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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Popular Magazine, February 1906
with "The Mutiny of the Six"
The very unhappy state of affairs which existed when the "Happy Family" of the "Flying U" ranch found it necessary to issue a united protest against the action of one of their employers; all of which was fraught with momentous consequences ...
"EAVESDROPPING," said Cal Emmett reflectively, as he helped himself to more butter, "is about as demoralizing to a man's morals as holding a straight flush twice, hand-running. Yuh want more uh the same, and your mind kinda clings to the subject more'n is good for yuh."
"It's sure unhealthy, all right," Jack Bates assented. "I eavesdropped once, and heard a lot uh things about m'self I didn't feel no call t' stand for; so I rose up and declared m'self and started t' drag it out uh m' slanderers. I wore raw beefsteak on m' face for a week afterward. You bet eavesdropping is demoralizing, all right. But my experience don't tally with your views. I didn't want no more uh the same!"
"What I heard wasn't no ways personal t' me," Cal explained; "but it was sure interesting. I stretched my ears till they was lame, and my bump uh curiosity swelled so it like t' knocked my hat off. I sure wish't I'd 'a' heard it all." Cal stifled a sigh with half a biscuit.
"Well, what about it?" demanded Weary. "Throw it out uh yuh—any fool can see you're dying t' tell."
"Oh, I don't know," Cal retorted, and seemed about to forget the affair altogether, from pure spite. "Pass the spuds this way, Happy," he requested, with dignity.
"What was it you heard?" Weary asked apologetically, after a long silence.
Cal hesitated, dripped cream out of a tin can into his coffee, and then abandoned his dignity and let his big, baby-blue eyes travel the length of the table.
"It was while I was having my bridle-bit mended," he told them. "I dubbed around town a while, and then I strayed into Rusty Brown's place. There didn't seem t' be anything doing; but a crazy sheep-herder was in there bowling up, and he was stringing out on poetry, so I took a jolt or two and set down on a card-table, listening to him elocute. I was over in the corner, right beside that little box-stall Brown had put in for the use uh them that's too bashful t' walk up to the bar. So I was setting there knocking my heels together and murdering time the best I could, and I heard some one talking in the box-stall—and if it wasn't old Dunk you can call me a liar.
"I didn't pay much attention for a minute, being all took up with his nibs from the sheep-pens. But he slacked up to have a drink, and I caught a word or two that made me prick up my ears' some. Whoever it was—and it sure sounded like Dunk—asked somebody if he was ready to open up the ball and the other feller said, 'Yes, you can turn her loose any old time, but look out yuh don't mix me into it.'
"Now that there sounded t' me like shady work, and I leans back against the wall and listens for all I'm worth."
"Who was the other fellow?" asked Chip.
"Lord, I dunno! It takes some practise t' locate a man by the sound of him, unless yuh know him right well, that is. I know who it sounded like, all right. Then Dunk, he says—if it was Dunk: 'We'll have to make a grand-stand play and run you in, too, but yuh needn't be uneasy in your mind—it'll only be a matter uh form. You go on like yuh been doing, and keep your face closed. We'll do the rest.'
"The other one kinda grunted, like he wasn't real hilarious over the thoughts uh getting pinched, and they scraped their chairs back easy, and I rolled m' eyes around, expecting the men'd walk out amongst us—but they didn't. They made a sneak out the side door, and I didn't get a look at 'em. I got up and sashayed out the front way and like t' run over Dunk, just coming in. I was some surprised to see him there, but I never let on. I kept right on a-going, and the only male human I seen was Joe Dodson, hiking across the street to where his horse was tied. Now, I ain't any Sherlock Holmes, and that may or may not be suspicious. All the same, I wisht I'd 'a' heard it all—or else not a word. It's plum aggravating."
"Who do yuh reckon they meant?" asked Weary musingly.
"You can search me. If it was Joe Dodson in the box-stall, and Dunk, it's almost a cinch they was mixing a dose for the Gordon boys. Joe's been stopping down there in the Bad Lands with 'em."
