by B. M. Bower
According to that standard, he should feel repulsed and annoyed by the familiarity of strangers who persisted in calling him “Bud” without taking the trouble to find out whether or not he liked it. And what puzzled Thurston and put him all at sea was the consciousness that he did like it, and that it struck familiarly upon his ears as something to which he had been accustomed in the past.
Also, according to his well-ordered past, he should hate this raw life and rawer country where could occur such brutal things as he had that day witnessed. He should dislike a man like Park Holloway who, having wounded a man unto death, had calmly dismissed the subject with the regret that his aim had not been better, so that he could have saved the county the expense of trying and hanging the fellow. Thurston was amazed to find that, down in the inner man of him, he admired Park Holloway exceedingly, and privately resolved to perfect himself in the use of fire-arms, he who had been wont to deplore the thinly veneered savagery of men who liked such things.
After much speculation he decided that Mona Stevens would not do for a kidnapped heroine. He could not seem to “see” her in such a position, and, besides, he told himself that such a type of girl did not attract him at all. She had called him a coward—and why? simply because he, straight from the trammels of civilization, had not been prepared to meet the situation thrust upon him-which she had thrust upon him. She had demanded of him something he had not the power to accomplish, and she had called him a coward. And in his heart Thurston knew that it was unjust, and that he was not a coward.
CHAPTER III
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Thurston, dressed immaculately in riding clothes of the latest English cut, went airily down the stairs and discovered that he was not early, as he had imagined. Seven o’clock, he had told himself proudly, was not bad for a beginner; and he had smiled in anticipation of Hank Graves’ surprise which was fortunate, since he would otherwise have been cheated of smiling at all. For Hank Graves, he learned from the cook, had eaten breakfast at five and had left the ranch more than an hour before; the men also were scattered to their work.
Properly humbled in spirit, he sat down to the kitchen table and ate his belated breakfast, while the cook kneaded bread at the other end of the same table and eyed Thurston with frank amusement. Thurston had never before been conscious of feeling ill at ease in the presence of a servant, and hurried through the meal so that he could escape into the clear sunshine, feeling a bit foolish in the unaccustomed bagginess of his riding breeches and the snugness of his leggings; for he had never taken to outdoor sports, except as an onlooker from the shade of a grand stand or piazza.
While he was debating the wisdom of writing a detailed description of yesterday’s tragedy while it was still fresh in his mind and stowing it away for future “color,” Park Holloway rode into the yard and on to the stables. He nodded at Thurston and grinned without apparent cause, as the cook had done. Thurston followed him to the corral and watched him pull the saddle off his horse, and throw it carelessly to one side. It looked cumbersome, that saddle; quite unlike the ones he had inspected in the New York shops. He grasped the horn, lifted upon it and said, “Jove!”
“Heavy, ain’t it?” Park laughed, and slipped the bridle down over the ears of his horse and dismissed him with a slap on the rump. “Don’t yuh like the looks of it?” he added indulgently.
Thurston, engaged in wondering what all those little strings were for, felt the indulgence and straightened. “How should I know?” he retorted. “Anyone can see that my ignorance is absolute. I expect you to laugh at me, Mr. Holloway.”
“Call me Park,” said he of the tawny hair, and leaned against the fence looking extremely boyish and utterly incapable of walking calmly down upon a barking revolver and shooting as he went. “You’re bound to learn all about saddles and what they’re made for,” he went on. “So long as yuh don’t get swell-headed the first time yuh stick on a horse that side-steps a little, or back down from a few hard knocks, you’ll be all right.”
Thurston had not intended getting out and actually living the life he had come to observe, but something got in his nerves and his blood and bred an impulse to which he yielded without reserve. “Park, see here,” he said eagerly. “Graves said he’d turn me over to you, so you could—er—teach me wisdom. It’s deuced rough on you, but I hope you won’t refuse to be bothered with me. I want to learn—everything. And I want you to find fault like the mischief, and—er—knock me into shape, if it’s possible.” He was very modest over his ignorance, and his voice rang true.
Park studied him gravely. “Bud,” he said at last, “you’ll do. You’re greener right now than a blue-joint meadow in June, but yuh got the right stuff in yuh, and it’s a go with me. You come along with us after that trail-herd, and you’ll get knocked into shape fast enough. Smoke?”
Thurston shook his head. “Not those.”
“I dunno I’m afraid yuh can’t be the real thing unless yuh fan your lungs with cigarette smoke regular.” The twinkle belied him, though. “Say, where did you pick them bloomers?”
“They were made in New York.” Thurston smiled in sickly fashion. He had all along been uncomfortably aware of the sharp contrast between his own modish attire and the somewhat disreputable leathern chaps of his host’s foreman.
