Wild Western Tales 2: 101 Classic Western Stories Vol. 2 (Civitas Library Classics)

by Various

  He was told yes, that for the present he was their coachman. Their horses were tired and would follow, tied behind. "We're weary, too," said Drake, getting in. "Take your legs out of my way or I'll kick off your shins. Bolles, are you fixed warm and comfortable? Now start her up for Harper ranch, Uncle."

  "What are you proposing to do with me?" inquired Uncle Pasco.

  "Not going to wring your neck, and that's enough for the present. Faster, Uncle. Get a gait on. Bolles, here's Baby Bunting. Much obliged to you for the loan of it, old man."

  Uncle Pasco's eye fell on the 22-caliber pistol. "Did you hold me up with that lemonade straw?" he asked, huskily.

  "Yep," said Drake. "That's what."

  "Oh, hell!" murmured Uncle Pasco. And for the first time he seemed dispirited.

  "Uncle, you're not making time," said Drake after a few miles. "I'll thank you for the reins. Open your bandanna and get your concertina. Jerk the bellows for us."

  "That I'll not!" screamed Uncle Pasco.

  "It's music or walk home," said the boy. "Take your choice."

  Uncle Pasco took his choice, opening with the melody of "The Last Rose of Summer." The sleigh whirled up the Owyhee by the winter willows, and the, levels, and the meadow pools, bright frozen under the blue sky. Late in this day the amazed Brock by his corrals at Harper's beheld arrive his favorite, his boy superintendent, driving in with the schoolmaster staring through his glasses, and Uncle Pasco throwing out active strains upon his concertina. The old man had been bidden to bellows away for his neck.

  Drake was not long in explaining his need to the men. "This thing must be worked quick," said he. "Who'll stand by me?"

  All of them would, and he took ten, with the faithful Brock. Brock would not allow Gilbert to go, because he had received another mule-kick in the stomach. Nor was Bolles permitted to be of the expedition. To all his protests, Drake had but the single word: "This is not your fight, old man. You've done your share with Baby Bunting."

  Thus was the school-master in sorrow compelled to see them start back to Indian Creek and the Malheur without him. With him Uncle Pasco would have joyfully exchanged. He was taken along with the avengers. They would not wring his neck, but they would play cat and mouse with him and his concertina; and they did. But the conscience of Bolles still toiled. When Drake and the men were safe away, he got on the wagon going for the mail, thus making his way next morning to the railroad and Boise, where Max Vogel listened to him; and together this couple hastily took train and team for the Malheur Agency.

  The avengers reached Indian Creek duly, and the fourth day after his Christmas dinner Drake came once more in sight of Castle Rock.

  "I am doing this thing myself, understand," he said to Brock. "I am responsible."

  "We're here to take your orders," returned the foreman. But as the agency buildings grew plain and the time for action was coming, Brock's anxious heart spoke out of its fulness. "If they start in to--to--they might--I wish you'd let me get in front," he begged, all at once.

  "I thought you thought better of me," said Drake.

  "Excuse me," said the man. Then presently: "I don't see how anybody could 'a' told he'd smuggle whiskey that way. If the old man [Brock meant Max Vogel] goes to blame you, I'll give him my opinion straight."

  "The old man's got no use for opinions," said Drake. "He goes on results. He trusted me with this job, and we're going to have results now."

  The drunkards were sitting round outside the ranch house. It was evening. They cast a sullen inspection on the new-comers, who returned them no inspection whatever. Drake had his men together and took them to the stable first, a shed with mangers. Here he had them unsaddle. "Because," he mentioned to Brock, "in case of trouble we'll be sure of their all staying. I'm taking no chances now."

  Soon the drunkards strolled over, saying good-day, hazarding a few comments on the weather and like topics, and meeting sufficient answers.

  "Goin' to stay?"

  "Don't know."

  "That's a good horse you've got."

  "Fair."

  But Sam was the blithest spirit at the Malheur Agency. "Hiyah!" he exclaimed. "Misser Dlake! How fashion you come quick so?" And the excellent Chinaman took pride in the meal of welcome that he prepared.

