by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER 4. ANDY TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
Andy Green was a day late in arriving at the Flying U. First he losttime by leaving the train thirty miles short of the destination markedon his ticket, and when he did resume his journey on the next train, hetraveled eighty-four miles beyond Dry Lake, which landed him in GreatFalls in the early morning. There, with the caution of a criminalcarefully avoiding a meeting with Miss Hallman, he spent an hour inporing over a plat of a certain section of Chouteau County, and incopying certain description of unoccupied land.
He had not slept very well the night before and he looked it. He hadcogitated upon the subject of land speculations and the welfare of hisoutfit until his head was one great, dull ache; but he stuck to hisdetermination to do something to block the game of the Homeseekers'Syndicate. Just what that something would be he had not yet decided. Buton general principles it seemed wise to learn all he could concerningthe particular tract of land about which Florence Grace Hallman hadtalked.
The day was past when range rights might be defended honorably withrifles and six-shooters and iron nerved men to use them--and I fearthat Andy Green sighed because it was so. Give him the "bunch" and freeswing, and he thought the Homeseekers would lose their enthusiasm beforeeven the first hot wind blew up from the southwest to wither theircrops. But such measures were not to be thought of; if they fought atall they must fight with the law behind them--and even Andy's optimismdid not see much hope from the law; none, in fact, since both the lawand the moneyed powers were eager for the coming of homebuilders intothat wide land. All up along the Marias they had built their boardshacks, and back over the benches as far as one could see. There wasnothing to stop them, everything to make their coming easy.
Andy scowled at the plat he was studying, and admitted to himself thatit looked as though the Home Seekers' Syndicate were going to havethings their own way; unless--There he stuck. There must be someway out; never in his life had he faced a situation which had beenabsolutely hopeless; always there had been some chance to win, if a manonly saw it in time and took it. In this case it was the clerk in theoffice who pointed the way with an idle remark.
"Going to take up a claim, are you?"
Andy looked up at him with the blank stare of preoccupation, and changedexpression as the question filtered into his brain and fitted somehowinto the puzzle. He grinned, said maybe he would, folded the sheet ofpaper filled with what looked like a meaningless jumble of lettersand figures, bought a plat of that township and begged some governmentpamphlets, and went out humming a little tune just above a whisper. Atthe door he tilted his hat down at an angle over his right eye and tooklong, eager steps toward an obscure hotel and his meagre baggage.
There was no train going east until midnight, and he caught that train.This time he actually got off at Dry Lake, ate a hurried breakfast, gothis horse out of the livery stable and dug up the dust of the lane withrapid hoof-beats so that he rode all the way to the first hill followedby a rolling, gray cloud that never quite caught him.
When he rode down the Hog's Back he saw the Happy Family bunched aroundsome object on the creek-bank, and he heard the hysterical screaming ofthe Kid up in the house, and saw the Old Man limping excitedly up anddown the porch. A man less astute than Andy Green would have known thatsome thing had happened. He hurried down the last slope, galloped alongthe creek-bottom, crossed the ford in a couple of leaps and pulled upbeside the group that surrounded Silver.
"What's been taking place here?" he demanded curiously, skipping theusual greetings.
"Hell," said the Native Son succinctly, glancing up at him.
"Old Silver looked over the fence into Kingdom Come," Weary enlarged thestatement a little. "Tried to take a drink with a nose bag on. I guesshe'll come through all right."
"What ails the Kid?" Andy demanded, glancing toward the house whenceissued a fresh outburst of shrieks.
The Happy Family looked at one another and then at the White House.
"Aw, some folks hain't got a lick of sense when it comes to kids," BigMedicine accused gruffly.
"The Kid," Weary explained, "put the nose bag on Silver and then leftthe stable door open."
"They ain't--spanking him for it, are they?" Andy demandedbelligerently. "By gracious, how'd a kid know any better? Little bit ofa tad like that--"
"Aw, they don't never spank the Kid!" Slim defended the parents loyally."By golly, they's been times when I would-a spanked him, if it'd beenme. Countess says it's plumb ridiculous the way that Kid runs over'em--rough shod. If he's gittin' spanked now, it's the first time."
