The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 5

"Dot," he said, "is der chestnut. I him have heard before."

There was good-humoured laughter--for even when it has an animus an American crowd is usually fair; and in the meanwhile five or six other men got down from a car. They were lean and brown, with somewhat grim faces, and were dressed in blue shirts and jean.

"Well," said one of them, "we're Americans. Got any objections to us getting off here, boys?"

Some of the men in store clothing nodded a greeting, but there were others in wide hats, and long boots with spurs, who jeered.

"Brought your plough-cows along?" said one, and the taunt had its meaning, for it is usually only the indigent and incapable who plough with oxen.

"No," said one of the newcomers. "We have horses back yonder. When we want mules or cowsteerers, I guess we'll find them here. You seem to have quite a few of them around."

A man stepped forward, jingling his spurs, with his jacket of embroidered deerskin flung open to show, though this was as yet unusual, that he wore a bandolier. Rolling back one loose sleeve he displayed a brown arm with the letters "C. R." tattooed within a garter upon it. "See this. You've heard of that mark before?" he said.

"Cash required!" said the newcomer, with a grin. "Well, I guess that's not astonishing. It would be a blame foolish man who gave you credit."

"No, sir," said the stockrider. "It's Cedar Range, and there's twenty boys and more cattle than you could count in a long day carrying that brand. It will be a cold day when you and the rest of the Dakotas start kicking against that outfit."

There was laughter and acclamation, in the midst of which the cars rolled on; but in the meanwhile Grant had seized the opportunity to get a gang-plough previously unloaded from a freight-car into a wagon. The sight of it raised a demonstration, and there were hoots, and cries of approbation, while a man with a flushed face was hoisted to the top of a kerosene-barrel.

"Boys," he said, "there's no use howling. We're Americans. n.o.body can stop us, and we're going on. You might as well kick against a railroad; and because the plough and the small farmer will do more for you than even the locomotive did, they have got to come. Well, now, some of you are keeping stores, and one or two I see here baking bread and making clothes. Which is going to do the most for your trade and you, a handful of rich men, who wouldn't eat or wear the things you have to sell, owning the whole country, or a family farming on every quarter section? A town ten times this size wouldn't be much use to them. Well, you've had your cattle-barons, gentlemen most of them; but even a man of that kind has to step out of the track and make room when the nation's moving on."

He probably said more, but Grant did not hear him, for he had as unostentatiously as possible conveyed Muller and the fraulein into a wagon, and had horses led up for the Dakota men. They had some difficulty in mounting, and the crowd laughed good-humouredly, though here and there a man flung jibes at them; while one, jolting in his saddle as his broncho reared, turned to Grant with a little deprecatory gesture.

"In our country we mostly drive in wagons, but I'll ride by the stirrup and get down when n.o.body sees me," he said. "The beast wouldn't try to climb out this way if there wasn't something kind of p.r.i.c.kly under his saddle."

Grant's face was a trifle grim when he saw that more of the horses were inclined to behave similarly, but he flicked his team with the whip, and there was cheering and derision when, with a drumming of hoofs and rattle of wheels, wagons and hors.e.m.e.n swept away into the dust-cloud that rolled about the trail.

"This," he said, "is only a little joke of theirs, and they'll go a good deal further when they get their blood up. Still, I tried to warn you what you might expect."

"So!" said Muller, with a placid grin. "It is noding to der franc tireurs.

I was in der chase of Menotti among der Vosges. Also at Paris."

"Well," said Grant drily, "I'm 'most afraid that by and by you'll go through very much the same kind of thing again. What you saw at the depot is going on wherever the railroad is bringing the farmers in, and we've got men in this country who'd make first-grade franc tireurs."

IV

MULLER STANDS FAST

The windows of Fremont homestead were open wide, and Larry Grant sat by one of them in a state of quiet contentment after a long day's ride.

Outside, the prairie, fading from grey to purple, ran back to the dusky east, and the little cool breeze that came up out of the silence and flowed into the room had in it the qualities of snow-chilled wine. A star hung low to the westward in a field of palest green, and a shaded lamp burned dimly at one end of the great bare room.

By it the Fraulein Muller, flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry's eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her.

It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fraulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he had now and then daringly pictured sitting there. Her father, perhaps from force of habit, sat with a big meerschaum in hand, by the empty stove, and if his face expressed anything at all it was phlegmatic content. Opposite him sat Breckenridge, a young Englishman, lately arrived from Minnesota.

"What do you think of the land, now you've seen it?" asked Grant.

Muller nodded reflectively. "Der land is good. It is der first-grade hard wheat she will grow. I three hundred and twenty acres buy."

"Well," said Grant, "I'm willing to let you have it; but I usually try to do the square thing, and you may have trouble before you get your first crop in."

"Und," said Muller, "so you want to sell?"

Grant laughed. "Not quite; and I can't sell that land outright. I'll let it to you while my lease runs, and when that falls in you'll have the same right to homestead a quarter or half section for nothing as any other man.

In the meanwhile, I and one or two others are going to start wheat-growing on land that is ours outright, and take our share of the trouble."

"Ja," said Muller, "but dere is much dot is not clear to me. Why you der trouble like?"

