+beds that night if they had been the kind to endure with silent
+fortitude their troubles.
+
+"If you fellers would back me up," brooded Big Medicine down by the
+corral after supper, "I'd see to it them sheep never gits across the
+coulee, by cripes! I'd send 'em so far the other way they'd git plumb
+turned around and forgit they ever wanted to go south."
+
+"It's all Dunk's devilishness," Jack Bates declared. "He could take them
+in the other way, even if the feed ain't so good along the trail. It's
+most all prairie-dog towns--but that's good enough for sheep." Jack, in
+his intense partisanship, spoke as if sheep were not entitled to decent
+grass at any time or under any circumstances.
+
+"Them herders packin' guns looks to me like they're goin' to make
+trouble if they kin," gloomed Happy Jack. "I betche they'll kill
+somebody before they're through. When sheepmen gits mean--"
+
+Pink picked up his rope and started for the large corral, where a few
+saddle horses had been driven in just before supper and had not yet been
+turned out.
+
+"You fellows can stand around and chew the rag, if you want to," he said
+caustically, "and wait for Weary to make a war-talk. But I'm going to
+keep cases on them Dots, if I have to stand an all-night guard on 'em. I
+don't blame Weary; he's looking out for the law-and-order business--and
+that's all right. But I'm not in charge of the outfit. I'm going to do
+as I darn please, and, if they don't like my style, they can give me my
+time."
+
+"Good for you, Little One!" Big Medicine hurried to overtake him so
+that he might slap him on the shoulder with his favorite, sledge-hammer
+method of signifying his approval of a man's sentiments. "Honest to
+grandma, I was just b'ginnin' to think this bunch was gitting all
+streaked up with yeller. 'Course, we ain't goin' to wait for no official
+orders, by cripes! I'd ruther lock Weary up in the blacksmith shop than
+let him tell us to go ahead. Go awn and tell him a good, stiff lie,
+Andy--just to keep him interested while us fellers make a gitaway. He
+ain't in on this; we don't want him in on it."
+
+"What yuh goin' to do?" Happy Jack inquired suspiciously. "Yuh can't
+go and monkey with them sheep, er them herders. They ain't on our land.
+And, if you don't git killed, old Dunk'll fix yuh like he fixed the
+Gordon boys--I know him--to a fare-you-well. It'd tickle him to death to
+git something on us fellers. I betche that's what he's aiming t'do. Git
+us to fightin' his outfit so's't--"
+
+"Oh, go off and lie down!" Andy implored him contemptuously. "We're
+going to hang those herders, and drive the sheep all over a cut-back
+somewhere, like Jesus done to the hogs, and then we're going over and
+murder old Dunk, if he's at home, and burn the house to hide the guilty
+deed. And, if the sheriff comes snooping around, asking disagreeable
+questions, we'll all swear you done it. So now you know our plans; shut
+your face and go on to bed. And be sure," he added witheringly, "you
+pull the soogans over your head, so you won't hear the dying shriek of
+our victims. We're liable to get kinda excited and torture 'em a while
+before we kill 'em."
+
+"Aw, gwan!" gulped Happy Jack mechanically. "You make me sick! If yuh
+think I'm goin' to swaller all that, you're away off! You wouldn't dast
+do nothing of the kind; and, if yuh did, you'd sure have a sweet time
+layin' it onto me!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," drawled the Native Son, with a slow, velvet-eyed
+glance, "any jury in the country would hang you on your looks, Happy. I
+knew a man down in the lower part of California, who was arrested, tried
+and hanged for murder. And all the evidence there was against him was
+the fact that he was seen within five miles of the place on the same day
+the murder was committed; and his face. They had an expert physiognomist
+there, and he swore that the fellow had the face of a murderer; the poor
+devil looked like a criminal--and, though he had one of the best lawyers
+on the Coast, it was adios for him."
+
+"I s'pose you mean I got the face of a criminal!" sputtered Happy Jack.
+"It ain't always the purty fellers that wins out--like you 'n' Pink. I
+never seen the purty man yit that was worth the powder it'd take to
+blow him up! Aw, you fellers make me sick!" He went off, muttering his
+opinion of them all, and particularly of the Native Son, who smiled
+while he listened. "You go awn and start something--and you'll wisht you
+hadn't," they heard him croak from the big gate, and chuckled over his
+wrath.
+
+As a matter of fact, the Happy Family, as a whole, or as individuals,
+had no intention of committing any great violence that evening. Pink
+wanted to see just where this new band of sheep was spending the night,
+and to find out, if possible, what were the herders' intentions. Since
+the boys were all restless under their worry, and, since there is a
+contagious element in seeking a trouble-zone, none save Happy Jack, who
+was "sore" at them, and Weary stayed behind in the coulee with old Patsy
+while the others rode away up the grade and out toward Antelope coulee
+beyond.
+
+They meant only to reconnoiter, and to warn the herders against
+attempting to cross Flying U coulee; though they were not exactly
+sure that they would be perfectly polite, or that they would confine
+themselves rigidly to the language they were wont to employ at dances.
+Andy Green, in particular, seemed rather to look forward with pleasure
+to the meeting. Andy, by the way, had remained heartbrokenly passive
+during that whole week, because Weary had extracted from him a promise
+which Andy, mendacious though he had the name of being, felt constrained
+to keep intact. Though of a truth it irked him much to think of two
+sheepherders walking abroad unpunished for their outrage upon his
+person.
+
+Weary, as he had made plain to them all, wanted to avoid trouble if it
+were possible to do so. And, though they grinned together in secret
+over his own affair with Dunk--which was not, in their opinion, exactly
+pacific--they meant to respect his wishes as far as human nature was
+able to do so. So that the Happy Family, galloping toward the red sunset
+and the great, gray blot on the prairie, just where the glory of
+the west tinged the grass blades with red, were not one-half as
+blood-thirsty as they had proclaimed themselves to be.
+
+While they were yet afar off they could see two men walking slowly in
+the immediate vicinity of the huddled band. A hundred yards away was
+a small tent, with a couple of horses picketed near by and feeding
+placidly. The men turned, gazed long at their approach, and walked to
+the tent, which they entered somewhat hastily.
+
+"Look at 'em dodge outa sight, will you!" cried Cal Emmett, and lifted
+up his voice in the yell which sometimes announced the Happy Family's
+arrival in Dry Lake after a long, thirsty absence on roundup. Other
+voices joined in after that first, shrill "Ow-ow-ow-eee!" of Cal's; so
+that presently the whole lot of them were emitting nerve-crimping yells
+and spurring their horses into a thunder of hoofbeats, as they bore down
+upon the tent. Between howls they laughed, picturing to themselves four
+terrified sheepherders cowering within those frail, canvas walls.
+
+"I'm a rambler, and a gambler, and far from my ho-o-me, And if yuh don't
+like me, jest leave me alo-o-ne!" chanted Big Medicine most horribly,
+and finished with a yell that almost scared himself and set his horse to
+plunging wildly.
+
+"Come out of there, you lop-eared mutton-chewers, and let us pick the
+wool outa your teeth!" shouted Andy Green, telling himself hastily
+that this was not breaking his promise to Weary, and yielding to the
+temptation of coming as close to the guilty persons as he might; for,
+while these were not the men who had tied him and left him alone on the
+prairie, they belonged to the same outfit, and there was some comfort in
+giving them a few disagreeable minutes.
+
+Pink, in the lead, was turning to ride around the tent, still yelling,
+when someone within the tent fired a rifle--and did not aim as high as
+he should. The bullet zipped close over the head of Big Medicine, who
+happened to be opposite the crack between the tent-flaps. The hand of
+Big Medicine jerked back to his hip; but, quick as he was, the Native
+Son plunged between him and the tent before he could take aim.
+
+"Steady, amigo," smiled Miguel. "You aren't a crazy sheepherder."
+
+"No, but I'm goin' to kill off one. Git outa my way!" Big Medicine was
+transformed into a cold-eyed, iron-jawed fighting machine. He dug the
+spurs in, meaning to ride ahead of Miguel. But Miguel's spurs also
+pressed home, so that the two horses plunged as one. Big Medicine,
+bellowing one solitary oath, drew his right leg from the stirrup to
+dismount. Miguel reached out, caught him by the arm, and held him to the
+saddle. And, though Big Medicine was a strong man, the grip held firm
+and unyielding.
+
+"You must think of the outfit, you know," said Miguel, smiling still.
+"There must be no shooting. Once that begins--" He shrugged his
+shoulders with that slight, eloquent movement, which the Happy Family
+had come to know so well. He was speaking to them all, as they crowded
+up to the scuffle. "The man who feels the trigger-itch had better throw
+his gun away," he advised coolly. "I know, boys. I've seen these things
+start before. All hell can't stop you, once you begin to shoot. Put it
+up, Bud, or give it to me."
+
+"The man don't live that can shoot at me, by cripes, and git away with
+it. Not if he misses killin' me!" Big Medicine was shaking with rage;
+but the Native Son saw that he hesitated, nevertheless, and laughed
+outright.
+
+"Call him out and give him a thumping. That's good enough for a
+sheepherder," he suggested as a substitute.
+
+Perhaps because the Native Son so seldom offered advice, and, because of
+his cool courage in interfering with Big Medicine at such a time, Bud's
+jaw relaxed and his pale eyes became more human in their expression. He
+even permitted Miguel to remove the big, wicked Colt from his hand,
+and slide it into his own pocket; whereat the Happy Family gasped with
+astonishment. Not even Pink would have dreamed of attempting such a
+thing.
+
+"Well he's got to come out and take a lickin', anyway," shouted Big
+Medicine vengefully, and rode close enough to slap the canvas smartly
+with his quirt. By all the gods he knew by name he called upon the
+offender to come forth, while the others drew up in a rude half-circle
+to await developments. Heavy silence was the reply he got. It was as
+though the men within were sitting tense and watchful, like cougars
+crouched for a spring, with claws unsheathed and muscles quivering.
+
+"You better come out," called Andy sharply, after they had waited a
+decent interval. "We didn't come here hunting trouble; we want to know
+where you're headed for with these sheep. The fellow that cut loose with
+the gun--"
+
+"Aw, don't talk so purty! I'm gitting almighty tired, just setting here
+lettin' m' legs hang down. Git your ropes, boys!" With one sweeping
+gesture of his arm Big Medicine made plain his meaning as he rode a few
+paces away, his fingers fumbling with the string that held his rope.
+"I'm goin' to have a look at 'em, anyway," he grinned. "I sure do hate
+to see men act so bashful."
+
+With his rope free and ready for action, Big Medicine shook the loop
+out, glanced around, and saw that Andy, Pink and Cal Emmett were also
+ready, and, with a dexterous flip, settled the noose neatly over the
+iron pin that thrust up through the end of the ridge-pole in front.
+Andy's loop sank neatly over it a second later, and the two wheeled and
+dashed away together, with Pink and Irish duplicating their performance
+at the other end of the tent. The dingy, smoke-stained canvas swayed,
+toppled, as the pegs gave way, and finally lay flat upon the prairie
+fifty feet from where it had stood, leaving the inmates exposed to the
+cruel stare of eight unfriendly cowpunchers. Four cowering figures they
+were, with guns in their hands that shook.
+
+"Drop them guns!" thundered Big Medicine, flipping his rope loose and
+recoiling it mechanically as he plunged up to the group.
+
+One man obeyed. One gave a squawk of terror and permitted his gun to go
+off at random before he fled toward the coulee. The other two crouched
+behind their bed-rolls, set their jaws doggedly and glared defiance.
+
+Pink, Andy, Irish, Big Medicine and the Native Son slid off their horses
+and made a rush at them. A rifle barked viciously, and Slim, sitting
+prudently on his horse well in the rear, gave a yell and started for
+home at a rapid pace.
+
+Considering the provocation the Happy Family behaved with quite
+praiseworthy self-control and leniency. They did not lynch those two
+herders. They did not kill them, either by bullets, knives, or beating
+to death. They took away the guns, however, and they told them with
+extreme bluntness what sort of men they believed them to be. They
+defined accurately their position in society at large, in that
+neighborhood, and stated what would be their future fate if they
+persisted in acting with so little caution and common sense.