“Well,” commented Park, “you told me to find fault like the mischief, and I’m going to call your bluff. This here’s Montana, recollect, and I raise the long howl over them habiliments. The best thing you can do is pace along to the house and discard before the boys get sight of yuh. They’d queer yuh with the whole outfit, sure. Uh course,” he went on soothingly when he saw the resentment in Thurston’s eyes, “I expect they’re real stylish—back East—but the boys ain’t educated to stand for anything like that; they’d likely tell yuh they set like the hide on the hind legs of an elephant—which is a fact. I hate to say it, Kid, but they sure do look like the devil.”
“So would you, in New York,” Thurston flung back at him.
“Why, sure. But this ain’t New York; this here’s the Lazy Eight corral, and I’m doing yuh a favor. You wouldn’t like to have the boys shooting holes through the slack, would yuh? You amble right along and get some pants on—and when you’ve wised up some you’ll thank me a lot. I’m going on a little jaunt down the creek, before dinner, and you might go along; you’ll need to get hardened to the saddle anyway, before we start for Billings, or you’ll do most uh riding on the mess-wagon.”
Thurston, albeit in resentful mood, went meekly and did as he was commanded to do; and no man save Park and the cook ever glimpsed those smart riding clothes of English cut.
“Now yuh look a heap more human,” was the way Park signified his approval of the change. “Here’s a little horse that’s easy to ride and dead gentle if yuh don’t spur him in the neck, which you ain’t liable to do at present; and Hank says you can have this saddle for keeps. Hank used to ride it, but he out-growed it and got one longer in the seat. When we start for Billings to trail up them cattle, of course you’ll get a string of your own to ride.”
“A string? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
“Yuh don’t savvy riding a string? A string, m’son, is ten or a dozen saddle-horses that yuh ride turn about, and nobody else has got any right to top one; every fellow has got his own string, yuh see.”
Thurston eyed his horse distrustfully. “I think,” he ventured, “one will be enough for me. I’ll scarcely need a dozen.” The truth was that he thought Park was laughing at him.
Park slid sidewise in the saddle and proceeded to roll another cigarette. “I’d be willing to bet that by fall you’ll have a good-sized string rode down to a whisper. You wait; wait till it gets in your blood. Why, I’d die if you took me off the range. Wait till yuh set out in the dark, on your horse, and count the stars and watch the big dipper swing around towards morning, and listen to the cattle breathing close by—sleeping while you ride around ’em playing guardian angel over th
eir dreams. Wait till yuh get up at daybreak and are in the saddle with the pink uh sunrise, and know you’ll sleep fifteen or twenty miles from there that night; and yuh lay down at night with the smell of new grass in your nostrils where your bed had bruised it.
“Why, Bud, if you’re a man, you’ll be plumb spoiled for your little old East.” Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept the pace doggedly.
“I’ve got to go down to the Stevens place,” Park informed him. “You met Mona yesterday—it was her come down on the train with me, yuh remember.” Thurston did remember very distinctly. “Hank says yuh compose stories. Is that right?”
Thurston’s mind came back from wondering how Mona Stevens’ mouth looked when she was pleased with one, and he nodded.
“Well, there’s a lot in this country that ain’t ever been wrote about, I guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But the trouble is, them that know ain’t in the writing business, and them that write don’t know. The way I’ve figured it, they set back East somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it’s a hell of a job they make of it.”
Thurston, remembering the time when he, too, “set back East” and wrote it like he thought maybe it was, blushed guiltily. He was thankful that his stories of the West had, without exception, been rejected as of little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the hands of Park Holloway.
“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you’d tell me just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing a herd.”
“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered, surprised. “What we’re going to do when we get there is to receive a shipment of cattle young steer that’s coming up from the Panhandle which is a part uh Texas. And we trail ’em up here and turn ’em loose this side the river. After that we’ll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other; we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew, twenty-five or thirty men.”
“I didn’t know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying some?”
“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds, this spring; some seasons it’s more. We get in young stock every year and turn ’em loose on the range till they’re ready to ship. It’s cheaper than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you’ll see some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain’t a commencement. Cattle’s cheap down South, this year, and seems like everybody’s buying. Hank didn’t buy as much as some, because he runs quite a bunch uh cows; we’ll brand six or seven thousand calves this spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.”
Thurston agreed as politely as he could for the jolting. They had again struck the level and seven miles, at Park’s usual pace, was heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his luring dreams, about “the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky,” and he was gritting his teeth now over the idiotic lines.
When they reached the ranch and Mona’s mother came to the door and invited them in, he declined almost rudely, for he had a feeling that once out of the saddle he would have difficulty in getting into it again. Besides, Mona was not at home, according to her mother.
So they did not tarry, and Thurston reached the Lazy Eight alive, but with the glamour quite gone from his West. If he had not been the son of his father, he would have taken the first train which pointed its nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western made him swear mild, city-bred oaths.