"Well," said Andy, looking from one to another and reverting to his ownworry as he swung down from his sweating horse, "there's something worsethan a spanked kid going to happen to this outfit if you fellows don'tget busy and do something. There's a swarm of dry-farmers coming inon us, with their stock to eat up the grass and their darned fencesshutting off the water--"
"Oh, for the Lord's sake, cut it out!" snapped Pink. "We ain't in themood for any of your joshes. We've had about enough excitement foronce."
"Ah, don't be a damn' fool," Andy snapped back. "There's no josh aboutit. I've got the whole scheme, just as they framed it up in Minneapolis.I got to talking with a she-agent on the train, and she gave the wholesnap away; wanted me to go in with her and help land the suckers. I laidlow, and made a sneak to the land office and got a plat of the land, andall the dope--"
"Get any mail?" Pink interrupted him, in the tone that took no noticewhatever of Andy's ill news.
"Time I was hearing from them spurs I sent for." Andy silently wentthrough his pockets and produced what mail he had gleaned from thepost-office, and led his horse into the shade of the stable and pulledoff the saddle. Every movement betrayed the fact that he was in thegrip of unpleasant emotions, but to the Happy Family he said not anotherword.
The Happy Family did not notice his silence at the time. But afterwards,when the Kid had stopped crying and Silver had gotten to his feet andwobbled back to the stable, led by Chip, who explained briefly andsatisfactorily the cause of the uproar at the house, and the boys hadstarted up to their belated dinner, they began to realize that for areturned traveler Andy Green was not having much to say.
They asked him about his trip, and received brief answers. Had he beenanyone else they would have wanted to know immediately what was eatin'on him; but since it was Andy Green who sat frowning at his toes andsmoking his cigarette as though it had no comfort or flavor, the boldestof them were cautious. For Andy Green, being a young man of vividimagination and no conscience whatever, had fooled them too often withhis lies. They waited, and they watched him covertly and a bit puzzled.
Silence and gloom were not boon companions of Andy Green, at any time.So Weary, having the most charitable nature of any among them, sighedand yielded the point of silent contention.
"What was all that you started to tell us about the dry-farmers, Andy?"he asked indulgently.
"All straight goods. But there's no use talking to you bone-heads.You'll set around chewing the rag and looking wise till it's too late todo anything but holler your heads off." He got up from where he had beenlounging on a bench just outside the mess house and walked away,with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his shoulders droopedforward.
The Happy Family looked after him doubtfully.
"Aw, it's just some darned josh uh his," Happy Jack declared. "I knowHIM."
"Look at the way he slouches along--like he was loaded to the ears withtrouble!" Pink pointed out amusedly. "He'd fool anybody that didn't knowhim, all right."
"And he fools the fellows that do know him, oftener than anybody else,"added the Native Son negligently. "You're fooled right now if you thinkthat's all acting. That HOMBRE has got something on his mind."
"Well, by golly, it ain't dry-farmers," Slim asserted boldly.
"If you fellows wouldn't say it was a frame-up between us two, I'd goafter him and find out. But..."
"But as it stands, we'd
believe Andy Green a whole lot quicker'n what wewould you," supplemented Big Medicine loudly. "You're dead right there."
"What was it he said about it?" Weary wanted to know. "I wasn't payingmuch attention, with the Kid yelling his head off and old Silver gapinglike a sick turkey, and all. What was it about them dryfarmers?"
"He said," piped Pink, "that he'd got next to a scheme to bring a bigbunch of dry-farmers in on this bench up here, with stock that they'dturn loose on the range. That's what he said. He claims the agent wantedhim to go in on it."
"Mamma!" Weary held a match poised midway between his thigh and hiscigarette while he stared at Pink. "That would be some mixup--if it wasto happen." His sunny blue eyes--that were getting little crow's-feetat their corners--turned to look after the departing Andy. "Where's thejosh?" he questioned the group.
"The josh is, that he'd like to see us all het up over it, and makin'war-talks and laying for the pilgrims some dark night with our six-guns,most likely," retorted Pink, who happened to be in a bad humor becausein ten minutes he was due at a line of post-holes that divided the bigpasture into two unequal parts. "He can't agitate me over anybody'stroubles but my own. Happy, I'll help Bud stretch wire this afternoon ifyou'll tamp the rest uh them posts."