"Oh, I don't know. Joe's been riding grub-line all winter, up and down the river," objected Jack Bates. "He's a wolfer by profession, and a dead beat by trade. He don't stop nowhere."
"The Gordon shack has been his base uh operations, all the same," said Cal, unconvinced.
"Dunk's got it in for the Gordons," Happy Jack assured them with mournful satisfaction.
"You must be locoed, Cal," spoke up Chip Bennett, disgusted. "Dunk isn't fool enough to mix into a thing like that—especially with a low-down bum like Joe Dodson. And if he was he'd choose some place beside that wine box in Rusty's palace of booze. He's ornery enough, but he's too sharp."
"That's no josh," assented Jack Bates. "Cal went to sleep and had a bad dream. Patsy, d'you expect one pie to go the rounds amongst six grown-up men, when every son-of-a-gun takes half? You limber up your arithmetic, you old devil, and trot out a couple more."
"All the same-," Cal persisted, "that thing sure sets heavy on my mind. For half a cent I'd ride down to the Gordon place and scout around some on my own responsibility. I wish to the Lord the Old Man would rise up and kick old Dunk out uh the company. He's sure a blot on the scenery every time he comes nosing around here. The Flying U don't need him or his money."
"You sure know how to cling to one train of thought, Cal," Chip told him sarcastically. "You must be some relation to the Countess. Why don't you say, 'Yuh can know a man's face, but yuh can't know his heart'; and be done with it?"
"By golly, the Countess ain't no fool! She knows what she's talkin' about, and that's more'n you gillies do," cut in Slim, who had a weakness for the loquacious cook up at the White House.
The other five turned the fire of their scorn upon Slim, and the first argument was forgotten for a time by all—that is, all save Cal. Though he called himself a fool many times, the scrap of conversation which he had overheard stuck in his memory; he caught himself speculating upon what had gane before, and calculated mentally the number of seconds which it would take for a man to leave the side door of Rusty Brown's place and reenter at the front. Also, his memory awoke and recalled the grudge which Dunk Whittaker felt against the Gordon boys.
Then he would call himself unflattering names for thinking of the Gordons at all.
What he heard might refer to almost any one—or to no one. It might mean nothing at all. Then he would recall the smooth, grating tones, so like Dunk's voice, and would pinch his eyebrows together uneasily.
Dunk Whittakcr, although a partner in the Flying U outfit, was a man whom the Happy Family neither liked nor respected. It is safe to say that James G. Whitmore would not have had any Happy Family had Dunk been much about the place. They would have left it in disgust to a man. But Dunk had other and more important interests than the Fying U ranch. He lived in Butte, where the society was more congenial, and he traveled much. He sometimes visited the ranch, but never for more than a few days at a time. On such occasions the Happy Family became a morose, silent lot of fellows, who went about their work calmly, politely oblivious of the presence of one of their employers.
It was Dunk who adopted the land-leasing system of securing the range, and it was Dunk who surrounded certain small ranchers with wire fencing, leaving them no outlet—after which he bought them out at his own figure, which was none too generous.
The Gordon boys had been so surrounded, but they had not sold out. When they had no longer outside range for their little bunch of cattle they quietly moved them down upon the river bottom, just in the edge of the Bad Lands. There they built a shack, and there they lived, lonely but triumphant, while their stock fed among the breaks and put on great layers of fat for the winter storms.
The Happy Family had laughed quietly at Dunk, and openly wished the Gordons luck. The Old Man, too, had chuckled at Dunk's defeat, although the Gordon ranch was good to look upon and much to be desired. It lay at the mouth of Flying U coulee, and its hay meadows showed blue-joint straight, with neither weed nor bare alkali spot to mar the level beauty of them. And huddled under the brick-red bluff that rimmed it on the north—a straight two hundred feet of wind-break—were springs, clear and cold, that watered the meadows generously and flowed away to Flying U creek, across the coulee.
