They of the High Trails. Garland Hamlin

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СКАЧАТЬ with light as Bidwell's messenger with his sumpter horse piled high with bales of ore-sacks came round the clump of firs at the corner of Bidwell's claim. He was followed by a tall man who rode with a tired droop and nervous clutching at the rein.

      Bidwell stared and exclaimed, "May I be shot if the preachers aren't takin' a hand in the rush!"

      The widow looked unwontedly rosy as she conclusively said, "I sent for him, man dear!"

      "You did? What for?"

      The widow was close enough now to put her hand in the crook of his elbow. "To make us wan, Sherm darlin'. There's no time like the prisent."

      Bidwell tugged at his ragged beard. "I wish I had time to slick up a bit."

      "There'll be plinty of time for that afterward," she said. "Go welcome the minister."

      In the presence of old Angus Craig and young Johnson they were married, and when the minister gave Mrs. Bidwell a rousing smack she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said to Bidwell:

      "Now we're ayqul partners, Sherm, and all old scores wiped out."

      And old Angus wagged his head and said, "Canny lass, the widdy!"

      When the news of this marriage reached the camp demons of laughter and disorder were let loose. Starting from somewhere afar off, a loud procession formed. With camp-kettles for drums and aspen-bark whistles for pipes, with caterwaul and halloo, the whole loosely cohering army of prospectors surrounded the little log cabin of the Maggie Mine and shouted in wild discord:

      "Bidwell! Come forth!"

      "A speech! A speech!"

      Bidwell was for poking his revolver out through the unchinked walls and ordering the mob to disperse, but his wife was diplomatic.

      "'Tis but an excuse to get drink," she said. "Go give them treat."

      So Bidwell went forth, and, while a couple of stalwart friends lifted him high, he shouted, sharp and to the point, "It's on me, Clark!"

      The mob, howling with delight, rushed upon him and bore him away, struggling and sputtering, to Clark's saloon, where kegs of beer were broached and the crowd took a first deep draught. Bidwell, in alarm for Maggie, began to fight to get back to the cabin. But cries arose for the bride.

      "The bride – let's see the bride!"

      Bidwell expostulated. "Oh no! Leave her alone. Are you gentlemen? If you are, you won't insist on seeing her."

      In the midst of the crowd a clear voice rang out:

      "The bride, is it? Well, here she is. Get out o' me way."

      "Clear the road there for the bride!" yelled a hundred voices as Maggie walked calmly up an aisle densely walled with strange men. She had been accustomed to such characters all her life, and knew them too well to be afraid. Mounting a beer-keg, she turned a benign face on the crowd. The light of the torches lighted her hair till it shone like spun gold in a halo round her head. She looked very handsome in the warm, sympathetic light of the burning pitch-pine.

      "Oh yiss, Oi'll make a speech; I'm not afraid of a handful of two-by-fours like you tenderfeet from the valley, and when me speech is ended ye'll go home and go to bed. Eleven days ago Sherm, me man, discovered this lode. Since then we've both worked night and day to git out the ore – we're dog-tired – sure we are – but we're raisonable folk and here we stand. Now gaze y'r fill and go home and l'ave us to rest – like y'r dacent mothers would have ye do."

      "Good for you, Maggie!" called old Angus Craig, who stood near her. "Mak' way, lads!"

      The men opened a path for the bride and groom and raised a thundering cheer as they passed.

      Old Angus Craig shook his head again and said to Johnson: "Sik a luck canna last. To strike a lode and win a braw lass a' in the day, ye may say. Hoo-iver, he waited lang for baith."

      THE COW-BOSS

      – the reckless cowboy on his watch-eyed bronco still lopes across the grassy foot-hills – or holds his milling herd in the high parks.

      II

      THE COW-BOSS

I

      The post-office at Eagle River was so small that McCoy and his herders always spoke of the official within as "the Badger," saying that he must surely back into his den for lack of room to turn round. His presentment at the arched loophole in his stockade was formidable. His head was large, his brow high and seamed, his beard long and tangled, and the look of his hazel-gray eyes remote with cold abstraction.

      "He's not a man to monkey with," said McCoy when the boys complained that the old seed had put up a sign, "NO SPITTING IN THIS OFFICE." "I'd advise you to act accordingly. I reckon he's boss of that thing while he's in there. He's a Populist, but he's regularly appointed by the President, and I don't see that we're in any position to presume to spit if he objects. No, there ain't a thing to do but get up a petition and have him removed – and I won't agree to sign it when you do."

      Eagle River was only a cattle-yard station, a shipping-point for the mighty spread of rolling hills which make up the Bear Valley range to the north and the Grampa to the south. Aside from the post-office, it possessed two saloons, a store, a boarding-house or two, and a low, brown station-house. That was all, except during the autumn, when there was nearly always an outfit of cowboys camped about the corrals, loading cattle or waiting for cars.

      On the day when this story opens, McCoy had packed away his last steer, and, being about to take the train for Kansas City, called his foreman aside.

      "See here, Roy, seems to me the boys are extra boozed already. It's up to you to pull right out for the ranch."

      "That's what I'm going to try to do," answered Roy. "We'll camp at the head of Jack Rabbit to-night."

      "Good idea. Get 'em out of town before dark – every mother's son of 'em. I'll be back on Saturday."

      Roy Pierce was a dependable young fellow, and honestly meant to carry out the orders of his boss; but there was so little by way of diversion in Eagle, the boys had to get drunk in order to punctuate a paragraph in their life. There was not a disengaged woman in the burg, and bad whisky was merely a sad substitute for romance. Therefore the settlers who chanced to meet this bunch of herders in the outskirts of Eagle River that night walked wide of them, for they gave out the sounds of battle.

      They could all ride like Cossacks, notwithstanding their dizzy heads, and though they waved about in their saddles like men of rubber, their faithful feet clung to their stirrups like those of a bat to its perch. In camp they scuffled, argued, ran foot-races, and howled derisive epithets at the cook, who was getting supper with drunken gravity, using pepper and salt with lavish hand.

      Into the midst of this hullabaloo Roy, the cow-boss, rode, white with rage and quite sober.

      "I'll kill that old son of a gun one of these days," said he to Henry Ring.

      "Kill who?"

      "That postmaster. If he wasn't a United States officer, I'd do it now."

      "What's the matter? Wouldn't he shuffle the mail fer you?"

      "Never lifted a finger. 'Nothing,' he barked out at me. Didn't even look up till I let СКАЧАТЬ