+
+At Andy Green's earnest behest they also wound them round and round with
+ropes, before they departed, and gave them some very good advice upon
+the matter of range rules and the herding of sheep, particularly of Dot
+sheep.
+
+"You're playing big luck, if you only had sense enough to know it," Andy
+pointed out to the recumbent three before they rode away. "We didn't
+come over here on the warpath, and, if you hadn't got in such a darned
+hurry to start something, you'd be a whole lot more comfortable right
+now. We rode over to tell yuh not to start them sheep across Flying U
+coulee; because, if you do, you're going to have both hands and your
+hats plumb full uh trouble. It has taken some little time and fussing
+to get yuh gentled down so we can talk to you, and I sure do hope yuh
+remember what I'm saying."
+
+"Oh, we'll remember it, all right!" menaced one of the men, lifting his
+head turtlewise that he might glare at the group. "And our bosses'll
+remember it; you needn't worry about that none. You wait till--"
+
+The next man to him turned his head and muttered a sentence, and the
+speaker dropped his head back upon the ground, silenced.
+
+"It was your own outfit started this style of rope trimming, so you
+can't kick about that part of the deal," Pink informed them melodiously.
+"It's liable to get to be all the rage with us. So, if you don't like
+it, don't come around where we are. And say!" His dimples stood deep in
+his cheeks. "You send those ropes home to-morrow, will yuh? We're liable
+to need 'em."
+
+"By cripes!" Big Medicine bawled. "What say we haze them sheep a few
+miles north, boys?"
+
+"Oh, I guess they'll be all right where they are," Andy protested, his
+thirst for revenge assuaged at sight of those three trussed as he had
+been trussed, and apparently not liking it any better than he had liked
+it. "They'll be good and careful not to come around the Flying U--or I
+miss my guess a mile."
+
+The others cast comprehensive glances at their immediate surroundings,
+and decided that they had at least made their meaning plain; there
+was no occasion for emphasizing their disapproval any further. They
+confiscated the rifles, and they told the fellows why they did so.
+They very kindly pulled a tarpaulin over the three to protect them in a
+measure from the chill night that was close upon them, and they wished
+them good night and pleasant dreams, and rode away home.
+
+On the way they met Weary and Happy Jack, galloping anxiously to the
+battle scene. Slim, it appeared from Weary's rapid explanation, had
+arrived at the ranch with his horse in a lather and with a four-inch
+furrow in the fleshiest part of his leg, where a bullet had flicked him
+in passing. The tale he told had led Weary to believe that Slim was the
+sole survivor of that reckless company.
+
+"Mamma! I'm so glad to see you boys able to fork your horses and swear
+natural, that I don't believe I can speak my little piece about staying
+on your own side the fence and letting trouble do some of the hunting,"
+he exclaimed thankfully. "I wish you'd stayed at home and left these
+blamed Dots alone. But, seeing yuh didn't, I'm tickled to death to hear
+you didn't kill anybody off. I don't want the folks to come home and
+find the whole bunch in the pen. It might look as if--"
+
+"You don't want the folks to come home and find the whole ranch sheeped
+off, either, and the herders camping up in the white house, do yuh?"
+Pink inquired pointedly. "I kinda think," he added dryly, "those same
+herders will feel like going away around Flying U fences with their
+sheep. I don't believe they'll do any cutting across."
+
+"I betche old Dunk'll make it interestin' fer this outfit, just the
+same," Happy Jack predicted. "Tyin' up three men uh hisn, like that, and
+ropin' their tent and draggin' it off, ain't things he'll pass up. He'll
+have a possy out here--you see if he don't!"
+
+"In that case, I'll be sorry for you, Happy," purred Miguel close beside
+him. "You're the only one in the outfit that looks capable of such a
+vile deed."
+
+"Oh, Dunk won't do anything," Weary said cheerfully. "You'll have to
+take those guns back, though. They might take a notion to call that
+stealing!"
+
+"You forget," the Native Son reminded calmly, "that we left them three
+good ropes in exchange."
+
+Whereupon the Happy Family laughed and went to offer their unsought
+sympathy to Slim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. The Happy Family Herd Sheep
+
+The boys of the Flying U had many faults in common, aside from certain
+individual frailties; one of their chief weaknesses was over-confidence
+in their own ability to cope with any situation which might arise,
+unexpectedly or otherwise, and a belief that others felt that same
+confidence in them, and that enemies were wont to sit a long time
+counting the cost before venturing to offer too great an affront. Also
+they believed--and made it manifest in their conversation--that they
+could even bring the Old Man back to health if they only had him on
+the ranch where they could get at him. They maligned the hospitals and
+Chicago doctors most unjustly, and were agreed that all he needed was
+to be back on the ranch where somebody could look after him right. They
+asserted that, if they ever got tired of living and wanted to cash in
+without using a gun or anything, they'd go to a hospital and tell the
+doctors to turn loose and try to cure them of something.
+
+This by way of illustration; also as an explanation of their sleeping
+soundly that night, instead of watching for some hostile demonstration
+on the part of the Dot outfit. To a man--one never counted Happy Jack's
+prophecies of disaster as being anything more than a personal deformity
+of thought--they were positive in their belief that the Dot sheepherders
+would be very, very careful not to provoke the Happy Family to further
+manifestations of disapproval. They knew what they'd get, if they tried
+any more funny business, and they'd be mighty careful where they drove
+their sheep after this.
+
+So, with the comfortable glow of victory in their souls, they laid
+them down, and, when the animated discussion of that night's adventure
+flagged, as their tongues grew sleep-clogged and their eyelids drooped,
+they slept in peace; save when Slim, awakened by the soreness of his
+leg, grunted a malediction or two before he began snoring again.
+
+They rose and ate their breakfast in a fair humor with the world. One
+grows accustomed to the thought of sickness, even when it strikes close
+to the affections, and, with the resilience of youth and hope, life
+adjusts itself to make room for the specter of fear, so that it does
+not crowd unduly, but stands half-forgotten in the background of one's
+thoughts. For that reason they no longer spoke soberly because of the
+Old Man lying hurt unto death in Chicago. And, when they mentioned the
+Dot sheep and men, they spoke as men speak of the vanquished.
+
+With the taste of hot biscuits and maple syrup still lingering
+pleasantly against their palates, they went out and were confronted with
+sheep, blatting sheep, stinking sheep, devastating sheep, Dot sheep. On
+the south side of the coulee, up on the bluff, grazed the band. They fed
+upon the brow of the hill opposite the ranch buildings; they squeezed
+under the fence and spilled a ragged fringe of running, gray animals
+down the slope. Half a mile away though the nearest of them were, the
+murmur of them, the smell of them, the whole intolerable presence of
+them, filled the Happy Family with an amazed loathing too deep for
+words.
+
+Technically, that high, level stretch of land bounding Flying U coulee
+on the south was open range. It belonged to the government. The soil was
+not fertile enough even for the most optimistic of "dry land" farmers to
+locate upon it; and this was before the dry-land farming craze had swept
+the country, gathering in all public land as claims. J. G. Whitmore
+had contented himself with acquiring title to the whole of the Flying
+U coulee, secure in his belief that the old order of things would not
+change, in his life-time, at least, and that the unwritten law of the
+range land, which leaves the vicinity of a ranch to the use of the ranch
+owner, would never be repealed by new customs imposed by a new class of
+people.
+
+Legally, there was no trespassing of the Dots, beyond the two or three
+hundred which had made their way through the fence. Morally, however,
+and by right of custom, their offense would not be much greater if they
+came on down the hill and invaded the Old Man's pet meadows, just beyond
+the "little pasture."
+
+Ladies may read this story, so I am not going to pretend to repeat the
+things they said, once they were released from dumb amazement. I should
+be compelled to improvise and substitute--which would remove much of the
+flavor. Let bare facts suffice, at present.
+
+They saddled in haste, and in haste they rode to the scene. This, they
+were convinced, was the band herded by the bug-killer and the man from
+Wyoming; and the nerve of those two almost excited the admiration of the
+Happy Family. It did not, however, deter them from their purpose.
+
+Weary, to look at him, was no longer in the mood to preach patience and
+a turning of the other cheek. He also made that change of heart manifest
+in his speech when Pink, his eyes almost black, rode up close and
+gritted at him:
+
+"Well, what's the orders now? Want me to go back and get the wire
+nippers so we can let them poor little sheep down into the meadow? Maybe
+we better ask the herders down to have some of Patsy's grub, too; I
+don't believe they had time to cook much breakfast. And it wouldn't be
+a bad idea to haze our own stuff clear off the range. I'm afraid Dunk's
+sheep are going to fare kinda slim, if we go on letting our cattle eat
+all the good grass!" Pink did not often indulge in such lengthy sarcasm,
+especially toward his beloved Weary; but his exasperation toward Weary's
+mild tactics had been growing apace.
+
+Weary's reply, I fear, will have to be omitted. It was terribly
+unrefined.
+
+"I want you boys to spread out, around the whole bunch," was his first
+printable utterance, "and haze these sheep just as far south as they
+can get without taking to the river. Don't get all het up chasing 'em
+yourself--make the men (Weary did not call them men; he called them
+something very naughty) that's paid for it do the driving."
+
+"And, if they don't go," drawled the smooth voice of the Native Son,
+"what shall we do, amigo? Slap them on the wrist?"
+
+Weary twisted in the saddle and sent him a baleful glance, which was not
+at all like Weary the sunny-hearted.
+
+"If you can't figure that out for yourself," he snapped, "you had better
+go back and wipe the dishes for Patsy; and, when that's done, you can
+pull the weeds out of his radishes. Maybe he'll give you a nickel to buy
+candy with, if you do it good." Before he faced to the front again his
+harsh glance swept the faces of his companions.
+
+They were grinning, every man of them, and he knew why. To see him lose
+his temper was something of an event with the Happy Family, who used
+sometimes to fix the date of an incident by saying, "It was right after
+that time Weary got mad, a year ago last fall," or something of the
+sort. He grinned himself, shamefacedly, and told them that they were
+a bunch of no-account cusses, anyway, and he'd just about as soon herd
+sheep himself as to have to run with such an outfit; which swept his
+anger from him and left him his usual self, with but the addition of a
+purpose from which nothing could stay him. He was going to settle the
+sheep question, and he was going to settle it that day.
+
+Only one injunction did he lay upon the Happy Family. "You fellows don't
+want to get excited and go to shooting," he warned, while they were
+still out of hearing of the herders. "We don't want Dunk to get anything
+like that on us; savvy?"
+
+They "savvied," and they told him so, each after his own individual
+manner.
+
+"I guess we ought to be able to put the run on a couple of sheepherders,
+without wasting any powder," Pink said loftily, remembering his meeting
+with them a few days before.
+
+"One thing sure--we'll make a good job of it this time," promised Irish,
+and spurred after Weary, who was leading the way around the band.
+
+The herders watched them openly and with the manner of men who are
+expecting the worst to happen. Unlike the four whose camp had been laid
+low the night before, these two were unarmed, as they had been from the
+first; which, in Weary's opinion, was a bit of guile upon the part of
+Dunk. If trouble came--trouble which it would take a jury to settle--the
+fact that the sheepmen were unarmed would tell heavily in their favor;
+for, while the petty meanness of range-stealing and nagging trespass may
+be harder to bear than the flourishing of a gun before one's face, it
+all sounds harmless enough in the telling.
+
+Weary headed straight for the nearest herder, told him to put his dogs
+to work rounding up the sheep, which were scattered over an area half
+a mile across while they fed, and, when the herder, who was the
+bug-killer, made no move to obey, Weary deliberately pulled his gun and
+pointed at his head.
+
+"You move," he directed with grim intent, "and don't take too much time
+about it, either."
+
+The bug-killer, an unkempt, ungainly figure, standing with his back to
+the morning sun, scowled up at Weary stolidly.
+
+"Yuh dassent shoot," he stated sourly, and did not move.
