IV“I ain’t noways aimin’ tuh be hollerin’,” explained old Hank, spraying a sage bush with tobacco juice. “I jest want that you boys should know what kind of a skunk yo’re workin’ fer and how he’s throwed the hooks to me.”Tad and Shorty, riding on either side of the cattle-man, nodded.“Two years ago, come July fourth, my son, Pete, gits into a jam over a hoss that Black Jack is abusin’ on the street in Alder Gulch. Black Jack pulls a gun. He’s tanked up on Injun whisky and onery as ——,sabe? He hates the Pete boy anyhow, and comes a rearin’ when Pete tells him tuh quit beatin’ the hoss over the head.“His bullet ketches Pete in the thigh and Pete limbers up his six-gun as he’s a fallin’. Black Jack goes down with a .45 slug in his gun arm and the fight is over.“But the Black Jack gent and Luther Fox is playin’ of a deep game and they sets out tuh bust us. They has Pete throwed in jail and tried fer attempt tuh murder. They’s a dozen LF pole cats that swears on the witness stand that Pete starts the fight and shoots fust. Pete, not havin’ ary witness, is railroaded.“Trials is expensive, boys. Pete’s law sharp bleeds me fer all I kin scrape up. The price uh cattle is lower’n a rattler’s belly and I’m bad crowded tuh git the coin. I borrys ten thousand dollars from the bank and gives my note, never thinkin’ they’d sell the note tuh Luther Fox. I ain’t wise tuh them throat-cuttin’ tricks that’s called good business by some.“That fall finds me busted and in debt. I’m doin’ business with Fox’s bank, buyin’ grub from Fox’s store and the pore specimens uh cowpunchers that’s workin’ fer me is drawin’ double wages from Fox and stealin’ me blind. Up till then, Pete has bin runnin’ the round-up and takin’ care uh that end. He’s made me and Ma take it easy like, sendin’ us to Californy and Florida fer the winters and a babyin’ us scan’lous thataway. Now we’re throwed up ag’in’ it onct more and we pitches in tuh do our dangdest.“The day Pete is sentenced to twenty-five years at Deer Lodge, Ma takes the train fer Helena tuh see the governor and I comes back and starts the fall round-up with as sorry a crew as ever rode a good hoss tuh death. My range covers the country between the lone cottonwood and the Missouri River. Some eighty thousand acres and she’s supposed tuh be fair stocked. Gents, it sounds scary when I tell it, and yuh kin believe it er not, but we works that range and we don’t gather five hundred head uh steers. Somebody’s beat us to it, understand, and I’m cleaned out complete!“I ships the five hundred head which don’t bring no kind of a price, pays off these hoss killers, and gits Joe Kipp tuh help me home with theremudauh sore-backed hosses. Then me and Joe starts in fer tuh hunt them stolen cattle.“There’s old sign a plenty and when we cuts the main trail, we splits up and follers it into the bad lands. There’s mebbe so a stretch uh rough, timbered brakes fer fifteen-twenty miles betwixt the open prairie and the river. Timbered some and stood on end fer the most part. I follers a trail along a timbered ridge while Joe takes the main trail which seems tuh twist eastward towards the LF range.“I’ve rode mebbe so eight-ten miles when my hat gits knocked off and I hears the pop of a 30-30. Some gent has drilled my hat. Over behind some boulders is a puff of white smoke. The range is upwards uh five hundred yards. I picks up my hat, unlimbers ole “meat-in-the-pot” and heads fer Mister Bushwhacker.“Ping!Off goes my hat onct more and this time the shot comes from the other side, a good four hundred yards away.Whoever is doin’ that shootin’ is —— good shots. Thinkin’ along them lines, and wonderin’ where the next bullet will hit, I jabs home the spurs and goes a shootin’ towards Mister Polecat behind the boulders.“Wham!A Winchester barks and my hoss piles up, shot between the eyes. I takes my stand behind his carcass and throws some lead in the direction uh the brush patch where I sees the white smoke fadin’ away. When my gun is empty, I commences shovin’ fresh shells in the magazine. Then —— busts loose. Seems like a army is bombardin’ me. But every danged bullet is goin’ about a foot high. Sudden like, the shootin’ quits.