One of the boots was still in his hand. He swung it round and brought the heel hard against the fellow’s mouth. The blood gushed from the crushed lips. Bob dropped the boot and jolted his left to the cheek. He followed with a smashing right to the eye.
Taken at disadvantage, Bandy tried to struggle to his feet. He ran into one straight from the shoulder that caught the bridge of his nose and flung him back upon the bunk.
His hand reached under the pillow. Bob guessed what was there and dropped hard with both knees on his stomach.
The breath went out of Bandy suddenly. He lay still for a moment. When he began to struggle again he had forgotten the revolver under the pillow. With a sweeping gesture Bob brushed pillow and gun to the floor.
The man underneath twisted his red, wrinkled neck and bit Bob’s forearm savagely. The boy’s fingers closed like a vice on the hairy throat and tightened. His other fist beat a merciless tattoo on the bruised and bleeding face.
“Take him off!” Bandy presently gasped.
Dud appointed himself referee. With difficulty he unloosed the fingers embedded in the flesh of the throat.
“Had enough, Bandy? You licked?” he asked.
“Take him off, I tell you!” the man managed to scream.
“Not unless you’re whipped. How about it?”
“’Nough,” the bully groaned.
Bob observed that Hawks had taken charge of the revolver. He released Walker.
The bow-legged puncher sat at the side of the bed and coughed. The blood was streaming from a face bruised and cut in a dozen places.
“He—he—jumped me—when I wasn’t lookin’,” the cowboy spat out, a word at a time.
“Don’t pull an alibi, Bandy. You had it comin’,” Dud said with a grin. He was more pleased than he could tell.
Dillon felt as though something not himself had taken control of him. He was in a cold fury, ready to fight again at the drop of a hat.
“He said she—she—” The sentence broke, but Bob rushed into another. “He’s got to take it back or I’ll kill him.”
“Only the first round ended, looks like, Bandy,” Dud said genially. “You better be lookin’ this time when he comes at you, or he’ll sure eat you alive.”
“I’m not lookin’ for no fight,” Bandy said sulkily, dabbing at his face with the bandanna round his neck.
“I’ll bet you ain’t—not with a catamount like Miss Roberta here,” Tom Reeves said, chuckling with delight.
One idea still obsessed Bob’s consciousness. “What he said about June—I’ll not let him get away with it. He’s got to tell you-all he was lyin’.”
“You hear yore boss speak, Bandy,” drawled Dud. “How about it? Do we get to see you massacreed again? Or do you stand up an’ admit you’re a dirty liar for talkin’ thataway?”
Bandy Walker looked round on a circle of faces all unfriendly to him. He had broken the code, and he knew it. In the outdoor West a man does not slander a good woman without the chance of having to pay for it. The puncher had let his bad bullying temper run away with him. He had done it because he had supposed Dillon harmless, to vent on him the spleen he could not safely empty upon Dud Hollister’s blond head.
If Bob had been alone the bow-legged man might have taken a chance—though it is doubtful whether he would have invited that whirlwind attack again, unless he had had a revolver close at hand—but he knew public sentiment was wholly against him. There was nothing to do but to swallow his words.
That he did this in the most ungracious way possible was like him. “Since you’re runnin’ a Sunday School outfit I’ll pack my roll an’ move on to-morrow to where there’s some he-men,” he sneered. “I never met this girl, so I don’t know a thing about her. All I did was to make a general remark about women. Which same I know to be true. But since you’re a bunch of sky pilots at the Slash Lazy D, I’ll withdraw anything that hurts yore tender feelin’s.”
“Are you takin’ back what you said—about—about her?” Bob demanded harshly.
Bandy’s smouldering, sullen eyes slid round. “I’m takin’ it back. Didn’t you hear me say I don’ know a thing about her? I know Houck, though. So I judged—” He spat a loose tooth out on the floor venomously. It would perhaps not be wise to put into words what he had deduced from his knowledge of Jake Houck.
“The incident is now clo-o-sed if Miss Roberta is satisfied,” Dud announced to the public at large.