+
+For answer, Weary pulled back the hammer; also he smiled as malignantly
+as it was in his nature to do, and hoped in his heart that he looked
+sufficiently terrifying to convince the man. So they faced each other in
+a silent clash of wills.
+
+Big Medicine had not been saying much on the way over, which was
+unusual. Now he rode forward until he was abreast of Weary, and he
+grinned down at the bug-killer in a way to distract his attention from
+the gun.
+
+"Nobody don't have to shoot, by cripes!" he bawled. "We hain't goin' to
+kill yuh. We'll make yuh wisht, by cripes, we had, though, b'fore we
+git through. Git to work, boys, 'n' gether up some dry grass an' sticks.
+Over there in them rose-bushes you oughta find enough bresh. We'll give
+him a taste uh what we was talkin' about comm' over, by cripes! I guess
+he'll be willin' to drive sheep, all right, when we git through with
+him. Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" He leaned forward in the saddle and ogled the
+bug-killer with horrid significance.
+
+"Git busy with that bresh!" he yelled authoritatively, when a glance
+showed him that the Happy Family was hesitating and eyeing him
+uncertainly. "Git a fire goin' quick's yuh kin--I'll do the rest. Down
+in Coconino county we used to have a way uh fixin' sheepherders--"
+
+"Aw, gwan! We don't want no torture business!" remonstrated Happy Jack
+uneasily, edging away.
+
+"Yuh don't, hey?" Big Medicine turned in the saddle wrathfully and
+glared. When he had succeeded in catching Andy Green's eye he winked,
+and that young man's face kindled understandingly. "Well, now, you
+hain't runnin' this here show. Honest to grandma, I've saw the time when
+a little foot-warmin' done a sheepherder a whole lot uh good; and, it
+looks to me, by cripes, as if this here feller needed a dose to gentle
+him down. You git the fire started. That's all I want you t' do, Happy.
+Some uh you boys help me rope him--like him and that other jasper over
+there done to Andy. C'mon, Andy--it ain't goin' to take long!"
+
+"You bet your sweet life I'll come on!" exclaimed Andy, dismounting
+eagerly. "Let me take your rope, Weary. Too bad we haven't got a
+branding iron--"
+
+"Aw, we don't need no irons." Big Medicine was also on the ground by
+then, and untying his rope. "Lemme git his shoes off once, and I'll show
+yuh."
+
+The bug-killer lifted his stick, snarling like a mongrel dog when
+a stranger tries to drive it out of the house; hurled the stick
+hysterically, as Big Medicine, rope in hand, advanced implacably, and,
+with a squawk of horror, turned suddenly and ran. After him, bellowing
+terribly, lunged Big Medicine, straight through the band like a
+snowplow, leaving behind them a wide, open trail.
+
+"Say, we kinda overplayed that bet, by gracious," Andy commented to
+Weary, while he watched the chase. "That gazabo's scared silly; let's
+try the other one. That torture talk works fine."
+
+In his enthusiasm Andy remounted and was about to lead the way to
+the other herder when Big Medicine returned puffing, the bug-killer
+squirming in his grasp. "Tell him what yuh want him to do, Weary," he
+panted, with some difficulty holding his limp victim upright by a
+greasy coat-collar. "And if he don't fall over himself doin' it, why--by
+cripes--we'll take off his shoes!"
+
+Whereupon the bug-killer gave another howl and professed himself eager
+to drive the sheep--well, what he said was that he would drive them to
+that place which ladies dislike to hear mentioned, if the Happy Family
+wanted him to.
+
+"That's all right, then. Start 'em south, and don't quit till somebody
+tells you to." Weary carefully let down the hammer of his six-shooter
+and shoved it thankfully into his scabbard.
+
+"Now, you don't want to pile it on quite so thick, next time," Irish
+admonished Big Medicine, when they turned away from watching the
+bug-killer set his dogs to work by gestures and a shouted word or two.
+"You like to have sent this one plumb nutty."
+
+"I betche Bud gets us all pinched for that," grumbled Happy Jack.
+"Torturing folks is purty darned serious business. You might as well
+shoot 'em up decent and be done with it."
+
+"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" Big Medicine ogled the group mirthfully. "Nobody
+can't swear I done a thing, or said a thing. All I said definite was
+that I'd take off his shoes. Any jury in the country'd know that
+would be hull lot worse fer us than it would fer him, by cripes.
+Haw-haw-haw-w-w!"
+
+"Say, that's right; yuh didn't say nothin', ner do nothin'. By golly,
+that was purty slick work, all right!" Slim forgot his sore leg until he
+clapped his hand enthusiastically down upon the place as comprehension
+of Bud's finesse dawned upon him. He yelped, and the Happy Family
+laughed unfeelingly.
+
+"You want to be careful and don't try to see through any jokes, Slim,
+till that leg uh yours gets well," Irish bantered, and they laughed the
+louder.
+
+All this was mere byplay; a momentary swinging of their mood to
+pleasantry, because they were a temperamentally cheerful lot, and
+laughter came to them easily, as it always does to youth and perfect
+mental and physical health. Their brief hilarity over Slim's misfortune
+did not swerve them from their purpose, nor soften the mood of them
+toward their adversaries. They were unsmiling and unfriendly when they
+reached the man from Wyoming; and, if they ever behaved like boys let
+out of school, they did not show it then.
+
+The Wyoming man was wiser than his fellow. He had been given several
+minutes grace in which to meditate upon the unwisdom of defiance; and he
+had seen the bug-killer change abruptly from sullenness to terror, and
+afterward to abject obedience. He did not know what they had said to
+him, or what they had done; but he knew the bug-killer was a hard man to
+stampede. And he was one man, and they were many; also he judged that,
+being human, and this being the third offense of the Dot sheep under his
+care, it would be extremely unsafe to trust that their indignation would
+vent itself in mere words.
+
+Therefore, when Weary told him to get the stragglers back through the
+fence and up on the level, he stopped only long enough for a good look
+at their faces. After that he called his dogs and crawled through the
+fence.
+
+It really did not require the entire Family to force those sheep south
+that morning. But Weary's jaw was set, as was his heart, upon a
+thorough cleaning of that particular bit of range; and, since he did
+not definitely request any man to turn back, and every fellow there
+was minded to see the thing to a finish, they straggled out behind the
+trailing two thousand--and never had one bunch of sheep so efficient a
+convoy.
+
+After the first few miles the way grew rough. Sheep lagged, and the
+blatting increased to an uproar. Old ewes and yearlings these were
+mostly, and there were few to suffer more than hunger and thirst,
+perhaps. So Weary was merciless, and drove them forward without a stop
+until the first jumble of hills and deep-worn gullies held them back
+from easy traveling.
+
+But the Happy Family had not ridden those breaks for cattle, all these
+years, to be hindered by rough going. Weary, when the band stopped and
+huddled, blatting incessantly against a sheer wall of sandstone and
+gravel, got the herders together and told them what he wanted.
+
+"You take 'em down that slope till you come to the second little coulee.
+Don't go up the first one--that's a blind pocket. In the second coulee,
+up a mile or so, there's a spring creek. You can hold 'em there on water
+for half an hour. That's more than any of yuh deserve. Haze 'em down
+there."
+
+The herders did not know it, but that second coulee was the rude gateway
+to an intricate system of high ridges and winding waterways that would
+later be dry as a bleached bone--the real beginning of the bad lands
+which border the Missouri river for long, terrible miles. Down there,
+it is possible for two men to reach places where they may converse quite
+easily across a chasm, and yet be compelled to ride fifteen or twenty
+miles, perhaps, in order to shake hands. Yet, even in that scrap-heap of
+Nature there are ways of passing deep into the heart of the upheaval.
+
+The Happy Family knew those ways as they knew the most complicated
+figures of the quadrilles they danced so lightfootedly with the girls of
+the Bear Paw country. When they forced the sheep and their herders out
+of the coulee Weary had indicated he sent Irish and Pink ahead to point
+the way, and he told them to head for the Wash Bowl; which they did with
+praiseworthy zeal and scant pity for the sheep.
+
+When at last, after a slow, heartbreaking climb up a long, bare ridge,
+Pink and Irish paused upon the brow of a slope and let the trail-weary
+band spill itself reluctantly down the steep slope beyond, the sun stood
+high in the blue above them and their stomachs clamored for food; by
+which signs they knew that it must be near noon.
+
+When the last sheep had passed, blatting discordantly, down the bluff,
+Weary halted the sweating herders for a parting admonition.
+
+"We don't aim to deal you any more misery, for a while, if you stay
+where you're at. You're only working for a living, like the rest of
+us--but I must say I don't admire your trade none. Anyway, I'll send
+some of your bunch down here with grub and beds. This is good enough
+range for sheep. You keep away from the Flying U and nobody'll bother
+you. Over there in them trees," he added, pointing a gloved finger
+toward a little grove on the far side of the basin, "you'll find a
+cabin, and water. And, farther down the river there's pretty good grass,
+in the little bottoms. Now, git."
+
+The herders looked as if they would enjoy murdering them all, but they
+did not say a word. With their dogs at heel they scrambled down
+the bluff in the wake of their sheep, and the Happy Family, rolling
+cigarettes while they watched them depart, told one another that this
+settled that bunch; they wouldn't bed down in the Flying U door-yard
+that night, anyway.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. Weary Unburdens
+
+Hungry with the sharp, gnawing hunger of healthy stomachs accustomed
+to regular and generous feeding; tired with the weariness of healthy
+muscles pushed past their accustomed limit of action; and hot with the
+unaccustomed heat of a blazing day shunted unaccountably into the midst
+of soft spring weather, the Happy Family rode out of the embrace of
+the last barren coulee and up on the wide level where the breeze swept
+gratefully up from the west, and where every day brought with it a
+deeper tinge of green into its grassy carpet.
+
+Only for this harassment of the Dot sheep, the roundup wagons would
+be loaded and ready to rattle abroad over the land. Meadow larks and
+curlews and little, pert-eyed ground sparrows called out to them that
+roundup time was come. They passed a bunch of feeding Flying U cattle,
+and flat-ribbed, bandy-legged calves galloped in brief panic to their
+mothers and from the sanctuary of grass-filled paunches watched the
+riders with wide, inquisitive eyes.
+
+"We ought to be starting out, by now," Weary observed a bit gloomily to
+Andy and Pink, who rode upon either side of him. "The calf crop is going
+to be good, if this weather holds on another two weeks or so. But--" he
+waved his cigarette disgustedly "--that darned Dot outfit would be all
+over the place, if we pulled out on roundup and left 'em the run of
+things." He smoked moodily for a minute. "My religion has changed a lot
+in the last few days," he observed whimsically. "My idea of hell is
+a place where there ain't anything but sheep and sheepherders; and
+cowpunchers have got to spend thousands uh years right in the middle of
+the corrals."
+
+"If that's the case, I'm going to quit cussing, and say my prayers every
+night," Andy Green asserted emphatically.
+
+"What worries me," Weary confided, obeying the impulse to talk over his
+troubles with those who sympathized, "is how I'm going to keep the work
+going along like it ought to, and at the same time keep them Dot sheep
+outa the house. Dunk's wise, all right. He knows enough about the cow
+business to know we ye got to get out on the range pretty quick, now.
+And he's so mean that every day or every half day he can feed his sheep
+on Flying U grass, he calls that much to the good. And he knows we won't
+go to opening up any real gun-fights if we can get out of it; he counts
+on our faunching around and kicking up a lot of dust, maybe--but we
+won't do anything like what he'd do, in our places. He knows the Old Man
+and Chip are gone, and he knows we've just naturally got to sit back and
+swallow our tongues because we haven't any authority. Mamma! It comes
+pretty tough, when a low-down skunk like that just banks on your doing
+the square thing. He wouldn't do it, but he knows we will; and so he
+takes advantage of white men and gets the best of 'em. And if we should
+happen to break out and do something, he knows the herders would be the
+ones to get it in the neck; and he'd wait till the dust settled, and bob
+up with the sheriff--" He waved his hand again with a hopeless gesture.
