The Free Range

by Francis William Sullivan

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE THREADS MEET

  It could not have been later than ten o'clock in the morning when apuncher with sharp eyes might have seen two figures approaching the Bar Tranch house on horseback. They rode needlessly close together and swungtheir clasped and gauntleted hands like happy children.

  One was a girl into whose radiant eyes a new wonder had come, and theother a handsome, tanned young man bathed in a deliriously happyexpression.

  "Isn't it jolly to be married without anyone's knowing?" cried Julie. "Oh,but won't they be surprised at home?"

  "Rather!" remarked Bud, with a sobered expression. "I only hope yourfather doesn't widow you just as I ride into the yard with the olivebranch."

  "Stop it, Bud! What puts such awful thoughts into your head?"

  "Experience. Your father was so mad about my getting the sheep across theriver that he started his punchers walking home that same night, andnobody has seen him since."

  Larkin spoke the truth, but little exaggerated. Beef Bissell, humiliated,beaten, and forced to accept the small end of a deal for once in his life,had started from the useless cowmen's camp by the Gray Bull the very nightof the crossing. He ordered the men to follow and round up their stampededhorses and then to ride home.

  Meanwhile he appropriated one horse that had not been in the corral andtrotted homeward, eaten by chagrin and beside himself with impotent fury.

  Bud and Julie had found this out the day of their talk concerning Lester,when they forded the stream on horses and asked for Bissell. Under thecircumstances Bud developed a genius for inspiration that was little shortof marvelous.

  "What's the use of riding all the way home and having a grand row withyour father?" he asked. "Why not go over to Rattlesnake, where there's asky-pilot, and be married? Then we'll go home, and there can't be any row,because there will only be one party in the mood for it."

  But the girl demurred. It was cruel to her father and mother, she said,not to have them present on the greatest day of her life. She allowed itwas mighty ungrateful after all they had done for her. Then Bud took herhand in his and told her his principal reasons.

  "I'm a business man, honey, and I've got to start north after Simmy andthe sheep in three or four days," he said. "Shearing is late now, but Iguess we can make it. This trouble has set me behind close to fifteenthousand dollars, and everything is in a critical state.

  "I know it don't sound much like a lover, but as soon as we get on ourfeet we'll take a honeymoon to Japan that will make you think I'd neverheard of a sheep.

  "You want your mother and father in on the joy, I know, but it doesn'tseem to me there can be much joy with nine or ten men sitting aroundwaiting for their necks to be stretched. Does it to you?"

  "No," said Julie, and shuddered.

  "Then come along over to Rattlesnake and be married. Then we'll ride backto the Bar T, so you can see your folks, and I can see Caldwell. We can bethrough and away before anything is really done about the rustlers."

  So it was arranged, and the two were married by an Episcopal clergyman whohad a surplice but no cassock, and whose trouser-legs looked very funnymoving about inside the thin, white material--and Julie nearly laughed outloud.

  After the ceremony they had ridden out of town with their equipment andmade their first honeymoon camp in a cool, green place beside a littlebrook that had trout in it and sang to them for hours on end.

  Now, the day afterward, they were on the way home, and not without a fewsecret misgivings.

  As they neared the Bar T a single man rode out to meet them. It wasLester, who had come the night before and was waiting for Bud, so as to bepresent at the interview with Smithy Caldwell, whom he had not yet seen.

  He congratulated the pair warmly and rode with them to the corral.

  Suddenly there was a shriek, and Martha Bissell tore out of thecook-house. She ran to Julie, kissed her, and welcomed her back; then whenshe heard the news she picked up her apron to start crying, and dropped itagain, undecided what to do.

  What with Bissell's safe arrival and Julie's glorious home-coming the poorwoman was nearly out of her mind.

  The excitement brought Beef Bissell around the house from the frontveranda, where he had been grumbling and swearing all the morning. Atsight of Larkin he halted in his tracks and began to redden. But he got nofarther, for Julie flung herself into his arms, tears of happinessstreaming down her face, and overwhelmed him with caresses.

  Bissell was mightily relieved to see her. In fact, it had been all hiswife could do to restrain him from starting out to unearth Julie when hearrived home and found her gone. But Martha said that the girl had gone tofind Larkin, and added that the two were old enough to settle theirtroubles between them. So Bissell, remembering his last miserableinterview with his daughter, decided not to interfere.

  "Father, I'm married; please be happy and good to me," the girl said,clinging to him, and the fury that had flown to his head like wine died anatural death. After all, to see her happy was what he most wanted.

  "Are you sure he will love you always?" he asked gently.

  "Yes, father, I am. I refused to marry him long ago in Chicago." He kissedher for the first time in a long while, and then gently disengaged himselfand took a step toward Bud.

  "Larkin," he said, "yuh were always lucky, but yuh've beat all records forWyoming now. I allow yuh can take her away with yuh on one condition."

  "What's that?"

  "That yuh never beat her like yuh beat me."

  "Agreed!" laughed Bud, and grasped the other's hand. "But can you stand asheepman in the family?"

  "I sure can, Larkin. Ever since I seen Jimmie Welsh and his men fight, Iain't got anythin' against sheepmen."

  "Jimmie Welsh!" cried Bud. "Tell me, did any of his party come throughalive?"

