The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 32

"Y' been out huntin' them seven weeks?"

"Yes, seven weeks!" His articulation had cleared a little. "Please gimme m' gun, Wayland!"

"Y' saw them? Y're sure y' saw them?"

"Saw them?" Sheriff Flood laughed in a thin little squeaking laugh.

"Gosh A'mighty, I--I fought--them single handed for a whole half day; I think I got one! Least ways, there's a powerful smell som'pin dead comin' up below the Pa.s.s Trail. It's too steep to go down to see. I wish I knew."

"Ye wish ye knew? Ye do--do you? 'Tis a wish bone instead of a back bone the likes of you have; and it was too steep to see?" Matthews megaphoned a laugh that echoed loud and long and scornful from the rocks. "I saw a man who was no sheriff climb both up an' down that place too steep for the likes o' you to see; and he climbed to do more than see! 'Twas half an hour y' fought them th' first version? Now 'tis raised to half a day. A'm thinkin' y' be applyin' to th' pension bureau for a hero's triflin' remembrance! Hoh! An' y' saw us pa.s.s did y'? An' y'r frowsy dyed-haired slattern wife told us y' were away?

An' 't will be a week y' fought 'em when y' tell it again; an' y' been huntin' them seven weeks lyin' sodden drunk in y'r tent wi' a whiskey keg from th' cellar o' y'r white-vested friend? Hoh?"

He caught the flabby body by the collar, spinning the dignity of the law round face down p.r.o.ne upon the log. "A'll not take my fist t' y'

as A wud t' a Man! Ye dastard, drunken, poltroon, coward, whiskey sodden lout an' sc.u.m o' filth, an'," each word was emphasized by the thud of the empty whiskey bottle wielded as a flail.

"Look out, sir," warned Wayland, rolling from his horse in laughter, "you'll hurt something, with that bottle."

"Hurt something? N' danger on this wad of fat an' laziness an' lies."

(Thud . . . thump . . . and a double tattoo.) He threw the instrument of castigation aside and spinning the hulk of flesh and sprawling legs erect, began applying the sole of his boot. "A'll no take m' fist t'

y' as A wud t' a Man! A'll treat y' as A wud a dirty broth of a brat of a boy with the flat o' my hand an' sole leather; y' sc.u.m, y' runt, y' hoggish swinish whiskey soak o' bacon an' fat! 'Tis th' likes o'

you are the curse o' this country, y' horse-thief sheriff, y'

bribe-takin' blackguard guardian o' justice an' right! y' coward not doin' th' crime y' self, but shieldin' them that do."

The sheriff had uttered a splutter of filthy expletives at the first blow, then a yell; now he was bellowing aloud, chattering with terror, screaming to be, "let go, let go! I never done you no harm. I'll have y'r life for this."

"Y' will, will y'? Did y' ask for a drink? Wayland, wait for m' here!"

The Ranger saw the white-haired frontiersman seize one sprawling leg and the shirt front of the struggling limp thing in his hands. He heard him plunging down through the tangle of windfall and brush.

There was a bellowing howl and a splash; and Wayland being altogether human flesh and blood doubled up on the ground with laughter.

"That'll cool him," remarked Matthews coming back very red of face and sober, "an' it's not deep enough to drown."

He tore open the tent flap and rolled out a small keg. There was a sound of dregs still rinsing round inside. They could hear the bellows from the brook. The majesty of the law had evidently crawled out on the far side.

"He's the kind o' brave man will slap children, an' call a boy a calf, an' bully timid women, an' knock down little c.h.i.n.ks and dagoes! Oh, A know his kind o' thunder-barrel bravery, that makes the more noise the emptier and bigger it is--they're thick as louse ticks under the slimy side of a dirty board in this world, Wayland; an' they're thick in the girth an' thicker in the skull." Matthews had taken one of the Forest axes from the saddle. He left the whiskey keg in kindling wood.