“Got a plenty?” calls a stranger voice. “We bin foolin’ up to now. The next shootin’ we does will be the real article. Git on yore laigs and hit fer home.”“I feels the wind of a steel-jacket bullet as she misses my nose by about a inch. Mad? I was b’ilin’, gents. Only fer leavin Ma a widder, I’d uh stayed till they got me. But het up as I was, I sees how plumb useless it is tuh make a fight, so I drags it.“At the edge uh the bad lands, where we’d split up, I finds Joe Kipp. He’s kinda white and shaky like, and he’s afoot, the same as me. The drawed look around his mouth and the way his eyes looks at me, makes me feel plumb sorry fer him. He’s takin’ it wuss than I am.“‘They shot yor hoss and made a danged target outa yuh, Joe?’ I asks, not knowin’ how else tuh ease his feelin’s.“‘Hank,’ says he, solemn like and earnest as ——, ‘I wish tuh —— they’d uh killed me, instead uh wingin’ me, like they did.’“And he shows me his gun arm, busted between the shoulder and elbow by a soft-nosed bullet. I ties up the arm the best I kin and we commences that thirty-mile walk home. Ol’ Joe never whimpered onct durin’ that night’s walk, though I knowed he was sufferin’ bad. Ner did he do ary talkin’. Up till then he’d bin right hopeful about gittin’ them stolen cattle back. But bein’ set afoot and sech musta drug it outa him bad, fer he ain’t never bin the same man since.“There’s them that claims he’s scared uh Fox, and sometimes it shore looks like they done read the sign right. Me, I don’t know. Seems like, if he was scared uh Fox, that he’d throw up his tail and quit. But he still holds the job down. Some day, I look fer him tuh kill Fox er git killed a-tryin’.”“Didn’t yuh never make no more fight tuh find them cattle?” asked Tad after some silence.“Kipp done went down into the hills two-three times. Each time he went there, he come back afoot, lookin’ like he’d seen a ghost. And somewhere in his hide ’ud be a bullet hole. Not bad, jest a kinda souvenir uh the occasion, as the feller says.“Onct, I gathers me a posse uh cow-men from around the county and we slips into the brakes after night. Injuns couldn’t uh done it more quiet. We’d gone mebbe so five-six miles and was goin’ single file down a steep trail that led into a canyon. Sudden like, fifty feet ahead uh my hoss—I’m in the lead,sabe?—a match sputters. Before I kin unlimber my cannon, a heap uh brush blazes up. There we are, square in the light uh the blaze, the trail too narrer tuh turn around, with a dead drop uh two hundred feet on one side and a shale cliff on the other. On the trail behind us, afore we gits our senses good, another brush pile busts into flame.”“‘Do you idjits turn back from here er does we start a shootin’?’ bellers a gent from the dark up above.“It don’t take no more’n a half-witted sheep herder tuh decide which to do. We tells this gent that we’re turnin’ back.“‘Fifty feet down the trail,’ says he, ‘the trail widens. When the front fire goes out, ride over it to that place and turn. Ary man that passes that wide point, gits a free ticket tuh ——. Us boys is holed up here fer a spell and we ain’t cravin’ no visitors. The next man that rides into these brakes, don’t see his happy home no more.’”“That ended it, eh?” inquired Tad.Hank nodded.“I ain’t never bin back there. What’s the use? They got the bulge in that country. They kin set on a pinnacle and see every rider between the brakes and my place, if they got ary fieldglasses, which they likely has. The only way tuh git into the hills is along them trails and every danged trail is watched. Them cattle is like so many flies in a bottle and Fox’s hand over the mouth tuh keep ’em in. The same crew uh gun fighters that keeps folks from goin’ into the hills, keeps the cattle from driftin’ out.”“Hmm,” mused Tad aloud. “Regular hole-in-the wall proposition, ain’t it? Yeah. How many trails leadin’ into that section, Hank?”“Two,” came the prompt reply. ‘It’s a kinda pocket, widening out beyond where the brakes meets the bottom lands.”“Trails along the river bottoms, ain’t there?”