The Gordons would sell, but they would sell at their own price. And their own price was more than double what Dunk offered. So Dunk went back to Butte, and the Gordons to the river! and the Happy Family laughed. As the months slipped away they forgot that Dunk had ever coveted the ranch down the coulee.
Down in the little pasture, where they were mending a panel of fence, the next day, Cal spoke of the matter again to Weary. But Weary was a born optimist, and, though he hated Dunk quite as much as he could hate any one, was inclined to laugh at Cal for bothering his mind.' Cal might not have heard it straight, he said. And, even if he did, there was nothing to hang a theory to. It might not have been Dunk at all. And, if it was, it was no cinch that he was really making medicine over anything important. He advised Cal to go to the Little Doctor and get something for his liver.
Cal advised Weary to go somewhere else—where no one is anxious to go—and closed the argument. After that he did not mention the matter to any of the boys, though he thought of it a great deal. By Saturday night he had soothed his nerves with the promise to ride down to the Gordon camp and, if he found Joe Dodson around there and acting suspicious, to thump the daylights out of him. Though what possible good could come of such a performance, only Cal or his nerves can say. It is a fact, however, that he slept soundly that night and did not dream disagreeable things, as he had done before.
On Sundays the Happy Family is accountable to no one for its comings and goings—except on round-up, and then there is no Sunday.' So when Cal saddled up, soon after breakfast, and rode away down the coulee, no one considered it his business to ask his destination. He headed as straight for the river as the sharp-nosed bluffs would permit, and zigzagged down-stream, following always a dim trail. For two hours he rode steadily, then rounded a bold, rocky point, and stopped at the very door of a low, sod-roofed cabin of logs. A white-hatted head was thrust inquiringly from the door and a voice hailed him joyfully.
"Come right in, old timer! Yuh sure look good to me." Dick Gordon did not look like the victim of plotters, and somehow his cheerful, commonplace face reassured Cal mightily.
He swung out of the saddle and went in, and Steve Gordon gave him boisterous welcome. It was a monotonous life they lived, and lonely. Except for an occasional trip outside to the home ranch, they saw few human faces. And if they had seen hundreds every day Cal would still be welcome; for there is a certain freemasonry of the range land that makes all true men brothers at heart.
"I thought Joe Dodson was stopping with you," Cal ventured, in a consciously casual tone, after an hour of gossipy conversation.
"Oh, Joe's like the birds. He comes and goes without no rule. He's down-river now, hunting out wolf dens," Steve Gordon answered, and began recounting the antics of a "bronc" he had just broken.
Cal felt diffident about clinging, conversationally, to Joe Dodson, and let the subject drift from him, though there was much he would like to have known, concerning the movements of that gentleman.
When the shadows grew long and attenuated in the coulee he rode away home, calling himself names which would have cost another man a badly disfigured countenance. He walked into the mess-house just as the Happy Family had arrived at that stage of the meal which calls for canned fruit, and took his place without a word.
Happy Jack, who never could read the weather signs in a man's face, asked him where he had been all day.
Cal reached for the meat platter, and replied truly and impolitely that it was none of his business. After that none questioned him, and Cal was grateful, in a way. His gratitude bore fruit in his putting Joe Dodson into the background of his mind.
They were out on round-up—all save Chip, who was laid up-for repairs at the ranch, and Slim, who was kept at ranch work—when a rider came to camp with their mail and a bit of news that set the Happy Family in a blind rage.
The Gordon boys had been arrested for rustling cattle, and were being held without bail, pending the action of the grand jury. Joe Dodson was arrested as an accomplice.
"Now, what did I tell you?" Cal demanded hotly, when the man had ridden on to a near-by ranch. "I was right, all the time. It was them Dunk was talking about—and it was Joe Dodson with him."
"Mebby not," said Weary, but his tone lacked conviction.
"I'll bet yuh fifty dollars Joe walks out free," cried Cal hotly.
The Happy Family eyed him silently and did not take the bet. They knew Cal would win.
