The Flying U Ranch Part 6

By then the bunk-house was buzzing with voices, and there was none to give heed to Big Medicine s blatant boasting. Others there were who seemed rather inclined to give Weary good advice while they pulled on their boots and sought for their gloves and rolled early-morning cigarettes, and otherwise prepared themselves for what Fate might have waiting for then outside the door.

"Are you sure they're in the coulee, Cadwalloper?" Weary asked, during a brief lull. "They could be up on the hill--"

"h.e.l.l, yes!" was Pink's forceful answer. "They could be on the hill, but they ain't. Why, darn it, they're straggling into the little pasture! I could see 'em from the stable. They--"

"Come and eat your breakfast first, boys, anyway." Weary had his hand upon the door-k.n.o.b. "A few minutes more won't make any difference, one way or the other." He went out and over to the mess-house to see if Patsy had the coffee ready; for this was a good three-quarters of an hour earlier than the Flying U outfit usually bestirred themselves on these days of preparation for roundup and waiting for good gra.s.s.

"I'll be darned if I'd be as calm as he is," Cal Emmett muttered while the door was being closed. "Good thing the Old Man ain't here, now. He'd go straight up in the air. He wouldn't wait for no breakfast."

"I betche there'll be a killin' yet, before we're through with them sheep," gloomed Happy Jack. "When sheepherders starts in once to be ornery, there ain't no way uh stoppin' 'em except by killin' 'em off.

And that'll mean the pen for a lot of us fellers--"

"Well, by golly, it won't be me," Slim declared loudly. "Yuh wouldn't ketch me goin' t' jail for no doggone sheepherder. They oughta be a bounty on 'en by rights."

"Seems queer they'd be right back here this morning, after being hazed out yesterday afternoon," said Andy Green thoughtfully. "Looks like they're plumb anxious to build a lot of trouble for themselves."

Patsy, thumping energetically the bottom of a tin pan, sent them trooping to the mess-house. There it was evident that the breakfast had been unduly hurried; there were no biscuits in sight, for one thing, though Patsy was lumbering about the stove frying hot-cakes. They were in too great a hurry to wait for them, however. They swallowed their coffee hurriedly, bolted a few mouthfuls of meat and fried eggs, and let it go at that.

Weary looked at then with a faint smile. "I'm going to give a few of you fellows a chance to herd sheep to-day," he announced, cooling his coffee so that it would not actually scald his palate. "That's why I wanted you to get some grub into you. Some of you fellows will have to take the trail up on the hill, and meet us outside the fence, so when we chase 'em through you can make a good job of it this time. I wonder--"

"You don't need to call out the troops for that job; one man is enough to put the fear uh the Lord into then herders," Andy remarked slightingly. "Once they're on the move--"

"All right, my boy; we'll let you be the man," Weary told him promptly.

"I was going to have a bunch of you take a packadero outfit down toward Boiler Bottom and comb the breaks along there for horses--and I sure do hate to spend the whole day chasing sheepherders around over the country. So we'll haze 'em through the fence again, and, seeing you feel that way about it, I'll let you go around and keep 'em going. And, if you locate their camp, kinda impress it on the tender, if you can round him up, that the Flying U ain't pasturing sheep this spring. No matter what kinda talk he puts up, you put the run on 'em till you see 'em across One-Man coulee. Better have Patsy put you up a lunch--unless you're fond of mutton."

Andy twisted his mouth disgustedly. "Say, I'm going to quit handing out any valuable advice to you, Weary," he expostulated.

"Haw-haw-haw-w-w!" laughed Big Medicine, and slapped Andy on the shoulder so that his face almost came in contact with his plate.

"Yuh will try to work some innercent man into sheepherdin', will yuh?

Haw-haw-haw-w! You'll come in tonight blattin'--if yuh don't stay out on the range tryin' t' eat gra.s.s, by cripes! Andy had a little lamb that follered him around--"

"Better let Bud take that herdin' job, Weary," Andy suggested. "It won't hurt him--he's blattin' already."

"If you think you're liable to need somebody along," Weary began, soft-heartedly relenting, "why, I guess--"

"If I can't handle two crazy sheepherders without any help, by gracious, I'll get me a job holdin' yarn in an old ladies' hone," Andy cut in hastily, and got up from the table. "Being a truthful man, I can't say I'm stuck on the job; but I'm game for it. And I'll promise you there won't be no more sheep of that brand lickin' our doorsteps. What darned outfit is it, anyway? I never b.u.mped into any Dot sheep before, to my knowledge."

"It's a new one on me," Weary testified, heading the procession down to the stable. "If they belonged anywhere in this part of the country, though, they wouldn't be acting the way they are. They'd be wise to the fact that it ain't healthy."

Even while he spoke his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will carry a long way.

They slapped saddles on their horses in record time that morning, and raced down the coulee ironically shouting commiserating sentences to the unfortunate Andy, who rode slowly up to the mess-house for the lunch which Patsy had waiting for him in a flour sack, and afterward climbed the grade and loped along outside the line fence to a point opposite the sheep and the shouting hors.e.m.e.n, who forced them back by weight of numbers.