“Nary trail ’ceptin’ late in the fall when the water’s low. It’s what they call the Narrows. Except fer where trails has bin cut out, a man can’t water his saddle hoss along the riverbank fer ten miles. Thirty and forty foot banks,sabe? And at each end uh the ten-mile stretch is a gorge cut out by spring rains and the cricks, which is so full uh quicksand that they’d bog a jacksnipe. A danged pocket, I tell yuh, a danged, gyp-water, soap-hole, shale-banked pocket. And they’s feed in them cañons tuh winter half the cattle in Montana.”“Uh-huh. Yet, some way er another, Hank, it don’t sound noways reasonable that a man can’t git in there. Supposin’ that a man was tuh cross the river, say at one uh the ferries, ride back on the opposite bank till he come opposite them Narrers, then swim across to where one uh them trails is cut in the bank?”Hank laughed mirthlessly. “Can’t be done, pardner. My boy Pete is the only human that ever done it and he crossed when the river was down. Now, at high water, the —— hisself couldn’t make it.”“Yore Pete done it?” put in Shorty, silent up till now.Hank smiled reminiscently.“Pete knowed the river better’n ary human alive. As a kid, he used tuh kinda look after the hosses durin’ the summer. He’d go into the pocket with a pack outfit and stay there till time fer the fall round-up. Long afore I even knowed he could swim, that kid was bustin’ that river wide open, jest fer the fun of it. He like tuh drowned a dozen hosses, learnin’ ’em the channel. I never knowed nobody else that ever swum the Missouri at the Narrows.”“Got ary uh them water hosses at the ranch, Hank?” Shorty’s eyes were dancing excitedly.“Shore thing, but even if you was fool enough tuh tackle it, Shorty, the river’s up and boomin’ now and the current swifter’n a blue-racer snake. I wouldn’t let yuh tackle it, boy. ——’s bells, what ’ud yuh do if yuh did git across?”“Now there’s where yuh got me guessin’,” grinned the little puncher, but that dancing light still flickered in his eyes as they rode on.“If yo’re figgerin’ on playin’ fish, runt, fergit it,” grunted Tad as he licked the paper of a cigaret.They rode on in silence for some time, heading back toward the Basset ranch.“Hank,” Tad broke a lengthy silence, “Did Kipp ever try tuh git help from the Stock Association on this deal?”“If he did, he never said so ner nothin’ ever come of it. Why?”“I was jest a-askin’, that’s all,” came the evasive reply. “Jest tryin’ tuh git a squint at the lay from all sides. How long have yuh knowed Kipp?”“Ever since he come to the country. Lemme see. About eighteen years, near as I kin figger.”“Where’d he come from?”“Don’t know as Joe ever said, and I never asked him. Look here, if yo’re figgerin’ that Joe Kipp is mixed up with Fox and ain’t square, yo’re plumb wrong. Joe’s honest, bank on that. I’d bet my last steer on it.”“Mebbe so yuh done bet ’em already, and lost ’em,” laughed Tad.Hank smiled bitterly.“I reckon not, Ladd. Does ol’ Joe look like a crook er a cow thief tuh you?”“No, Hank. If ever a man had honest eyes, it’s Kipp. A right nice ol’ feller from what me’n Shorty seen uh him. How long has this Fox pole cat bin clutterin’ up the range around here?”“Three years. He leased and bought all the range he could git holt of and throwed in some dogie stuff from the south. Black Jack come with the cattle. He’s bin after my range ever since he come to these parts, but he never offered nowhere near a fair price. He told me, last time he made me a offer, that it was his top price and if I didn’t take it, he’d bust me. It looks like he’s shore doin’ it, too. Him and that black-whiskered Injun.”“Is Black Jack a Injun?” asked Tad. “Half-breed, so they claim. Apache, I reckon, by his looks. It wouldn’t surprise me none if he’s a outlaw. If he wasn’t scared uh bein’ recognized, why does he wear them whiskers? I asked Joe but he ’lowed a man couldn’t arrest a man and shave him without havin’ danged good reason, and I reckon he’s right.”They rode on, each of the three busy with his own thoughts. Ma Basset was waiting for them at the corral. Beside her stood Joe Kipp. Both seemed unusually excited. Ma Basset’s eyes showed signs of weeping.“God help us and him, Hank!” she cried out as Hank dismounted, “Pete’s escaped the pen!”“Have they caught him yet?” asked Hank, his lips white with fear.“He got clean away, Hank,” said Kipp. “I rode over tuh tell yuh.”
