The Drift Fence

by Zane Grey

  Whereupon he strode off the porch and down the road, erect and forceful, his departure expressive of much.

  “Me an’ Arch was sure curious aboot this fence,” continued Seth. “We rode out of Flag an’ started in where the fence begins. It strikes south into the timber at Traft’s line, an’ closes up every draw clear to the Diamond. At Limestone we hit into Traft’s outfit. They’ve got the job half done an’ by the time the snow flies that drift fence will run clear from Flag to Black Butte.”

  “Ha! A hundred miles of drift fence!” exclaimed some one.

  “Ahuh,” nodded Summers, sagely. “An’ all the cattle will drift along to Black Butte an’ then drift back again.”

  Haverly swung his spurred boot back to his stirrup and without another word rode away.

  Molly watched the departing rider as thoughtfully as any of the others on Summers’ porch. This drift fence must be going to have a profound significance for the few inhabitants along the West Fork of the Cibeque.

  Then down the road from the other direction appeared the See buckboard, sight of which brought Molly bouncing to her feet. To her relief young John See was not in the vehicle with his parents. John had more prospects than any of the young men Molly knew, but he also had more than his share of their demerits. The buckboard rolled to a stop.

  “Hop up, Molly,” called See, gayly. “We’re late an’ it ain’t no fault of yours.”

  “Good mawnin’,” returned Molly, brightly, as she climbed to the seat beside Mrs. See.

  “Mornin’ lass,” replied the rancher’s wife. “You look like you could fly as well as hop.”

  “Oh, I’m on pins,” cried Molly. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

  “Howdy, Caleb,” spoke up Summers. “Reckon you’ve got time to come inside a minute.”

  “Mawnin’, Enoch,” replied See, which greeting included the others present. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Wal, come in anyhow,” returned Summers, bluntly, and went into the store.

  See grumbled a little, as he wound the reins around the brake-handle, and laboriously got down. He was a heavy man, no longer young. All the loungers on the porch followed him into the store, but Andy Stoneham remained in the door, watching Molly.

  “That lout’s makin’ sheep eyes at you, Molly,” said Mrs. See.

  Molly did not look. “He just said some nasty things to me,” she confided. “Then the fool asked me to go to a dance at Hall’s Mill.”

  “Molly, you’re growin’ up an’ it’s time you got some sensible notions,” said Mrs. See, seriously.

  “I’m goin’ to Flag,” trilled Molly, as if that momentous adventure was all that mattered.

  “Lass, you’re a bad combination. You’re too pretty an’ too crazy. I reckon it’s time to get you a husband.”

  Molly laughed and blushed. “That’s what ma says. But it’s funny. I have to work hard enough now.”

  Caleb See came stamping out of the store, wiping his beard, sober of face where he had been merry. Without a word he stepped into the buckboard, making it lurch, and drove away. Molly was reminded of the news about the drift fence.

  “Mrs. See, while I was waitin’ for you Seth Haverly rode up,” said Molly. “He’d just come in from the Diamond with my brother Arch. They’d been to Flag. An’ he was tellin’ old Enoch Summers about a fence that was bein’ built, down across the country. A drift fence, he called it. What’s a drift fence?”

  While Mrs. See pondered over the query Caleb answered.

  “Wal, lass, it’s no wonder you ask, seein’ we don’t have no fences in this country. On a free range cattle travel all over, according’ to water an’ grass. Now a drift fence is somethin’ that changes a free range. It ain’t free no more. It’s a rough country this side of the Diamond. All the draws head up on top an’ run down into the West Fork, an’ into the Cibeque. Water runs down these draws, an’ feed is good. Wal, a drift fence built on top an’ runnin’ from Flag down country will keep the cattle on top. They’ll drift along an’ water down on the other side. Then they’ll drift back.”

  “Why were they so serious about it?” asked Molly, curiously. “Isn’t a drift fence a good thing?”

  “Reckon it is, for Traft an’ Blodgett, an’ the big cattlemen up Flag way. But for us folks, who live off the Diamond, it ain’t so good.”

  “Most of us couldn’t live much worse,” replied Molly, thoughtfully.

  “You bet you could, lass. Haven’t you always had milk an’ beefsteak, an’ shoes to wear?”