  "Supper's now," said Drake to his men. "Sit anywhere you feel like. Don't mind whose chair you're taking--and we'll keep our guns on."

  Thus they followed him, and sat. The boy took his customary perch at the head of the table, with Brock at his right. "I miss old Bolles," he told his foreman. "You don't appreciate Bolles."

  "From what you tell of him," said Brock, "I'll examine him more careful."

  Seeing their boss, the sparrow-hawk, back in his place, flanked with supporters, and his gray eye indifferently upon them, the buccaroos grew polite to oppressiveness. While Sam handed his dishes to Drake and the new-comers, and the new-comers eat what was good before the old inhabitants got a taste, these latter grew more and more solicitous. They offered sugar to the strangers, they offered their beds; Half-past Full urged them to sit companionably in the room where the fire was burning. But when the meal was over, the visitors went to another room with their arms, and lighted their own fire. They brought blankets from their saddles, and after a little concertina they permitted the nearly perished Uncle Pasco to slumber. Soon they slumbered themselves, with the door left open, and Drake watching. He would not even share vigil with Brock, and all night he heard the voices of the buccaroos, holding grand, unending council.

  When the relentless morning came, and breakfast with the visitors again in their seats unapproachable, the drunkards felt the crisis to be a strain upon their sobered nerves. They glanced up from their plates, and down; along to Dean Drake eating his hearty porridge, and back at one another, and at the hungry, well-occupied strangers.

  "Say, we don't want trouble," they began to the strangers.

  "Course you don't. Breakfast's what you're after."

  "Oh, well, you'd have got gay. A man gets gay."

  "Sure."

  "Mr. Drake," said Half-past Full, sweating with his effort, "we were sorry while we was a-fogging you up."

  "Yes," said Drake. "You must have been just overcome by contrition."

  A large laugh went up from the visitors, and the meal was finished without further diplomacy.

  "One matter, Mr. Drake," stammered Half-past Full, as the party rose. "Our jobs. We're glad to pay for any things what got sort of broke."

  "Sort of broke," repeated the boy, eyeing him. "So you want to hold your jobs?"

  "If--" began the buccaroo, and halted.

  "Fact is, you're a set of cowards," said Drake, briefly. "I notice you've forgot to remove that whiskey jug." The demijohn still stood by the great fireplace. Drake entered and laid hold of it, the crowd standing back and watching. He took it out, with what remained in its capacious bottom, set it on a stump, stepped back, levelled his gun, and shattered the vessel to pieces. The whiskey drained down, wetting the stump, creeping to the ground.

  Much potency lies in the object-lesson, and a grin was on the faces of all present, save Uncle Pasco's. It had been his demijohn, and when the shot struck it he blinked nervously.

  "You ornery old mink!" said Drake, looking at him. "You keep to the jewelry business hereafter."

  The buccaroos grinned again. It was reassuring to witness wrath turn upon another.

  "You want to hold your jobs?" Drake resumed to them. "You can trust yourselves?"

  "Yes, sir," said Half-past Full.

  "But I don't trust you," stated Drake, genially; and the buccaroos' hopeful eyes dropped. "I'm going to divide you," pursued the new superintendent. "Split you far and wide among the company's ranches. Stir you in with decenter blood. You'll go to White-horse ranch, just across the line of Nevada," he said to Half-past Full. "I'm tired of the brothers Drinker. You'll go--let's see--"

  Drake paused in his apportionment, and a sleigh came swiftly round the turn, the horse l
oping and lathery.

  "What vas dat shooting I hear joost now?" shouted Max Vogel, before he could arrive. He did not wait for any answer. "Thank the good God!" he exclaimed, at seeing the boy Dean Drake unharmed, standing with a gun. And to their amazement he sped past them, never slacking his horse's lope until he reached the corral. There he tossed the reins to the placid Bolles, and springing out like a surefooted elephant, counted his saddle-horses; for he was a general. Satisfied, he strode back to the crowd by the demijohn. "When dem men get restless," he explained to Drake at once, "always look out. Somebody might steal a horse."

  The boy closed one gray, confidential eye at his employer. "Just my idea," said he," when I counted 'em before breakfast."