"Aw, you stick to your own job! How was it when I wanted you to helppull the old wire off that hill fence and git it ready to string downhere? You wasn't crazy about workin' with bob wire then, I noticed. Yousaid--"
"What I said wasn't a commencement to what I'll say again," Pink begantruculently, and so the subject turned effectually from Andy Green.
Weary smoked meditatively while they wrangled, and when the group brokeup for the afternoon's work he went unobtrusively in search of Andy.He was not quite easy in his mind concerning the alleged joke. He hadlooked full at the possibilities of the situation--granting Andy hadtold the truth, as he sometimes did--and the possibilities had notpleased him. He found Andy morosely replacing some broken strands in hiscinch, and he went straight at the mooted question.
Andy looked up from his work and scowled. "This ain't any joke with me,"he stated grimly. "It's something that's going to put the Flying Uout of business if it ain't stopped before it gets started. I've beenworrying my head off ever since day before yesterday; I ain't in thehumor to take anything off those imitation joshers up there--I'll tellyuh that much."
"Well, but how do you figure it can be stopped?" Weary sat soberly downon the oats box and absently watched Andy's expert fingers while theyknotted the heavy cotton cord through the cinch-ring. "We can't stand'em off with guns."
Andy dropped the cinch and stood up, pushing back his hat and thenpulling it forward into place with the gesture he used when he was verymuch in earnest. "No, we can't. But if the bunch is game for it there'sa way to block their play--and the law does all our fighting for us. Wedon't have to yeep. It's like this, Weary counting Chip and the LittleDoctor and the Countess there's eleven of us that can use our rights uphere on the bench. I've got it all figured out. If we can get Irish andJack Bates to come back and help us out, there's thirteen of us. Andwe can take homesteads along the creeks and deserts back on the bench,and--say, do you know how much land we can corral, the bunch of us? Fourthousand acres and if we take our claims right, that's going to meanthat we get a dead immortal cinch on all the bench land that's worthlocating, around here, and we'll have the creeks, and also we'll havethe breaks corralled for our own stock.
"I've gone over the plat--I brought a copy to show you fellows what wecan do. And by taking up our claims right, we keep a deadline from theBear Paws to the Flying U. Now the Old Man owns Denson's ranch, allsouth uh here is fairly safe--unless they come in between his south lineand the breaks; and there ain't room for more than two or three claimsthere. Maybe we can get some of the boys to grab what there is, andstring ourselves out north uh here too.
"That's the only way on earth we can save what little feed there isleft. This way, we get the land ourselves and hold it, so there don'tany outside stock come in on us. If Florence Grace Hallman and her bunchlands any settlers here, they'll be between us and Dry Lake; and they'redead welcome to squat on them dry pinnacles--so long as we keep theirstock from crossing our claims to get into the breaks. Savvy the burro?"
"Yes-s--but how'd yuh KNOW they're going to do all this? Mamma! I don'twant to turn dry-farmer if I don't have to!"
Andy's face clouded. "That's just what'll block the game, I'm afraid. Idon't want to, either. None of the boys'll want to. It'll mean goingup there and baching, six or seven months of the year, by our highlonesomes. We'll have to fulfill the requirements, if we startin--because them pilgrims'll be standing around like dogs at a picnic,waiting for something to drop so they can grab it and run. It ain'tgoing to be any snap.
"And there's another thing bothers me, Weary. It's going to be one peachof a job to make the boys believe it hard enough to make their entriesin time." Andy grinned wrily. "By gracious, this is where I could see agilt-edged reputation for telling the truth!"
"You could, all right," Weary agreed sympathetically. "It's going tostrain our swallowers to get all that down, and that's a fact. You oughtto have some proof, if you want the boys to grab it, Andy." His facesobered. "Who is this Florence person? If you could get some kindaproof--a letter, say..."
"Easiest thing in the world!" Andy brightened at the suggestion. "She'sstopping at the Park, in Great Falls, and she wanted me to come up orwrite. Anybody going to town right away? I'll send that foxy dame aletter that'll produce proof enough. You've helped ma a lot, Weary."
