The Flying U's Last Stand Part 6

"I wouldn't ask you fellows to go into this," said Chip, straightening from his stooping over the map and looking from one sober face to another, "just to help the outfit. But it'll be a good thing for you boys. It'll give you a foothold--something better than wages, if you stay with your claims and prove up. Of course, I can't say anything about us buying out your claims--that's fraud, according to Hoyle; but you ain't simple-minded--you know your land won't be begging for a buyer, in case you should ever want to sell.

"There's another thing. This will not only head off the dry-farmers from overstocking what little range is left--it'll make a dead-line for sheep, too. We've been letting 'em graze back and forth on the bench back here beyond our leased land, and not saying much, so long as they didn't crowd up too close, and kept going. With all our claims under fence, do you realize what that'll mean for the gra.s.s?"

"Josephine! There's feed for considerable stock, right over there on our claims, to say nothing of what we'll cover," exclaimed Pink.

"I'd tell a man! And if we get water on the desert claims--" Chip grinned down at him. "See what we've been pa.s.sing up, all this time.

We've had some of it leased, of course--but that can't be done again.

There's been some wire-pulling, and because we ain't politicians we got turned down when the Old Man wanted to renew the lease. I can see now why it was, maybe. This dry-farm business had something to do with it, if you ask me."

"Gee whiz! And here we've been calling Andy a liar," sighed Cal Emmett.

"Aw, jest because he happened to tell the truth once, don't cut no ice,"

Happy Jack maintained with sufficient ambiguity to avert the natural consequences.

"Of course, it won't be any gold-mine," Chip added dispa.s.sionately.

"But it's worth picking up, all right; and if it'll keep out a bunch of tight-fisted settlers that don't give a darn for anything but what's inside their own fence, that's worth a lot, too."

"Say, my dad's a farmer," Pink declared defiantly in his soft treble.

"And while I think of it, them eastern farmers ain't so worse--not the brand I've seen, anyway. They're narrow, maybe--but they're human.

d.a.m.n it, you fellows have got to quit talking about 'em as if they were blackleg stock or gra.s.shoppers or something."

"We ain't saying nothing aginst farmers AS farmers, Little One" Big Medicine explained forebearingly. "As men, and as women, and as kids, they're mighty nice folks. My folks have got an eighty-acre farm in Wisconsin," he confessed unexpectedly, "and I think a pile of 'em. But if they was to come out here, trying to horn in on our range, I'd lead 'em gently to the railroad, by cripes, and tell 'em goodbye so's't they'd know I meant it! Can't yuh see the difference?" he bawled, goggling at Pink with misleading savageness in his ugly face.

"Oh, I see," Pink admitted mildly. "I only just wanted to remind you fellows that I don't mean anything personal and I don't want you to.

Say, what about One Man Coulee?" he asked suddenly. "That's marked vacant on the map. I always thought--"

"Sure, you did!" Chip grinned at him wisely, "because we used it for a line camp, you thought we owned a deed to it. Well, we don't. We had that land leased, is all."

"Say, by golly, I'll file on that, then," Slim declared selfishly. For One Man coulee, although a place of gruesome history, was also desirable for one or two reasons. There was wood, for instance, and water, and a cabin that was habitable. There was also a fence on the place, a corral and a small stable. "If Happy's ghost don't git to playin' music too much," he added with his heavy-handed wit.

"No, sir! You ain't going to have One Man coulee unless Andy, here, says he don't want it!" shouted Big Medicine. "I leave it to Chip if Andy hadn't oughta have first pick. He's the feller that's put us onto this, by cripes, and he's the feller that's going to pick his claim first."

Chip did not need to sanction that a.s.sertion. The whole Happy Family agreed unanimously that it should be so, except Slim, who yielded a bit unwillingly.

Till midnight and after, they bent heads over the plat and made plans for the future and took no thought whatever of the difficulties that might lie before them. For the coming colony they had no pity, and for the balked schemes of the Homeseekers' Syndicate no compunctions whatever.

So Andy Green, having seen his stratagem well on the way to success, and feeling once more the well-earned confidence of his fellows, slept soundly that night in his own bed, serenely sure of the future.

CHAPTER 6. THE FIRST BLOW IN THE FIGHT

Letters went speeding to Irish and Jack Bates, absent members of the Happy Family of the Flying U; letters that explained the situation with profane completeness, set forth briefly the plan of the proposed pool, and which importuned them to come home or make haste to the nearest land-office and file upon certain quarter-sections therein minutely described. Those men who would be easiest believed wrote and signed the letters, and certain others added characteristic postscripts best calculated to bring results.

After that, the Happy Family debated upon the boldness of going in a body to Great Falls to file upon their claims, or the caution of proceeding instead to Glasgow where the next nearest land-office might be found. Slim and Happy Jack favored caution and Glasgow. The others sneered at their timidity, as they were wont to do.

"Yuh think Florence Grace Hallman is going to stand guard with a six-gun?" Andy challenged at last. "She's tied up till her colony gets there. She can't file on all that land herself, can she?" He smiled reminiscently. "The lady asked me to come up to the Falls and see her,"

he said softly. "I'm going. The rest of you can take the same train, I reckon--she won't stop you from it, and I won't. And who's to stop you from filing? The land's there, open for settlement. At least it was open, day before yesterday."

"Well, by golly, the sooner we go the better," Slim declared fussily.

"That fencin' kin wait. We gotta go and git back before Chip wants to start out the wagons, too."

"Listen here, hombres," called the Native Son from the window, where he had been studying the well-thumbed pamphlet containing the homestead law. "If we want to play dead safe on this, we all better quit the outfit before we go. Call for our time. I don't like the way some of this stuff reads."

