GUESTS OF THE BOSS LADY
Vesta rode out to meet them as they
were coming back, to make sure of her thanks.
She was radiant with gratitude, and at no loss any
longer for words to express it. Before they had
ridden together on the return journey half a mile,
Taterleg felt that he had known her all her life,
and was ready to cast his fortunes with her, win or
lose.
Lambert was leaving the conversation
between her and Taterleg, for the greater part.
He rode in gloomy isolation, like a man with something
on his mind, speaking only when spoken to, and then
as shortly as politeness would permit. Taterleg,
who had words enough for a book, appeared to feel
the responsibility of holding them up to the level
of gentlemen and citizens of the world. Not if
talk could prevent it would Taterleg allow them to
be classed as a pair of boors who could not go beyond
the ordinary cow-puncher’s range in word and
thought.
“It’ll be some time, ma’am,
before that feller Hargus and his boy’ll try
to make a short cut to Glendora through your ranch
ag’in,” said he.
“It was the first time they
were ever caught, after old man Hargus had been cutting
our fence for years, Mr. Wilson. I can’t
tell you how much I owe you for humiliating them where
they thought the humiliation would be on my side.”
“Don’t you mention it,
ma’am; it’s the greatest pleasure in the
world.”
“He thought he’d come
by the house and look in the window and defy me because
I was alone.”
“He’s got a mean eye; he’s got a
eye like a wolf.”
“He’s got a wolf’s habits, too,
in more ways than one, Mr. Wilson.”
“Yes, that man’d steal calves, all right.”
“We’ve never been able
to prove it on him, Mr. Wilson, but you’ve put
your finger on Mr. Hargus’ weakness like a phrenologist.”
Taterleg felt his oats at this compliment.
He sat up like a major, his chest out, his mustache
as big on his thin face as a Mameluke’s.
It always made Lambert think of the handlebars on
that long-horn safety bicycle that he came riding
into the Bad Lands.
“The worst part of it is, Mr.
Wilson, that he’s not the only one.”
“Neighbors livin’ off
of you, are they? Yes, that’s the way it
was down in Texas when the big ranches begun to fence,
they tell me I never was there, ma’am,
and I don’t know of my own knowledge and belief,
as the lawyers say. Fence-ridin’ down there
in them days was a job where a man took his life in
both hands and held it up to be shot at.”
“There’s been an endless
fight on this ranch, too. It’s been a strain
and a struggle from the first day, not worth it, not
worth half of it. But father put the best years
of his life into it, and established it where men
boasted it couldn’t be done. I’m not
going to let them whip me now.”
Lambert looked at her with a quick
gleam of admiration in his eyes. She was riding
between him and Taterleg, as easy in their company,
and as natural as if she had known them for years.
There had been no heights of false pride or consequence
for her to descend to the comradeship of these men,
for she was as unaffected and ingenuous as they.
Lambert seemed to wake to a sudden realization of
this. His interest in her began to grow, his
reserve to fall away.
“They told us at Glendora that
rustlers were running your cattle off,” said
he. “Are they taking the stragglers that
get through where the fence is cut, or coming after
them?”
“They’re coming in and
running them off almost under our eyes. I’ve
only got one man on the ranch beside Ananias; nobody
riding fence at all but myself. It takes me a
good while to ride nearly seventy miles of fence.”
“Yes, that’s so,”
Lambert seemed to reflect. “How many head
have you got in this pasture?”
“I ought to have about four
thousand, but they’re melting away like snow,
Mr. Lambert.”
“We saw a bunch of ’em
up there where them fellers cut the fence,”
Taterleg put in, not to be left out of the game which
he had started and kept going single-handed so long;
“white-faced cattle, like they’ve got
in Kansas.”
“Ours mine are all
white-faced. They stand this climate better than
any other.”
“It must have been a bunch of
strays we saw none of them was branded,”
Lambert said.
“Father never would brand his
calves, for various reasons, the humane above all
others. I never blamed him after seeing it done
once, and I’m not going to take up the barbarous
practice now. All other considerations aside,
it ruins a hide, you know, Mr. Lambert.”
“It seems to me you’d
better lose the hide than the calf, Miss Philbrook.”
“It does make it easy for thieves,
and that’s the only argument in favor of branding.
While we’ve I’ve got the only
white-faced herd in this country, I can’t go
into court and prove my property without a brand,
once the cattle are run outside of this fence.
So they come in and take them, knowing they’re
safe unless they’re caught.”
Lambert fell silent again. The
ranchhouse was in sight, high on its peninsula of
prairie, like a lighthouse seen from sea.
“It’s a shame to let that
fine herd waste away like that,” he said, ruminatively,
as if speaking to himself.
“It’s always been hard
to get help here; cowboys seem to think it’s
a disgrace to ride fence. Such as we’ve
been able to get nearly always turned out thieves
on their own account in the end. The one out with
the cattle now is a farm boy from Iowa, afraid of
his shadow.”