+"It may not look that way on the face of it," he added gloomily, "but
+Dunk has got us right where he wants us. From the way they've been
+letting sheep on our land, time and time again, I'd gamble he's just
+trying to make us so mad we'll break out. He's got it in for the whole
+outfit, from the Old Man and the Little Doctor down to Slim. If any of
+us boys got into trouble, the Old Man would spend his last cent to clear
+us; and Dunk knows that just as well as he knows the way from the house
+to the stable. He'd see to it that it would just about take the Old
+Man's last cent, too. And he's using these Dot sheep like you'd use a
+red flag on a bull, to make us so crazy mad we'll kill off somebody.
+
+"That's why," he said to them all when he saw that they had ridden up
+close that they might hear what he was saying, "I've been hollering so
+loud for the meek-and-mild stunt. When I slapped him on the jaw, and he
+stood there and took it, I saw his game. He had a witness to swear I hit
+him and he didn't hit back. And when I saw them Dots in our field again,
+I knew, just as well as if Dunk had told me, that he was kinda hoping
+we'd kill a herder or two so he could cinch us good and plenty. I don't
+say," he qualified with a rueful grin, "that Dunk went into the sheep
+business just to get r-re-venge, as they say in shows. But if he can
+make money running sheep--and he can, all right, because there's more
+money in them right now than there is in cattle--and at the same time
+get a good whack at the Flying U, he's the lad that will sure make a
+running jump at the chance." He spat upon the burnt end of his cigarette
+stub from force of the habit that fear of range fires had built, and
+cast it petulantly from him; as if he would like to have been able to
+throw Dunk and his sheep problem as easily out of his path.
+
+"So I wish you boys would hang onto yourselves when you hear a sheep
+blatting under your window," he summed up his unburdening whimsically.
+"As Bud said this morning, you can't hang a man for telling a
+sheepherder you'll take off his shoes. And they can't send us over the
+road for moving that band of sheep onto new range to-day. Last night
+you all were kinda disorderly, maybe, but you didn't hurt anybody, or
+destroy any property. You see what I mean. Our only show is to stop with
+our toes on the right side of the dead line."
+
+"If Andy, here, would jest git his think-wheels greased and going good,"
+Big Medicine suggested loudly, "he ought to frame up something that
+would put them Dots on the run permanent. I d'no, by cripes, why it is
+a feller can always think uh lies and joshes by the dozens, and put 'em
+over O. K. when there ain't nothing to be made out of it except hard
+feelin's; and then when a deal like this here sheep deal comes up, he's
+got about as many idees, by cripes, as that there line-back calf over
+there. Honest to grandma, Andy makes me feel kinda faint. Only time he
+did have a chanc't, he let them--" It occurred to Big Medicine at that
+point that perhaps his remarks might be construed by the object of
+them as being offensively personal. He turned his head and grinned
+good-naturedly in Andy's direction, and refrained from finishing what he
+was going to say. "I sure do like them wind-flowers scattered all
+over the ground," he observed with such deliberate and ostentatious
+irrelevance that the Happy Family laughed, even to Andy Green, who had
+at first been inclined toward anger.
+
+"Everything," declared Andy in the tone of a paid instructor, "has its
+proper time and place, boys; I've told you that before. For instance, I
+wouldn't try to kill a skunk by talking it to death; and I wouldn't
+be hopeful of putting the run on this Dunk person by telling him ghost
+stories. As to ideas--I'm plumb full of them. But they're all about
+grub, just right at present."
+
+That started Slim and Happy Jack to complaining because no one had had
+sense enough to go back after some lunch before taking that long trail
+south; the longer because it was a slow one, with sheep to set the pace.
+And by the time they had presented their arguments against the Happy
+Family's having enough brains to last them overnight, and the Happy
+Family had indignantly pointed out just where the mental deficiency was
+most noticeable, they were upon that last, broad stretch of "bench" land
+beyond which lay Flying U coulee and Patsy and dinner; a belated dinner,
+to be sure, but for that the more welcome.
+
+And when they reached the point where they could look away to the
+very rim of the coulee, they saw sheep--sheep to the skyline, feeding
+scattered and at ease, making the prairie look, in the distance, as
+if it were covered with a thin growth of gray sage-brush. Four herders
+moved slowly upon the outskirts, and the dogs were little, scurrying,
+black dots which stopped occasionally to wait thankfully until the
+master-minds again urged them to endeavor.
+
+The Happy Family drew up and stared in silence.
+
+"Do I see sheep?" Pink inquired plaintively at last. "Tell me,
+somebody."
+
+"It's that bunch you fellows tackled last night," said Weary miserably.
+"I ought to have had sense enough to leave somebody on the ranch to look
+out for this."
+
+"They've got their nerve," stated Irish, "after the deal they got last
+night. I'd have bet good money that you couldn't drag them herders
+across Flying U coulee with a log chain."
+
+"Say, by golly, do we have to drive this here bunch anywheres before we
+git anything to eat?" Slim wanted to know distressfully.
+
+Weary considered briefly. "No, I guess we'll pass 'em up for the
+present. An hour or so won't make much difference in the long run, and
+our horses are about all in, right now--"
+
+"So'm I, by cripes!" Big Medicine attested, grinning mirthlessly. "This
+here sheep business is plumb wearin' on a man. 'Specially," he added
+with a fretful note, "when you've got to handle 'em gentle. The things
+I'd like to do to them Dots is all ruled outa the game, seems like.
+Honest to grandma, a little gore would look better to me right now than
+a Dutch picnic before the foam's all blowed off the refreshments. Lemme
+kill off jest one herder, Weary?" he pleaded. "The one that took a shot
+at me las' night. Purty, please!"
+
+"If you killed one," Weary told him glumly, "you might as well make a
+clean sweep and take in the whole bunch."
+
+"Well, I won't charge nothin' extra fer that, either," Bud assured him
+generously. "I'm willin' to throw in the other three--and the dawgs,
+too, by cripes!" He goggled the Happy Family quizzically. "Nobody can't
+say there's anything small about me. Why, down in the Coconino country
+they used to set half a dozen greasers diggin' graves, by cripes, soon
+as I started in to argy with a man. It was a safe bet they'd need three
+or four, anyways, if old Bud cut loose oncet. Sheepherders? Why, they
+jest natcherly couldn't keep enough on hand, securely, to run their
+sheep. They used to order sheepherders like they did woolsacks, by
+cripes! You could always tell when I was in the country, by the number
+uh extra herders them sheep outfits always kep' in reserve. Honest to
+grandma, I've knowed two or three outfits to club together and ship in
+a carload at a time, when they heard I was headed their way. And so when
+it comes to killin' off four, why that ain't skurcely enough to make it
+worth m'while to dirty up m'gun!"
+
+"Aw, I betche yuh never killed a man in your life!" Happy Jack grumbled
+in his characteristic tone of disparagement; but such was his respect
+for Big Medicine's prowess that he took care not to speak loud enough
+to be overheard by that modest gentleman, who continued with certain
+fearsome details of alleged murderous exploits of his own, down in
+Coconino County, Arizona.
+
+But as they passed the detested animals, thankful that the trail
+permitted them to ride by at a distance sufficient to blur the most
+unsavory details, even Big Medicine gave over his deliberate boastings
+and relapsed into silence.
+
+He had begun his fantastic vauntings from an instinctive impulse
+to leaven with humor a situation which, at the moment, could not be
+bettered. Just as they had, when came the news of the Old Man's dire
+plight, sought to push the tragedy of it into the background and cling
+to their creed of optimism, they had avoided openly facing the sheep
+complication squarely with mutual admissions of all it might mean to the
+Flying U.
+
+Until Weary had unburdened his heart of worry on the ride home that day,
+they had not said much about it, beyond a general vilification of the
+sheep industry as a whole, of Dunk as the chief of the encroaching Dots,
+and of the herders personally.
+
+But there were times when they could not well avoid thinking rather
+deeply upon the subject, even if they did refuse to put their
+forebodings into speech. They were not children; neither were they to
+any degree lacking in intelligence. Swearing, about herders and at them,
+was all very well; bluffing, threatening, pummeling even with willing
+fists, tearing down tents and binding men with ropes might serve to
+relieve the emotions upon occasion. But there was the grim economic
+problem which faced squarely the Flying U as a "cow outfit"--the problem
+of range and water; the Happy Family did not call it by name, but they
+realized to the full what it meant to the Old Man to have sheep just
+over his boundary line always. They realized, too, what it meant to have
+the Old Man absent at this time--worse, to have him lying in a
+hospital, likely to die at any moment; what it meant to have the whole
+responsibility shifted to their shoulders, willing though they might be
+to bear the burden; what it meant to have the general of an army gone
+when the enemy was approaching in overwhelming numbers.
+
+Pink, when they were descending the first slope of the bluff which was
+the southern rim of Flying U coulee, turned and glared vindictively back
+at the wavering, gray blanket out there to the west. When he faced to
+the front his face had the look it wore when he was fighting.
+
+"So help me, Josephine!" he gritted desperately, "we've got to clean the
+range of them Dots before the Old Man comes back, or--" He snapped his
+jaws shut viciously.
+
+Weary turned haggard eyes toward him.
+
+"How?" he asked simply. And Pink had no answer for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. Two of a Kind
+
+Patsy, staunch old partisan that he was, placed before them much food
+which he had tried his best to keep hot without burning everything to
+a crisp, and while they ate with ravenous haste he told, with German
+epithets and a trembling lower jaw, of his troubles that day.
+
+"Dem sheeps, dey coom by der leetle pasture," he lamented while he
+poured coffee muddy from long boiling. "Looks like dey know so soon you
+ride away, und dey cooms cheeky as you pleece, und eats der grass und
+crawls under der fence and leafs der vool sthicking by der vires. I goes
+out mit a club, py cosh, und der sheeps chust looks und valks by some
+better place alreatty, und I throw rocks and yells till mine neck iss
+sore.
+
+"Und' dose herders, dey sets dem by der rock and laugh till I felt like
+I could kill der whole punch, by cosh! Und von yells, 'Hey, dutchy,
+pring me some pie, alreatty!' Und he laughs some more pecause der sheeps
+dey don't go avay; dey chust run around und eat more grass and baa-aa!"
+He turned and went heavily back to the greasy range with the depleted
+coffee pot, lifted the lid of a kettle and looked in upon the contents
+with a purely mechanical glance; gave a perfunctory prod or two with a
+long-handled fork, and came back to stand uneasily behind Weary.
+
+"If you poys are goin' to shtand fer dot," he began querulously, "Py
+cosh I von't! Py myself I vill go and tell dot Dunk W'ittaker vot
+lowdown skunk I t'ink he iss. Sheep's vool shtickin' by der fences
+efferwhere on der ranch, py cosh! Dot vould sure kill der Old Man quick
+if he see it. Shtinkin' off sheeps py our noses all der time, till I
+can't eat no more mit der shmell of dem. Neffer pefore did I see vool on
+der Flying U fences, py cosh, und sheeps baa-aain' in der coulee!"
+
+Never had they seen Patsy take so to heart a matter of mere business
+importance. They did not say much to him; there was not much that they
+could say. They ate their fill and went out disconsolately to discuss
+the thing among themselves, away from Patsy's throaty complainings. They
+hated it as badly as did he; with Weary's urgent plea for no violence
+holding them in leash, they hated it more, if that were possible.
+
+The Native Son tilted his head unobtrusively stableward when he caught
+Andy's eye, and as unobtrusively wandered away from the group. Andy
+stopped long enough to roll and light a cigarette and then strolled
+after him with apparent aimlessness, secretly curious over the summons.
+He found Miguel in the stable waiting for him, and Miguel led the way,
+rope in hand across the corral and into the little pasture where fed a
+horse he meant to ride. He did not say anything until he had turned to
+close the gate, and to make sure that they were alone and that their
+departure had not carried to the Happy Family any betraying air of
+significance.