  “Most always, but not always. Just now I’m walkin’ in my bare toes,” said Molly, with a giggle. “If I hadn’t saved up money enough to buy stockings an’ shoes I’d never come.”

  “Molly, you goin’ to have a new dress, too,” declared Mrs. See. “I didn’t tell you we are goin’ to a picnic. Goin’ to be a big time in Flag on Saturday, most like the Fourth.”

  “Oh, heavenly!” exclaimed Molly, rapturously. “An’ to think I almost didn’t come! … Mrs. See, you’re awfully kind.”

  Mr. See went on with something in his mind. “No, Molly, we’ve been fair to middlin’ prosperous down here in the valley. But this drift fence will make a difference.”

  “Caleb, isn’t the land owned by the government? Couldn’t any man homestead it?”

  “Shore. An’ there’s the rub. Traft has no right to fence this free range. But he’s a rich, powerful old duffer an’ bull-headed as one of his steers. Who’re we down here to go to law? An’ where’d we go? Fairfield, the county seat, is farther away than Flag. It takes time an’ money to travel.”

  “Oh, dear!” sighed the good woman. “Then it’ll mean hard times.”

  “Wal, Susan, we can stand hard times, an’ I reckon come out ahead. But this drift fence means trouble. It’s a slap in the face to every free ranger in this section. They’ll all take it Traft accuses them of stealin’ unbranded stock that drifts down into the draws on the West Fork.”

  “What kind of trouble, Uncle Caleb?” queried Molly, soberly.

  “Lass, do you remember the Pleasant Valley war over across the mountains in the Tonto? Let’s see, you must have been about six years old. Ten years ago.”

  “Yes, I remember, mama wouldn’t let me play out of the yard. We lived at Lunden then. But if I hadn’t remembered I’d sure know what the war was. Papa talks about it yet.”

  “Ahuh. Lass, some people say your dad was crippled for sympathy to one faction in that fight.”

  “Pa denies it. But he was on the side of the sheepmen. An’ that riles my brother Arch somethin’ funny. They never get along. Arch isn’t much good, Uncle Caleb.”

  “Humph! I’d not say that, for Arch has good parts. But he’s much bad, an’ that’s no joke. … Wal, if Traft’s outfit ever finishes their fence—at least down in the Diamond, it’ll be cut. An’ as Traft runs a lot of hard-ridin’ and shootin’ cowpunchers, there’s shore goin’ to be blood spilled. It takes years sometimes to wear out these feuds. An’ we’ve a lot of thick-headed hombres in our neck of the woods.”

  His ominous reasoning had a silencing effect upon his hearers. The women of that country were pioneers in suffering, and there were many windows and orphans. Molly thought of her brother Arch. He was only twenty-two, yet he had killed more than one man, and through many fights, but few of them bloodless, he had earned a reputation that was no source of pride to his family. Arch not so long ago had been a nice boy. Lack of work, and drinking, and roaming the woods with fellows like Seth Haverly, had ruined him. Now it would grow worse, and that would make it harder for Molly’s crippled father, who had to sit at home and brood.

  Molly conceived a resentment against the rich cattleman who could impose such restrictions and embitter the lives of poor people. And as for Traft’s tenderfoot relative, who had come out from Missouri to run a hard outfit and build barbed-wire fences, Molly certainly hated him. Funny if she should meet him! What would he be like? A change from long-legged, unshaven, rag
ged boys who smelled of horses would be a relief, even if he was an enemy. It was unlikely, however, that she should have the luck to encounter Mr. Traft’s nephew from Missouri, which fact would be good luck for him, at least. Molly would certainly let him know what she thought of him.

  It occurred to her presently that Arch had seen this new foreman of Traft’s and could tell her all about him. How was Arch going to take this newcomer? Seth Haverly was as easygoing a boy as Arch, but dangerous when crossed. Molly was prone to spells of depression and she felt the imminence of one here.

  Wherefore, in order to shake off the insidious shadow, she devoted herself to the ride and to her companion, who needed a little cheering also.