"He's camped dead beat on the State line, all right, Wayland," said the irate old frontiersman as they mounted their ponies. "He'll have at least some scars to prove his story, but A'm no thinkin' he'll boast round showin' them marks o' glory! 'Tis some satisfaction for my thirst back in the Desert."

"I thought it was about here, on our way out, that a law-loving Briton, I know, gave me a sermon about exceeding law, taking the law in our own hands?"

"Hoh!" said the old man.

And the Sheriff's tent was not the only one seen on the way back to the Ridge. Where the Pa.s.s widened to the Valley above the Sheriff's homestead, they came on a huge miner's tent boarded half way up as for winter residence, with eight tow-headed half-clad urchins thumb in mouth staring out from the open mosquito wire door. There was a smell of onions and frying pork.

"What! a homestead, here, Wayland? D' y'r homesteaders farm on th'

perpendicular, or the level; an' what will they grow on these rocks?"

The Ranger had reined in his pony and was running his glance up the precipice face for the posts marking the bounds.

"What do they grow? Water-power, I guess! I'm looking for the lines.

The fellow has his posts in for a wire fence; he couldn't get a hundred and sixty acres on the level; and the posts run up the face, by George he's blanketed a cool square mile, mostly on the up and down."

"Your territory, Wayland?"

The Ranger had turned looking back up the Pa.s.s.

"The trail marks the lower bounds of the N. F., but this fellow's line runs clear up above the trail. If you bunch this fellow's claim with the Sheriff's, they've got forty miles of the Pa.s.s corked up: no way to bring the timber above down but by the River; and they've got the River; and if possession is nine points in the law, they've got our Forest road besides. We'll have to give that fellow warning and if he doesn't move, break his fence down."

"Gutt dae." A big burly Swede came forward from the miner's tent.

"Are you one of the new settlers?" asked Wayland.

"Yaw! A gott pig--varm! Tra--vor--years mak' pig money liffin' y'ere!

Mae voman, Ae send her vork citie; Ae build mae house y're!"

"All these children yours?"

"Yaw!" The man smiled bigly, incredulous that any one could doubt.

"Have you filed for a homestead for each of them?"

"Yaw!" The man smiled more pleased than ever, indicating the numerous olive branches by a wave of his hand. "Gott gutt pig varm! Pat, Pat Prydges . . . he sae he pay mae voman, one-huntred; mae, two huntred; mae chil'en . . ." he smiled again, bigly and blandly, "mabbee, five, ten. Yaw--?"

"One hundred and sixty acres each: twelve hundred acres for the kids, not one of age, a quarter section to the man!" Then turning back from Matthews to the foreign settler.

"You've got a thundering big farm?"

"Yaw! Ae mak' a pig yob of itt!"

"By George, I should think you do make a big job of it! This is the way those two-thousand acres of coal lands were swiped! Are you the fellow I gave a permit to cut timber up on the Ridge? What did you change your homestead for?"

The Swede stood smiling showing all his white teeth and wrinkling his nose and absorbing the meaning of the Ranger's questions into his skull.

"Pat did utt," he said.

"Who? Oh, Bat!" He looked at Matthews. "Do you mind riding back over the Pa.s.s trail; so we can go to the Ridge by the Gully, the way the outlaws escaped? I want to see where this fellow's upper lines run."

They rode back in silence almost all the way, coming up to the top shoulder of the precipice where the outlaws had come tumbling down on Matthews' hiding place a few weeks before. Wayland followed the lines of the newly planted posts, where the wire had not yet been strung.

"There is not the slightest doubt," he burst out, "this has been done to force a test case! Well, they'll get it."

"Wayland, is there no way of letting the public know what is going on?

A bet the people of this State don't know!"

"It's against the rule to give out information any more," answered Wayland.

"Man alive--is this Russia? Y' mind me of Indians in the conjurors'

tent: they tie the medicine man hand and foot and throw him into a tent; and he's t' make the tent shake. Only the devil-Indians can do it. They tie y' hand an' foot, then they expect y' to serve the Nation."