by B. M. Bower
Frosty Miller came first to see what was up, and I got him to put on the gloves for awhile; he knew something of the manly art, I discovered, and we went at it fast and furious. I think I broke up a game in the next room. The boys came to the door, one by one, and stood watching, until we had the full dozen for audience. Before any one realized what was happening, we were playing together real pretty, with the chilly shoulder barred and the social ice gone the way of a dew-drop in the sun.
We boxed and wrestled, with much scientific discussion of “full Nelsons” and the like, and even fenced with sticks. I had them going there, and could teach them things; and they were the willingest pupils a man ever had—docile and filled with a deep respect for their teacher who knew all there was to know—or, if he didn’t, he never let on. Before night we had smashed three window-panes, trimmed several faces down considerably, and got pretty well acquainted. I found out that they weren’t so far behind the old gang at home for wanting all there is in the way of fun, and I believe they discovered that I was harmless. Before that storm let up they were dealing cards to me, and allowing me to get rid of the rest of the forty dollars Rankin had overlooked. I got some of it back.
I went down and bunked with them, because they had a stove and I didn’t, and it was more sociable; Perry Potter and the cook were welcome to the house, I told them, except at meal-times. And, more than all the rest, I could keep out of range of Perry Potter’s eyes. I never could get used to that watch-Willie-grow way he had, or rid myself of the notion that he was sending dad a daily report of my behavior.
The next thing, when the weather quit sifting snow and turned on the balmy breezes and the sunshine, I was down in the corrals in my chaps and spurs, learning things about horses that I never suspected before. When I did something unusually foolish, the boys were good enough to remember my boxing and fencing and such little accomplishments, and did not withdraw their favor; so I went on, butting into every new game that came up, and taking all bets regardless, and actually began to wise up a little and to forget a few of my grievances.
I was down in the corral one day, saddling Shylock—so named because he tried to exact a pound of flesh every time I turned my back or in other ways seemed off my guard—and when I was looping up the latigo I discovered that the alliterative Mr. Potter was roosting on the fence, watching me with those needle-pointed eyes of his. I wondered if he was about to prepare another report for dad.
“Do yuh want to be put on the pay-roll?” he asked, without any preamble, when he caught my glance.
“Yes, if I’m earning wages. ‘The laborer is worthy of his hire,’ I believe,” I retorted loftily. The fact was, I was strapped again—and, though one did not need money on the Bay State Ranch, it’s a good thing to have around.
He grinned into his collar. “Well,” he said, “you’ve been pretty busy the last three weeks, but I ain’t had any orders to hire a boxing-master for the boys. I don’t know as that’d rightly come under the head of legitimate expenses; boxing-masters come high, I’ve heard. Are yuh going on round-up?”
“Sure!” I answered, in an exact copy—as near as I could make it—of Frosty Miller’s intonation. I was making Frosty my model those days.
He said: “All right—your pay starts on the fifteenth of next month”—which was April. Then he got down from the fence and went off, and I mounted Shylock and rode away to Laurel, after the mail. Not that I expected any, for no one but dad knew where I was, and I hadn’t heard a word from him, though I knew he wrote to Perry Potter—or his secretary did—every week or so. Really, I don’t think a father ought to be so chesty with the only son he’s got, even if the son is a no-account young cub.
I was standing in the post-office, which was a store and saloon as well, when an old fellow with stubby whiskers and a jaw that looked as though it had been trimmed square with a rule, and a limp that made me know at once who he was, came in. He was standing at the little square window, talking to the postmaster and waving his pipe to emphasize what he said, when a horse went past the door on the dead run, with bridle-reins flying. A fellow rushed out past us—it was his horse—and hit old King’s elbow a clip as he went by. The pipe went about ten feet and landed in a pickle-keg. I went after it and fished it out for the old fellow—not so much because I’m filled with a natural courtesy, as because I was curious to know the man that had got the best of dad.