  It had been years since Molly had been so many miles from the village. She did not remember the road. From her own porch she always had a wonderful view down the valley and across to the grand upheaval of earth and rock locally called the Diamond, and at the rugged black hills to the south. But now she was riding at a fast trot of a spirited team through a winding timbered canyon, along the banks of the West Fork. As there was a gradual down grade, the gray cliff walls grew higher until they were far above. Only a lone horseman was encountered in all the fifteen miles down to where the West Fork poured its white torrent into the Cibeque. Here Mr. See took the main road, which climbed and wound and zigzagged up the long slope. Molly looked down and back at the wilderness which was her home. All green and gray, and so big! She could not hate it, somehow. All her life she had known that kind of country. She had played among the ferns and the rock, and in the amber water, and under the brown-barked pines and spruces, where deer and elk and wild turkeys were as common as the cows she drove from pasture in the dusk. She felt that it would take a terrible break to sever her from this home of forest and gorge.

  CHAPTER

  2

  FROM the head of the Cibeque the road wound through undulating forest land, heading the deep draws and glens, and gradually ascending to the zone of cedar and piñon, which marked the edge of the cattle-range.

  There had been snow on the ground all winter, which accounted for the abundance of gramma grass, now beginning to bleach in the early summer sun. Cattle dotted all the glades and flats and wide silvery meadows; and toward afternoon, from a ridge top the vast gray-green range spread like a billowy ocean far as eye could see.

  Several ranches were passed at any one of which See would have been welcome to spend the night, but he kept going all of daylight, and by night had covered more than half the journey to Flagerstown.

  “Wal, wife, we’ve made Keech’s, an’ that’s good, considerin’ our late start,” remarked See, with satisfaction, as he drove into a wide clearing, the hideousness of which attested to the presence of an old sawmill. Rude clapboard cabins and fences, not to note the barking dogs, gave evidence of habitation.

  The cabins, however, were more inviting inside, Molly was to learn, and that the widow Keech was a most kindly and loquacious hostess. She had two grown daughters, and a son about fourteen years old, an enormously tall boy who straightway became victim to Molly, a conspicuous fact soon broadly hinted by his elders.

  “So this hyar is John Dunn’s girl growed up,” said Mrs. Keech. “I knowed your father well, an’ I seen you when you was a big-eyed kid. Now you’re a woman ridin’ to Flag.”

  Molly, however, was not to be led into conversation. This adventure seemed to her too grand to be joked about. She was keen to listen, and during the dinner hour heard much about Flagerstown and the fair to begin there on the morrow, and to end on Saturday with a rodeo. Mrs. See had not imparted all this marvelous news to Molly and she laughed at the girl’s excitement.

  “What you know aboot this drift fence?” finally asked See.

  “Caleb, it’s a downright fact,” replied the widow, forcefully. “Harry has seen it. Traft’s outfit are camped ten miles north of us. They’ll pass here this summer an’ be down on your Diamond by the time snow flies.”

  “Ahuh. So we heerd. But what’s your idee aboot it?”

  “Wal, Caleb, all things considered, it’ll be good for the range. For no matter what folks say, cattle-rustlin’ is not a thing of the past. Two-bit stealin’ of calves is what it really is. But rustlin’, for all that. An’ up this way, anyhow, it’ll help.”

  “Are you runnin’ any stock?” asked See, thoughtfully.

  “Cows, mostly. I send a good deal of butter in to town. Really am gettin’ on better than when we tried to ranch it. I don’t have to hire no-good punchers. People travel the road a lot these days. An’ they all stop hyar. I’ve run up some little cabins.”

  “An’ that’s a good idee,” said See.

  Molly listened to hear everything, and particularly wanted to learn more about the young Missouri tenderfoot who had come out West to build fences for Traft. He would certainly have a miserable existence. And it was most liable to be short. To Molly’s disappointment, no more was said about the drift fence.

  “Wal, we’ll rustle off to bed,” concluded See. “Mrs. Keech, I’ll want to leave early in the mornin’.”

  Molly shared one of the new cabins with Mrs. See. It was small, clean, and smelled fragrantly of dry pine. It had three windows, and that to Molly was an innovation. She vowed she would have one like it, where she could have light in the daytime and air at night. She was tired, but not sleepy. Perhaps the bed was too comfortable. Anyway, Molly lay wide awake in the dark, wondering what was going to happen to her. This trip to Flagerstown might be a calamity for her. But she must have it. She must enjoy every moment of it, no matter what discontent it might engender.

