CHAPTER XIII. The Happy Family Learn Something
"Well, I hope this farce is about over," Dunk sneered, with as near anapproach to his old, supercilious manner as he could command, when thethree who had ridden apart returned presently. "Perhaps, Weary, you'llbe good enough to have this fellow put up his gun, and these--" hehesitated, after a swift glance, to apply any epithet whatever to theHappy Family. "I have two witnesses here to swear that you have withoutany excuse assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you mayconsider yourselves lucky if I do not insist--"
"Ah, cut that out," Andy advised wearily. "I don't know how it strikesthe rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don't overlook the factthat two of us happen to know all about you; and we know just where tosend word, to dig up a lot more identification. So bluffing ain't goingto help you out, a darned bit."
"Miguel, you can go with Andy," Weary said with brisk decision. "TakeDunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here--if it's straightgoods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can take Dunk into-morrow, ourselves." He turned and fixed a cold, commanding eye uponthe slack-jawed herders. "Come along, you two, and get these sheepheaded outa here."
"Say, we'll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on back,"Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. "He couldn't get outin a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvilwith a log-chain." He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowedcountenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk didwithout a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.
"What's it all about, Weary?" Irish asked, when the three were gone."What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty fierce, theway he wilted down into the saddle."
"You'll have to wait and ask the boys." Weary rode off to hurry theherders on the far side of the band.
So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject andfor that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel aswell. They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and theycalled it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.
There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and thedam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep downupon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently it happens thatperfectly innocent victims are made to suffer. The Happy Family hadbeen extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before. They hadfrequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled withoutcommitting any real act of violence. But that day had held a long seriesof petty annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept fromthem as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish askedPink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook his headand said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of lying, andhis temper was none the better for the rebuff, as anyone can readilyunderstand.
When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started themmoving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against that shuffling,nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long, weary hours in thesaddle with the other band. But it was Irish who first took measures toaccelerate that pace.
He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across thenearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few paces andreturned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it names and whackedanother.
After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing ithave so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close to theheels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped to look up athim foolishly and blat, and the buck charged ahead in a panic at thenoise and the spat of the bullet behind him.
"Hit him agin in the same place!" yelled Big Medicine, and drew his owngun. The Happy Family, at that high tension where they were ready foranything, caught the infection and began shooting and yelling like crazymen.
The effect was not at all what they expected. Instead of adding impetusto the band, as would have been the case if they had been drivingcattle, the result was exactly the opposite. The sheep ran--but theyran to a common center. As the shooting went on they bunched tighter andtighter, until it seemed as though those in the center must surely becrushed flat. From an ambling, feeding company of animals, they becomea lumpy gray blanket, with here and there a long, vacuous face showingidiotically upon the surface.
The herders grinned and drew together as against a common enemy--oras with a new joke to be discussed among themselves. The dogs wanderedhelplessly about, yelped half-heartedly at the woolly mass, then satdown upon their haunches and lolled red tongues far out over theirpointed little teeth, and tilted knowing heads at the Happy Family.
"Look at the darned things!" wailed Pink, riding twice around thehuddle, almost ready to shed tears of pure rage and helplessness."Git outa that! Hi! Woopp-ee!" He fired again and again, and gave therange-old cattle-yell; the yell which had sent many a tired herd overmany a weary mile; the yell before which had fled fat steers into thestockyards at shipping time, and up the chutes into the cars; the yellthat had hoarsened many a cowpuncher's voice and left him with a merecroak to curse his fate with; a yell to bring results--but it did notstart those sheep.
The Happy Family, riding furiously round and round, fired everycartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper thingthey could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes werestarting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep so tighttogether that dynamite could scarcely have pried them apart.
And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely overhunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low tones, andgrinned.
Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them pointingderisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great oath and made forthem, calling aloud that he would knock those grins so far in that theywould presently find themselves smiling wrong-side-out from the back oftheir heads.
Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of aburrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand inreversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came bellowing upfrom the far side of the huddle like a bull challenging to combat fromacross a meadow. Big Medicine did not know what it was all about, but hescented battle, and that was sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equallyignorant of the cause, started at a lope toward the trouble center.
It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon thoseherders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much so thatthe herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails toward the rim ofDenson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the west.
"Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep it,"exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from him that day.
While he was still laughing, there was a shot from the ridge towardwhich they were running; the sharp, vicious crack of a rifle. The HappyFamily heard the whistling hum of the bullet, singing low over theirheads; quite low indeed; altogether too low to be funny. And they hadsquandered all their ammunition on the prairie sod, to hurry a band ofsheep that flatly refused to hurry anywhere except under one another'sodorous, perspiring bodies.
From the edge of the coulee the rifle spoke again. A tiny geyser ofdust, spurting up from the ground ten feet to one side of Cal Emmett,showed them all where the bullet struck.
"Get outa range, everybody!" yelled Weary, and set the example bytilting his rowels against Glory's smooth hide, and heading eastward."I like to be accommodating, all right, but I draw the line on standingaround for a target while my neighbors practise shooting."
The Happy Family, having no other recourse, therefore retreated in hastetoward the eastern skyline. Bullets followed them, overtook them asthe shooter raised his sights for the increasing distance, and whinedharmlessly over their heads. All save one.