“They didn’t want no fence
in here in the first place that’s
what set their teeth ag’in’ you,”
Taterleg said.
“If I could only get some real
men once,” she sighed; “men who could
handle them like you boys did this morning. Even
father never seemed to understand where to take hold
of them to hurt them, the way you do.”
They were near the house now.
Lambert rode on a little way in silence. Then:
“It’s a shame to let that herd go to pieces,”
he said.
“It’s a sin!” Taterleg declared.
She dropped her reins, looking from
one to the other, an eager appeal in her hopeful face.
“Why can’t you boys stop
here a while and help me out?” she asked, saying
at last in a burst of hopeful eagerness what had been
in her heart to say from the first. She held
out her hand to each of them in a pretty way of appeal,
turning from one to the other, her gray eyes pleading.
“I hate to see a herd like that
broken up by thieves, and all of your investment wasted,”
said the Duke, thoughtfully, as if considering it
deeply.
“It’s a sin and a shame!”
said Taterleg.
“I guess we’ll stay and give you a hand,”
said the Duke.
She pulled her horse up short, and
gave him, not a figurative hand, but a warm, a soft
and material one, from which she pulled her buckskin
glove as if to level all thought or suggestion of a
barrier between them. She turned then and shook
hands with Taterleg, warming him so with her glowing
eyes that he patted her hand a little before he let
it go, in manner truly patriarchal.
“You’re all right, you’re all
right,” he said.
Once pledged to it, the Duke was anxious
to set his hand to the work that he saw cut out for
him on that big ranch. He was like a physician
who had entered reluctantly into a case after other
practitioners had left the patient in desperate condition.
Every moment must be employed if disaster to that
valuable herd was to be averted.
Vesta would hear of nothing but that
they come first to the house for dinner. So the
guests did the best they could at improving their
appearance at the bunkhouse after turning their horses
over to the obsequious Ananias, who appeared with
a large bandage, and a strong smell of turpentine,
on his bruised head.
Beyond brushing off the dust of the
morning’s ride there was little to be done.
Taterleg brought out his brightest necktie from the
portable possessions rolled up in his slicker; the
Duke produced his calfskin vest. There was not
a coat between them to save the dignity of their profession
at the boss lady’s board. Taterleg’s
green-velvet waistcoat had suffered damage during
the winter when a spark from his pipe burned a hole
in it as big as a dollar. He held it up and looked
at it, concluding in the end that it would not serve.
With his hairy chaps off, Taterleg
did not appear so bow-legged, but he waddled like
a crab as they went toward the house to join the companion
of their ride. The Duke stopped on the high ground
near the house, turned, looked off over the great
pasture that had been Philbrook’s battle ground
for so many years.
“One farmer from Iowa out there
to watch four thousand cattle, and thieves all around
him! Eatin’ looks like burnin’ daylight
to me.”
“She’d ‘a’
felt hurt if we’d ‘a’ shied off from
her dinner, Duke. You know a man’s got
to eat when he ain’t hungry and drink when he
ain’t dry sometimes in this world to keep up
appearances.”
“Appearances!” The Duke
looked him over with humorous eye, from his somewhat
clean sombrero to his capacious corduroy trousers gathered
into his boot tops. “Oh, well, I guess
it’s all right.”
Vesta was in excellent spirits, due
to the broadening of her prospects, which had appeared
so narrow and unpromising but a few hours before.
One of this pair, she believed, was worth three ordinary
men. She asked them about their adventures, and
the Duke solemnly assured her that they never had
experienced any.
Taterleg, loquacious as he might be
on occasion, knew when to hold his tongue. Lambert
led her away from that ground into a discussion of
her own affairs, and conditions as they stood between
her neighbors and herself.
“Nick Hargus is one of the most
persistent offenders, and we might as well dispose
of him first, since you’ve met the old wretch
and know what he’s like on the outside,”
she explained. “Hargus was in the cattle
business in a hand-to-mouth way when we came here,
and he raised a bigger noise than anybody else about
our fences, claiming we’d cut him off from water,
which wasn’t true. We didn’t cut anybody
off from the river.
“Hargus is married to an Indian
squaw, a little old squat, black-faced thing as mean
as a snake. They’ve got a big brood of children,
that boy you saw this morning is the senior of the
gang. Old Hargus usually harbors two or three
cattle thieves, horse thieves or other crooks of that
kind, some of them just out of the pen, some preparing
their way to it. He does a sort of general rustling
business, with this ranch as his main source of supply.
We’ve had a standing fight on with him ever since
we came here, but today was the first time, as I told
you, that he ever was caught.
“You heard what he said about
cutting the fence this morning. That’s the
attitude of the country all around. You couldn’t
convict a man for cutting a fence in this country.
So all a person can do is shoot them if you catch
them at it. I don’t know what Hargus will
do to get even with this morning’s humiliation.”
“I think he’ll leave that
fence alone like it was charged with lightnin’,”
Taterleg said.
“He’ll try to turn something; he’s
wily and vindictive.”
