The Flying U's Last Stand

by Bower, B M

  Andy woke with a jerk, his horse having stopped because he could go no farther. But it was not that which woke him. He listened. He would have sworn that he had heard the shrill, anxious whinney of a horse not far away. He turned and examined the gulch, but it was narrow and grassy and had no possible place of concealment, and save himself and his own horse it was empty. And it was not his own horse that whinnied—he was sure of that. Also, he was sure that he had-not dreamed it. A horse had called insistently. Andy knew horses too well not to know that there was anxiety and rebellion in that call.

  He waited a minute, his heart beating heavily. He turned and started back down the gulch, and then stopped suddenly. He heard it again—shrill, prolonged, a call from somewhere; where, he could not determine because of the piled masses of earth and rock that flung the sound riotously here and there and confused him as to direction.

  Then his own horse turned his head and looked toward the left, and answered the call. From far off the strange horse made shrill reply. Andy got down and began climbing the left-hand ridge on the run, tired as he was. Not many horses ranged down in here—and he did not believe, anyway, that this was any range horse. It did not sound like Silver, but it might be the pigeon-toed horse of Miss Allen. And if it was, then Miss Allen would be there. He took a deep breath and went up the last steep pitch in a spurt of speed that surprised himself.

  At the top he stood panting and searched the canyon below him. Just across the canyon was the high peak which Miss Allen had climbed afoot. But down below him he saw her horse circling about in a trampled place under a young cottonwood.

  You would never accuse Andy Green of being weak, or of having unsteady nerves, I hope.

  But it is the truth that he felt his knees give way while he looked; and it was a minute or two before he had any voice with which to call to her. Then he shouted, and the great hill opposite flung back the echoes maddeningly.

  He started running down the ridge, and brought up in the canyon's bottom near the horse. It was growing shadowy now to the top of the lower ridges, although the sun shone faintly on the crest of the peak. The horse whinnied and circled restively when Andy came near. Andy needed no more than a glance to tell him that the horse had stood tied there for twenty-four hours, at the very least. That meant....

  Andy turned pale. He shouted, and the canyon mocked him with echoes. He looked for her tracks. At the base of the peak he saw the print of her riding boots; farther along, up the slope he saw the track again. Miss Allen, then, must have climbed the peak, and he knew why she had done so. But why had she not come down again?

  There was only one way to find out, and he took the method in the face of his weariness. He climbed the peak also, with now and then a footprint to guide him. He was not one of these geniuses at trailing who could tell, by a mere footprint, what had been in Miss Allen's mind when she had passed that way; but for all that it seemed logical that she had gone up there to see if she could not glimpse the kid—or possibly the way home.

  At the top he did not loiter. He saw, before he reached the height, where Miss Allen had come down again—and he saw where she had, to avoid a clump of boulders and a broken ledge, gone too far to one side. He followed that way. She had descended at an angle, after that, which took her away from the canyon.

  In Montana there is more of daylight after the sun has gone than there is in some other places. Andy, by hurrying, managed to trail Miss Allen to the bottom of the peak before it grew really dusky. He knew that she had been completely lost when she reached the bottom, and had probably wandered about at random since then. At any rate, there were no tracks anywhere save her own, so that he felt less anxiety over her safety than, when he had started out looking for her.

  Andy knew these breaks pretty well. He went over a rocky ridge, which Miss Allen had not tried to cross because to her it seemed exactly in the opposite direction from where she had started, and so he came to her horse again. He untied the poor beast and searched for a possible trail over the ridge to where his own horse waited; and by the time he had found one and had forced the horse to climb to the top and then descend into the gulch, the darkness lay heavy upon the hills.

  He picketed Miss Allen's horse with his rope', and fashioned a hobble for his own mount. Then he ate a little of the food he carried and sat down to rest and smoke and consider how best he could find Miss Allen or the Kid—or both. He believed Miss Allen to be somewhere not far away—since she was afoot, and had left her lunch tied to the saddle. She could not travel far without food.