Weary scrutinized him sharply and puckered his lips into a doubtfulexpression. "I wish I knew for a fact whether all this is straightgoods, Andy," he said pensively. "Chances are you're just stringing me.But if you are, old boy, I'm going to take it outa your hide--and don'tyou forget that." He grinned at his own mental predicament. "Honest,Andy, is this some josh, or do you mean it?"
"By gracious, I wish it was a josh! But it ain't, darn it. In abouttwo weeks or so you'll all see the point of this joke--but whether thejoke's on us or on the homeseekers' Syndicate depends on you fellows.Lord! I wish I'd never told a lie!"
Weary sat knocking his heels rhythmically against the side of the boxwhile he thought the matter over from start to hypothetical finish andback again. Meanwhile Andy Green went on with his work and scowled overhis well-earned reputation that hampered him now just when he needed theconfidence of his fellows in order to save their beloved Flying U fromslow annihilation. Perhaps his mental suffering could not rightly becalled remorse, but a poignant regret it most certainly was, and a senseof complete bafflement which came out in his next sentence.
"Even if she wrote me a letter, the boys'd call it a frame-up just thesame. They'd say I had it fixed before I left town. Doctor Cecil's up atthe Falls. They'd lay it to her."
"I was thinking of that, myself. What's the matter with getting Chip togo up with you? Couldn't you ring him in on the agent somehow, so he canget the straight of it?"
Andy stood up and looked at Weary a minute. "How'd I make Chip believeme enough to GO?" he countered. "Darn it, everything looked all smoothsailing till I got back here to the ranch and the boys come at me withthat same old smart-aleck brand uh talk. I kinda forgot how I've liedto 'em and fooled 'em right along till they duck every time I open myface." His eyes were too full of trouble to encourage levity in hislistener. "You remember that time the boys' rode off and left me layingout here on the prairie with my leg broke?" he went on dismally. "I'drather have that happen to me a dozen times than see 'em set back andgive me the laugh now, just when--Oh, hell!" He dropped the finishedcinch and walked moodily to the door. "Weary, if them dry-farmers comeflockin' in on us while this bunch stands around callin' me a liar, I--"He did not attempt to finish the sentence; but Weary, staring curiouslyat Andy's profile, saw a quivering of the muscles around his lips andfelt a responsive thrill of sympathy and belief that rose above his longtraining in caution.
Spite of past e
xperience he believed, at that moment, every word whichAndy Green had uttered upon the subject of the proposed immigration. Hewas about to tell Andy so, when Chip walked unexpectedly out of Silver'sstall and glanced from Weary to Andy standing still in the doorway.Weary looked at him enquiringly; for Chip must have heard every wordthey said, and if Chip believed it--
"Have you got that plat with you, Andy?" Chip asked tersely and withnever a doubt in his tone.
Andy swung toward him like a prisoner who has just heard a jury returna verdict of not guilty to the judge. "I've got it, yes," he answeredsimply, with only his voice betraying the emotions he felt--and his eye?"Want it?"
"I'll take a look at it, if it's handy," said Chip.
Andy felt in his inside coat pocket, drew out a thin, folded map of thatparticular part of the county with all the government land marked uponit, and handed it to Chip without a word. He singled out a couple ofpamphlets from a bunch of old letters such as men are in the habit ofcarrying upon their persons, and gave them to Chip also.
"That's a copy of the homestead and desert laws," he said. "I guess youheard me telling Weary what kinda deal we're up against, here. Betternot say anything to the Old Man till you have to; no use worryinghim--he can't do nothing." It was amazing, the change that had come overAndy's face and manner since Chip first spoke. Now he grinned a little.
"If you want to go in on this deal," he said quizzically, "maybe it'llbe just as well if you talk to the bunch yourself about it, Chip. Youain't any tin, angel, but I'm willing to admit the boys'll believe you;a whole lot quicker than they would me."
"Yes--and they'll probably hand me a bunch of pity for getting stung byyou," Chip retorted. "I'll take a chance, anyway--but the Lord help you,Andy if you can't produce proof when the time comes."