  The hounds bayed the wolves and made her shudder. Wolves and coyotes seldom ranged down in the brakes of the Cibeque. Bears and lions were plentiful, but Molly had never feared them. Wolves had such a mournful, blood-curdling howl. And when the hounds answered it they imitated that note, or else imparted to it something of hunger for the free life their wild brothers enjoyed.

  When at last Molly fell asleep it seemed only a moment until she was rudely awakened. Mrs. See was up, dressing by lamplight. A gray darkness showed outside the open window, and the air that blew in on Molly was cold enough for early fall, down on the West Fork.

  But the great day was at hand. She found her voice, and even had a friendly word for the boy Harry, who certainly made the most of it. When she came out from breakfast, a clear cold morning, with rosy flush in the east, greeted her triumphantly, as if to impart that it had some magic in store.

  Harry squeezed Molly’s arm, as he helped her into the buckboard, and said, confidently, “I’ll see you at the rodeo.”

  “Hope so,” replied Molly.

  Then they were off behind fresh horses and soon into the cedars. Jack rabbits bounded away, with their ridiculously long ears bobbing erect; lean gray coyotes watched them roll along; deer trotted out of sight into thick clumps of brush.

  Soon they came to the open top of a ridge and Molly saw a gray, dim, speckled world of range, so immense as to dwarf her sight. The scent from that vast gulf was intoxicating.

  “What’s the sweet smell?” she asked.

  “Sage, you Cibeque Valley backwoods girl,” replied Mrs. See. “Anyone would think you’d never been out of the timber.”

  “I haven’t, much,” laughed Molly. “I’ve seen an’ smelled sage, but it’s so long ago I’d forgotten. Reckon I’d better be pretty careful up at Flag, Auntie See?”

  “Shore you had. But what aboot?”

  “Talkin’. I’m so ignorant,” sighed Molly.

  “You don’t need to be dumb. You just think before you speak. You’re such a pretty little mouse that it’ll become you. I don’t care for gabby girls, myself. An’ I never seen a man who did, if he was in earnest.”

  Molly was silent enough for the next long stretch. She watched a sunrise that made her think how beautiful the world was and how little she had seen, hidden down there in the green brakes. But she reproved herself for that. From her porch she could se
e the sun set in the great valley when the Diamond sheered abruptly down into the Cibeque, and nothing could have excelled that. And what could be better than the wooded canyons, deep and gray and green, with their rushing streams? But this open range took her breath. Here was the cattle country—what Mr. See had called the free range, and which riders like her brother Arch and Seth Haverly regarded as their own. Yet was it not a shame to fence that magnificent rolling land of green? For a moment Molly understood what it meant to be a range-rider, to have been born on a horse. She sympathized with Arch and Seth. A barbed-wire fence, no matter how far away, spoiled the freedom of that cedared grassy land.

  “Wal, lass, thar’s the smoke of Flag,” said Mrs. See. “Way down in the corner. Long ways yet. But we’re shore gettin’ there.”

  “Smoke,” said Molly, dreamily. “Are they burnin’ brush?”

  “Haw! Haw! That smoke comes from the railroad an’ the sawmill.”

  From there on the miles were long, yet interesting, almost every one of them, with herds of cattle wearing different brands, with ranches along the road, with the country appearing to spread and grow less cedared. Ten miles out of Flagerstown Mr. See pointed to a distant ridgetop, across which a new fence strung, startlingly clear against the sky. It gave Molly a pang.

  “Traft’s drift fence, I reckon,” said See. “An’ I’d almost rather have this a sheep range!”

  For all her poor memory, Molly remembered Flagerstown—the black timbered mountain above it, the sawmill with its pile of yellow lumber, the gray cottages on the outskirts, and at last the thrilling long main street, with buildings that looked wonderful to her. Mr. See remarked with satisfaction that the time was not much past four o’clock. He drove straight down this busy thoroughfare. Molly was all eyes.

  “Hyar we are,” said Mr. See, halting before a pretentious brick building. “This is the new hotel, Molly. Now, wife, make the best of our good trip in. Take Molly in the stores. I’ll look after the horses, get our rooms, an’ meet you hyar at six o’clock.”