"Well," said Grant, "as I've tried to tell you, it works out very much like this. It was known that this land was specially adapted to mixed farming quite a few years ago, but the men who ran their cattle over it never drove a plough. You want to know why? Well, I guess it was for much the same reason that an a.s.sociation of our big manufacturers bought up the patents of an improved process, and for a long while never made an ounce of material under them, or let any one else try. We had to pay more than it was worth for an inferior article that hampered some of the most important industries in the country, and they piled up the dollars in the old-time way."

"Und," said Muller, "dot is democratic America!"

"Yes," said Grant. "That is the America we mean to alter. Well, where one man feeds his cattle, fifty could plough and make a living raising stock on a smaller scale, and the time's quite close upon us when they will; but the cattle-men have got the country, and it will hurt them to let go. It's not their land, and was only lent them. Now I'm no fonder of trouble than any other man, but this country fed and taught me, and kept me two years in Europe looking round, and I'd feel mean if I took everything and gave it nothing back. Muller will understand me. Do you, Breckenridge?"

The English lad laughed. "Oh, yes; though I don't know that any similar obligation was laid on myself. The country I came from had apparently no use for a younger son at all, and it was kicks and snubs it usually bestowed on me; but if there's a row on hand I'm quite willing to stand by you and see it through. My folks will, however, be mildly astonished when they hear I've turned reformer."

Grant nodded good-humouredly, for he was not a fanatic, but an American with a firm belief in the greatness of his country's destiny, who, however, realized that faith alone was scarcely sufficient.

"Well," he said, "if it's trouble you're anxious for, it's quite likely you'll find it here. n.o.body ever got anything worth having unless he fought for it, and we've taken on a tolerably big contract. We're going to open up this state for any man who will work for it to make a living in, and subst.i.tute its const.i.tution for the law of the cattle-barons."

"Der progress," said Muller, "she is irresistible."

Breckenridge laughed. "From what I was taught, it seems to me that she moves round in rings. You start with the luxury of the few, oppression, and brutality, then comes revolution, and worse things than you had before, progress growing out of it that lasts for a few generations until the few fittest get more than their fair share of wealth and control, and you come back to the same point again."

Muller shook his head. "No," he said, "it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on der volute is nod constant."

"On the top?" said Breckenridge. "Princ.i.p.alities and powers, traditional and aristocratic, or monetary. Well, it seems to me they squeeze progress down tolerably flat between them occasionally. Take our old cathedral cities and some of your German ones, and, if you demand it, I'll throw their ghettos in. Then put the New York tenements or most of the smaller western towns beside them, and see what you've arrived at."

"No," said Muller tranquilly. "Weight above she is necessary while der civilization is incomblete, but der force is from der bottom. It is all time positive and primitive, for it was make when man was make at der beginning."

Grant nodded. "Well," he said, "our work's waiting right here. What other men have done in the Dakotas and Minnesota we are going to do. Nature has been storing us food for the wheat plant for thousands of years, and there's more gold in our black soil than was ever dug out of Mexico or California. Still, you have to get it out by ploughing, and not by making theories. Breckenridge, you will stay with me; but you'll want a house to live in, Muller."

Muller drew a roll of papers out of his pocket, and Grant, who took them from him, stared in wonder. They were drawings and calculations relating to building with undressed lumber, made with Teutonic precision and accuracy.

"I have," said Muller, "der observation make how you build der homestead in this country."

"Then we'll start you in to-morrow," said Grant. "You'll get all the lumber you want in the birch bluff, and I'll lend you one or two of the boys I brought in from Michigan. There's n.o.body on this continent handier with the axe."

Muller nodded and refilled his pipe, and save for the click of the fraulein's needles there was once more silence in the bare room. She had not spoken, for the knitting and the baking were her share, and the men whose part was the conflict must be clothed and fed. They knew it could not be evaded, and, springing from the same colonizing stock, placid Teuton with his visions and precision in everyday details, eager American, and adventurous Englishman, each made ready for it in his own fashion.

Free as yet from pa.s.sion, or desire for fame, they were willing to take up the burden that was to be laid upon them; but only the one who knew the least awaited it joyously. Others had also the same thoughts up and down that lonely land, and the dusty cars were already bringing the vanguard of the homeless host in. They were for the most part quiet and resolute men, who asked no more than leave to till a few acres of the wilderness, and to eat what they had sown; but there were among them others of a different kind--fanatics, outcasts, men with wrongs--and behind them the human vultures who fatten on rapine. As yet, the latter found no occupation waiting them, but their sight was keen, and they knew their time would come.

It was a week later, and a hot afternoon, when Muller laid the big crosscut saw down on the log he was severing and slowly straightened his back. Then he stood up, red and very damp in face, a burly, square-shouldered man, and, having mislaid his spectacles, blinked about him. On three sides of him the prairie, swelling in billowy rises, ran back to the horizon; but on the fourth a dusky wall of foliage followed the crest of a ravine, and the murmur of water came up faintly from the creek in the hollow. Between himself and its slender birches lay piled amidst the parched and dusty gra.s.s, and the first courses of a wooden building, rank with the smell of sappy timber, already stood in front of him. There was no notch in the framing that had not been made and pinned with an exact precision. In its scanty shadow his daughter sat knitting beside a smouldering fire over which somebody had suspended a big blackened kettle. The crash of the last falling trunk had died away, and there was silence in the bluff; but a drumming of hoofs rose in a sharp staccato from the prairie.

"Now," said Muller quietly, "I think the cha.s.seurs come."