He thanked me, and asked me across to the saloon side of the room to drink with him. “I don’t know as I’ve met you before, young man,” he said, eying me puzzled. “Your face is familiar, though; been in this country long?”
“No,” I said; “a little over a month is all.”
“Well, if you ever happen around my way—King’s Highway, they call my place—stop and see me. Going to stay long out here?”
“I think so,” I replied, motioning the waiter—“bar-slave,” they call them in Montana—to refill our glasses. “And I’ll be glad to call some day, when I happen in your neighborhood. And if you ever ride over toward the Bay State, be sure you stop.”
Well, say! old King turned the color of a ripe prune; every hair in that stubble of beard stood straight out from his chin, and he looked as if murder would be a pleasant thing. He took the glass and deliberately emptied the whisky on the floor. “John Carleton’s son, eh? I might ’a’ known it—yuh look enough like him. Me drink with a son of John Carleton? That breed uh wolves had better not come howling around my door. I asked yuh to come t’ King’s Highway, young man, and I don’t take it back. You can come, but you’ll get the same sort uh welcome I’d give that—”
Right there I got my hand on his throttle. He was an old man, comparatively, and I didn’t want to hurt him; but no man under heaven can call my dad the names he did, and I told him so. “I don’t want to dig up that old quarrel, King,” I said, shaking him a bit with one hand, just to emphasize my words, “but you’ve got to speak civilly of dad, or, by the Lord! I’ll turn you across my knee and administer a stinging rebuke.”
He tried to squirm loose, and to reach behind him with that suggestive movement that breeds trouble among men of the plains; but I held his arms so he couldn’t move, the while I told him a lot of things about true politeness—things that I wasn’t living up to worth mentioning. He yelled to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet’s-nest I’d got into. The waiter and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that I was on old King’s territory, and that they were after holding their jobs.
I don’t know how it would have ended—I suppose they’d have got me, eventually—but Perry Potter walked in, and it didn’t seem to take him all day to savvy the situation. He whipped out a gun and leveled it at the enemy, and told me to scoot and get on my horse.
“Scoot nothing!” I yelled back. “What about you in the meantime? Do you think I’m going to leave them to clean you up?”
He smiled sourly at me. “I’ve held my own with this bunch uh trouble-hunters for thirty years,” he said dryly. “I guess yuh ain’t got any reason t’ be alarmed. Come out uh that corner and let ’em alone.”
I don’t, to this day, know why I did it, but I quit hugging old King, and the other two fell back and gave me a clear path to the door. “King was blackguarding dad, and I couldn’t stand for it,” I explained to Perry Potter as I went by. “If you’re not going, I won’t.”
“I’ve got a letter to mail,” he said, calm as if he were in his own corral. “You went off before I got a chance to give it to yuh. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He went and slipped the letter into the mail-box, turned his back on the three, and walked out as if nothing had happened; perhaps he knew that I was watching them, in a mood to do things if they offered to touch him. But they didn’t, and we mounted our horses and rode away, and Perry Potter never mentioned the affair to me, then or after. I don�
��t think we spoke on the way to the ranch; I was busy wishing I’d been around in that part of the world thirty years before, and thinking what a lot of fun I had missed by not being as old as dad. A quarrel thirty years old is either mighty stale and unprofitable, or else, like wine, it improves with age. I meant to ride over to King’s Highway some day, and see how he would have welcomed dad thirty years before.
CHAPTER IV
Through King’s Highway
It was a long time before I was in a position to gratify my curiosity, though; between the son and heir, with nothing to do but amuse himself, and a cowboy working for his daily wage, there is a great gulf fixed. After being put on the pay-roll, I couldn’t do just as my fancy prompted. I had to get up at an ungodly hour, and eat breakfast in about two minutes, and saddle a horse and “ride circle” with the rest of them—which same is exceeding wearisome to man and beast. For the first time since I left school, I was under orders; and the foreman certainly tried to obey dad’s mandate and treat me just as he would have treated any other stranger. I could give it up, of course—but I hope never to see the day when I can be justly called a quitter.