  "You liddle r-rascal," said Max, fondly, "What you shoot at?"

  Drake pointed at the demijohn. "It was bigger than those bottles at Nampa," said he. "Guess you could have hit it yourself."

  Max's great belly shook. He took in the situation. It had a flavor that he liked. He paused to relish it a little more in silence.

  "Und you have killed noding else?" said he, looking at Uncle Pasco, who blinked copiously. "Mine old friend, you never get rich if you change your business so frequent. I tell you that thirty years now." Max's hand found Drake's shoulder, but he addressed Brock. "He is all what you tell me," said he to the foreman. "He have joodgement."

  Thus the huge, jovial Teuton took command, but found Drake had left little for him to do. The buccaroos were dispersed at Harper's, at Fort Rinehart, at Alvord Lake, towards Stein's peak, and at the Island Ranch by Harney Lake. And if you know east Oregon, or the land where Chief E-egante helped out Specimen Jones, his white soldier friend, when the hostile Bannocks were planning his immediate death as a spy, you will know what wide regions separated the buccaroos. Bolles was taken into Max Vogel's esteem; also was Chinese Sam. But Max sat smoking in the office with his boy superintendent, in particular satisfaction.

  "You are a liddle r-rascal," said he. "Und I r-raise you fifty dollars."

  Contents

  THE PROMISED LAND

  By Owen Wister

  Perhaps there were ten of them--these galloping dots were hard to count--down in the distant bottom across the river. Their swiftly moving dust hung with them close, thinning to a yellow veil when they halted short. They clustered a moment, then parted like beads, and went wide asunder on the plain. They veered singly over the level, merged in twos and threes, apparently racing, shrank together like elastic, and broke ranks again to swerve over the stretching waste. From this visioned pantomime presently came a sound, a tiny shot. The figures were too far for discerning which fired it. It evidently did no harm, and was repeated at once. A babel of diminutive explosions followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, and so passed back and was lost among the silent barren hills.

  Four emigrants had watched this from the high bleak rim of the Big Bend. They stood where the flat of the desert broke and tilted down in grooves and bulges deep to the lurking Columbia. Empty levels lay opposite, nar- rowing up into the high country.

  "That's the Colville Reservation across the river from us," said the man.

  "Another!" sighed his wife.

  "The last Indians we'll strike. Our trail to the Okanagon goes over a corner of it."

  "We're going to those hills?" The mother looked at her little girl and back where the cloud had gone.

  "Only a corner, Liza. The ferry puts us over on it, and we've got to go by the ferry or stay this side of the Columbia. You wouldn't want to start a home here?"

  They had driven twenty-one hundred miles at a walk. Standing by them were the six horses with the wagon, and its tunneled roof of canvas shone duskily on the empty verge of the wilderness. A dry windless air hung over the table-land of the Big Bend, but a sound rose from somewhere, floating voluminous upon the silence, and sank again.

  "Rapids!" The man pointed far up the giant rut of the stream to where a streak of white water twinkled at the foot of the hills. "We've struck the river too high," he added.

  "Then we don't cross here?" said the woman, quickly.

  "No. By what they told me the cabin and the ferry ought to be five miles down."

  Her face fell. "Only five miles! I was wondering, John--Wouldn't there be a way round for the children to--"

  "Now, mother," interrupted the husband, "that ain't like you. We've crossed plenty Indian reservations this trip already."

  "I don't want to go round," the little girl said. "Father, don't make me go round."

  Mart, the boy, with a loose hook of hair hanging down to his eyes from his hat, did not trouble to speak. He had been disappointed in the westward journey to find all the Indians peaceful. He knew which way he should go now, and he went to the wagon to look once again down the clean barrel of his rifle.

  "Why, Nancy, you don't like Indians?" said her mother.

  "Yes, I do. I like chiefs."

  Mrs. Clallam looked across the river. "It was so strange, John, the way they acted. It seems to get stranger, thinking about it."

  "They didn't see us. They didn't have a notion--"

  "But if we're going right over?"

  "We're not going over there, Liza. That quick water's the Mahkin Rapids, and our ferry's clear down below from this place."