“I ain’t noways aimin’ tuh be hollerin’,” explained old Hank, spraying a sage bush with tobacco juice. “I jest want that you boys should know what kind of a skunk yo’re workin’ fer and how he’s throwed the hooks to me.”
Tad and Shorty, riding on either side of the cattle-man, nodded.
“Two years ago, come July fourth, my son, Pete, gits into a jam over a hoss that Black Jack is abusin’ on the street in Alder Gulch. Black Jack pulls a gun. He’s tanked up on Injun whisky and onery as ——,sabe? He hates the Pete boy anyhow, and comes a rearin’ when Pete tells him tuh quit beatin’ the hoss over the head.
“His bullet ketches Pete in the thigh and Pete limbers up his six-gun as he’s a fallin’. Black Jack goes down with a .45 slug in his gun arm and the fight is over.
“But the Black Jack gent and Luther Fox is playin’ of a deep game and they sets out tuh bust us. They has Pete throwed in jail and tried fer attempt tuh murder. They’s a dozen LF pole cats that swears on the witness stand that Pete starts the fight and shoots fust. Pete, not havin’ ary witness, is railroaded.
“Trials is expensive, boys. Pete’s law sharp bleeds me fer all I kin scrape up. The price uh cattle is lower’n a rattler’s belly and I’m bad crowded tuh git the coin. I borrys ten thousand dollars from the bank and gives my note, never thinkin’ they’d sell the note tuh Luther Fox. I ain’t wise tuh them throat-cuttin’ tricks that’s called good business by some.
“That fall finds me busted and in debt. I’m doin’ business with Fox’s bank, buyin’ grub from Fox’s store and the pore specimens uh cowpunchers that’s workin’ fer me is drawin’ double wages from Fox and stealin’ me blind. Up till then, Pete has bin runnin’ the round-up and takin’ care uh that end. He’s made me and Ma take it easy like, sendin’ us to Californy and Florida fer the winters and a babyin’ us scan’lous thataway. Now we’re throwed up ag’in’ it onct more and we pitches in tuh do our dangdest.
“The day Pete is sentenced to twenty-five years at Deer Lodge, Ma takes the train fer Helena tuh see the governor and I comes back and starts the fall round-up with as sorry a crew as ever rode a good hoss tuh death. My range covers the country between the lone cottonwood and the Missouri River. Some eighty thousand acres and she’s supposed tuh be fair stocked. Gents, it sounds scary when I tell it, and yuh kin believe it er not, but we works that range and we don’t gather five hundred head uh steers. Somebody’s beat us to it, understand, and I’m cleaned out complete!
“I ships the five hundred head which don’t bring no kind of a price, pays off these hoss killers, and gits Joe Kipp tuh help me home with theremudauh sore-backed hosses. Then me and Joe starts in fer tuh hunt them stolen cattle.
“There’s old sign a plenty and when we cuts the main trail, we splits up and follers it into the bad lands. There’s mebbe so a stretch uh rough, timbered brakes fer fifteen-twenty miles betwixt the open prairie and the river. Timbered some and stood on end fer the most part. I follers a trail along a timbered ridge while Joe takes the main trail which seems tuh twist eastward towards the LF range.
“I’ve rode mebbe so eight-ten miles when my hat gits knocked off and I hears the pop of a 30-30. Some gent has drilled my hat. Over behind some boulders is a puff of white smoke. The range is upwards uh five hundred yards. I picks up my hat, unlimbers ole “meat-in-the-pot” and heads fer Mister Bushwhacker.
“Ping!Off goes my hat onct more and this time the shot comes from the other side, a good four hundred yards away.
Whoever is doin’ that shootin’ is —— good shots. Thinkin’ along them lines, and wonderin’ where the next bullet will hit, I jabs home the spurs and goes a shootin’ towards Mister Polecat behind the boulders.
“Wham!A Winchester barks and my hoss piles up, shot between the eyes. I takes my stand behind his carcass and throws some lead in the direction uh the brush patch where I sees the white smoke fadin’ away. When my gun is empty, I commences shovin’ fresh shells in the magazine. Then —— busts loose. Seems like a army is bombardin’ me. But every danged bullet is goin’ about a foot high. Sudden like, the shootin’ quits.
“Got a plenty?” calls a stranger voice. “We bin foolin’ up to now. The next shootin’ we does will be the real article. Git on yore laigs and hit fer home.”