First, we were rounding up horses—saddlers that were to be ridden in the round-up proper. We were not more than two or three weeks at that, though we covered a good deal of country. Before it was over I knew a lot more than when we started out, and had got hard as nails; riding on round-up beats a gym for putting wire muscles under a man’s skin, in my opinion. We worked all around White Divide—which was turning a pale, dainty green except where the sandstone cliffs stood up in all the shades of yellow and red. Montana, as viewed on “horse round-up,” looks better than in the first bleak days of March, and I could gaze upon it without profanity. I even got to like tearing over the newborn grass on a good horse, with a cowboy or two galloping, keen-faced and calm, beside me. It was almost better than slithering along a hard road with a motor-car stripped to the running-gear.
When the real thing happened—the “calf round-up”—and thirty riders in white felt hats, chaps, spurs a-jingle, and handkerchief ends flying out in the wind, lined up of a morning for orders, the blood of me went a-jump, and my nerves were all tingly with the pure joy of being alive and atop a horse as eager as hounds in the leash and with the wind of the plains in my face and the grass-land lying all around, yelling come on, and the meadowlarks singing fit to split their throats. There’s nothing like it—and I’ve tried nearly everything in the way of blood-tinglers. Skimming through the waves, alean to the wind in a racing-yacht, comes nearest, and even that takes second money when circle-riding on round-up is entered in the race. But this is getting away from my story.
We were working the country just north of White Divide, when the foreman started me home with a message for Perry Potter—and I was to get back as soon as possible with the answer. Now, here’s where I got gay.
As I said, we were north of White Divide, and the home ranch was south, and to go around either end of that string of hills meant an extra sixty miles to cover each way—a hundred and twenty for the round trip. Directly in the way of the proverbial crow’s flight lay King’s Highway, which—if I got through—would put me at the ranch the first day, and back at camp the second; and I rather guessed that would surprise our worthy foreman not a little. I didn’t see why it couldn’t be done; surely old King wouldn’t murder a man just for riding through that pass—that would be bloody-minded indeed!
And if I failed—why, I could go around, and no one would be wise to the fact that I had tried it. I headed straight for the pass, which yawned invitingly, with two bare peaks for the jaws, not over six miles away. It was against orders, for Perry Potter had given the boys to understand that they were not to go that way, and that they were to leave King and his stronghold strictly alone; but I didn’t worry about that. When I was fairly in the mouth of the pass, I got down and looked to the cinch, and then rode boldly forward, like a soldier riding up to the cannon’s mouth with a smile on his face. Oh, I wasted plenty of admiration on one Ellis Carleton about that time, and rehearsed the bold, biting speech I meant to deliver at old King’s very door.
So far it was easy sailing. There was a hard-beaten road, and the hills seemed standing back and holding aside their skirts for a free passing. The sun lay warm on their green slopes, and one could fairly smell the grass growing. In the hollows were worlds of blue flowers, with patches here and there a royal purple. I stopped and gathered a handful and stuck them in my buttonhole and under my hatband. I don’t know when I have felt so thoroughly satisfied with said Ellis Carleton—of whom I am overfond of speaking—I even mimicked the meadow-larks, until they watched me with heads tilted, not knowing what to make of such an impertinent fellow.
King’s Highway was glorious; I didn’t wonder that dad thought it worth fighting over, and as I went on, farther and farther down this lane made by nature for easy passing, I could see what an immense advantage it would be to take herds through that way. I could see why the Bay State men cursed King when they took the rough trail around the end of White Divide.