  "What could they have been after, do you think?"

  "Those chaps? Oh, nothing, I guess. They weren't killing anybody."

  "Playing cross-tag," said Mart.

  "I'd like to know, John, how you know they weren't killing anybody. They might have been trying to."

  "Then we're perfectly safe, Liza. We can set and let 'em kill us all day."

  "Well, I don't think it's any kind of way to behave, running around shooting right off your horse."

  "And Fourth of July over too," said Mart from the wagon. He was putting cartridges into the magazine of his Winchester. His common-sense told him that those horsemen would not cross the river, but the notion of a night attack pleased the imagination of young sixteen.

  "It was the children," said Mrs. Clallam. "And nobody's getting me any wood. How am I going to cook supper? Stir yourselves!"

  They had carried water in the wagon, and father and son went for wood. Some way down the hill they came upon a gully with some dead brush, and climbed back with this. Supper was eaten on the ground, the horses were watered, given grain, and turned loose to find what pickings they might in the lean growth; and dusk had not turned to dark when the emigrants were in their beds on the soft dust. The noise of the rapids dominated the air with distant sonority, and the children slept at once, the boy with his rifle along his blanket's edge. John Clallam lay till the moon rose hard and brilliant, and then quietly, lest his wife should hear from her bed by the wagon, went to look across the river. Where the downward slope began he came upon her. She had been watching for some time. They were the only objects in that bald moonlight. No shrub grew anywhere that reached to the waist, and the two figures drew together on the lonely hill. They stood hand in hand and motionless, except that the man bent over the woman and kissed her. When she spoke of Iowa they had left, he talked of the new region of their hopes, the country that lay behind the void hills opposite, where it would not be a struggle to live. He dwelt on the home they would make, and her mood followed his at last, till husband and wife were building distant plans together. The Dipper had swung low when he remarked that they were a couple of fools, and they went back to their beds. Cold came over the ground, and their musings turned to dreams. Next morning both were ashamed of their fears.

  By four the wagon was on the move. Inside, Nancy's voice was heard discussing with her mother whether the school-teacher where they were going to live now would have a black dog with a white tail, that could swim with a basket in his mouth. They crawled along the edge of the vast descent, making sl
ow progress, for at times the valley widened and they receded far from the river, and then circuitously drew close again where the slant sank abruptly. When the ferryman's cabin came in sight, the canvas interior of the wagon was hot in the long-risen sun. The lay of the land had brought them close above the stream, but no one seemed to be at the cabin on the other side, nor was there any sign of a ferry. Groves of trees lay in the narrow folds of the valley, and the water swept black between untenanted shores. Nothing living could be seen along the scant levels of the bottom-land. Yet there stood the cabin as they had been told, the only one between the rapids and the Okanagon; and bright in the sun the Colville Reservation confronted them. They came upon tracks going down over the hill, marks of wagons and horses, plain in the soil, and charred sticks, with empty cans, lying where camps had been. Heartened by this proof that they were on the right road, John Clallam turned his horses over the brink. The slant steepened suddenly in a hundred yards, tilting the wagon so no brake or shoe would hold it if it moved farther.

  "All out!" said Clallam. "Either folks travel light in this country or they unpack." He went down a little way. "That's the trail too," he said. "Wheel marks down there, and the little bushes are snapped off."

  Nancy slipped out. "I'm unpacked," said she. "Oh, what a splendid hill to go down! We'll go like anything."

  "Yes, that surely is the trail," Clallam pursued. "I can see away down where somebody's left a wheel among them big stones. But where does he keep his ferry-boat? And where does he keep himself?"

  "Now, John, if it's here we're to go down, don't you get to studying over something else. It'll be time enough after we're at the bottom. Nancy, here's your chair." Mrs. Clallam began lifting the lighter things from the wagon.

  "Mart," said the father, "we'll have to chain lock the wheels after we're empty. I guess we'll start with the worst. You and me'll take the stove apart and get her down somehow. We're in luck to have open country and no timber to work through. Drop that bedding mother! Yourself is all you're going to carry. We'll pack that truck on the horses."