Patsy, staunch old partisan that he was, placed before them much food which he had tried his best to keep hot without burning everything to a crisp, and while they ate with ravenous haste he told, with German epithets and a trembling lower jaw, of his troubles that day.
“Dem sheeps, dey coom by der leetle pasture,” he lamented while he poured coffee muddy from long boiling. “Looks like dey know so soon you ride away, und dey cooms cheeky as you pleece, und eats der grass und crawls under der fence and leafs der vool sthicking by der vires. I goes out mit a club, py cosh, und der sheeps chust looks und valks by some better place alreatty, und I throw rocks and yells till mine neck iss sore.
“Und' dose herders, dey sets dem by der rock and laugh till I felt like I could kill der whole punch, by cosh! Und von yells, 'Hey, dutchy, pring me some pie, alreatty!' Und he laughs some more pecause der sheeps dey don't go avay; dey chust run around und eat more grass and baa-aa!” He turned and went heavily back to the greasy range with the depleted coffee pot, lifted the lid of a kettle and looked in upon the contents with a purely mechanical glance; gave a perfunctory prod or two with a long-handled fork, and came back to stand uneasily behind Weary.
“If you poys are goin' to shtand fer dot,” he began querulously, “Py cosh I von't! Py myself I vill go and tell dot Dunk W'ittaker vot lowdown skunk I t'ink he iss. Sheep's vool shtickin' by der fences efferwhere on der ranch, py cosh! Dot vould sure kill der Old Man quick if he see it. Shtinkin' off sheeps py our noses all der time, till I can't eat no more mit der shmell of dem. Neffer pefore did I see vool on der Flying U fences, py cosh, und sheeps baa-aain' in der coulee!”
Never had they seen Patsy take so to heart a matter of mere business importance. They did not say much to him; there was not much that they could say. They ate their fill and went out disconsolately to discuss the thing among themselves, away from Patsy's throaty complainings. They hated it as badly as did he; with Weary's urgent plea for no violence holding them in leash, they hated it more, if that were possible.
The Native Son tilted his head unobtrusively stableward when he caught Andy's eye, and as unobtrusively wandered away from the group. Andy stopped long enough to roll and light a cigarette and then strolled after him with apparent aimlessness, secretly curious over the summons. He found Miguel in the stable waiting for him, and Miguel led the way, rope in hand across the corral and into the little pasture where fed a horse he meant to ride. He did not say anything until he had turned to close the gate, and to make sure that they were alone and that their departure had not carried to the Happy Family any betraying air of significance.
“You remember when you blew in here, a few weeks or so ago?” the Native Son asked abruptly, a twinkle in his fathomless eyes. “You put up a good one on the boys, that time, you remember. Bluffed them into thinking I was a hero in disguise, and that you'd seen me pull off a big stunt of bull-fighting and bull-dogging down in Mexico. It was a fine josh. They believe it yet.”
Andy glanced at him perplexedly. “Yes—but when it turned out to be true,” he amended, “the josh was on me, I guess; I thought I was just lying, when I wasn't. I've wondered a good deal about that. By gracious, it makes a man feel funny to frame up a yarn out of his own think-machine, and then find out he's been telling the truth all the while. It's like a fellow handing out a twenty-four karat gold bar to a rube by mistake, under the impression it only looks like one. Of course they believe it! Only they don't know I just merely hit the truth by accident.”
The Native Son smiled his slow, amused smile, that somehow never failed to be impressive. “That's the funny part of it,” he drawled. “You didn't. I just piled another little josh on top of yours, that's all. I never throwed a bull in my life, except with my lariat. I'd heard a good deal about you, and—well, I thought I'd see if I could go you one better. And you put that Mexico yarn across so smooth and easy, I just simply couldn't resist the temptation to make you think it was all straight goods. Sabe?”
Andy Green did not say a word, but he looked exceedingly foolish.