  After a little he climbed back up the ridge to where he had noticed a patch of brush, and there he started a fire. Not a very large one, but large enough to be seen for a long distance where the vision was not blocked by intervening hills. Then he sat down beside it and waited and listened and tended the fire. It was all that he could do for the present, and it seemed pitifully little. If she saw the fire, he believed that she would come; if she did not see it, there was no hope of his finding her in the dark. Had there been fuel on the high peak, he might have gone up there to start his fire; but that was out of the question, since the peak was barren.

  Heavy-eyed, tired in every fibre of his being, Andy dragged up a dead buck-bush and laid the butt of it across his blaze. Then he lay down near it—and went to sleep as quickly as if he had been chloroformed.

  It may have been an hour after that—it may have been more. He sat up suddenly and listened. Through the stupor of his sleep he had heard Miss Allen call. At least, he believed he had heard her call, though he knew he might easily have dreamed it. He knew he had been asleep, because the fire had eaten part of the way to the branches of the bush and had died down to smoking embers. He kicked the branch upon the coals and a blaze shot up into the night. He stood up and walked a little distance away from the fire so that he could see better, and stood staring down into the canyon.

  From below he heard a faint call—he was sure of it. The wonder to him was that he had heard it at all in his sleep. His anxiety must have been strong enough even then to send the signal to his brain and rouse him.

  He shouted, and again he heard a faint call. It seemed to be far down the canyon. He started running that way.

  The next time he shouted, she answered him more clearly. And farther along he distinctly heard and recognized her voice. You may be sure he ran, after that!

  After all, it was not so very far, to a man who is running recklessly down hill. Before he realized how close he was he saw her standing before him in the starlight. Andy did not stop. He kept right on running until he could catch her in his arms; and when he had her there he held her close and then he kissed her. That was not proper, of course—but a man does sometimes do terribly improper things under the stress of big emotions; Andy had been haunted by the fear that she was dead.

  Well, Miss Allen was just as improper as he was, for that matter. She did say "Oh!" in a breathless kind of way, and then she must have known who he was. There surely could be no other excuse for the way she clung to him and without the faintest resistance let him kiss her.

  "Oh, I've found him!" she whispered after the first terribly unconventional greetings were over. "I've found him, Mr. Green. I couldn't come up to the fire, because he's asleep and I couldn't carry him, and I wouldn't wake him unless I had to. He's just down here—I was afraid to go very far, for fear of losing him again. Oh, Mr. Green! I—"

  "My name is Andy," he told her. "What's your name?"

  "Mine? It's—well, it's Rosemary. Never mind now. I should think you'd be just wild to see that poor little fellow—he's a brick, though."

  "I've been wild," said Andy, "over a good many things—you, for one. Where's the Kid?"

  They went together, hand in hand—terribly silly, wasn't it?—to where the Kid lay wrapped in the gray blanket in the shelter of a bank. Andy struck a match and held it so that he could see the Kid face—and Miss Allen, looking at the man whose wooing had been so abrupt, saw his mouth tremble and his lashes
glisten as he stared down while the match-blaze lasted.

  "Poor little tad—he's sure a great Kid," he said huskily when the match went out. He stood up and put his arm around Miss Allen just as though that was his habit. "And it was you that found him!" he murmured with his face against hers. "And I've found you both, thank God."

  CHAPTER 20. THE RELL OLE COWPUNCHER GOES HOME

  I don't suppose anything can equal the aplomb of a child that has always had his own way and has developed normally. The Kid, for instance, had been wandering in the wild places—this was the morning of the sixth day. The whole of Northern Montana waited anxiously for news of him. The ranch had been turned into a rendezvous for searchers. Men rode as long as they could sit in the saddle. Women were hysterical in the affection they lavished upon their own young. And yet, the Kid himself opened his eyes to the sun and his mind was untroubled save where his immediate needs were concerned. He sat up thinking of breakfast, and he spied Andy Green humped on his knees over a heap of camp-fire coals, toasting rabbit-hams—the joy of it—on a forked stick. Opposite him Miss Allen crouched and held another rabbit-leg on a forked stick. The Kid sat up as if a spring had been suddenly released, and threw off the gray blanket.

