The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 4

What Wayland was saying to himself was what Moyese would not have understood: it was a foolish, quotation about the Greeks when they come bearing gifts.

"But my dear fellow, we differ on fundamentals. You are for Federal authority. I am for the Federal authority everlastingly minding its own business most _severely_, and the States managing their own business! I am for States Rights. The Federal Government is an expensive luxury, Wayland. It wastes two dollars for every dollar it gives back to the country. There's an army of petty grafters and party heelers to be paid off at every turn! All the States want is to be let alone.

"For three years, Wayland, you have been fighting over those two-thousand acres of coal land where the Smelter stands. You say it was taken illegally. I know that; but they didn't take it! It was jugged through by an English promoter--"

"Just as foreign immigrants are jugging through timber steals to-day,"

thought Wayland; but he answered; "I acknowledge all that, Senator; but when goods are stolen, the owner has the right to take them back where found; and that land was stolen from the U. S. Reserves--ninety-million dollars worth of it."

"I know! I know! But what have _you_ gained? _That_ is what I ask!

Federal Government has blocked every move you have made to take action for these lands, hasn't it? Very soon, the Statute of Limitations will block _you_ altogether."

The Senator shifted a knee. Wayland waited.

"You have gained nothing--less than nothing: you have laid up a lot of ill will for yourself that will block your promotion. Been four years here, haven't you, at seventy-five dollars a month? I pay my cow men more; and _they_ haven't spent five years at Yale. Now take the timber cases. You hold the Smelter shouldn't take free timber from the Forests?"

"No more than the poorest thief who steals a stick of wood from a yard--"

"Pah! Poor man! Dismiss that piffle from your brain! What does the poor man do for the Valley? Why does any man stay poor in this land?

Because he is no good! We've brought in thousands of workmen. We've built up a city. We have developed this State."

"All for your own profit--"

"Exactly! What else does the poor man work for? But I'm not going to argue that kindergarten twaddle of the college highbrows, Wayland. I'm out for all I can make; so is the Smelter; so are you; but the point is you've fought this timber thing; you have filed and filed and filed your recommendations for suit to be inst.i.tuted; so have the Land Office men; have they done any good, Wayland? Has your boasted Federal Government, so superior to the State, taken any action?"

"No," answered Wayland, "somebody has monkeyed with the wheels of justice."

"Then, why do you distress yourself? You have played a losing game for four years, cut your fingers on those same wheels of justice. Quit it, Wayland! What good does it do? Come over to the right side and build up big industries, big development! I've watched you fighting for four years, Wayland! You are the squarest, pluckiest fighter I've ever known. But you can't do a thing! You can't get anywhere! You're wasting the best years of your life mouthing up here in the Mountains at the moon; and who of all the public you are fighting for, my boy, who of all the public gives one d.a.m.n for right or wrong? If we turn you down, who is going to raise a finger for you? Answer that my boy!

They are paying you poorer wages now than we pay any ignorant foreigner down in the Smelter; that's a way the dear people have of caring for their ownest! Chuck it, Wayland! Chuck it! Waken up, man; look out for number one; and, in the words of the ill.u.s.trious Vanderbilticus, let the public be d--ee--d! Come down to my ranch where you'll have a chance to carry out your fine ideas of Range and Forest! h.e.l.l, what are you gaining here, man? A sort o' moral hysterics--that's all!

It's all very well for those Down Easterners, who have lots of money and are keen on the lime light, to go spouting all over the country about running the Government the way you'd run a Sunday School." The Senator had become so tense that he had raised his voice. "Chuck those damfool theories, Wayland! Chuck them, I tell you! Get down to business, man! What are you howling about timber for posterity for?

If you don't look alive, you'll go lean frying fat for posterity! Oh, rot, the thing makes me so tired I can't talk about it! Come down to my ranch. I want a thorough man! I want a man who can fight like the devil if he has to and handle that gang in the cow camp with branding irons! I want 'em run out, do you hear? They're blackguards! I want a man that's a man; and, for pay, you can name your own price. I'll want a partner as I grow older. And don't you do any fool rash thing that I'll have to fight and down you for! I like _you_, Wayland--"

Then three things happened instantaneously. Wayland glanced up.

Eleanor MacDonald was looking straight into his eyes. And the sheep rancher's choppy voice was saying to the Missionary, "Some men go up in the mountains to fish for trout; but others stay right down in the Valley and grow rich catching suckers."

"We can't cross that gully," shouted the boy. "We, can't cross it nohow! We got to cross the ranch trail to go up to them Rim Rocks."

"Why, all right, Fordie," the Senator rose, kicking the folds from the knees of his trousers, "if you boss the job, Fordie, I'll let you cross the ranch! You'll take a few of the herders up with you? And you'll not let the sheep spread over the fields? Better do it towards evening when it's cool for the climb! All right, we'll call that a bargain!