He choked back his awe of the cook and asked him, quite humbly, what was good to take the soreness from one’s muscles; afterward he had crept painfully up the stairs, clasping to his bosom a beer bottle filled with pungent, home-made liniment which the cook had gravely declared “out uh sight for saddle-galls.”
Hank Graves, when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. “The son-of-a-gun! He’s the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He’s his dad over again, from the ground up.” And loved him the better.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRAIL-HERD
Thurston tucked the bulb of his camera down beside the bellows and closed the box with a snap. “I wonder what old Reeve would say to that view,” he mused aloud.
“Old who?”
“Oh, a fellow back in New York. Jove! he’d throw up his dry-point heads and take to oils and landscapes if he could see this.”
The “this” was a panoramic view of the town and surrounding valley of Billings. The day was sunlit and still, and far objects stood up with sharp outlines in the clear atmosphere. Here and there the white tents of waiting trail-outfits splotched the bright green of the prairie. Horsemen galloped to and from the town at top speed, and a long, grimy red stock train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of pounding surf in the distance.
Thurston—quite a different Thurston from the trim, pale young man who had followed the lure of the West two weeks before—drew a long breath and looked out over the hurrying waters of the Yellowstone. It was good to be alive and young, and to live the tented life of the plains; it was good even to be “speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky “—for two weeks in the saddle had changed considerably his view-point. He turned again to the dust and roar of the stockyards a mile or so away.
“Perhaps,” he remarked hopefully, “the next train will be ours.” Strange how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions and new aims. He had come West to look upon the life from the outside, and now his chief thought was of the coming steers, which he referred to unblushingly as “our cattle.” Such is the spell of the range.
“Let’s ride on over, Bud,” Park proposed. “That’s likely the Circle Bar shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours does, and I want to see how they stack up.”
Thurston agreed and went to saddle up. He had mastered the art of saddling and could, on lucky days and when he was in what he called “form,” rope the horse he wanted; to say nothing of the times when his loop settled unexpectedly over the wrong victim. Park Holloway, for instance, who once got it neatly under his chin, much to his disgust and the astonishment of Thurston.
“I’m going to take my Kodak,” said he. “I like to watch them unload, and I can get some good pictures, with this sunlight.”
“When you’ve hollered ’em up and down the chutes as many times as I have,” Park told him, “yuh won’t need no pictures to help yuh remember what it’s like.”
It was an old story with Park, and Thurston’s enthusiasm struck him as a bit funny. He perched upon a corner of the fence out of the way, and smoked cigarettes while he watched the cattle and shouted pleasantries to the men who prodded and swore and gesticulated at the wild-eyed huddle in the pens. Soon his turn would come, but just now he was content to look on and take his ease.
“For the life of me,” cried Thurston, sidling gingerly over to him, “I can’t see where they all come from. For two days these yards have never been empty. The country will soon be one vast herd.”
“Two days—huh! this thing’ll go on for weeks, m’son. And after all is over, you’ll won
der where the dickens they all went to. Montana is some bigger than you realize, I guess. And next fall, when shipping starts, you’ll think you’re seeing raw porterhouse steaks for the whole world. Let’s drift out uh this dust; you’ll have time to get a carload uh pictures before our bunch rolls in.”
As a matter of fact, it was two weeks before the Lazy Eight consignment arrived. Thurston haunted the stockyards with his Kodak, but after the first two or three days he took no pictures. For every day was but a repetition of those that had gone before: a great, grimy engine shunting cars back and forth on the siding; an endless stream of weary, young cattle flowing down the steep chutes into the pens, from the pens to the branding chutes, where they were burned deep with the mark of their new owners; then out through the great gate, crowding, pushing, wild to flee from restraint, yet held in and guided by mounted cowboys; out upon the green prairie where they could feast once more upon sweet grasses and drink their fill from the river of clear, mountain water; out upon the weary march of the trail, on and on for long days until some boundary which their drivers hailed with joy was passed, and they were free at last to roam at will over the wind-brushed range land; to lie down in some cool, sweet-scented swale and chew their cuds in peace.
Two weeks, and then came a telegram for Park. In the reading of it he shuffled off his attitude of boyish irresponsibility and became in a breath the cool, business-like leader of men. Holding the envelope still in his hand he sought out Thurston, who was practicing with a rope. As Park approached him he whirled the noose and cast it neatly over the peak of the night-hawk’s teepee.
“Good shot,” Park encouraged, “but I’d advise yuh to take another target. You’ll have the tent down over Scotty’s ears, and then you’ll think yuh stirred up a mess uh hornets.
“Say, Bud, our cattle are coming, and I’m going to be short uh men. If you’d like a job I’ll take yuh on, and take chances on licking yuh into shape. Maybe the wages won’t appeal to yuh, but I’m willing to throw in heaps uh valuable experience that won’t cost yuh a cent.” He lowered an eyelid toward the cook-tent, although no one was visible.