After an hour of undisputed riding on this forbidden trail, the pass narrowed rather abruptly till it was not more than a furlong in width; the hills stretched their heads still higher, as if they wanted to see the fun, and the shadow of the eastern rim laid clear across the narrow valley and touched the foot of the opposite slope. I hope I am not going to be called nervous if I tell the truth about things; when I rode into the shadow I stopped whistling a bad imitation of meadow-lark notes. A bit farther and I pulled up, looked all around, and got off and tightened the cinch a bit more. Shylock—I always rode him when I could—threw his head around and nearly took a chunk out of my arm, and in reproving him I forgot, for a minute, the ticklish game I was playing. Then I loosened my gun—I had learned to carry it inconspicuously under my coat, as did the other boys—made sure it could be pulled without embarrassing delay, and went on. Around the next turn a five-wired fence stretched across the trail, with a gate fastened by a chain and padlock. I whistled under my breath, and eyed the lock with extreme disfavor.
But I had learned a trick of the cowboys. I pulled the wire off a couple of posts at one side of the gate, laid them flat on the ground, and led Shylock over them. Then I found a rock, pounded the staples back in place, and went on; only for the tracks, one could not notice that any had passed that way. Still, it was a bit ticklish, riding down King’s Highway alone and with no idea of what lay farther on. But dad had dared go that way, and to fight at the far end; and what dad had not been afraid to tackle, it did not behoove his son to back down from. I made Shylock walk the next half-mile, with some notion of saving his wind for an emergency run.
Of a sudden I rounded a sharp nose of hill and came plump on the palace of the King. It looked a good deal like the Bay State Ranch—big corrals and sheds and stables, and little place for man to dwell. The house, though, was bigger than ours, and looked more comfortable to live in. And the thing that struck me most was the head which King displayed for strategy. The trail wound between those same sheds and corrals, a gantlet two hundred yards long that one must run or turn back. On either side the bluffs rose sheer, with the buildings crowding close against their base. I didn’t wonder Frosty called King’s Highway “bad medicine.” It certainly did look like it.
I went softly along that trail, turning sharp corners around a shed here, circling a corral there, with my hand within an inch of my gun, and my heart within an inch of my teeth, and you may laugh all you like.
No one seemed to be about; the sheds were deserted, and a few horses dozed in a corral that I passed; but human being I saw none. It was evident that King did not consider his enemy worth watching. I passed the last shed and found myself headed straight for the house; I had still to get through its very dooryard before I was in any position to crow, and beyond the house was another fence; I hoped the gate was not locked. Shylock pricked up his ears, then laid them back along his neck as if he did not ap
prove the layout, either. But we ambled right along, like a deacon headed for prayer-meeting, and I tried to look in four different directions at one and the same time.
For that reason, I didn’t see her till she stood right in front of me; and when I did, I stared like an idiot. It was a girl, and she was coming down a path to the trail, with her hands full of flowers, for all the world like a Duchess novel. Another minute, and I’d have run over her, I guess. She stopped and looked at me from under lashes so thick and heavy they seemed almost pulling her lids shut, and there was something in her eyes that made me go hot and cold, like I was coming down with grippe; when she spoke my symptoms grew worse.
“Did you wish to see father?” she asked, as if she were telling me to leave the place.
“I believe,” I rallied enough to answer, “that ‘father’ would give a good deal to see me.” Then that seemed to shut off our conversation too abruptly to suit me; there are occasions when prickly chills have a horrible fascination for a fellow; this was one of the times.
“He’s not at home, I’m very sorry to say,” she retorted in the same liquid-air voice as before, and turned to go back to the house.
I thanked the Lord for that, in a whisper, and kept pace with her. It was plain she hated the sight of me, but I counted on her being enough like her dad not to run away.
“May I trouble you for a drink of water?” I asked, in the orthodox tone of humility.
“There is no need to trouble me; there is the creek, beyond the house; you are welcome to all you want.”
“Thanks.” I watched the pink curve of her cheek, and knew she was dying for a chance to snub me still more maliciously. We were at the steps of the veranda now, but still she would not hurry; she seemed to hate even the semblance of running away.