Produced by Al Haines
SAWTOOTH RANCH
BY
B. M. BOWER
METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
JEAN OF THE LAZY A GOOD INDIAN THE UPHILL CLIMB THE GRINGOS THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND THE PHANTOM HERD THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX SKYRIDER
This Book was First Published in Great Britain . . . March 10th, 1921
First Issued in this Cheap Form . . . 1922
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. LITTLE FISH II. THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE III. REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING IV. "SHE'S A GOOD GIRL WHEN SHE AIN'T CRAZY" V. A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT" VI. LONE ADVISES SILENCE VII. THE MAN AT WHISPER VIII. "IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON" IX. THE EVIL EYE OF THE SAWTOOTH X. ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT" XI. SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS XII. THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW XIII. LONE TAKES HIS STAND XIV. "FRANK'S DEAD" XV. SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE XVI. THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND XVII. YACK DON'T LIE XVIII. "I THINK AL WOODRUFF'S GOT HER" XIX. SWAN CALLS FOR HELP XX. KIDNAPPED XXI. "OH, I COULD KILL YOU!" XXII. "YACK, I LICK YOU GOOD IF YOU BARK" XXIII. "I COULDA LOVED THIS LITTLE GIRL" XXIV. ANOTHER STORY BEGINS
SAWTOOTH RANCH
CHAPTER I
LITTLE FISH
Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none toogracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rockystretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrowchannel in the centre where what water there was hurried along to thepools below. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in aplatter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed thepools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle,as the double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.
A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJup-and-down herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly threehundred or so, though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordlyneighbours, the Sawtooth Cattle Company, who numbered their cattle bytens of thousands and whose riders must have strings of fifteen horsesapiece to keep them going; older too than many a modest ranch that hadflourished awhile and had finished as line-camps of the Sawtooth whenthe Sawtooth bought ranch and brand for a lump sum that looked big tothe rancher, who immediately departed to make himself a new homeelsewhere: older than others which had somehow gone to pieces when therancher died or went to the penitentiary under the stigma of a longsentence as a cattle thief. There were many such, for the Sawtooth,powerful and stern against outlawry, tolerated no pilfering from theirthousands.
The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions.Hunter and Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and fora mile and a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hiredtwo men, cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fedtheir cattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously throughthe summer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay theirgrocery bill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buywhat clothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fellill. Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey torheumatism that sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionallyindulged himself in a gallon or so of bad whisky and sufferedafterwards from a badly deranged digestion.
Their house was a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier toget than lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result ofcircumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from themountain-side logs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame tocut the long ones any shorter. Later, when the outside world had crepta little closer to their wilderness--as, go where you will, the outsideworld has a way of doing--he had built a lean-to shed against the cabinfrom what lumber there was left after building a cowshed against thelog-barn.
In the early days, Brit had had a wife and two children, but the wifecould not endure the loneliness of the ranch nor the inconvenience ofliving in a two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying overrattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell outand live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, andbecause he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shankedspurs ajingle on his heels and a snake-skin band around his hat, andbecause a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like astory in a book.
Adventures, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognised andappreciated only at a distance. Mrs Hunter lost the perspective ofromance and adventure, and shed tears because there was sufficientmineral in the water to yellow her week's washing, and for variousother causes which she had never foreseen and to which she refused toresign herself.
Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatumto Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would takethe children and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except thepost-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where afellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.Brit could not imagine himself actually _living_, day after day, in atown. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in arestaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three dayswhen he had meant to finish his business in one, because there was anawfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there wasgoing to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintancewith her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,and be reasonably certain of a favourable answer.
Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friendand neighbour, who had taken all the land the government would allowone man to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him.They had planned to run cattle together, had their brand alreadyrecorded, and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen youngcows. Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when theirate Mrs Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardise his right to theland.
Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life wouldbe a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears andnagging complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frankproved up and came down to live with him, and the partnership began towear into permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked andwrangled together like brothers.
For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then shewrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royalwas old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for themas she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honour andprotect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if hedid not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.
Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnlywhile they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing theunearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel thatthey could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out ofthe question. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncherfancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnieand enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar bank-note. With the two dollarsand a half which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to amail-order house for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwardsbecause the coat was not "wind and waterproof" as advertised in thecatalogue.
More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a noticethat he was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. Hefelt hurt, because, as he pointed out to Frank, he was perfectlywilling to support Minnie and the kids if they came back where he couldhave a chance. He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and receivedno reply. Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself fromhim, and that she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.
/> To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard fromthe children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough towrite. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have anymoney to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed,as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his childrenwere growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote,prattling youngsters whom Minnie was for ever worrying over and whoseemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, or under thewheels of his wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering offinto the sage while he and their distracted mother searched for them.For a long while--how many years Brit could not remember--they had beenliving in Los Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The girl,Lorraine--Minnie had wanted fancy names for the kids, and Britapologised whenever he spoke of them, which was seldom--Lorraine hadwritten that "Mamma has an apartment house." That had soundedprosperous, even at the beginning. And as the years passed and theiraddress remained the same, Brit became fixed in the belief that CasaGrande was all that its name implied, and perhaps more. Minnie must begetting rich. She had a picture of the place on the stationery whichLorraine used when she wrote him. There were two palm trees in front,with bay windows behind them, and pillars. Brit used to study thesemagnificences and thank God that Minnie was doing so well. He nevercould have given her a home like that. Brit sometimes added that hehad never been cut out for a married man, anyway.
Old-timers forgot that Brit had ever been married, and late comersnever heard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit wereold bachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town onlywhen they needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinnedscornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to allthe range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They nevertalked politics nor told which candidates received their two votes.They kept the same two men season after season,--leathery old rangehands with eyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision,and with the gift of silence, which is rare.
If you know anything at all about cattlemen, you will know that theQuirt was a poor man's ranch, when I tell you that Hunter and Johnsonmilked three cows and made butter, fed a few pigs on the skim milk andthe alfalfa stalks which the saddle horses and the cows disdained toeat, kept a flock of chickens, and sold what butter, eggs and pork theydid not need for themselves. Cattlemen seldom do that. More oftenthey buy milk in small tin cans, butter in "squares," and do withouteggs.
Four of a kind were the men of the TJ up-and-down, and even BillWarfield--president and general manager of the Sawtooth Cattle Company,and of the Federal Reclamation Company and several other companies,State senator and general benefactor of the Sawtooth country--even thegreat Bill Warfield lifted his hat to the owners of the Quirt when hemet them, and spoke of them as "the finest specimens of our old,fast-vanishing type of range men." Senator Warfield himselfrepresented the modern type of range man and was proud of hisprogressiveness. Never a scheme for the country's development washatched but you would find Senator Warfield closely allied with it, hisvoice the deciding one when policies and progress were being discussed.
As to the Sawtooth, forty thousand acres comprised their holdings underpatents, deeds and long-time leases from the government. Anothertwenty thousand acres they had access to through the grace of theowners, and there was forest-reserve grazing besides, which theSawtooth could have if it chose to pay the nominal rental sum. TheQuirt ranch, was almost surrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort oranother, though there was scant grazing in the early spring on thesagebrush wilderness to the south. This needed Quirt Creek foraccessible water, and Quirt Creek, save where it ran through cut-bankhills, was fenced within the section and a half of the TJ up-and-down.
So there they were, small fish making shift to live precariously withother small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one smallfish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the othersmall fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but fewwould leave the pool for the safe shallows beyond.
This is a tale of the little fishes.