The Free Range. Sullivan Francis William

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ men who continued the cattle drive after Joe and Pike had captured him.

      The sheepman could not but admire the natural advantages of the place chosen by his captors for the meeting. Rolling hills surrounded the little pocket on all sides, and here and there a red scoria butte thrust its ugly height out of the plain. The chances of discovery were infinitesimal.

      The evolution of the rustler was logical but rapid, and started with the general law that any ranch-owner was at liberty to brand with his mark any maverick found on his range. As it was the cowboy who discovered these strays, he was usually provided with a branding-iron and put the seal of his employer on the animal wherever found.

      From this it was but a step for unscrupulous punchers, or those with a shrewd eye for business, to drive off unbranded cattle and ship them independently to market, or to mark them with a private brand of their own. All this was before the introduction of brand inspectors at the stockyards of Omaha, Kansas City, or Chicago.

      Therefore, among the men at this rendezvous Larkin noted types of cowmen equal to any on the range for horsemanship and ability to handle cattle. With his naturally quick eye, the sheepman observed them closely, but failed to recognize any of them.

      His case came up quickly.

      By various papers in his possession he proved his identity.

      “What were you doing out on the range last night?” asked Joe.

      Bud hesitated for a minute and then, deciding that his safest and quickest course would be to make a clean breast of things, replied:

      “I was driving two thousand head of sheep north on the Bar T.”

      “Then you’re not a cattleman?”

      “No.” Larkin produced his bills of sale for the sheep and these were handed gravely about from one to another, although it was certain that some of the men could not read them.

      “How long are you going to stay in this country?”

      “Just as long as it takes to get my sheep north. I come from Montana.”

      Joe beckoned a number of the men aside out of Larkin’s hearing.

      “We’re plumb lucky,” he announced. “If I know my book, old Bissell will forget all about a few missin’ calves when he knows this feller has sent sheep up his range. Now we’ve got to run off about a hundred more head to that railroad camp north of here, and I think we can use this Larkin.”

      A dark, sullen-looking puncher shook his head slowly.

      “It’s takin’ chances,” he growled. “String him up, I say. He knows us all now, and I’d sooner he’d look through a rope than me.”

      “You shore are ornery, Pete,” said a third, “an’ plumb set on stretchin’ yore neck. Cain’t yuh see that if yuh hang this feller we’ll have both the sheep and cattlemen ag’in us?”

      “Shore, that’s sense,” broke in another. “Less hear Joe’s scheme.”

      “’Tain’t so blame much, boys,” countered the chief modestly. “We’ll make this Larkin swear never to give word agin us if we don’t kill him. Then we’ll run him off into the hills for four or five days with a guard, finish our own drive, and clear out, lettin’ him go. What d’ye think of that?”

      “It’s a reg’lar hum-dinger, Joe,” said one man, and the others concurred in the laudatory opinion.

      But at the first sentence to Larkin, that young man upset their well-laid plans.

      “Larkin,” said Joe, “we allow as how we’d like to make a bargain with yuh?”

      “If you are going to bargain with me to break the law, you had better not say anything about it,” was the reply.

      “I was jest about startin’ one of them mutual protective, benefit and literary sassieties,” suggested Joe tactfully as a feeler, while his comrades grinned.

      “Don’t want to hear about it,” retorted Bud, divining the intention. “You can do anything you like with me, but don’t tell me your bargains. I’ve got troubles enough with my sheep without signing on any more. Now, look here, men, I don’t want to interfere with you, and it only wastes your time to bother with me. Suppose you let me go about my business and you go about yours.”

      “Swear on oath never to recognize or bear witness against us?”

      “No. What kind of a crook do you think I am? If I were put under oath by a sheriff, I would have to accuse you, and I’d do it.”

      Joe Parker’s face lost its expression of genial amiability and he looked about on a circle of dark countenances.

      “I’m plumb sorry you act this-a-way,” he said aggrievedly. “Boys, where’s the nearest tree?”

      “Ten miles.”

      “After dinner everybody saddle up,” came the order.

      CHAPTER VII

      PRAIRIE BELL

      When Juliet Bissell rode back to the Bar T ranch after her parting with Larkin at the fork of Grass Creek, she was a decidedly more thoughtful and sober young woman than she had been at the same hour the day previous.

      Although blessed with an adoring father and a rather eccentric mother, she had, for the last year, begun to feel the stirrings of a tiny discontent.

      Her life was a good example of the familiar mistake made by many a wealthy cattle-owner. Her parents, realizing their crudity and lack of education, had seen to it that she should be given all the advantages denied them, and had sent her East to Chicago for eight consecutive years.

      During this time, while hating the noise and confinement of the city, she had absorbed much of its glamour, and enjoyed its alluring pleasures with a keen appreciation. Music had been her chief study, and her very decided talent had opened a busy career for her had she chosen to follow it.

      But Julie was true to her best instincts, and refused to consider such a thing. Her father and mother had done all in their power for her, she reasoned, and therefore it was but fair that she should return to them and make the closing years of their lives happy.

      Though nothing had ever been said, the girl knew that when she had left the ranch house, even for a week’s visit with a girl friend two hundred miles away, the sun might as well have fallen from the heavens, considering the gloom that descended upon the Bar T.

      It was this knowledge of their need for her that had brought her back to fulfill what she considered her greatest happiness and duty in life.

      Now, a monkey cannot wear clothes, smoke cigarettes, perform before applauding audiences and return to the jungle without a certain feeling of hateful unfitness among his gibbering brethren.

      No more could this wild, lovely creature of the plains become one of the most sought-after girls of Chicago’s North Shore set, and return to the painful prose of the Bar T ranch without paying the penalty.

      With the glory of health and outdoor life, she had failed to realize this, but since the sudden appearance of Bud Larkin she had done little else.

      He had brought СКАЧАТЬ