“I feels the wind of a steel-jacket bullet as she misses my nose by about a inch. Mad? I was b’ilin’, gents. Only fer leavin Ma a widder, I’d uh stayed till they got me. But het up as I was, I sees how plumb useless it is tuh make a fight, so I drags it.
“At the edge uh the bad lands, where we’d split up, I finds Joe Kipp. He’s kinda white and shaky like, and he’s afoot, the same as me. The drawed look around his mouth and the way his eyes looks at me, makes me feel plumb sorry fer him. He’s takin’ it wuss than I am.
“‘They shot yor hoss and made a danged target outa yuh, Joe?’ I asks, not knowin’ how else tuh ease his feelin’s.
“‘Hank,’ says he, solemn like and earnest as ——, ‘I wish tuh —— they’d uh killed me, instead uh wingin’ me, like they did.’
“And he shows me his gun arm, busted between the shoulder and elbow by a soft-nosed bullet. I ties up the arm the best I kin and we commences that thirty-mile walk home. Ol’ Joe never whimpered onct durin’ that night’s walk, though I knowed he was sufferin’ bad. Ner did he do ary talkin’. Up till then he’d bin right hopeful about gittin’ them stolen cattle back. But bein’ set afoot and sech musta drug it outa him bad, fer he ain’t never bin the same man since.
“There’s them that claims he’s scared uh Fox, and sometimes it shore looks like they done read the sign right. Me, I don’t know. Seems like, if he was scared uh Fox, that he’d throw up his tail and quit. But he still holds the job down. Some day, I look fer him tuh kill Fox er git killed a-tryin’.”
“Didn’t yuh never make no more fight tuh find them cattle?” asked Tad after some silence.
“Kipp done went down into the hills two-three times. Each time he went there, he come back afoot, lookin’ like he’d seen a ghost. And somewhere in his hide ’ud be a bullet hole. Not bad, jest a kinda souvenir uh the occasion, as the feller says.
“Onct, I gathers me a posse uh cow-men from around the county and we slips into the brakes after night. Injuns couldn’t uh done it more quiet. We’d gone mebbe so five-six miles and was goin’ single file down a steep trail that led into a canyon. Sudden like, fifty feet ahead uh my hoss—I’m in the lead,sabe?—a match sputters. Before I kin unlimber my cannon, a heap uh brush blazes up. There we are, square in the light uh the blaze, the trail too narrer tuh turn around, with a dead drop uh two hundred feet on one side and a shale cliff on the other. On the trail behind us, afore we gits our senses good, another brush pile busts into flame.”
“‘Do you idjits turn back from here er does we start a shootin’?’ bellers a gent from the dark up above.
“It don’t take no more’n a half-witted sheep herder tuh decide which to do. We tells this gent that we’re turnin’ back.
“‘Fifty feet down the trail,’ says he, ‘the trail widens. When the front fire goes out, ride over it to that place and turn. Ary man that passes that wide point, gits a free ticket tuh ——. Us boys is holed up here fer a spell and we ain’t cravin’ no visitors. The next man that rides into these brakes, don’t see his happy home no more.’”
“That ended it, eh?” inquired Tad.
Hank nodded.
“I ain’t never bin back there. What’s the use? They got the bulge in that country. They kin set on a pinnacle and see every rider between the brakes and my place, if they got ary fieldglasses, which they likely has. The only way tuh git into the hills is along them trails and every danged trail is watched. Them cattle is like so many flies in a bottle and Fox’s hand over the mouth tuh keep ’em in. The same crew uh gun fighters that keeps folks from goin’ into the hills, keeps the cattle from driftin’ out.”
“Hmm,” mused Tad aloud. “Regular hole-in-the wall proposition, ain’t it? Yeah. How many trails leadin’ into that section, Hank?”
“Two,” came the prompt reply. ‘It’s a kinda pocket, widening out beyond where the brakes meets the bottom lands.”
“Trails along the river bottoms, ain’t there?”
“Nary trail ’ceptin’ late in the fall when the water’s low. It’s what they call the Narrows. Except fer where trails has bin cut out, a man can’t water his saddle hoss along the riverbank fer ten miles. Thirty and forty foot banks,sabe? And at each end uh the ten-mile stretch is a gorge cut out by spring rains and the cricks, which is so full uh quicksand that they’d bog a jacksnipe. A danged pocket, I tell yuh, a danged, gyp-water, soap-hole, shale-banked pocket. And they’s feed in them cañons tuh winter half the cattle in Montana.”
