The Free Range. Sullivan Francis William

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СКАЧАТЬ flashing the fire that had made him feared in the earlier, rougher days of the range, finally stopped at the door.

      “Come on out with me and talk to Red,” he ordered his foreman, and the latter, whose eyes had never left Juliet since he entered the room, reluctantly obeyed.

      Presently Mrs. Bissell took herself off, and Bud and the girl were left alone.

      “I suppose you’ll marry some time,” said Larkin, after a long pause.

      “I sincerely hope so,” was her laughing rejoinder.

      “Any candidates at present?”

      “Not that I know of.”

      “Well, I know of a very active one – he just left the room.”

      “Who, Mike? Bud, that’s preposterous! I’ve known him ever since I was a little girl, and would no more think of marriage with him than of keeping pet rattlesnakes.”

      “Perhaps not, Julie, but Mike would. Will you take the word of an absolutely disinterested observer that the man is almost mad about you, and would sell his soul for one of your smiles?”

      The girl was evidently impressed by the seriousness of his tone, for she pondered a minute in silence.

      “Perhaps you are right, Bud,” she said at last. “I had never thought of it that way. But you needn’t worry; I can take care of myself.”

      “I’m sure of it, but that doesn’t make him any the less dangerous. Keep your eye on him, and if you ever find yourself in a place where you need somebody bad and quick, send for me. He hates me already, and I can’t say I love him any too well; I have an idea that he and I will come to closer quarters than will be good for the health of one of us.”

      “Nonsense, Bud; your imagination seems rather lively to-night. Now, just because I am curious, will you tell me why you went into the sheep business?”

      “Certainly. Because it is the future business of Wyoming and Montana. Sheep can live on less and under conditions that would kill cows. Moreover, they are a source of double profit, both for their wool and their mutton. The final struggle of the range will be between sheep and cattle and irrigation, and irrigation will win.

      “But the sheep will drive the cattle off the range, and, when they, in turn, are driven off, will continue to thrive in the foothills and lower mountains, where there is no irrigation. I went into the sheep business to make money, but I won’t see much of that money for several years. When I am getting rich, cowmen like your father will be fighting for the maintenance of a few little herds that have not been pushed off the range by the sheep. Cattle offer more immediate profit, but, according to my view, they are doomed.”

      “Bud, that’s the best defense of wool-growing I ever heard,” cried the girl. “Up to this I’ve held it against you that you were a sheepman – a silly prejudice, of course, that I have grown up with – but now you can consider yourself free of that. I believe you have hit the nail on the head.”

      “Thanks, I believe I have,” said Bud dryly, and a little while later they separated for the night, but not before he had remarked:

      “I think it would benefit all of us if you drilled some of that common-sense into your father.”

      CHAPTER IV

      THE SIX PISTOL SHOTS

      The next morning, after breakfast, which shortly followed the rising of the sun, Bissell called Bud Larkin aside just as that young man had headed for the corral to rope and saddle Pinte.

      Gone was any hint of the man of the night before. His red face was sober, and his brown eyes looked into Bud’s steel-gray ones with a piercing, almost menacing, intensity.

      “I hope any friend of Julie’s will continue to be my friend,” was all he said, but the glance and manner attending this delicate hint left no doubt as to his meaning. His whole attitude spelled “sheep!”

      “That depends entirely upon you, Mr. Bissell,” was Larkin’s rejoinder.

      The cowman turned away without any further words, and Bud continued on to the corral. At the enclosure he found Stelton roping a wiry and vicious calico pony, and when he had finally cinched the saddle on Pinte, he turned to see Julie at his side.

      “You had better invite me to ride a little way with you,” she said, laughing, “because I am coming anyhow.”

      “Bless you! What a treat!” cried Bud happily, and helped to cinch up the calico, who squealed at every tug.

      Stelton, his dark face flushed to the color of mahogany, sullenly left him the privilege and walked away.

      Presently they mounted, and Bud, with a loud “So-long” and a wave of the hand to some of the punchers, turned south. Julie, loping beside him, looked up curiously at this.

      “I thought you were going north, Bud,” she cried.

      “Changed my plans overnight,” he replied non-committally, and she did not press the subject further, feeling, with a woman’s intuition, that war was in the air.

      Ten miles south, at the ford of the southern branch of Grass Creek, she drew up her horse as the signal for their separation, and faced north. Bud, still headed southward, put Pinte alongside of her and took her hand.

      “It’s been a blessing to see you, you’re so civilized,” she said, half-seriously. “Do come again.”

      “Then you do sometimes miss the things you have been educated to?”

      “Yes, Bud, I do, but not often. Seeing you has brought back a flood of memories that I am happier without.”

      “And that is what you have done for me, dear girl,” he said in a low tone as he pressed her hand. The next moment, with a nonchalant “So-long,” the parting of the plains, he had dug the spurs into his horse and ridden away.

      For a minute the girl sat looking after this one link between her desolate existence and the luxury and society he still represented in her eyes.

      “His manners have changed for the worse,” she thought, recalling his abrupt departure, “but I think he has changed for the better.”

      Which remark proves that her sense of relative masculine values was still sound.

      Larkin continued on directly south-east for twenty miles, until he crossed the Big Horn at what is now the town of Kirby. Thence his course lay south rather than east until he should raise the white dust of his first flock.

      With regard to his sheep, Larkin, in all disputed cases, took the advice of his chief herder, Hard-winter Sims, the laziest man on the range, and yet one who seemed to divine the numbed sheep intelligence in a manner little short of marvelous.

      Sims he had picked up in Montana, when that individual, unable to perform the arduous duties of a cowboy, had applied for a job as a sheep-herder – not so much because he liked the sheep, but because he had to eat and clothe himself. By one of those rare accidents of luck Sims at last found his métier, and Larkin the prince of sheepmen.

      When Bud had determined to “walk” ten thousand animals north, Sims had accompanied him to help in the buying, and was now superintending the long drive.

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