They lay in the bed-tent and discussed the affair in low tones and with much unseemly language long after all good cow-punchers are supposed to be asleep. They argued whether the two sentences which Cal had overheard might be introduced as evidence, and decided that it would not stand as such. They took comfort in telling one another what they thought of Dunk, and there was some rivalry in the invention of strange and offensive epithets applied in that connection. The four or five fellows hired only for the summer, not being of the elect, listened admiringly and sympathetically. If they were shut out from active participation in the debate, they at least formed an appreciative audience, which went far toward soothing the outraged feelings of the Happy Family.
The next week Weary rode to the ranch with a message from Shorty, and told them something on his return which soothed them still more. It was something about a picture which Chip had painted and which Dunk had sold, thinking it the work of the Little Doctor. He had been furious when he discovered it was Chip's, Weary said. He had said something to the Little Doctor, and Chip had taken it up. Between them they had let Dunk down on his face in. a way to make a fellow glad all over. Dunk had left the ranch without waiting for his dinner, and Chip had a good big check out of the deal.
The Happy Family threw up their hats for old Splinter, and said it was a dirty shame the Little Doctor had a fellow in the East. They'd like to see Splinter win out, just to pay him for taking a rise out of old Dunk. There was another long discussion in the bed-tent, with the same appreciative audience. On this occasion, however, the rivalry lay in eulogizing Chip and the Little Doctor as the Happy Family felt they deserved.
When they heard that the grand jury had found a true bill against the Gordons, and that Joe Dodson was released and would testify for the State, they said little—having exhausted the English language and such Mexican obloquy as they knew long before. What they did say, however, proved that their resentment of the injustice had only settled and hardened into a fixed hatred of the two they held guilty.
Chip, newly recovered from a badly twisted ankle which had laid him up for the summer, was sitting upon the north porch of the White House, when he heard a faint, familiar jangle of bells that set his pulse a-tingle—the tuneful clang-alang which heralds the coming of the saddle bunch. He looked up from his magazine and saw the Flying U mess-wagon just dipping over the first descent of the grade. He threw the magazine down and stood up eagerly. A group of horsemen clattered out from behind a willow growth and yelled greeting. Cal and Weary swung their battered hats high over their heads, and Chip gave a whoop that brought the Little Doctor to the door.
Up on the Hog's Back "Jack Bates gave an answering whoop and dug the spurs into his horse. Happy Jack, on the bed-wagon, nearly started his four horses down the grade at a run with the yell he gave.
"They'll camp down there by the creek," Chip told the Little Doctor. "If you want to see how they set camp here's your chance."
The Little Doctor needed no urging, and followed Chip down the hill almost at a run. The Happy Family gathered around them and left the strangers to help Patsy set up the cook-tent. Patsy resented their desertion, and grumbled so audibly that the Little Doctor heard and took the hint.
"I must be in the way very much," she remarked, "from the way Patsy's growling around. I'll go home and wait till you're ready to receive company."
The Happy Family protested, and offered to gag Patsy, but there was that in their tones which the Little Doctor read as polite dismissal. She smiled vaguely upon the lot, and went slowly back up the hill, feeling rather hurt, and not understanding their attitude in the least.
When she was gone Chip turned upon them angrily. He would not have his Little Doctor slighted without cause.
"Maybe you'll tell me what that was for?" he said, with lowered brows.
"Ladies ain't always welcome," Weary told him placidly. "Come on into the bed-tent, out uh the sun, Splinter. You look hot."
"Well?" Chip stood, straight and angry, just inside the doorway; his gray hat crown grazed the ridge-pole.
"Aw, lay down here and don't git on your war paint," urged Weary. "You couldn't lick the whole bunch if you tried. Old Dunk's headed this way, and that's what. He came in on the train, just before we pulled out uh Dry Lake. Shorty cut out a gentle horse for him to ride out. When we left he was trying to rustle a saddle. You're real pleased, ain't yuh?"