His riding mate looked at Hollister. “Don’t call me that,” he said.
For a moment Dud was puzzled. “Don’t call you what?”
“What you just called me.”
Dud broke into a grin of delight. He wondered if it would not be a good idea to make Bob give him a licking, too. But he decided to let good enough alone. He judged that Blister would be satisfied without any more gore. Anyhow, Bob might weaken and spoil it.
“Boy, I’ll never call you Miss—what I called you—long as I live exceptin’ when I’m meanin’ to compliment you special.” Dud slapped him hard between the shoulder blades. “You’re a young cyclone, but you can’t get a chance to muss Dud Hollister up to-night. You work too rapid. Doggone my hide, if I ever did see a faster or a better piece o’ work. How about it, Tom?”
Reeves, too, pounded Dillon in token of friendship. If Bob had not wiped the slate clean he had made a start in that direction.
“You’re some scrapper when you get started. Bandy looks like he’s been through a railroad wreck,” he said.
Bandy was by this time at the wash-basin repairing damages. “Tell you he jumped me when I wasn’t lookin’,” he growled sulkily. “Fine business. You-all stood by an’ watched him do it.”
“After you’d deviled him for a week,” amended Big Bill. “Mebbe in that outfit of he-men you’re expectin’ to hit the trail for to-morrow they’ll wrop you up in cotton an’ not let a hundred-an’-thirty-pound giant jump you.”
“I ain’t askin’ it of ’em,” Bandy retorted. “I can look out for myself an’ then some. As for this sprout who thinks he’s so gosh-mighty, I’ll jus’ say one thing. Some o’ these days I’ll settle with him proper.”
He turned as he spoke. The look on his battered face was venomous.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE SADDLE
White winter covered the sage hills and gave the country a bleak and desolate look. The Slash Lazy D riders wrapped up and went out over the wind-swept mesas to look after the cattle cowering in draws or drifting with the storm. When Bob could sleep snugly in the bunkhouse he was lucky. There were nights when he shivered over a pine-knot fire in the shelter of a cutbank with the temperature fifteen degrees below zero.
At this work he won the respect of his fellows. He could set his teeth and endure discomfort with any of them. It was at sharp danger crises that he had always quailed. He never shirked work or hardship, and he never lied to make the way easier or more comfortable. Harshaw watched him with increasing approval. In Dillon he found all but one of the essential virtues of the cowboy—good humor, fidelity, truth, tenacity, and industry. If he lacked courage in the face of peril the reason was no doubt a constitutional one.
A heavy storm in February tried the riders to capacity. They were in the saddle day and night. For weeks they appeared at the ranch only at odd intervals, haggard, unshaven, hungry as wolves. They ate, saddled fresh mounts, and went out into the drifts again tireless and indomitable.
Except for such food as they could carry in a sack they lived on elk trapped in the deep snow. The White River country was one of the two or three best big game districts in the United States.[3] The early settlers could get a deer whenever they wanted one. Many were shot from the doors of their cabins.
While Harshaw, Dud, and Bob were working Wolf Creek another heavy snow fell. A high wind swept the white blanket into deep drifts. All day the riders ploughed through these to rescue gaunt and hungry cattle. Night caught them far from the cabin where they had been staying.
They held a consultation. It was bitter weather, the wind still blowing.
“Have to camp, looks like,” Harshaw said.
“We’ll have a mighty tough night without grub and blankets,” Dud said doubtfully. “She’s gettin’ colder every minute.”
“There’s a sheltered draw below here. We’ll get a good fire going anyhow.”
In the gulch they found a band of elk.
“Here’s our supper an’ our beds,” Dud said.
They killed three.
While Bob gathered and chopped up a down and dead tree the others skinned the game. There was dry wood in Harshaw’s saddle-bags with which to start a fire. Soon Dillon had a blaze going which became a crackling, roaring furnace. They ate a supper of broiled venison without trimmings.
“Might be a heap worse,” Dud said while he was smoking afterward before the glowing pine knots. “I’m plenty warm in front even if I’m about twenty below up an’ down my spine.”