  "Say, I want to do that too!" he cried. "Get me a stick, Andy, so I can do it. I never did and I want to!"

  Andy grabbed him as he came up and kissed him—and the Kid wondered at the tremble of Andy's arms. He wondered also at the unusual caress; but it was very nice to have Andy's arms around him and Andy's cheek against his, and of a sudden the baby of him came to the surface.

  "I want my Daddy Chip!" he whimpered, and laid his head down on Andy's shoulder. "And I want my Doctor Dell and my—cat! She's lonesome for me. And I forgot to take the string off her tail and maybe it ain't comfortable any more!"

  "We're going to hit the trail, old-timer, just as soon as we get outside of a little grub." Andy's voice was so tender that Miss Allen gulped back a sob of sympathy. "You take this stick and finish roasting the meat, and then see what you think of rabbit-hams. I hear you've been a real old cowpuncher, Buck. The way you took care of Miss Allen proves you're the goods, all right. Not quite so close, or you'll burn it, Buck. That's better. I'll go get another stick and roast the back."

  The Kid, squatting on his heels by the fire, watched gravely the rabbit-leg on the two prongs of the willow stick he held. He glanced across at Miss Allen and smiled his Little Doctor smile.

  "He's my pal," he announced. "I bet if I stayed we could round up all them cattle our own selves. And I bet he can find your horse, too. He—he's 'customed to this country. I'd a found your horse today, all right—but I guess Andy could find him quicker. Us punchers'll take care of you, all right." The rabbit-leg sagged to the coals and began to scorch, and the Kid lifted it startled and was grateful when Miss Allen did not seem to have seen the accident.

  "I'd a killed a rabbit for you," he explained, "only I didn't have no gun or no matches so I couldn't. When I'm ten my Daddy Chip is going to give me a gun. And then if you get lost I can take care of you like Andy can. I'll be ten next week, I guess." He turned as Andy came back slicing off the branches of a willow the size of his thumb.

  "Say, old-timer, where's the rest of the bunch?" he inquired casually. "Did you git your cattle rounded up?"

  "Not yet." Andy sharpened the prongs of his stick and carefully impaled the back of the rabbit.

  "Well, I'll help you out. But I guess I better go home first—I guess Doctor Dell might need me, maybe."

  "I know she does, Buck." Andy's voice had a peculiar, shaky sound that the Kid did not understand. "She needs you right bad. We'll hit the high places right away quick."

  Since Andy had gone at daybreak and brought the horses over into this canyon, his statement was a literal one. They ate hurriedly and started—and Miss Allen insisted that Andy was all turned around, and that they were going in exactly the wrong direction, and blushed and was silent when Andy, turning his face full toward her, made a kissing motion with his lips.

  "You quit that!" the Kid commanded him sharply. "She's my girl I guess I found her first 'fore you did, and you ain't goin' to kiss her."

  After that there was no lovemaking but the most decorous conversation between these two.

  Flying U Coulee lay deserted under the warm sunlight of early forenoon. Deserted, and silent with the silence that tells where Death has stopped with his sickle. Even the Kid seemed to feel a strangeness in the atmosphere—a stillness that made his face sober while he looked around the little pasture and up at the hill trail. In all the way home they had not met anyone—but that may have been because Andy chose the way up Flying U Creek as being shorter and therefore more desirable.

  At the lower line fence of the little pasture Andy refused to believe the Kid's assertion of having opened and shut the gate, until the Kid got down and proved that he could open it—the shutting process being too slow for Andy's raw nerves. He lifted the Kid into the saddle and shut the gate himself, and led the way up the creek at a fast trot.

  "I guess Doctor Dell will be glad to see me," the Kid observed wistfully. "I've been gone most a year, I guess."

  Neither Andy nor Miss Allen made any reply to this. Their eyes were searching the hilltop for riders, that they might signal. But there was no one in sight anywhere.