"Sure," said Chip ironically, forgetting his anger at the Happy Family. He came over and sprawled beside Weary on the grass. The Happy Family watched him curiously. They had been telling themselves, all the way out, that they could see Dunk's finish if he went up against Chip. They felt that the quarrel between them was ripe for a climax, and gloated that there would sure be a time when Dunk struck the ranch. They judged Chip's intentions by his silence on the subject, which was certainly ominous. For that reason they had not wanted the Little Doctor around to spoil the fun.
"There seems t' be a general roundup of or'nery cusses in town t'day," Jack Bates informed him. "Joe Dodson was hanging around the saloons, calling up the house and trying t' square himself. I sure was amused at the look of pain he wore when a bunch of us strung into Rusty Brown's. Joe was there ahead of us, and he rares up with a smile on his face like a traveling rat. 'Come on, boys—have one on me!' he sings out, jovial as anything. We didn't do a thing but give him the bad-eye, and turn around and file out again. I could hardly keep m' hands off'n him."
"You fellows didn't hear what he said, I guess," spoke up a stranger who was not remarkable for his loquacity. He seemed always to wait until a subject had been well threshed out before adding a word. "I was the last one out. Joe kinda sneered and says to Rusty: 'They're sure rollicky and sassy, that Flying U bunch—but it don't cut. no lemons with me. I'll be unrollin' my soogans in their bed-tent before sundown.'"
There was a space when no one spoke.
"The devil he will!" snorted Cal, at last.
"He'll sure have plenty of room," said Weary softly.
"He can have my place," offered Jack Bates generously.
"Well, it ain't my fight," remarked one of the strangers, "but I'd sure make rough house for him, for a few minutes."
"And if Shorty kept him on and fired you, what about it?" fleered Cal.
"Shorty wouldn't," Jack assured him. "He'd never dare."
"Joe, he's a real wolf," murmured Weary, with, his eyes closed. "He talks heap big, but I notice he didn't tackle Shorty for no job. I guess he don't unroll his soogans in this old tent tonight. At the rate he was tanking up when I seen him last he'll likely sleep under Rusty's pool-table."
"Betche, if he comes out here with Dunk, he'll go t' work," prophesied Happy Jack, with his usual intuition.
"Happy, if you say the like of that again, I'll hand yuh a bunch uh trouble that won't need no magnifying-glass," Cal promised.
"As the Countess says," interposed Chip, "Yuh don't never want t' cross no bridge till yuh git t' where it is, an' then the chances is yuh can ford it if yuh want to!"
"Oh, say!" cried Cal, "what about that yarn that, the Countess has got a fortune left to her? Anything in it, Chip?"
"I'd tell a man!" said Chip. "She's sure lucky, that old girl. She—"
Every man in the tent rose silently to his elbow and listened. The grating voice of Dunk came to them in the silence.
"Well, I have hired him, and I shall expect you to put him to work. I have a perfect right to hire men, you know—though I don't trouble to exercise it-very often, I own. It would be better for the ranch if I did, I think. There would not be so many fellows about who think they own the place."
"But the boys won't stand for it," Shorty protested. "If I'm any judge, they won't work for him a day."
"Who is supposed to be running this outfit?" inquired Dunk politely.
Shorty growled an oath and subsided into mutterings.
"As I have said," went on Dunk smoothly, "the man should not be ostracized because he was found in bad company. There was absolutely no evidence that he was concerned in the rustling—on the contrary, he will prove a very valuable witness for us. When he asked me for work it occurred to me that it would be a good way to keep him in sight, so that we will be able to get him when we want him. I think he is honest, and I really felt sorry for the fellow. I want you to give him a chance, and I shall expect you to see that he gets fair treatment. There is too much of favoritism shown among the men as it is. I object to forty-dollar men being treated like honored guests."
"That's you, Splinter," whispered Weary in Chip's ear.
"Well," temporized Shorty sullenly, "I s'pose I'll have to put him on, but I won't guarantee that he'll stay."
They heard Dunk walk away toward the cook-tent, where Joe evidently was waiting.
"Well, I call that darned rank work," muttered Cal, and began to roll up his bed. "Why the devil didn't Shorty tell him we're all onto him bigger than a wolf? I hope somebody plugs me with lead if I ever turn another cow for the outfit."