Presently they rolled up in the green hides and fell asleep.
None of them slept very comfortably. The night was bitter, and they found it impossible to keep warm.
Bob woke first. He decided to get up and replenish with fuel the fire. He could not rise. The hide had frozen stiff about him. He shouted to the others.
They, too, were helpless in the embrace of their improvised sleeping-bags.
“Have to roll to the fire an’ thaw out,” Harshaw suggested.
This turned out to be a ticklish job. They had to get close enough to scorch their faces and yet not near enough to set fire to the robes. More than once Bob rolled over swiftly to put out a blaze in the snow.
Dud was the first to step out of his blanket. In a minute or two he had peeled the hides from the others.
An hour later they were floundering through the drifts toward the cabin on Wolf Creek. Behind each rider was strapped the carcass of an elk.
“Reminds me of the time Blister went snow blind,” Harshaw said. “Up around Badger Bend it was. He got lost an’ wandered around for a coupla days blind as a bat. Finally old Clint Frazer’s wife seen him wallowin’ in the drifts an’ the old man brought him in. They was outa grub an’ had to hoof it to town. Clint yoked his bull team an’ had it break trail. He an’ the wife followed. But Blister he couldn’t see, so he had to hang on to one o’ the bulls by the tail. The boys joshed him about that quite a while. He ce’tainly was a sight rollin’ down Main Street anchored to that critter’s tail.”
“I’ll bet Blister was glad to put his foot on the rail at Dolan’s,” Dud murmured. “I’d be kinda glad to do that same my own se’f right now.”
“Blister went to bed and stayed there for a spell. He was a sick man.” Harshaw’s eye caught sight of some black specks on a distant hillside. “Cattle. We’ll come back after we’ve onloaded at the cabin.”
They did. It was long after dark before they reached shelter again.
The riders of the Slash Lazy D were glad to see spring come, though it brought troubles of its own. The weather turned warm and stayed so. The snow melted faster than the streams could take care of it. There was high water all over the Blanco country. The swollen creeks poured down into the overflowing river. Three punchers in the valley were drowned inside of a week, for that was before the bridges had been built.
While the water was still high Harshaw started a trail herd to Utah.
* * *
[3] According to old-timers the automobile is responsible for the extermination of the game supply going on so rapidly. The pioneers at certain seasons provided for their needs by killing blacktail and salting down the meat. But they were dead shots and expert hunters. The automobile tourists with high-power rifles rush into the hills during the open season and kill male and female without distinction. For every deer killed outright three or four crawl away to die later from wounds. One ranchman reports finding fifteen dead deer on one day’s travel through the sage.
* * *
CHAPTER XXV
THE RIO BLANCO PUTS IN A CLAIM
Preparations for the drive occupied several days. The cattle were rounded up and carefully worked. Many of those that had roughed through the hard winter were still weak. Some of these would yet succumb and would increase the thirty per cent of losses already counted. Only those able to stand inspection were thrown into the trail herd. Afterward, a second cut was made and any doubtful ones culled from the bunch.
Word had come from Rangely that all the streams were high as far as and beyond the Utah line. But the owner of the Slash Lazy D was under contract to deliver and he could not wait for the water to go down.
When the road herd had been selected and the mavericks in the round-up branded with the Slash Lazy D or whatever other brand seemed fair considering the physical characteristics of the animal and the group with which it was ranging, Harshaw had the cattle moved up the river a couple of miles to a valley of good grass. Here they were held while the ranch hands busied themselves with preparations for the journey. A wagon and harness were oiled, a chuck-box built, and a supply of groceries packed. Bridles and cinches were gone over carefully, ropes examined, and hobbles prepared.
The remuda for the trail outfit was chosen by Harshaw himself. He knew his horses as he knew the trail to Bear Cat. No galled back or lame leg could escape his keen eye. No half-tamed outlaw could slip into the cavvy. Every horse chosen was of proved stamina. Any known to be afraid of water remained at the ranch. Every rider would have to swim streams a dozen times and his safety would depend upon his mount. Tails were thinned, hoofs trimmed, manes cleared of witches’ bridles, and ears swabbed to free them of ticks.