  "Hadn't you better shout?" suggested Miss Allen. "Or would it be better to go quietly—"

  Andy did not reply; nor did he shout. Andy, at that moment, was fighting a dryness in his throat. He could not have called out if he had wanted to. They rode to the stable and stopped. Andy lifted the Kid down and set him on his two feet by the stable door while he turned to Miss Allen. For once in his life he was at a loss. He did not know how best to bring the Kid to the Little Doctor; How best to lighten the shock of seeing safe and well the manchild who she thought was dead. He hesitated. Perhaps he should have ridden on to the house with him. Perhaps he should have fired the signal when first he came into the coulee. Perhaps...

  The Kid himself swept aside Andy's uncertainties. Adeline, the cat, came out of the stable and looked at them contemplatively. Adeline still had the string tied to her tail, and a wisp of paper tied to the string. The Kid pounced and caught her by the middle.

  "I guess I can tie knots so they stay, by cripes!" he shouted vaingloriously. "I guess Happy Jack can't tie strings any better 'n me, can he? Nice kitty—c'm back here, you son-a-gun!"

  Adeline had not worried over the absence of the Kid, but his hilarious arrival seemed to worry her considerably. She went bounding up the path to the house, and after her went the Kid, yelling epithets which were a bit shocking for one of his age.

  So he came to the porch just when Chip and the Little Doctor reached it, white-faced and trembling. Adeline paused to squeeze under the steps, and the Kid catching her by the tail, dragged her back yowling. While his astounded parents watched him unbelievingly, the Kid gripped Adeline firmly and started up the steps.

  "I ketched the son-a-gun!" he cried jubilantly.

  "Say, I seen a skink, Daddy Chip, and I frowed a rock and knocked his block off 'cause he was going to swipe my grub. Was you s'prised, Doctor Dell?"

  Doctor Dell did not say. Doctor Dell was kneeling on the porch floor with the Kid held closer in her arms than ever he held the cat, and she was crying and laughing and kissing him all at once—though nobody except a mother can perform that feat.

  CHAPTER 21. THE FIGHT GOES ON

  It is amazing how quickly life swings back to the normal after even so harrowing an experience as had come to the Flying U. Tragedy had hovered there a while and had turned away with a smile, and the smile was reflected upon the faces and in the eyes of everyone upon whose souls had fallen her shadow. The Kid was safe, and he was well, and he had not suffered from the experience; on the contrary he spent most of his waking hours in recounting his adventures to an admiring audience. He was a real old cowpuncher. He had gone into the wilderness and he had proven the st
uff that was in him. He had made "dry-camp" just exactly as well as any of the Happy Family could have done. He had slept out under the stars rolled in a blanket—and do you think for one minute that he would ever submit to lace-trimmed nighties again? If you do, ask the little Doctor what the Kid said on the first night after his return, when she essayed to robe him in spotless white and rock him, held tight in her starved arms. Or you might ask his Daddy Chip, who hovered pretty close to them both, his eyes betraying how his soul gave thanks. Or—never mind, I'll tell you myself.

  The Little Doctor brought the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip's knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with a gesture of dismissal.

  "Aw, take that damn' thing away!" he told her in the tone of the real old cowpuncher. "When I get ready to hit the bed-ground, a blanket is all I'll need."

  Lest you should think him less lovable than he really was, I must add that, when Chip set him down hastily so that he himself could rush off somewhere and laugh in secret, the Kid spread his arms with a little chuckle and rushed straight at his Doctor Dell and gave her a real bear hug.

  "I want to be rocked," he told her—and was her own baby man again, except that he absolutely refused to reconsider the nightgown. "And I want you to tell me a story—about when Silver breaked his leg. Silver's a good ole scout, you bet. I don't know what I'd a done 'theut Silver. And tell about the bunch makin' a man outa straw to scare you, and the horses runned away. I was such a far ways, Doctor Dell, and I couldn't get back to hear them stories and I've most forgot about 'em. And tell about Whizzer, Doctor Dell."