There was a general movement in the tent. Every man—save Chip—rolled up his bed and tied it securely, with savage jerks. Long practise had made them adepts in the art, and shaved time down to a minimum. Chip did not move, except out of the way of the others, for he had no bed to roll. He was wishing just then that he had. There is a certain grim pleasure in open rebellion for a principle. The men stood up and looked at one another.
"Come on," said Weary, grinning wickedly. "I head the bunch. We'll give Dunk's man a clear tent."
Dunk's jaw dropped when he turned, at a shuffling sound, and saw the bed-tent spewing determined looking cow-punchers, each one dragging behind him a tarpaulin-covered roll of bedding-He counted them mechanically. With the strangers there were ten.
"I guess I'm ready for my time, Shorty," announced Weary, with a mildness that belied him much. He threw his roll upon the ground and stood aside for the others.
"Same here," said Jack Bates, and threw his roll down beside Weary's.
"Same here," echoed the eight, adding their beds to the pile upon the grass. The strangers could not resist the temptation to strike with the Happy Family, though theirs was merely a sympathetic demonstration. Also, they knew it would be well to side with the Happy Family and save future painful developments.
Shorty stifled an appreciative grin and looked at Dunk. "I guess your man will have heaps uh room," he remarked placidly.
Dunk's eyes traveled slowly over the silent group. He did not quite like the looks of them, but he had a great, abiding faith in himself—had Dunk. He had one fatal weakness; he considered himself a born diplomat. And when a man labors under that hallucination trouble is his portion.
"What is the trouble, boys?" he asked them blandly. To show that he was quite at his ease, he pared the end off a cigar and lit it, studiously calm. This to prove to himself how diplomatic he could be.
"Oh, nothing," Weary answered evenly. "We're ready to quit, is all."
"You have a reason, surely. What is it?" Dunk puffed at the cigar with mathematical regularity.
"Well, speaking for myself," began Weary slowly, "I don't work for no outfit that will hire a ——"
Since ladies may read this chronicle I must refrain from finishing that sentence as Weary finished it. It is enough to say that when he was through speaking, Dunk's face was red and his eyes furious, and the boys approved audibly. Also, Joe Dodson was facing the crowd in an attitude which would have been warlike if it had dared.
Patsy, hearing something of what passed, appeared in the door of the cook-tent, frying-pan in hand. His round eyes wandered from the boys to the piled-up bedding.
"By cosh, I go mit you!" he cried suddenly, casting the frying-pan far from him. "I don'd cook no grub mit no Joe Dodson, I tells you dose!" He jerked off his apron, rolled it into a tight little ball, and sent it to keep the frying-pan company. Then he rolled down his sleeves and awaited developments.
Joe, who could not hope to fight the ten with any chance of success, contented himself with asserting, to Dunk, that a whole lot of Flying U cow-punchers needed killing off. But when Cal and Weary advised him cheerfully to "start right in killing," he abandoned the argument.
Dunk's eyes fell upon Chip, standing quietly at one side. Perhaps he mistook Chip's passive attitude for timidity. He remembered that Chip had not dragged a bed after him when he came from the tent, and foolishly concluded that Chip's "soogans" were inside.
"Joe will have at least one congenial companion," he sneered, forgetting his diplomacy. "Our friend the artist evidently does not despise a forty-dollar job. One seldom finds genius and thrift so linked together—but perhaps the senator did not prove so gullible, after all."
Chip pinched off the lighted end of his cigarette from habit born of long riding over the range land, where carelessness with fire is a crime, and then tossed the cigarette into the creek; took two swift strides and made a quick-move. Dunk fell over the pile of bedding and lay in a most undignified posture, with his head down and his feet waving impotently in the air. Well-shod feet they were, and the Happy Family gazed at them with grave interest.
Chip's boot helpfully sought a good target and landed with effect. Dunk rolled off the bedding.