"I don't like the way none of it reads," grumbled Happy Jack. "I betche we can't make it go; they's some ketch to it. We'll never git a patent.

I'll betche anything yuh like."

"Well, pull out of the game, then!" snapped Andy Green, whose nerves were beginning to feel the strain put upon them.

"I ain't in it yet," said Happy Jack sourly, and banged the door shut upon his departure.

Andy scowled and returned to studying the map. Finally he reached for his hat and gloves in the manner of one who has definitely made up his mind to some thing.

"Well, the rest of you can do as you darned please," he delivered his ultimatum from the doorway. "I'm going to catch up my horse, draw a month's wages and hit the trail. I can catch the evening train to the Falls, easy, and be ready to file on my chunk first thing in the morning."

"Ain't in any rush, are yuh?" Pink inquired facetiously. "If I had my dinner settled and this cigarette smoked, I might go along--provided you don't take the trail with yuh."

"Hold on, boys, and listen to this," the Native Son called out imperatively. "I think we better get a move on, too; but we want to get a fair running start, and not fall over this hump. Listen here! We've got to swear that it is not for the benefit of any other person, persons or corporation, and so on; and farther along it says we must not act in collusion with any person, persons or corporation, to give them the benefit of the land. There's more of the same kind, too, but you see--"

"Well, who's acting in collusion? What's collusion mean anyhow?" Slim demanded aggressively.

"It means what we're aiming to do--if anybody could prove it on us,"

explained the Native Son. "My oldest brother's a lawyer, and I caught some of it from him. And my expert, legal advice is this: to get into a row with the Old Man, maybe--anyway, quit him cold, so we get our time.

We must let that fact percolate the alleged brains of Dry Lake and vicinity--and if we give any reason for taking claims right under the nose of the Flying U, why, we're doing it to spite the Old Man. Sabe?

Otherwise we're going to have trouble--unless that colony scheme is just a pipe dream of Andy's."

The Happy Family had learned to respect the opinions of the Native Son, whose mixture of Irish blood with good Castilian may have had something to do with his astuteness. Once, as you may have heard, the Native Son even scored in a battle of wits with Andy Green, and scored heavily.

And he had helped Andy pull the Flying U out of an extremely ticklish situation, by his keen wit saving the outfit much trouble and money.

Wherefore they heeded now his warning to the extent of unsmilingly discussing the obstacle he had pointed out to them. One after another they read the paragraph which they had before pa.s.sed over too hastily, and sensed the possibilities of its construction. Afterward they went into serious consultation as to ways and means, calling Happy Jack back so that he might understand thoroughly what must be done. For the Happy Family was nothing if not thorough, and their partisanship that had been growing insensibly stronger through the years was roused as it had not been since Dunk Whittaker drove sheep in upon the Flying U.

The Old Man, having eaten a slice of roast pork the size of his two hands, in defiance of his sister's professional prohibition of the indulgence, was sitting on the sunny side of the porch trying to ignore the first uneasy symptoms of indigestion. The Little Doctor had taken his pipe away from him that morning, and had badgered him into taking a certain decoction whose taste lingered bitterly. The paper he was reading was four days old and he disagreed with its political policy, and there was no telling when anyone would have time to go in after the mail and his favorite paper. Ranch work was growing heavier each year in proportion to the lightening of range work. He was going to sow another twenty acres of alfalfa, and to do that he must cut down the size of his pasture--something that always went against the grain. He had not been able to renew his lease of government land,--which also went against the grain. And the Kid, like the last affliction which the Lord sent unto Job--I've forgotten whether that was boils or the butchery of his offspring--came loping down the length of the porch and kicked the Old Man's bunion with a stubby boot-toe.

Thus was born the psychological moment when the treachery of the Happy Family would cut deepest.

They came, bunched and talking low-voiced together with hatbrims hiding shamed eyes, a type-true group of workers bearing a grievance. Not a man was absent--the Happy Family saw to that! Even Patsy, big and sloppy and bearing with him stale kitchen odors, limped stolidly in the rear beside Slim, who looked guilty as though he had been strangling somebody's favorite cat.

The Old Man, bent head-foremost over his growing paunch that he might caress his outraged bunion, glared at them with belligerent curiosity from under his graying eyebrows. The group came on and stopped short at the steps--and I don't suppose the Happy Family will ever look such sneaks again whatever crime they may commit. The Old Man straightened with a grunt of pain because of his lame back, and waited. Which made it all the harder for the Happy Family, especially for Andy Green who had been chosen spokesman--for his sins perhaps.

"We'd like our time," blurted Andy after an unpleasant silence, and fixed his eyes frigidly upon the lowest rung of the Old Man's chair.

"Oh, you would, hunh? The whole bunch of yuh?" The Old Man eyed them incredulously.

"Yes, the whole bunch of us. We're going to quit."

The Old Man's jaw dropped a little, but his eyes didn't waver from their Hangdog faces. "Well, I never coaxed a man to stay yet," he stated grimly, "and I'm gittin' too old in the business to start coaxin' now.

Dell!" He turned stiffly in his chair so that he faced the open door.

"Bring me my time and check books outa the desk!"

A gray hardness came slowly to the Old Man's face while he waited, his seamed hands gripping the padded arms of his chair. A tightness pulled at his lips behind the grizzled whiskers. It never occurred to him now that the Happy Family might be perpetrating one of their jokes. He had looked at their faces, you see. They meant to quit him--quit him cold just as spring work was beginning. They were ashamed of themselves, of course; they had a right to be ashamed, he thought bitterly. It hurt--hurt so that he would have died before he would ask for excuse, reason, grievance, explanation--for whatever motive impelled them. So he waited, and he gripped the arms of his chair, and he clamped his mouth shut and did not speak a word.