+
+"You remember when you blew in here, a few weeks or so ago?" the Native
+Son asked abruptly, a twinkle in his fathomless eyes. "You put up a good
+one on the boys, that time, you remember. Bluffed them into thinking I
+was a hero in disguise, and that you'd seen me pull off a big stunt of
+bull-fighting and bull-dogging down in Mexico. It was a fine josh. They
+believe it yet."
+
+Andy glanced at him perplexedly. "Yes--but when it turned out to be
+true," he amended, "the josh was on me, I guess; I thought I was just
+lying, when I wasn't. I've wondered a good deal about that. By
+gracious, it makes a man feel funny to frame up a yarn out of his own
+think-machine, and then find out he's been telling the truth all the
+while. It's like a fellow handing out a twenty-four karat gold bar to a
+rube by mistake, under the impression it only looks like one. Of course
+they believe it! Only they don't know I just merely hit the truth by
+accident."
+
+The Native Son smiled his slow, amused smile, that somehow never failed
+to be impressive. "That's the funny part of it," he drawled. "You
+didn't. I just piled another little josh on top of yours, that's all. I
+never throwed a bull in my life, except with my lariat. I'd heard a
+good deal about you, and--well, I thought I'd see if I could go you one
+better. And you put that Mexico yarn across so smooth and easy, I just
+simply couldn't resist the temptation to make you think it was all
+straight goods. Sabe?"
+
+Andy Green did not say a word, but he looked exceedingly foolish.
+
+"So I think we can both safely consider ourselves top-hands when it
+comes to lying," the Native Son went on shamelessly. "And if you're
+willing to go in with me on it and help put Dunk on the run--" He
+glanced over his shoulder, saw that Happy Jack, on horseback, was coming
+out to haze in the saddle bunch, and turned to stroll back as lazily as
+he had come. He continued to speak smoothly and swiftly, in a voice
+that would not carry ten paces. While Andy Green, with brown head bent
+attentively, listened eagerly and added a sentence or two on his own
+account now and then, and smiled--which he had not been in the habit of
+doing lately.
+
+"Say, you fellers are gittin' awful energetic, ain't yuh?--wranglin'
+horses afoot!" Happy Jack bantered at the top of his voice when he
+passed them by. "Better save up your strength while you kin. Weary's
+goin' to set us herdin' sheep agin--and I betche there's goin' to be
+something more'n herdin' on our hands before we git through."
+
+"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was," sang out Andy, as
+cheerfully as if he had been invited to dance "Ladies' choice" with the
+prettiest girl in the crowd. "Wonder what hole he's going to dump this
+bunch into," he added to the Native Son. "By gracious, he ought to send
+'em just as far north as he can drive 'em without paying duty! I'd sure
+take 'em over into Canada, if it was me running the show."
+
+"It was a mistake," the Native Son volunteered, "for the whole bunch to
+go off like we did to-day. They had those sheep up here on the hill just
+for a bait. They knew we'd go straight up in the air and come down on
+those two freaks herding 'em, and that gave them the chance to cross the
+other bunch. I thought so all along, but I didn't like to butt in."
+
+"Well Weary's mad enough now to do things that will leave a dent,
+anyway," Andy commented under his breath when, from the corral gate, he
+got a good look at Weary's profile, which showed the set of his mouth
+and chin. "See that mouth? It's hunt the top rail, and do it quick, when
+old Weary straightens out his lips like that."
+
+Behind them, Happy Jack bellowed for an open gate and no obstructions,
+and they drew hastily to one side to let the saddle horses gallop
+past with a great upflinging of dust. Pink, with a quite obtrusive
+facetiousness, began lustily chanting that it looked to him like a big
+night to-night--with occasional, furtive glances at Weary's face; for
+he, also, had been quick to read those close-pressed lips, which did not
+soften in response to the ditty. Usually he laughed at Pink's drollery.
+
+They rode rather quietly upon the hill again, to where fed the sheep.
+During the hour or so that they had been absent the sheep had not moved
+appreciably; they still grazed close enough to the boundary to make
+their position seem a direct insult to the Flying U, a virtual slap in
+the face. And these young men who worked for the Flying U, and who made
+its interests right loyally their own, were growing very, very tired
+of turning the other cheek. With them, the time for profanity and for
+horseplay bluffing and judicious temporizing was past. There were other
+lips besides Weary's that were drawn tight and thin when they approached
+that particular band of sheep. More than one pair of eyes turned
+inquiringly toward him and away again when they met no answering look.
+
+They topped a rise of ground, and in the shallow wrinkle which had
+hidden him until now they came full upon Dunk Whittaker, riding a chunky
+black which stepped restlessly about while he conferred in low tones
+with a couple of the herders. The Happy Family recognized them as two
+of the fellows in whose safe keeping they had left their ropes the night
+before. Dunk looked around quickly when the group appeared over the
+little ridge, scowled, hesitated and then came straight up to them.
+
+"I want you rowdies to bring back those sheep you took the trouble to
+drive off this morning," he began, with the even, grating voice and the
+sneering lift of lip under his little, black mustache which the older
+members of the Happy Family remembered--and hated--so vividly.
+"I've stood just all I'm going to stand, of these typically Flying U
+performances you've been indulging in so freely during the past week.
+It's all very well to terrorize a neighborhood of long-haired rubes who
+don't know enough to teach you your places; but interfering with another
+man's property is--"
+
+"Interfering with another--what?" Big Medicine, his pale blue eyes
+standing out more like a frog's than ever upon his face, gave his horse
+a kick and lunged close that he might lean and thrust his red face near
+to Dunk's. "Another what? I don't see nothin' in your saddle that looks
+t'me like a man, by cripes! All I can see is a smooth-skinned, slippery
+vermin I'd hate to name a snake after, that crawls around in the dark
+and lets cheap rough-necks do all his dirty work. I've saw dogs sneak
+up and grab a man behind, but most always they let out a growl or two
+first. And even a rattler is square enough to buzz at yuh and give yuh
+a chanc't to side-step him. Honest to grandma, I don't hardly know what
+kinda reptyle y'are. I hate to insult any of 'em, by cripes, by namin'
+yuh after 'em. But don't, for Lordy's sake, ever call yourself a man
+agin!"
+
+Big Medicine turned his head and spat disgustedly into the grass and
+looked back slightingly with other annihilating remarks close behind his
+wide-apart teeth, but instead of speaking he made an unbelievably quick
+motion with his hand. The blow smacked loudly upon Dunk's cheek, and so
+nearly sent him out of the saddle that he grabbed for the horn to save
+himself.
+
+"Oh, I seert yuh keepin' yer hand next yer six-gun all the while," Big
+Medicine bawled. "That's one reason I say yuh ain't no man! Yuh wouldn't
+dast talk up to a prairie dog if yuh wasn't all set to make a quick
+draw. Yuh got your face slapped oncet before by a Flyin' U man, and yuh
+had it comm'. Now you're--gittin'--it--done--right!"
+
+If you have ever seen an irate, proletarian mother cuffing her offspring
+over an empty wood-box, you may picture perhaps the present proceeding
+of Big Medicine. To many a man the thing would have been unfeasible,
+after the first blow, because of the horses. But Big Medicine was very
+nearly all that he claimed to be; and one of his pet vanities was his
+horsemanship; he managed to keep within a fine slapping distance of
+Dunk. He stopped when his hand began to sting through his glove.
+
+"Now you keep your hand away from that gun--that you ain't honest enough
+to carry where folks can see it, but 'ye got it cached in your pocket!"
+he thundered. "And go on with what you was goin' t'say. Only don't get
+swell-headed enough to think you're a man, agin. You ain't."
+
+"I've got this to say!" Mere type cannot reproduce the malevolence of
+Dunk's spluttering speech. "I've sent for the county sheriff and a dozen
+deputies to arrest you, and you, and you, damn you!" He was pointing
+a shaking finger at the older members of the Happy Family, whom he
+recognized not gladly, but too well. "I'll have you all in Deer Lodge
+before that lying, thieving, cattle-stealing Old Man of yours can lift a
+finger. I'll sheep Flying U coulee to the very doors of the white house.
+I'll skin the range between here and the river--and I'll have every one
+of you hounds put where the dogs won't bite you!" He drew a hand across
+his mouth and smiled as they say Satan himself can smile upon occasion.
+
+"You've done enough to send you all over the road; destroying property
+and assaulting harmless men--you wait! There are other and better
+ways to fight than with the fists, and I haven't forgotten any of you
+fellows--there are a few more rounders among you--"
+
+"Hey! You apologize fer that, by cripes, er I'll kill yuh the longest
+way I know. And that--" Big Medicine again laid violent hands upon Dunk,
+"and that way won't feel good, now I'm tellin' yuh. Apologize, er--"
+
+"Say, all this don't do any good, Bud," Weary expostulated. "Let Dunk
+froth at the mouth if he wants to; what we want is to get these sheep
+off the range. And," he added recklessly, "so long as the sheriff is
+headed for us anyway, we may as well get busy and make it worth his
+while. So--" He stopped, silenced by a most amazing interruption.
+
+On the brow of the hill, when first they had sighted Dunk in the hollow,
+something had gone wrong with Miguel's saddle so that he had stopped
+behind; and, to keep him company, Andy had stopped also and waited for
+him. Later, when Dunk was spluttering threats, they had galloped up to
+the edge of the group and pulled their horses to a stand. Now, Miguel
+rode abruptly close to Dunk as rides one with a purpose.
+
+He leaned and peered intently into Dunk's distorted countenance until
+every man there, struck by his manner, was watching him curiously. Then
+he sat back in the saddle, straightened his legs in the stirrups and
+laughed. And like his smile when he would have it so, or the little
+twitch of shoulders by which he could so incense a man, that laugh
+brought a deeper flush to Dunk's face, reddened though it was by Big
+Medicine's vigorous slapping.
+
+"Say, you've got nerve," drawled the Native Son, "to let a sheriff
+travel toward you. I can remember when you were more timid, amigo." He
+turned his head until his eyes fell upon Andy. "Say, Andy!" he called.
+"Come and take a look at this hombre. You'll have to think back a few
+years," he assisted laconically.
+
+In response, Andy rode up eagerly. Like the Native Son, he leaned and
+peered into eyes that stared back defiantly, wavered, and turned away.
+Andy also sat back in the saddle then, and snorted.
+
+"So this is the Dunk Whittaker that's been raising merry hell around
+here! And talks about sending for the sheriff, huh? I've always heard
+that a lot uh gall is the best disguise a man can hide under, but, by
+gracious, this beats the deuce!" He turned to the astounded Happy Family
+with growing excitement in his manner.
+
+"Boys, we don't have to worry much about this gazabo! We'll just
+freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There'll sure be
+something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person really is!
+And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh, Lord!" He looked
+with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk's glance flickered again and
+dropped, just as his hand dropped to the pocket of his coat.
+
+"No, yuh don't, by cripes!" Big Medicine's hand gripped Dunk's arm on
+the instant. With his other he plucked the gun from Dunk's pocket, and
+released him as he would let go of something foul which he had been
+compelled to touch.
+
+"He'll be good, or he'll lose his dinner quick," drawled the Native
+Son, drawing his own silver-mounted six-shooter and resting it upon the
+saddle horn so that it pointed straight at Dunk's diaphragm. "You take
+Weary off somewhere and tell him something about this deal, Andy. I'll
+watch this slippery gentleman." He smiled slowly and got an answering
+grin from Andy Green, who immediately rode a few rods away, with Weary
+and Pink close behind.
+
+"Say, by golly, what's Dunk wanted fer?" Slim blurted inquisitively
+after a short silence.
+
+"Not for riding or driving over a bridge faster than a walk Slim,"
+purred the Native Son, shifting his gun a trifle as Dunk moved uneasily
+in the saddle. "You know the man. Look at his face--and use your
+imagination, if you've got any."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. The Happy Family Learn Something
+
+"Well, I hope this farce is about over," Dunk sneered, with as near an
+approach to his old, supercilious manner as he could command, when the
+three who had ridden apart returned presently. "Perhaps, Weary, you'll
+be good enough to have this fellow put up his gun, and these--" he
+hesitated, after a swift glance, to apply any epithet whatever to the
+Happy Family. "I have two witnesses here to swear that you have without
+any excuse assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you may
+consider yourselves lucky if I do not insist--"
+
+"Ah, cut that out," Andy advised wearily. "I don't know how it strikes
+the rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don't overlook the fact
+that two of us happen to know all about you; and we know just where to
+send word, to dig up a lot more identification. So bluffing ain't going
+to help you out, a darned bit."