This morning the herders were not quite so pa.s.sive. The bug-killer still scowled, but he spoke without the preliminary sulky silence of the day before,

"We're goin' across the coulee," he growled. "Them's orders. We range south uh here."

"No, you don't," Weary dissented calmly. "Not by a long shot, you don't.

You're going back where you come from--if you ask me. And you're going quick!"

CHAPTER VI. What Happened to Andy

With the sun shining comfortably upon his back, and with a cigarette between his lips, Andy sat upon his horse and watched in silent glee while the irate Happy Family scurried here and there behind the band, swinging their ropes down upon the woolly backs, and searching their vocabularies for new and terrible epithets. Andy smiled broadly as a colorful phrase now and then boomed across the coulee in that clear, snappy atmosphere, which carries sounds so far. He did not expect to do much smiling upon his own account, that day, and he was therefore grateful for the opportunity to behold the spectacle before him.

There was Slim, for instance, unwillingly careening down hill toward home, because, in his zeal to slap an old ewe smartly with his rope, he drove her unexpectedly under his horse, and so created a momentary panic that came near standing both horse and rider upon their heads. And there was Big Medicine whistling until he was purple, while the herder, with a single gesture, held the dog motionless, though a dozen sheep broke back from the band and climbed a slope so steep that Big Medicine was compelled to go after them afoot, and turn them with stones and profane objurgations.

It was very funny--when one could sit at ease upon the hilltop and smoke a cigarette while others risked apoplexy and their souls' salvation below. By the time they panted up the last rock-strewn slope of the bluff, and sent the vanguard of the invaders under the fence, Andy's mood was complacent in the extreme, and his smile offensively wide.

"Oh, you needn't look so sorry for us," drawled the Native Son, jingling over toward him until only the fence and a few feet of s.p.a.ce divided them. "Here's where you get yours, amigo. I wish you a pleasant day--and a long one!" He waved his hand in mocking adieu, touched his horse with his silver spurs, and rode gaily away down the coulee.

"Here, sheepherder's your outfit. Ma-aa-a-a!" jeered Big Medicine.

"You'll wisht, by cripes, you was a dozen men just like yuh before you're through with the deal. Haw-haw-haw-w!"

There were others who, seeing Andy's grin, had something to say upon the subject before they left.

Weary rode up, and looked undecidedly from Andy to the sheep, and back again.

"If you don't feel like tackling it single-handed, I'll send--"

"What do yuh think I am, anyway?" Andy interrupted crisply, "a Montgomery Ward two-for-a-quarter cowpuncher? Don't you fellows waste any time worrying over me!"

The herders stared at Andy curiously when he swung in behind the tail-end of the band and kept pace with their slow moving, but they did not speak beyond shouting an occasional command to their dogs. Neither did Andy have anything to say, until he saw that they were swinging steadily to the west, instead of keeping straight north, as they had been told to do. Then he rode over to the nearest herder, who happened to be the bug-killer.

"You don't want to get turned around," he hinted quietly. "That's north, over there."

"I'm workin' fer the man that pays my wages," the fellow retorted glumly, and waved an arm to a collie that was waiting for orders. The dog dropped his head, and ran around the right wing of the band, with sharp yelps and dartings here and there, turning them still more to the west.

Andy hesitated, decided to leave the man alone for the present, and rode around to the other herder.

"You swing these sheep north!" he commanded, disdaining preface or explanation.

"I'm workin' for the man that pays my wages," the herder made answer stolidly, and chewed steadily upon a quid of tobacco that had stained his lips unbecomingly.

So they had talked the thing over--had those two herders--and were following a premeditated plan of defiance! Andy hooked at the man a minute. "You turn them sheep, d.a.m.n you," he commanded again, and laid a hand upon his saddle-horn suggestively.

"You go to the devil, d.a.m.n yuh," advised the herder, and c.o.c.ked a wary eye at him from under his hat-brim. Not all herders, let it be said in pa.s.sing, take unto themselves the mental attributes of their sheep; there are those who believe that a bold front is better than weak compliance, and who will back that belief by a very bold front indeed.

Andy appraised him mentally, decided that he was an able-bodied man and therefore fightable, and threw his right leg over the cantle with a quite surprising alacrity.

"Are you going to turn them sheep?" Andy was taking off his coat when he made that inquiry.

"Not for your tellin'. You keep back, young feller, or I'll sick the dogs on yuh." He turned and whistled to the nearest one, and Andy hit him on the ear.

They clinched and pummeled when they could and where they could. The dog came up, circled the gyrating forms twice, then sat down upon his haunches at a safe distance, tilted his head sidewise and lifted his ears interestedly. He was a wise little dog; the other dog was also wise, and remained phlegmatically at his post, as did the bug-killer.

"Are you going to turn them sheep?" Andy spoke breathlessly, but with deadly significance.