"By golly, yuh got t' count me in on this, whatever it is!" cried a voice behind them, and Slim was added to the mutiny.
Dunk scrambled to his feet, and immediately sprawled again in the grass.
"Get up!" commanded Chip, grinning ever so little.. He was enjoying himself very much. He had dreamed of such a reckoning, but it had been a dream he never thought would be realized.
Dunk did not get up. He lay upon, his left side, and looked up craftily, with the snarl of a wolf on his lips. His right hand stole backward—but he reckoned without the boot. It was there, just where it was most needed, and Dunk had two raw knuckles to remember it by. When one would draw a. gun, one should do it quickly. Something splashed in the creek, and lay gleaming in the shallows, where it was soon surrounded by an investigative school of tiny minnows.
"Now, wouldn't that rattle your slats?" murmured Weary to the others.
The Happy Family nodded, looked at one another inquiringly, and made a forward move. They stooped, lifted, sang out a cheery "Yo, heave ho!" and something else splashed in the creek—a mighty splash, which drove the minnows scurrying, with panicky flirt of tails, to hide under the willow roots.
"Thanks," said Chip, giving the Happy Family a brief glance of approval. "I was wishing you would." He reached into the shallows and recovered the silver-mounted pistol, with Dunk's initials engraved intricately upon the butt. He dried it carefully with his handkerchief and delivered a short, impromptu address which was a masterpiece of biting truth and picturesque profanity. Like Weary, he left Dunk in no doubt as to his meaning.
Shorty, Joe, Patsy, the strangers and the rest of the mutinous six lined up on the bank and listened solemnly. Dunk wisely remained in the creek, which, as he sat, came just to his shoulders, and listened also, having no choice.
The horse-wrangler was inconsolable that night, because his duties had prevented his presence at this oration, which held, in concentrated form, all the bitterness against Dunk which the Happy Family had nursed for three years.
The speech ended in a brilliant burst of verbal pyrotechnics. Weary suddenly conceived an appropriate finale. He stepped quietly to one side, seized the unsuspecting Joe Dodson by the shoulders, and with the aid of his foot sent him headlong into the creek, to the further discomfiture of the minnows. The crowd gave a shout of approval.
"What goes next—the mess-wagon?"
Shorty, Patsy, the strangers and the mutinous six wheeled with a start, to discover the Old Man sitting calmly by on his little gray pacer. There was a twinkle in the Old Man's eyes, but he became instantly grave when they faced him.
"What's the row here?" he demanded peremptorily. He had been looking after the ditches in the lower meadow, and rode down to camp to hear the news of the range. He arrived in time to see Dunk land in the creek, and had listened to Chip's maiden speech with considerable amusement, if the truth were known.
Dunk crawled up the bank, very wet and very much relieved at the presence of his partner. The Old Man could handle these howling savages better than he, after all. He stood, dripping and wrathful, and explained how he came to hire Joe. He did not fail to state that a man should not be ostracized for being found in bad company, and that he felt sorry for Joe.
The Old Man listened, and looked back. He eyed the Happy Family from under shaggy brows. "I hope you fellows ain't been makin' dog-goned fools uh yourselves," he said tentatively. As a general thing, he had always found his Happy Family amenable to reason.
"Not any to speak of," retorted Weary sweetly. "If Joe ain't blowed in what he got for caching Flying U hides around the Gordon place, he can get along fine without a job for awhile. The need uh work didn't harrow his feelings none last winter."
Dunk wrung out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it. "Who's been stuffing you with lies, you fools?" he snarled, an anxious note in his voice.
"Oh, I don't know as it's any lie," drawled Weary, blowing upon his cigarette book to single out a leaf. "I guess you didn't cook up a deal with Joe—eh? I don't suppose yuh ever seen him till yuh got plumb full uh sympathy to-day, and brought him out here t' bed down with white men—to which the white men has certain strenuous objections."
"It's all a lie," repeated Dunk with emphasis. "I suppose," he added, "the whisky inside Joe has set him gabbling—and you were fools enough to believe his drunken drivelings."