Fordie's on the job to pa.s.s the sheep up the trail; and just to show you I'm fair, here is Miss Eleanor for my witness, you can drive the whole bunch over my ranch! Good night, all! Everybody coming now?

Come on! We'll lead the way, Miss Eleanor. It's getting dark. I'll pad the fall if anybody behind trips. Good night, Wayland; think that offer of mine over? Not coming, Brydges? All right, give Wayland a piece of your mind, as a newspaper man, about this business! Night!

Good night, Calamity!"

CHAPTER IV

STACKING THE CARDS

Bat straddled the slab and lighted his pipe.

"Old man been giving you some good advice?"

"I don't know whether you'd call it good or not. Let's heap the logs on, Brydges, and make the shadows dance."

Brydges did some hard thinking and let the Ranger do the heaping.

"Sort of razzle-dazzler, MacDonald's daughter; she's a winner; but you can't get at her! Sort of feel when she's talking to you as if her other self was 'way down East. Wonder what the old curmudgeon brought her back here for? If she'd let down her high airs a peg, she'd have every fellow in the Valley on a string. She could have Moyese's scalp now if she wanted it--all that's left of it?"

"You can bunk inside! I'll take the hammock." Wayland emerged from the cabin trailing a gray blanket and a lynx skin robe. Bat continued to emit smoke in puffs and curls and wreaths at the top of the trees.

"How many acres do you patrol, d.i.c.kie?"

"About a hundred-thousand."

"Is that all? How many horses does the Govment allow?"

"None! Buy our own!"

"Great Guns! And you're loyal to that kind of Service? It's bally loyal I'd be! Why, Moyese allows me the use of any bronch on his ranch; and, when there's a quick turn to be made, it's a motor car.

Why don't you let me send you up a couple of Moyese's nags? You could pasture 'em here and get their use for nothing. I could do that right off my own responsibility. Need be no connection with the old man."

"Bat," said the Ranger, "did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"I don't know whether I did or not; but, now that I _am_ here, I say it anyway; and I say a whole lot more--don't be a bally fool and buck into a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves, and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and all that? You can't buck the combination, d.i.c.k! It isn't only Moyese! He's a mere tool himself in this game. It's the Ring you're up against, and you can chase yourself all your life round that Ring, and never get anywhere. The big dubs at Washington, the politicians, they are only spokes themselves in that wheel. If you buck into that wheel, you get yourself tangled into a pulp; and if any of those dubs down in Washington thinks he won't fit into the Ring, why he'll find himself broken and jerked out so quick he won't know what has happened till he sees the Wheel going round again with a new spoke in his place."

"Bat, did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"No, I did not." With a twig Bat pushed down the tobacco in his pipe.

"I stayed up here, if you want to know, because we were on our way to the cow camp when the parson and his kid joined us. I guess every man has his limit. That cow-camp gang is mine. I want to live a little longer; and I don't want to know things that might make it useful for me to die. When Moyese wants to deal with that gang, he can go it alone."

"Brydges," said Wayland, "you have given me some frank advice. _I'm_ going to reciprocate. You know what is going on out here. You know why that Arizona gang comes up here. You know why we can't touch them--they are off the Range of the Forest. You know about the stolen coal for the Smelter Ring, thousands of acres of it; and the stolen timber limits for the Lumber Ring, millions of acres of them. If the public knew, Bat, we'd win our fight. It would be a walk over. Every man jack of them would lie down, and stay put. Why don't you tell in your paper? Why don't you tell the truth when you send the dispatches East? If you did, Bat, we could clean out the gang in a month. Why don't you play the game a man should play? Every newspaper man likes a clean sporty fight; and no knifing in the back. Why don't you put up that fight for us, now, Brydges, and stop giving us side jabs?"

Brydges' pipe fell from his teeth.

"Wayland--what in h.e.l.l--do you think--I'm working for?"

There was a big silence.

The look of masterdom came back to Wayland's face; but he paused, looking straight ahead in s.p.a.ce. Perhaps he was looking for the hard grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his eye became a blank.

"You are at least sincere, Brydges," he said. Bat gathered up his shattered pipe.

"I'm not a past-master, _yet_," he said. "I haven't reached the point where I can believe my own lies; so I don't tell 'em and get caught.

I've dug down in the mortuaries of other men too often--long as a man doesn 't believe his own lies, he's on guard and doesn't get caught.

It's when he comes ping against a buzz-saw and finds it's a fact that he has to pay or back down or lose out. You can't budge a fact, d.a.m.n it! Thing always shows the same!"

Bat had found the pieces of his pipe. Fitting the meerschaum to the wood, he had gained confidence and was going ahead full steam.