“Uh-huh. Yet, some way er another, Hank, it don’t sound noways reasonable that a man can’t git in there. Supposin’ that a man was tuh cross the river, say at one uh the ferries, ride back on the opposite bank till he come opposite them Narrers, then swim across to where one uh them trails is cut in the bank?”
Hank laughed mirthlessly. “Can’t be done, pardner. My boy Pete is the only human that ever done it and he crossed when the river was down. Now, at high water, the —— hisself couldn’t make it.”
“Yore Pete done it?” put in Shorty, silent up till now.
Hank smiled reminiscently.
“Pete knowed the river better’n ary human alive. As a kid, he used tuh kinda look after the hosses durin’ the summer. He’d go into the pocket with a pack outfit and stay there till time fer the fall round-up. Long afore I even knowed he could swim, that kid was bustin’ that river wide open, jest fer the fun of it. He like tuh drowned a dozen hosses, learnin’ ’em the channel. I never knowed nobody else that ever swum the Missouri at the Narrows.”
“Got ary uh them water hosses at the ranch, Hank?” Shorty’s eyes were dancing excitedly.
“Shore thing, but even if you was fool enough tuh tackle it, Shorty, the river’s up and boomin’ now and the current swifter’n a blue-racer snake. I wouldn’t let yuh tackle it, boy. ——’s bells, what ’ud yuh do if yuh did git across?”
“Now there’s where yuh got me guessin’,” grinned the little puncher, but that dancing light still flickered in his eyes as they rode on.
“If yo’re figgerin’ on playin’ fish, runt, fergit it,” grunted Tad as he licked the paper of a cigaret.
They rode on in silence for some time, heading back toward the Basset ranch.
“Hank,” Tad broke a lengthy silence, “Did Kipp ever try tuh git help from the Stock Association on this deal?”
“If he did, he never said so ner nothin’ ever come of it. Why?”
“I was jest a-askin’, that’s all,” came the evasive reply. “Jest tryin’ tuh git a squint at the lay from all sides. How long have yuh knowed Kipp?”
“Ever since he come to the country. Lemme see. About eighteen years, near as I kin figger.”
“Where’d he come from?”
“Don’t know as Joe ever said, and I never asked him. Look here, if yo’re figgerin’ that Joe Kipp is mixed up with Fox and ain’t square, yo’re plumb wrong. Joe’s honest, bank on that. I’d bet my last steer on it.”
“Mebbe so yuh done bet ’em already, and lost ’em,” laughed Tad.
Hank smiled bitterly.
“I reckon not, Ladd. Does ol’ Joe look like a crook er a cow thief tuh you?”
“No, Hank. If ever a man had honest eyes, it’s Kipp. A right nice ol’ feller from what me’n Shorty seen uh him. How long has this Fox pole cat bin clutterin’ up the range around here?”
“Three years. He leased and bought all the range he could git holt of and throwed in some dogie stuff from the south. Black Jack come with the cattle. He’s bin after my range ever since he come to these parts, but he never offered nowhere near a fair price. He told me, last time he made me a offer, that it was his top price and if I didn’t take it, he’d bust me. It looks like he’s shore doin’ it, too. Him and that black-whiskered Injun.”
“Is Black Jack a Injun?” asked Tad. “Half-breed, so they claim. Apache, I reckon, by his looks. It wouldn’t surprise me none if he’s a outlaw. If he wasn’t scared uh bein’ recognized, why does he wear them whiskers? I asked Joe but he ’lowed a man couldn’t arrest a man and shave him without havin’ danged good reason, and I reckon he’s right.”
They rode on, each of the three busy with his own thoughts. Ma Basset was waiting for them at the corral. Beside her stood Joe Kipp. Both seemed unusually excited. Ma Basset’s eyes showed signs of weeping.
“God help us and him, Hank!” she cried out as Hank dismounted, “Pete’s escaped the pen!”
“Have they caught him yet?” asked Hank, his lips white with fear.
“He got clean away, Hank,” said Kipp. “I rode over tuh tell yuh.”