“So I think we can both safely consider ourselves top-hands when it comes to lying,” the Native Son went on shamelessly. “And if you're willing to go in with me on it and help put Dunk on the run—” He glanced over his shoulder, saw that Happy Jack, on horseback, was coming out to haze in the saddle bunch, and turned to stroll back as lazily as he had come. He continued to speak smoothly and swiftly, in a voice that would not carry ten paces. While Andy Green, with brown head bent attentively, listened eagerly and added a sentence or two on his own account now and then, and smiled—which he had not been in the habit of doing lately.
“Say, you fellers are gittin' awful energetic, ain't yuh?—wranglin' horses afoot!” Happy Jack bantered at the top of his voice when he passed them by. “Better save up your strength while you kin. Weary's goin' to set us herdin' sheep agin—and I betche there's goin' to be something more'n herdin' on our hands before we git through.”
“I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was,” sang out Andy, as cheerfully as if he had been invited to dance “Ladies' choice” with the prettiest girl in the crowd. “Wonder what hole he's going to dump this bunch into,” he added to the Native Son. “By gracious, he ought to send 'em just as far north as he can drive 'em without paying duty! I'd sure take 'em over into Canada, if it was me running the show.”
“It was a mistake,” the Native Son volunteered, “for the whole bunch to go off like we did to-day. They had those sheep up here on the hill just for a bait. They knew we'd go straight up in the air and come down on those two freaks herding 'em, and that gave them the chance to cross the other bunch. I thought so all along, but I didn't like to butt in.”
“Well Weary's mad enough now to do things that will leave a dent, anyway,” Andy commented under his breath when, from the corral gate, he got a good look at Weary's profile, which showed the set of his mouth and chin. “See that mouth? It's hunt the top rail, and do it quick, when old Weary straightens out his lips like that.”
Behind them, Happy Jack bellowed for an open gate and no obstructions, and they drew hastily to one side to let the saddle horses gallop past with a great upflinging of dust. Pink, with a quite obtrusive facetiousness, began lustily chanting that it looked to him like a big night to-night—with occasional, furtive glances at Weary's face; for he, also, had been quick to read those close-pressed lips, which did not soften in response to the ditty. Usually he laughed at Pink's drollery.
They rode rather quietly upon the hill again, to where fed the sheep. During the hour or so that they had been absent the sheep had not moved appreciably; they still grazed close enough to the boundary to make their position seem a direct insult to the Flying U, a virtual slap in the face. And these young men who worked for the Flying U, and who made its interests right loyally their own, were growing very, very tired of turning the other cheek. With them, the time for profanity and for horseplay bluffing and judicious temporizing was past. There were other lips besides Weary's that were drawn tight and thin when they approached that particular band of sheep. More than one pair of eyes turned inquiringly toward him and away again when they met no answering look.
They topped a rise of ground, and in the shallow wrinkle which had hidden him until now they came full upon Dunk Whittaker, riding a chunky black which stepped restlessly about while he conferred in low tones with a couple of the herders. The Happy Family recognized them as two of the fellows in whose safe keeping they had left their ropes the night before. Dunk looked around quickly when the group appeared over the little ridge, scowled, hesitated and then came straight up to them.
“I want you rowdies to bring back those sheep you took the trouble to drive off this morning,” he began, with the even, grating voice and the sneering lift of lip under his little, black mustache which the older members of the Happy Family remembered—and hated—so vividly. “I've stood just all I'm going to stand, of these typically Flying U performances you've been indulging in so freely during the past week. It's all very well to terrorize a neighborhood of long-haired rubes who don't know enough to teach you your places; but interfering with another man's property is—”
“Interfering with another—what?” Big Medicine, his pale blue eyes standing out more like a frog's than ever upon his face, gave his horse a kick and lunged close that he might lean and thrust his red face near to Dunk's. “Another what? I don't see nothin' in your saddle that looks t'me like a man, by cripes! All I can see is a smooth-skinned, slippery vermin I'd hate to name a snake after, that crawls around in the dark and lets cheap rough-necks do all his dirty work. I've saw dogs sneak up and grab a man behind, but most always they let out a growl or two first. And even a rattler is square enough to buzz at yuh and give yuh a chanc't to side-step him. Honest to grandma, I don't hardly know what kinda reptyle y'are. I hate to insult any of 'em, by cripes, by namin' yuh after 'em. But don't, for Lordy's sake, ever call yourself a man agin!”