The start was made before dawn. Stars were shining by thousands when the chuck-wagon rolled down the road. The blatting of cows could be heard as the riders moved the phantom cattle from their bedding-ground.
The dogies were long-legged and shaggy, agile and wild as deer. They were small-boned animals, not fit for market until they were four-year-olds. On their gaunt frames was little meat, but they were fairly strong and very voracious. If not driven too hard these horned jackrabbits, as some wag had dubbed them, would take on flesh rapidly.
Harshaw chose five punchers to go with him—Dud, Big Bill, Tom Reeves, Hawks, and Bob. A light mess-wagon went with the outfit. Before noon the herd had grazed five miles down the river.
The young grass matted the ground. Back of the valley could be seen the greenclad mesas stretching to the foothills which hemmed in the Rio Blanco. The timber and the mesquite were in leaf. Wild roses and occasionally bluebells bloomed. The hillsides were white with the blossoms of service berries.
In the early afternoon they reached the ford. Harshaw trailed the cattle across in a long file. He watched the herd anxiously, for the stream was running strong from the freshet. After a short, hard swim the animals made the landing.
The mess-wagon rattled down to the ford as the last of the herd scrambled ashore.
“Think I’ll put you at the reins, Dud,” the cattleman said. “Head the horses upstream a little and keep ’em going.”
All the other punchers except Bob were across the river with the herd.
Dud relieved the previous driver, gathered up reins and whip with competent hands, and put the horses at the river. They waded in through the shallows, breasted the deep water, and began to swim. Before they had gone three yards they were in difficulties. The force of the current carried the light wagon downstream. The whiplash cracked around the ears of the horses, but they could not make headway. Team, wagon, and driver began to drift down the river. Supplies, floating from the top of the load, were scattered in all directions.
Instantly six men became very busy. Rope loops flew out and tightened around the bed of the wagon. Others circled the necks of the horses. Dud dived into the river to lighten the load. Harshaw, Bob, and the cook rode into the shallow water and salvaged escaping food, while the riders on the other bank guided wagon and team ashore.
Dud, dripping like a mermaid
, came to land with a grin. Under one arm a pasty sack of flour was tucked, under the other a smoked venison haunch. “An’ I took a bath only yesterday,” he lamented.
The food was sun-dried and the wagon repacked.
At Dry Creek, which was now a rushing torrent, Harshaw threw the cattle into a draw green with young grass and made camp for the night.
“We got neighbors,” announced Big Bill, watching a thin column of smoke rising from the mesa back of them.
“Guess I’ll drift over after supper,” Harshaw said. “Maybe they can give me the latest news about high water down the river.”
Hawks had just come in from the remuda. He gave information.
“I drifted over to their camp. An old friend, one of ’em. Gent by the name of Bandy Walker. He’s found that outfit of he-men he was lookin’ for.”
“Yes,” said the cattleman non-committally.
“One’s a stranger. The other’s another old friend of some o’ the boys. Jake Houck he calls hisself.”
Bob’s heart shriveled within him. Two enemies scarcely a stone’s throw away, and probably both of them knew he was here. Had they come to settle with him?
He dismissed this last fear. In Jake Houck’s scheme of things he was not important enough to call for a special trip of vengeance.
“We’ll leave ’em alone,” Harshaw decided. “If any of them drop over we’ll be civil. No trouble, boys, you understand.”
But Houck’s party did not show up, and before break of day the camp of the trail herd outfit was broken. The riders moved the herd up the creek to an open place where it could be easily crossed. From here the cattle drifted back toward the river. Dud was riding on the point, Hawks and Dillon on the drag.
In the late afternoon a gulch obstructed their path. It ran down at right angles to the Rio Blanco. Along the edge of this Harshaw rode till he found an easier descent. He drove the leaders into the ravine and started them up the other side of the trough to the mesa beyond. The cattle crowded so close that some of them were forced down the bed of the gorge instead of up the opposite bank.
The Fighting Edge Page 13