“He needs a chunk of lead about
the middle of his appetite,” Taterleg declared.
“Who comes next?” Lambert inquired.
“There’s a man they call
Walleye Bostian his regular name is Jesse on
the farther end of this place that’s troubled
with a case of incurable resentment against a barbed-wire
fence. He’s a sheepman, one of the last
that would do a lawless deed, you’d think, from
the look of him, but he’s mean to the roots
of his hair.”
“All sheepmen’s onery,
ma’am, they tell me,” said Taterleg, a
cowman now from core to rind, and loyal to his calling
accordingly.
“I don’t know about the
rest of them, but Walleye Bostian is a mighty mean
sheepman. Well, I know I got a shot at him once
that he’ll remember.”
“You did?” Taterleg’s
face was as bright as a dishpan with admiration.
He chuckled in his throat, eying the Duke slantingly
to see how he took that piece of news.
The Duke sat up a little stiffer,
his face grew a shade more serious, and that was all
the change in him that Taterleg could see.
“I hope we can take that kind
of work off your hands in the future, Miss Philbrook,”
he said, his voice slow and grave.
She lifted her grateful eyes with
a look of appreciation that seemed to him overpayment
for a service proposed, rather than done. She
went on, then, with a description of her interesting
neighbors.
“This ranch is a long, narrow
strip, only about three miles wide by twenty deep,
the river at this end of it, Walleye Bostian at the
other. Along the sides there are various kinds
of reptiles in human skin, none of them living within
four or five miles of our fences, the average being
much farther than that, for people are not very plentiful
right around here.
“On the north of us Hargus is
the worst, on the south a man named Kerr. Kerr
is the biggest single-handed cattleman around here.
His one grievance against us is that we shut a creek
that he formerly used along inside our fences that
forced him to range down to the river for water.
As the creek begins and ends on our land it
empties into the river about a mile above here it’s
hard for an unbiased mind to grasp Kerr’s point
of objection.”
“Have you ever taken a shot
at him?” the Duke asked, smiling a little dry
smile.
“No-o,” said she reflectively,
“not at Kerr himself. Kerr is what is usually
termed a gentleman; that is, he’s a man of education
and wears his beard cut like a banker’s, but
his methods of carrying on a feud are extremely low.
Fighting is beneath his dignity, I guess; he hires
it done.”
“You’ve seen some fightin’
in your time, ma’am,” Taterleg said.
“Too much of it,” she
sighed wearily. “I’ve had a shot at
his men more than once, but there are one or two in
that Kerr family I’d like to sling a gun down
on!”
It was strange to hear that gentle-mannered,
refined girl talk of fighting as if it were the commonest
of everyday business. There was no note of boasting,
no color of exaggeration in her manner. She was
as natural and sincere as the calm breeze, coming
in through the open window, and as wholesome and pure.
There was not a doubt of that in the mind of either
of the men at the table with her. Their admiration
spoke out of their eyes.
“When you’ve had to fight
all your life,” she said, looking up earnestly
into Lambert’s face, “it makes you old
before your time, and quick-tempered and savage, I
suppose, even when you fight in self-defense.
I used to ride fence when I was fourteen, with a rifle
across my saddle, and I wouldn’t have thought
any more of shooting a man I saw cutting our fence
or running off our cattle than I would a rabbit.”
She did not say what her state of
mind on that question was at present, but it was so
plainly expressed in her flushed cheeks and defiant
eyes that it needed no words.
“If you’d ‘a’
had your gun on you this morning when them fellers
knocked that old coon down I bet there’d ‘a’
been a funeral due over at old Hargus’ ranch,”
said Taterleg.
“I’d saddled up to go
to the post office; I never carry a gun with me when
I go to Glendora,” she said.
“A country where a lady has
to carry a gun at all ain’t no country to speak
of. It needs cleanin’ up, ma’am, that’s
what it needs.”
“It surely does, Mr. Wilson:
you’ve got it sized up just right.”
“Well, Taterleg, I guess we’d
better be hittin’ the breeze,” the Duke
suggested, plainly uneasy between the duty of courtesy
and the long lines of unguarded fence.
Taterleg could not accustom himself
to that extraordinary bunkhouse when they returned
to it, on such short time. He walked about in
it, necktie in his hand, looking into its wonders,
marveling over its conveniences.
“It’s just like a regular human house,”
said he.
There was a bureau with a glass to
it in every room, and there were rooms for several
men. The Duke and Taterleg stowed away their slender
belongings in the drawers and soon were ready for the
saddle. As he put the calfskin vest away, the
Duke took out the little handkerchief, from which
the perfume of faint violet had faded long ago, and
pressed it tenderly against his cheek.
“You’ll wait on me a little
while longer, won’t you?” he asked.
Then he laid it away between the folds
of his remarkable garment very carefully, and went
out, his slicker across his arm, to take up his life
in that strip of contention and strife between Vesta
Philbrook’s far-reaching wire fences.