"Look here, now! That there's something I won't stand fer. Yuh got me out here into a scrape, and now yuh try t' clear yourself by knockin' me. I ain't been talkin' none, but I could tell a lot uh things you'd hate t' face. An' anyway, yuh lied t' me. Yuh said yuh was only goin' t' make a bluff at the Gordons, an' drive 'em out!"
The Old Man climbed rheumatically down from his saddle and confronted them. "Dog-gone it, this here thing has got t' be cleared up right now! They's been something in the Gordon business that didn't look right t' me, all along. I'll push a rustler as far as the next one, but I ain't in with no dirty work. Joe Dodson, if yuh got anything t' tell, doggone it, I want yuh t' out with it! I'll see 't Dunk don't eat yuh up whitest you're havin' your say."
"Well, I'm dead sick uh the hull thing, anyway," cried Joe recklessly. "Dunk Whittaker come t' me last winter, an' told me how he'd got a soft thing fer me, and wanted me t' help him git the Gordons out uh the country. He said they was rustlin' calves, but he couldn't never ketch 'em at it. He hired me t' stop with 'em an' try and ketch 'em at some shady work. After a month er so I sees him one day and tells him I couldn't see nothing wrong, so then he gets me t' cache some hides in the rocks and fix things so he could scarce 'em good. He said he'd have 'em arrested, and then let 'em off if they'd quit the country. I was t' git five hundred dollars—but I ain't never seen but fifty of it yet. Then he gits me this job—and things don't look good t' me here, neither."
The Happy Family grinned at him in a way that made him squirm.
"It's a lie," repeated Dunk, parrot-like. "You're drunk, Joe."
"Mebby I was, but that there dip kinda sobered me some," he retorted.
The Happy Family laughed outright.
"What you say carries no weight whatever with thinking men. I demand proof."
"As to proof," remarked Cal, "the boys here can tell yuh that I come home one night last spring and told 'em about hearing some conversation in Rusty's box-stall about this same deal."
"Is that right, Cal?" asked the Old Man, looking at him queerly.
"That's right," affirmed Cal gravely. Then to prove how right it was, he repeated the fragment of conversation word for word—only he did not say that he was doubtful of the speakers. What was the use, when they all knew who they were?
Dunk glared impotently upon him, and turned sullen.
The Old Man sat down upon the pile of bedding and proceeded thoughtfully to fill his pipe, as though that were the most important business on the ranch just then. When it was done to his satisfaction he fumbled in his vest pocket for a match, his eyes fixed reflectively upon Dunk's horse. Dunk, by the way, was busying himself with the cinch.
"Yuh must 'a' rode him pretty fast fer such a hot day," he remarked, "but them pintoes are tough; I guess he's good for another twenty mile—and the sun's getting low, so it'll be cooler. Too bad yuh got t' ride in them wet clothes, Dunk, but I guess they'll be dry by the time yuh git there. I want t' see yuh up at the house b'fore yuh start. I'm going t' buy out your interest in this outfit."
The Happy Family vented their feelings in a whoop that could be heard a mile. The Old Man gave his full attention to his pipe, and appeared deaf. After a minute he looked around the group, and there was a paternal glow in his eyes when they rested upon the Happy Family, standing close together.
"Ain't these beds aired all they need, boys? Looks like you'd put 'em in the tent, where they b'long. Who throwed your fryin'-pan in the crick, Patsy?"
Patsy grinned and went down after it and his apron, which had lodged in a willow.
The Old Man smoked meditatively until he discovered Joe Dodson hovering apprehensively on the outskirts of the group.
"Joe, yuh better hit the high places. And if I was you I wouldn't stop till I was clean over the line. That'll be dog-goned tough on the Canucks, but there ain't room over here for gents uh your caliber."
Five minutes later a lone horseman climbed the grade, leading behind him a tired packhorse which bore meekly a cowboy's "soogans." Down below, the Happy Family shouted derisive farewells as they dragged rolls of bedding into the tent which had sheltered them through many days of wandering.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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