+
+"Miguel, you can go with Andy," Weary said with brisk decision. "Take
+Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here--if it's straight
+goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can take Dunk in
+to-morrow, ourselves." He turned and fixed a cold, commanding eye upon
+the slack-jawed herders. "Come along, you two, and get these sheep
+headed outa here."
+
+"Say, we'll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on back,"
+Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. "He couldn't get out
+in a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvil
+with a log-chain." He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed
+countenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did
+without a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.
+
+"What's it all about, Weary?" Irish asked, when the three were gone.
+"What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty fierce, the
+way he wilted down into the saddle."
+
+"You'll have to wait and ask the boys." Weary rode off to hurry the
+herders on the far side of the band.
+
+So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject and
+for that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel as
+well. They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and they
+called it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.
+
+There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and the
+dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep down
+upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently it happens that
+perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer. The Happy Family had
+been extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before. They had
+frequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled without
+committing any real act of violence. But that day had held a long series
+of petty annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from
+them as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked
+Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook his head
+and said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of lying, and
+his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as anyone can readily
+understand.
+
+When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started them
+moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against that shuffling,
+nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long, weary hours in the
+saddle with the other band. But it was Irish who first took measures to
+accelerate that pace.
+
+He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across the
+nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few paces and
+returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it names and whacked
+another.
+
+After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing it
+have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close to the
+heels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped to look up at
+him foolishly and blat, and the buck charged ahead in a panic at the
+noise and the spat of the bullet behind him.
+
+"Hit him agin in the same place!" yelled Big Medicine, and drew his own
+gun. The Happy Family, at that high tension where they were ready for
+anything, caught the infection and began shooting and yelling like crazy
+men.
+
+The effect was not at all what they expected. Instead of adding impetus
+to the band, as would have been the case if they had been driving
+cattle, the result was exactly the opposite. The sheep ran--but they
+ran to a common center. As the shooting went on they bunched tighter and
+tighter, until it seemed as though those in the center must surely be
+crushed flat. From an ambling, feeding company of animals, they become
+a lumpy gray blanket, with here and there a long, vacuous face showing
+idiotically upon the surface.
+
+The herders grinned and drew together as against a common enemy--or
+as with a new joke to be discussed among themselves. The dogs wandered
+helplessly about, yelped half-heartedly at the woolly mass, then sat
+down upon their haunches and lolled red tongues far out over their
+pointed little teeth, and tilted knowing heads at the Happy Family.
+
+"Look at the darned things!" wailed Pink, riding twice around the
+huddle, almost ready to shed tears of pure rage and helplessness.
+"Git outa that! Hi! Woopp-ee!" He fired again and again, and gave the
+range-old cattle-yell; the yell which had sent many a tired herd over
+many a weary mile; the yell before which had fled fat steers into the
+stockyards at shipping time, and up the chutes into the cars; the yell
+that had hoarsened many a cowpuncher's voice and left him with a mere
+croak to curse his fate with; a yell to bring results--but it did not
+start those sheep.
+
+The Happy Family, riding furiously round and round, fired every
+cartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper thing
+they could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes were
+starting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep so tight
+together that dynamite could scarcely have pried them apart.
+
+And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely over
+hunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low tones, and
+grinned.
+
+Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them pointing
+derisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great oath and made for
+them, calling aloud that he would knock those grins so far in that they
+would presently find themselves smiling wrong-side-out from the back of
+their heads.
+
+Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of a
+burrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand in
+reversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came bellowing up
+from the far side of the huddle like a bull challenging to combat from
+across a meadow. Big Medicine did not know what it was all about, but he
+scented battle, and that was sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equally
+ignorant of the cause, started at a lope toward the trouble center.
+
+It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon those
+herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much so that
+the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails toward the rim of
+Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the west.
+
+"Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep it,"
+exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from him that day.
+
+While he was still laughing, there was a shot from the ridge toward
+which they were running; the sharp, vicious crack of a rifle. The Happy
+Family heard the whistling hum of the bullet, singing low over their
+heads; quite low indeed; altogether too low to be funny. And they had
+squandered all their ammunition on the prairie sod, to hurry a band of
+sheep that flatly refused to hurry anywhere except under one another's
+odorous, perspiring bodies.
+
+From the edge of the coulee the rifle spoke again. A tiny geyser of
+dust, spurting up from the ground ten feet to one side of Cal Emmett,
+showed them all where the bullet struck.
+
+"Get outa range, everybody!" yelled Weary, and set the example by
+tilting his rowels against Glory's smooth hide, and heading eastward.
+"I like to be accommodating, all right, but I draw the line on standing
+around for a target while my neighbors practise shooting."
+
+The Happy Family, having no other recourse, therefore retreated in haste
+toward the eastern skyline. Bullets followed them, overtook them as
+the shooter raised his sights for the increasing distance, and whined
+harmlessly over their heads. All save one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. Happy Jack
+
+Big Medicine, Irish and Pink, racing almost abreast, heard a scream
+behind them and pulled up their horses with short, stiff-legged plunges.
+A brown horse overtook them; a brown horse, with Happy Jack clinging to
+the saddle-horn, his body swaying far over to one side. Even as he went
+hurtling past them his hold grew slack and he slumped, head foremost, to
+the ground. The brown horse gave a startled leap away from him and went
+on with empty stirrups flapping.
+
+They sprang down and lifted him to a less awkward position, and Big
+Medicine pillowed the sweat-dampened, carroty head in the hollow of his
+arm. Those who had been in the lead looked back startled when the brown
+horse tore past them with that empty saddle; saw what had happened,
+wheeled and galloped back. They dismounted and stood silently grouped
+about poor, ungainly Happy Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big
+Medicine's arms. Not one of them remembered then that there was a man
+with a rifle not more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they
+quite forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves. They were
+thinking of Happy Jack.
+
+Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker,
+the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest, the
+stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had "betched" there
+would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he had predicted trouble
+of every conceivable kind; and they had laughed at him, swore at him,
+lied to him, "joshed" him unmercifully, and kept him in a state of
+chronic indignation, never dreaming that the memory of it would choke
+them and strike them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their
+chests with which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of
+weeping.
+
+"Where's he hurt?" asked Weary, in the repressed tone which only tragedy
+can bring into a man's voice, and knelt beside Big Medicine.
+
+"I dunno--through the lungs, I guess; my sleeve's gitting soppy right
+under his shoulder." Big Medicine did not bellow; his voice was as quiet
+as Weary's.
+
+Weary looked up briefly at the circle of staring faces. "Pink, you pile
+onto Glory and go wire for a doctor. Try Havre first; you may get one
+up on the nine o' clock train. If you can't, get one down on the
+'leven-twenty, from Great Falls. Or there's Benton--anyway, git one. If
+you could catch MacPherson, do it. Try him first, and never mind a Havre
+doctor unless you can't get MacPherson. I'd rather wait a couple of
+hours longer, for him. I'll have a rig--no, you better get a team from
+Jim. They'll be fresh, and you can put 'em through. If you kill 'em," he
+added grimly, "we can pay for 'em." He had his jack-knife out, and
+was already slashing carefully the shirt of Happy Jack, that he might
+inspect the wound.
+
+Pink gave a last, wistful look at Happy Jack's face, which seemed
+unfamiliar with all the color and all the expression wiped out of it
+like that, and turned away. "Come and help me change saddles, Cal,"
+he said shortly. "Weary's stirrups are too darned long." Even with the
+delay, he was mounted on Glory and galloping toward Flying U coulee
+before Weary was through uncovering the wound; and that does not mean
+that Weary was slow.
+
+The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty feet
+beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or gave any
+other sign of realization that they were still the target; they were
+staring, with that frowning painfully intent look men have at such
+moments, at a purplish hole not much bigger than if punched by a lead
+pencil, just under the point of Happy Jack's shoulder blade; and at the
+blood oozing sluggishly from it in a tiny stream across the girlishly
+white flesh and dripping upon Big Medicine's arm.
+
+"Hadn't we better get a rig to take him home with?" Irish suggested.
+
+Weary, exploring farther, had just disclosed a ragged wound under the
+arm where the bullet had passed out; he made no immediate reply.
+
+"Well, he ain't got it stuck inside of 'im, anyway," Big Medicine
+commented relievedly. "Don't look to me like it's so awful bad--went
+through kinda anglin', and maybe missed his lungs. I've saw men shot up
+before--"
+
+"Aw--I betche you'd--think it was bad--if you had it--" murmured Happy
+Jack peevishly, lifting his eyelids heavily for a resentful glance when
+they moved him a little. But even as Big Medicine grinned joyfully down
+at him he went off again into mental darkness, and the grin faded into
+solicitude.
+
+"You'd kick, by golly, if you was goin' to be hung," Slim bantered
+tritely and belatedly, and gulped remorsefully when he saw that he was
+"joshing" an unconscious man.
+
+"We better get him home. Irish, you--" Weary looked up and discovered
+that Irish and jack Bates were already headed for home and a conveyance.
+He gave a sigh of approval and turned his attention toward wiping the
+sweat and grime from Happy's face with his handkerchief.
+
+"Somebody else is goin' to git hit, by golly, if we stay here," Slim
+blurted suddenly, when another bullet dug up the dirt in that vicinity.
+
+"That gol-darned fool'll keep on till he kills somebody. I wisht I
+had m' thirty-thirty here--I'd make him wisht his mother was a man, by
+golly!"
+
+Big Medicine looked toward the coulee rim. "I ain't got a shell left,"
+he growled regretfully. "I wisht we'd thought to tell the boys to bring
+them rifles. Say, Slim, you crawl onto your hoss and go git 'em. It
+won't take more'n a minute. There'll likely be some shells in the
+magazines."
+
+"Go on, Slim," urged Weary grimly. "We've got to do something. They
+can't do a thing like this--" he glanced down at Happy Jack-- "and get
+away with it."
+
+"I got half a box uh shells for my thirty-thirty, I'll bring that." Slim
+turned to go, stopped short and stared at the coulee rim. "By golly,
+they're comm' over here!" he exclaimed.
+
+Big Medicine glanced up, took off his hat, crumpled it for a pillow
+and eased Happy Jack down upon it. He got up stiffly, wiped his fingers
+mechanically upon his trouser legs, broke his gun open just to make sure
+that it was indeed empty, put it back and picked up a handful of rocks.
+
+"Let 'em come," he said viciously. "I c'n kill every damn' one with m'
+bare hands!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. Oleson
+
+"Say, ain't that Andy and Mig following along behind?" Cal asked after a
+minute of watching the approach. "Sure, it is. Now what--"
+
+"They're drivin' 'em, by cripes!" Big Medicine, under the stress of the
+moment, returned to his usual bellowing tone. "Who's that tall, lanky
+feller in the lead? I don't call to mind ever seem him before. Them four
+herders I'd know a mile off."
+
+"That?" Weary shaded his eyes with his hat-brim, against the slant rays
+of the westering sun. "That's Oleson, Dunk's partner."
+
+"His mother'd be a-weepin'," Big Medicine observed bodefully, "if she
+knowed what was due to happen to her son right away quick. Must be him
+that done the shootin'."
+
+They came on steadily, the four herders and Oleson walking reluctantly
+ahead, with Andy Green and the Native Son riding relentlessly in the
+rear, their guns held unwaveringly in a line with the backs of their
+captives. Andy was carrying a rifle, evidently taken from one of the
+men--Oleson, they judged for the guilty one. Half the distance was
+covered when Andy was seen to turn his head and speak briefly with the
+Native Son, after which he lunged past the captives and galloped up to
+the waiting group. His quick eye sought first the face of Happy Jack
+in anxious questioning; then, miserably, he searched the faces of his
+friends.