  "Jes' Jimmie himself; the boys couldn't kill him, so he's over at BillySpeaker's mendin' up. Heart's pretty near broke because he hasn't seen yuhto explain why he's still alive."

  "Good old Jimmie!" said Bud, the tears leaping to his eyes. "Dearest," headded, turning to Julie, "there's one more stop on our honeymoon, andthat's at Billy Speaker's to-morrow."

  Bissell continued the conversation, and asked for the full story of howBud had run down and captured the rustlers, saying that the whole cowcountry owed him a debt, and if they had only known of the capture intime would have let his sheep through without protest.

  "I imagined as much," remarked Bud; "but I didn't care to get them throughthat way once I had started the other. I hope, Mr. Bissell, that we can befriends, although we have been enemies up to now. I'm sorry I had tosacrifice those cattle of the association, but there was no other way outof it."

  "I'll tell yuh this, Larkin," returned Bissell. "Anybody that can beat meat anything is good enough to be my friend fer life, an' I'm here to statethat yuh could count my friends of that type, before you came, on thehairs of a hairless dog!"

  Bud laughed, they shook hands again, and peace was finally made betweenthem; but not until Beef Bissell had signed away half of the interest inthe Bar T to Julie as her dower.

  That was a happy and hilarious dinner at the ranch. Some of the cowboyscoming in at noon from near-by ranges heard of the marriage and cheeredthe bride lustily when she appeared on the veranda. Bud made himself solidwith the disgruntled punchers by walking out to them and talking over thebattle of Welsh's Butte, while he rolled cigarettes and smoked them oneafter another.

  Shortly afterward, Bud and Lester found themselves in a room with SmithyCaldwell. The blackmailer, when he saw Lester, fell down in a faint, sogreat was the shock to his already wrecked nervous system. The man wasreally in a terrible condition both from physical fear and the tormentingby his comrades. He started at every slight sound, whirled about fearfullyto meet any footfall that sounded near, and trembled with uncontrollablenervous spasms.

  To both the Larkins he was a piteous sight, and Bud wondered that themiserable creature had not gone mad.

 
The wretch fell on his knees and pleaded with them for his life, so thatwhen Bud put the proposition squarely up to him that he forsweareverything in regard to the Larkin family, he could not accept it eagerlyenough.

  "But about the papers that you said were in Chicago?" asked Bud.

  "I lied about them," replied Smithy. "They're sewed in the lining of myshirt. Give me your knife and I'll get 'em for you."

  "Give me your shirt and I'll find them," countered Bud; and he presentlydid.

  Together the brothers looked them over. Every bit of incriminatingevidence was there, and as Bud slipped it all into his pocket he gave agreat sigh: "Thank Heaven, that's over!"

  He did not let Caldwell off, however, without securing from him thewritten and signed statement that he wanted. When all was done they lethim go, and now his mind was almost as unbalanced by joy as it hadformerly been by fear.

  Bissell, knowing Caldwell's condition, had agreed to his being released onclearing his account with the Larkins, for he realized that the man, infearing death, had suffered the penalty a thousand times, and that thememory would remain with him through life, and perhaps help keep himstraight.

  Shortly after Bud and Lester had joined the others on the veranda again, asudden scream was heard from the bunk-house, followed by the sounds of aterrible struggle. All hands rushed around to the rear and, with drawnrevolvers, forced an entrance among the sullen rustlers.

  On the floor in the middle of the room lay Smithy Caldwell, white andcontorted, while Mike Stelton was just rising from his prostrate body,making sounds in his throat like a wild animal. Smithy was dead.

  "How'd it happen, boys?" asked Bissell.

  "This here Caldwell come out an' 'lowed as how he wasn't goin' to swinglike the rest of us, an' he began packin' up his truck. Stelton asked himabout it, an' when Smithy repeated what he said before and got plumb cockyabout it, Mike there smeared him plenty. Then he broke his neck. Smithybetrayed Stelton, yuh know."

  There is not much more to tell, except that, three days later, therustlers paid the penalty of their lawless daring. It was the biggest"hangin' bee" Wyoming had ever seen, and was largely attended by men ofall sections who stood for right and justice, if not law and order.

  Bud and Julie brought pride and sunlight to a slowly recuperating JimmieWelsh on their way north, and from him and Billy Speaker heard again thedetails of the great fight. Now, if you go to Welsh's Butte, you will seea tall white shaft rising amid the tumbling of the wretched hogbacks. Onone side are the names of the sheepmen who fell (including Jimmie, who isstill alive), and on the other those of the cowmen. It is the humbleoffering of Bud and Julie Larkin.

  Time has proven that Bud's prophecy in regard to sheep was right. Wyominghas far more sheep than cattle now, and one of the biggest of the ranchesis the former Bar T, run under the Larkin name, in connection with thehome ranch in Montana.

  I hope it will not be a shock to some readers to know that the first Budand Julie have another Bud and Julie, who are over twenty years of age,quite old enough to have romances of their own.

  All their lives they have heard the story of the adventures that broughttheir parents together, but all four rather sadly admit that the FreeRange, which Bud fought for so hard, is now almost a thing of the past,that the great drives have passed never to return, and that the cowboyhimself is a dim figure against the prairie sunset.

  THE END

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