+
+"Good Lord!" he exclaimed mechanically, dismounted and bent over the
+figure on the ground. For a long minute he knelt there; he laid his ear
+close to Happy Jack's mouth, took off his glove and laid his hand over
+Happy's heart; reached up, twitched off his neckerchief, shook out the
+creases and spread it reverently over Happy Jack's face. He stood up
+then and spoke slowly, his eyes fixed upon the stumbling approach of the
+captives.
+
+"Pink told us Happy had been shot, so we rode around and come up behind
+'em. It was a cinch. And--say, boys, we've got the Dots in a pocket.
+They've got to eat outa our hands, now. So don't think about--our own
+feelings, or about--" he stopped abruptly and let a downward glance
+finish the sentence. "We've got to keep our own hands clean, and--now
+don't let your fingers get the itch, Bud!" This, because of certain
+manifestations of a murderous intent on the part of Big Medicine.
+
+"Oh, it's all right to talk, if yuh feel like talking," Big Medicine
+retorted savagely. "I don't." He made a catlike spring at the foremost
+man, who happened to be Oleson, and got a merciless grip with his
+fingers on his throat, snarling like a predatory animal over its kill.
+From behind, Andy, with Weary to help, pulled him off.
+
+"I didn't mean to--to kill anybody," gasped Oleson, pasty white. "I
+heard a lot of shooting, and so I ran up the hill--and the herders came
+running toward me, and I thought I was defending my property and men. I
+had a right to defend--"
+
+"Defend hell!" Big Medicine writhed in the restraining grasp of those
+who held him. "Look at that there! As good hearted a boy as ever turned
+a cow! Never harmed a soul in 'is life. Is all your dirty, stinkin'
+sheep, an' all your lousy herders, worth that boy's life? Yuh shot 'im
+down like a dog--lemme go, boys." His voice was husky. "Lemme tromp the
+life outa him."
+
+"I thought you were killing my men, or I never--I never meant to--to
+kill--" Oleson, shaking till he could scarcely stand, broke down and
+wept; wept pitiably, hysterically, as men of a certain fiber will weep
+when black tragedy confronts them all unawares. He cowered miserably
+before the Happy Family, his face hidden behind his two hands.
+
+"Boys, I want to say a word or two. Come over here." Andy's voice, quiet
+as ever, contrasted strangely with the man's sobbing. He led them back
+a few paces--Weary, Cal, Big Medicine and Slim, and spoke hurriedly. The
+Native Son eyed them sidelong from his horse, but he was careful to keep
+Oleson covered with his gun--and the herders too, although they were
+unarmed. Once or twice he glanced at that long, ungainly figure in the
+grass with the handkerchief of Andy Green hiding the face except where
+a corner, fluttering in the faint breeze which came creeping out of the
+west, lifted now and then and gave a glimpse of sunbrowned throat and a
+quiet chin and mouth.
+
+"Quit that blubbering, Oleson, and listen here." Andys voice broke
+relentlessly upon the other's woe. "All these boys want to hang yuh
+without any red tape; far as I'm concerned, I'm dead willing. But we're
+going to give yuh a chance. Your partner, as we told yuh coming over,
+we've got the dead immortal cinch on, right now. And--well you can see
+what you're up against. But we'll give yuh a chance. Have you got any
+family?"
+
+Oleson, trying to pull himself together, shook his head.
+
+"Well, then, you can get rid of them sheep, can't yuh? Sell 'em, ship
+'em outa here--we don't give a darn what yuh do, only so yuh get 'em off
+the range."
+
+"Y-yes, I'll do that." Oleson's consent was reluctant, but it was fairly
+prompt. "I'll get rid of the sheep," he said, as if he was minded to
+clinch the promise. "I'll do it at once."
+
+"That's nice." Andy spoke with grim irony. "And you'll get rid of the
+ranch, too. You'll sell it to the Flying U--cheap."
+
+"But my partner--Whittaker might object--"
+
+"Look here, old-timer. You'll fix that part up; you'll find a way
+of fixing it. Look here--at what you're up against." He waited, with
+pointing finger, for one terrible minute. "Will you sell to the Flying
+U?"
+
+"Y-yes!" The word was really a gulp. He tried to avoid looking where
+Andy pointed; failed, and shuddered at what he saw.
+
+"I thought you would. We'll get that in writing. And we're going to wait
+just exactly twenty-four hours before we make a move. It'll take some
+fine work, but we'll do it. Our boss, here, will fix up the business end
+with you. He'll go with yuh right now, and stay with yuh till you
+make good. And the first crooked move you make--" Andy, in unconscious
+imitation of the Native Son, shrugged a shoulder expressively and urged
+Weary by a glance to take the leadership.
+
+"Irish, you come with me. The rest of you fellows know about what to
+do. Andy, I guess you'll have to ride point till I get back." Weary
+hesitated, looked from Happy Jack to Oleson and the herders, and back
+to the sober faces of his fellows. "Do what you can for him, boys--and I
+wish one of you would ride over, after Pink gets back, and--let me know
+how things stack up, will you?"
+
+Incredible as was the situation on the face of it, nevertheless it was
+extremely matter-of-fact in the handling; which is the way sometimes
+with incredible situations; as if, since we know instinctively that we
+cannot rise unprepared to the bigness of its possibilities, we keep our
+feet planted steadfastly on the ground and refuse to rise at all. And
+afterward, perhaps, we look back and wonder how it all came about.
+
+At the last moment Weary turned back and exchanged guns with Andy Green,
+because his own was empty and he realized the possible need of one--or
+at least the need of having the sheep-men perfectly aware that he had
+one ready for use. The Native Son, without a word of comment, handed his
+own silver-trimmed weapon over to Irish, and rolled a cigarette deftly
+with one hand while he watched them ride away.
+
+"Does this strike anybody else as being pretty raw?" he inquired calmly,
+dismounting among them. "I'd do a good deal for the outfit, myself;
+but letting that man get off--Say, you fellows up this way don't think
+killing a man amounts to much, do you?" He looked from one to the other
+with a queer, contemptuous hostility in his eyes.
+
+Andy Green took a forward step and laid a hand familiarly on his rigid
+shoulder. "Quit it, Mig. We would do a lot for the outfit; that's the
+God's truth. And I played the game right up to the hilt, I admit. But
+nobody's killed. I told Happy to play dead. By gracious, I caught him
+just in the nick uh time; he'd been setting up, in another minute." To
+prove it, he bent and twitched the handkerchief from the face of Happy
+Jack, and Happy opened his eyes and made shift to growl.
+
+"Yuh purty near-smothered me t'death, darn yuh."
+
+"Dios!" breathed the Native Son, for once since they knew him jolted out
+of his eternal calm. "God, but I'm glad!"
+
+"I guess the rest of us ain't," insinuated Andy softly, and lifted his
+hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead. "I will say that--" After
+all, he did not. Instead, he knelt beside Happy Jack and painstakingly
+adjusted the crumpled hat a hair's breadth differently.
+
+"How do yuh feel, old-timer?" he asked with a very thin disguise of
+cheerfulness upon the anxiety of his tone.
+
+"Well, I could feel a lot--better, without hurtin' nothin," Happy Jack
+responded somberly. "I hope you fellers--feel better, now. Yuh got
+'em--tryin' to murder--the hull outfit; jes' like I--told yuh
+they would--" Gunshot wounds, contrary to the tales of certain
+sentimentalists, do not appreciably sweeten, or even change, a man's
+disposition. Happy Jack with a bullet hole through one side of him was
+still Happy Jack.
+
+"Aw, quit your beefin'," Big Medicine advised gruffly. "A feller with
+a hole in his lung yuh could throw a calf through sideways ain't got no
+business statin' his views on nothin', by cripes!"
+
+"Aw gwan. I thought you said--it didn't amount t' nothin'," Happy
+reminded him, anxiety stealing into his face.
+
+"Well, it don't. May lay yuh up a day or two; wouldn't be su'prised if
+yuh had to stay on the bed-ground two or three meals. But look at Slim,
+here. Shot through the leg--shattered a bone, by cripes!--las' night,
+only; and here he's makin' a hand and ridin' and cussin' same as any of
+us t'day. We ain't goin' to let yuh grouch around, that's all. We claim
+we got a vacation comm' to us; you're shot up, now, and that's fun
+enough for one man, without throwin' it into the whole bunch. Why, a
+little nick like that ain't nothin'; nothin' a-tall. Why, I've been
+shot right through here, by cripes"--Big Medicine laid an impressive
+finger-tip on the top button of his trousers--"and it come out back
+here"--he whirled and showed his thumb against the small of his
+back--"and I never laid off but that day and part uh the next. I was
+sore," he admitted, goggling Happy Jack earnestly, "but I kep' a-goin'.
+I was right in fall roundup, an' I had to. A man can't lay down an' cry,
+by cripes, jes' because he gets pinked a little--"
+
+"Aw, that's jest because--it ain't you. I betche you'd lay 'em
+down--jest like other folks, if yuh got shot--through the lungs. That
+ain't no--joke, lemme tell yuh!" Happy Jack was beginning to show
+considerable spirit for a wounded man. So much spirit that Andy Green,
+who had seen men stricken down with various ills, read fever signs in
+the countenance and in the voice of Happy, and led Big Medicine somewhat
+peremptorily out of ear-shot.
+
+"Ain't you got any sense?" he inquired with fine candor. "What do you
+want to throw it into him like that, for? You may not think so, but he's
+pretty bad off--if you ask me."
+
+Big Medicine's pale eyes turned commiseratingly toward Happy Jack. "I
+know he is; I ain't no fool. I was jest tryin' to cheer 'im up a little.
+He was beginnin' to look like he was gittin' scared about it; I reckon
+maybe I made a break, sayin' what I did about it, so I jest wanted to
+take the cuss off. Honest to gran'ma--"
+
+"If you know anything at all about such things, you must know what fever
+means in such a case. And, recollect, it's going to be quite a while
+before a doctor can get here."
+
+"Oh, I'll be careful. Maybe I did throw it purty strong; I won't, no
+more." Big Medicine s meekness was not the least amazing incident of
+the day. He was a big-hearted soul under his bellow and bluff, and his
+sympathy for Happy Jack struck deep. He went back walking on his toes,
+and he stood so that his sturdy body shaded Happy Jack's face from the
+sun, and he did not open his mouth for another word until Irish and Jack
+Bates came rattling up with the spring wagon hurriedly transformed with
+mattress, pillows and blankets into an ambulance.
+
+They had been thoughtful to a degree. They brought with them a jug of
+water and a tin cup, and they gave Happy Jack a long, cooling drink of
+it and bathed his face before they lifted him into the wagon. And of all
+the hands that ministered to his needs, the hands of Big Medicine were
+the eagerest and gentlest, and his voice was the most vibrant with
+sympathy; which was saying a good deal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. The End of the Dots
+
+Slim may not have been more curious than his fellows, but he was perhaps
+more single-hearted in his loyalty to the outfit. To him the shooting
+of Happy Jack, once he felt assured that the wound was not necessarily
+fatal, became of secondary importance. It was all in behalf of the
+Flying U; and if the bullet which laid Happy Jack upon the ground was
+also the means of driving the hated Dots from that neighborhood, he
+felt, in his slow, phlegmatic way, that it wasn't such a catastrophe as
+some of the others seemed to think. Of course, he wouldn't want Happy
+to die; but he didn't believe, after all, that Happy was going to do
+anything like that. Old Patsy knew a lot about sickness and wounds. (Who
+can cook for a cattle outfit, for twenty years and more, and not know a
+good deal of hurts?) Old Patsy had looked Happy over carefully, and had
+given a grin and a snort.
+
+"Py cosh, dot vos lucky for you, alreatty," he had pronounced. "So you
+don't git plood-poisonings, mit fever, you be all right pretty soon.
+You go to shleep, yet. If fix you oop till der dochtor he cooms. I seen
+fellers shot plumb through der middle off dem, und git yell. You ain't
+shot so bad. You go to shleep."
+
+So, his immediate fears relieved, Slim's slow mind had swung back to
+the Dots, and to Oleson, whom Weary was even now assisting to keep his
+promise (Slim grinned widely to himself when he thought of the abject
+fear which Oleson had displayed because of the murder he thought he had
+done, while Happy Jack obediently "played dead"). And of Dunk, whom Slim
+had hated most abominably of old; Dunk, a criminal found out; Dunk, a
+prisoner right there on the very ranch he had thought to despoil; Dunk,
+at that very moment locked in the blacksmith shop. Perhaps it was not
+curiosity alone which sent him down there; perhaps it was partly a
+desire to look upon Dunk humbled--he who had trodden so arrogantly
+upon the necks of those below him; so arrogantly that even Slim, the
+slow-witted one, had many a time trembled with anger at his tone.
+
+Slim walked slowly, as was his wont; with deadly directness, as was his
+nature. The blacksmith shop was silent, closed--as grimly noncommittal
+as a vault. You might guess whatever you pleased about its inmate; it
+was like trying to imagine the emotions pictured upon the face behind
+a smooth, black mask. Slim stopped before the closed door and listened.
+The rusty, iron hasp attracted his slow gaze, at first puzzling him a
+little, making him vaguely aware that something about it did not quite
+harmonize with his mental attitude toward it. It took him a full minute
+to realize that he had expected to find the door locked, and that the
+hasp hung downward uselessly, just as it hung every day in the year.
+
+He remembered then that Andy had spoken of chaining Dunk to the anvil.
+That would make it unnecessary to lock the door, of course. Slim seized
+the hanging strip of iron, gave it a jerk and bathed all the dingy
+interior with a soft, sunset glow. Cobwebs quivered at the inrush of the
+breeze, and glistened like threads of fine gold. The forge remained a
+dark blot in the corner. A new chisel, lying upon the earthen floor,
+became a bar of yellow light.
+
+Slim's eyes went to the anvil and clung there in a widening stare. His
+hands, white and soft when his gloves were off, drew up convulsively
+into fighting fists, and as he stood looking, the cords swelled and
+stood out upon his thick neck. For years he had hated Dunk Whittaker--
+
+The Happy Family, with rare good sense, had not hesitated to turn the
+white house into an impromptu hospital. They knew that if the Little
+Doctor and Chip and the Old Man had been at home Happy Jack would have
+been taken unquestioningly into the guest chamber--which was a square,
+three-windowed room off the big livingroom. More than one of them had
+occupied it upon occasion. They took Happy Jack up there and put him to
+bed quite as a matter-of-course, and when he was asleep they lingered
+upon the wide, front porch; the hammock of the Little Doctor squeaked
+under the weight of Andy Green, and the wide-armed chairs received the
+weary forms of divers young cowpunchers who did not give a thought to
+the intrusion, but were thankful for the comfort. Andy was swinging
+luxuriously and drawing the last few puffs from a cigarette when Slim,
+purple and puffing audibly, appeared portentously before him.
+
+"I thought you said you was goin' to lock Dunk up in the blacksmith
+shop," he launched accusingly at Andy.
+
+"We did," averred that young man, pushing his toe against the railing to
+accelerate the voluptuous motion of the hammock.
+
+"He ain't there. He's broke loose. The chain--by golly, yuh went an'
+used that chain that was broke an' jest barely hangin' together! His
+horse ain't anywheres around, either. You fellers make me sick. Lollin'
+around here an' not paying no attention, by golly--he's liable to be ten
+mile from here by this time!" When Slim stopped, his jaw quivered like
+a dish of disturbed jelly, and I wish I could give you his tone; choppy,
+every sentence an accusation that should have made those fellows wince.
+
+Irish, Big Medicine and Jack Bates had sprung guiltily to their feet
+and started down the steps. The drawling voice of the Native Son stopped
+them, ten feet from the porch.
+
+"Twelve, or fifteen, I should make it. That horse of his looked to me
+like a drifter."
+
+"Well--are yuh goin' t' set there on your haunches an' let him GO?"
+Slim, by the look of him, was ripe for murder.
+
+"You want to look out, or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed,
+giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whiff
+from his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't afford
+to get as excited as skinny ones can."
+
+"Aw, say! Where did you put him, Andy?" asked Big Medicine, his first
+flurry subsiding before the absolute calm of those two on the porch.
+
+"In the blacksmith shop," said Andy, with a slurring accent on the first
+word that made the whole sentence perfectly maddening. "Ah, come on back
+here and sit down. I guess we better tell 'em the how of it. Huh, Mig?"
+
+Miguel cast a slow, humorous glance over the four. "Ye-es--they'll have
+us treed in about two minutes if we don't," he assented. "Go ahead."
+
+"Well," Andy lifted his head and shoulders that he might readjust a
+pillow to his liking, "we wanted him to make a getaway. Fact is, if he
+hadn't, we'd have been--strictly up against it. Right! If he hadn't--how
+about it, Mig? I guess we'd have been to the Little Rockies ourselves."
+
+"You've got a sweet little voice," Irish cut in savagely, "but we're
+tired. We'd rather hear yuh say something!"
+
+"Oh--all right. Well, Mig and I just ribbed up a josh on Dunk. I'd read
+somewhere about the same kinda deal, so it ain't original; I don't lay
+any claim to the idea at all; we just borrowed it. You see, it's like
+this: We figured that a man as mean as this Dunk person most likely had
+stepped over the line, somewhere. So we just took a gambling chance, and
+let him do the rest. You see, we never saw him before in our lives. All
+that identification stunt of ours was just a bluff. But the minute I
+shoved my chips to the center, I knew we had him dead to rights. You
+were there. You saw him wilt. By gracious--"
+
+"Yuh don't know anything against him?" gasped Irish.
+
+"Not a darned thing--any more than what you all know," testified Andy
+complacently.
+
+It took a minute or two for that to sink in.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" breathed Irish.
+
+"We did chain him to the anvil," Andy went on. "On the way down, we
+talked about being in a hurry to get back to you fellows, and I told
+Mig--so Dunk could hear--that we wouldn't bother with the horse. We tied
+him to the corral. And I hunted around for that bum chain, and then we
+made out we couldn't find the padlock for the door; so we decided, right
+out loud, that he'd be dead safe for an hour or two, till the bunch of
+us got back. Not knowing a darn thing about him, except what you boys
+have told us, we sure would have been in bad if he hadn't taken a sneak.
+Fact is, we were kinda worried for fear he wouldn't have nerve enough
+to try it. We waited, up on the hill, till we saw him sneak down to the
+corral and jump on his horse and take off down the coulee like a scared
+coyote. It was," quoth the young man, unmistakably pleased with himself,
+"pretty smooth work, if you ask me."
+
+"I'd hate to ride as fast and far to-night as that hombre will,"
+supplemented Miguel with his brief smile, that was just a flash of
+white, even teeth and a momentary lightening of his languorous eyes.
+
+Slim stood for five minutes, a stolid, stocky figure in the midst of
+a storm of congratulatory comment. They forgot all about Happy Jack,
+asleep inside the house, and so their voices were not hushed. Indeed,
+Big Medicine's bull-like remarks boomed full-throated across the coulee
+and were flung back mockingly by the barren hills. Slim did not hear
+a word they were saying; he was thinking it over, with that complete
+mental concentration which is the chief recompense of a slow-working
+mind. He was methodically thinking it all out--and, eventually, he saw
+the joke.
+
+"Well, by golly!" he bawled suddenly, and brought his palm down with
+a terrific smack upon his sore leg--whereat his fellows laughed
+uproariously.
+
+"We told you not to try to see through any more jokes till your leg gets
+well, Slim," Andy reminded condescendingly.
+
+"Say, by golly, that's a good one on Dunk, ain't it? Chasin' himself
+clean outa the country, by golly--scared plumb to death---and you
+fellers was only jest makin' b'lieve yuh knowed him! By golly, that sure
+is a good one, all right!"
+
+"You've got it; give you time enough and you could see through a
+barbed-wire fence," patronized Andy, from the hammock. "Yes, since you
+mention it, I think myself it ain't so bad."
+
+"Aw-w shut up, out there, an' let a feller sleep!" came a querulous
+voice from within. "I'd ruther bed down with a corral full uh calves at
+weanin' time, than be anywheres within ten mile uh you darned, mouthy--"
+The rest was indistinguishable, but it did not matter. The Happy Family,
+save Slim, who stayed to look after the patient, tiptoed penitently
+off the porch and took themselves and their enthusiasm down to the
+bunk-house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. Good News
+
+Pink rolled over in his bed so that he might look--however
+sleepily--upon his fellows, dressing more or less quietly in the cool
+dawn-hour.
+
+"Say, I got a letter for you, Weary," he yawned, stretching both arms
+above his head. "I opened it and read it; it was from Chip, so--"
+
+"What did he have to say?"
+
+"Old Man any better?"
+
+"How they comm', back here?"
+
+Several voices, speaking at once, necessitated a delayed reply.
+
+"They'll be here, to-day or to-morrow," Pink replied without any
+circumlocution whatever, while he fumbled in his coat pocket for the
+letter. "He says the Old Man wants to come, and the doctors think he
+might as well tackle it as stay there fussing over it. They're coming in
+a special car, and we've got to rig up an outfit to meet him. The Little
+Doctor tells just how she wants things fixed. I thought maybe it was
+important--it come special delivery," Pink added naively, "so I just
+played it was mine and read it."
+
+"That's all right, Cadwalloper," Weary assured him while he read hastily
+the letter. "Well, we'll fix up the spring wagon and take it in right
+away; somebody's got to go back anyway, with MacPherson. Hello, Cal;
+how's Happy?"
+
+"All right," answered Cal, who had watched over him during the night and
+came in at that moment after someone to take his place in the sickroom.
+"Waked up on the fight because I just happened to be setting with my
+eyes shut. I wasn't asleep, but he said I was; claimed I snored so loud
+I kept him awake all night. Gee whiz! I'd ruther nurse a she bear with
+the mumps!"
+
+"Old Man's coming home, Cal." Pink announced with more joy in his
+tone and in his face than had appeared in either for many a weary
+day. Whereupon Cal gave an exultant whoop. "Go tell that to Happy,"
+he shouted. "Maybe he'll forget a grouch or two. Say, luck seems to be
+kinda casting loving glances our way again--what?"
+
+"By golly, seems to me Pink oughta told us when he come in, las' night,"
+grumbled Slim, when he could make himself heard.
+
+"You were all dead to the world," Pink defended, "and I wanted to
+be. Two o'clock in the morning is a mighty poor time for elegant
+conversation, if you want my opinion."
+
+"And the main point is, you knew all about it, and you didn't give a
+darn whether we did or not," Irish said bluntly. "And Weary sneaked in,
+too, and never let a yip outa him about things over in Denson coulee."
+
+"Oh, what was the use?" asked Weary blandly. "I got an option out of
+Oleson for the ranch and outfit, and all his sheep, at a mighty good
+figure--for the Flying U. The Old Man can do what he likes about it;
+but ten to one he'll buy him out. That is, Oleson's share, which was
+two-thirds. I kinda counted on Dunk letting go easy. And," he added,
+reaching for his hat, "once I got the papers for it, there wasn't
+anything to hang around for, was there? Especially," he said with his
+old, sunny smile, "when we weren't urged a whole lot to stay."
+
+Remained therefore little, save the actual arrival of the Old Man--a
+pitifully weak Old Man, bandaged and odorous with antiseptics, and quite
+pathetically glad to be back home--and his recovery, which was rather
+slow, and the recovery of Happy Jack, which was rapid.
+
+For a brief space the Flying U outfit owned the Dots; very brief it
+was; not a day longer than it took Chip to find a buyer--at a figure
+considerably above that named in the option, by the way.
+
+So, after a season of worry and trouble and impending tragedy such as
+no man may face unflinchingly, life dropped back to its usual level, and
+the trail of the Flying U outfit once more led through pleasant places.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flying U Ranch, by B. M. Bower
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