Big Medicine turned his head and spat disgustedly into the grass and looked back slightingly with other annihilating remarks close behind his wide-apart teeth, but instead of speaking he made an unbelievably quick motion with his hand. The blow smacked loudly upon Dunk's cheek, and so nearly sent him out of the saddle that he grabbed for the horn to save himself.
“Oh, I seert yuh keepin' yer hand next yer six-gun all the while,” Big Medicine bawled. “That's one reason I say yuh ain't no man! Yuh wouldn't dast talk up to a prairie dog if yuh wasn't all set to make a quick draw. Yuh got your face slapped oncet before by a Flyin' U man, and yuh had it comm'. Now you're—gittin'—it—done—right!”
If you have ever seen an irate, proletarian mother cuffing her offspring over an empty wood-box, you may picture perhaps the present proceeding of Big Medicine. To many a man the thing would have been unfeasible, after the first blow, because of the horses. But Big Medicine was very nearly all that he claimed to be; and one of his pet vanities was his horsemanship; he managed to keep within a fine slapping distance of Dunk. He stopped when his hand began to sting through his glove.
“Now you keep your hand away from that gun—that you ain't honest enough to carry where folks can see it, but 'ye got it cached in your pocket!” he thundered. “And go on with what you was goin' t'say. Only don't get swell-headed enough to think you're a man, agin. You ain't.”
“I've got this to say!” Mere type cannot reproduce the malevolence of Dunk's spluttering speech. “I've sent for the county sheriff and a dozen deputies to arrest you, and you, and you, damn you!” He was pointing a shaking finger at the older members of the Happy Family, whom he recognized not gladly, but too well. “I'll have you all in Deer Lodge before that lying, thieving, cattle-stealing Old Man of yours can lift a finger. I'll sheep Flying U coulee to the very doors of the white house. I'll skin the range between here and the river—and I'll have every one of you hounds put where the dogs won't bite you!” He drew a hand across his mouth and smiled as they say Satan himself can smile upon occasion.
“You've done enough to send you all over the road; destroying property and assaulting harmless men—you wait! There are other and better ways to fight than with the fists, and I haven't forgotten any of you fellows—there are a few more rounders among you—”
“Hey! You apologize fer that, by cripes, er I'll kill yuh the longest way I know. And that—” Big Medicine again laid violent hands upon Dunk, “and that way won't feel good, now I'm tellin' yuh. Apologize, er—”
“Say, all this don't do any good, Bud,” Weary expostulated. “Let Dunk froth at the mouth if he wants to; what we want is to get these sheep off the range. And,” he added recklessly, “so long as the sheriff is headed for us anyway, we may as well get busy and make it worth his while. So—” He stopped, silenced by a most amazing interruption.
On the brow of the hill, when first they had sighted Dunk in the hollow, something had gone wrong with Miguel's saddle so that he had stopped behind; and, to keep him company, Andy had stopped also and waited for him. Later, when Dunk was spluttering threats, they had galloped up to the edge of the group and pulled their horses to a stand. Now, Miguel rode abruptly close to Dunk as rides one with a purpose.
He leaned and peered intently into Dunk's distorted countenance until every man there, struck by his manner, was watching him curiously. Then he sat back in the saddle, straightened his legs in the stirrups and laughed. And like his smile when he would have it so, or the little twitch of shoulders by which he could so incense a man, that laugh brought a deeper flush to Dunk's face, reddened though it was by Big Medicine's vigorous slapping.
“Say, you've got nerve,” drawled the Native Son, “to let a sheriff travel toward you. I can remember when you were more timid, amigo.” He turned his head until his eyes fell upon Andy. “Say, Andy!” he called. “Come and take a look at this hombre. You'll have to think back a few years,” he assisted laconically.
In response, Andy rode up eagerly. Like the Native Son, he leaned and peered into eyes that stared back defiantly, wavered, and turned away. Andy also sat back in the saddle then, and snorted.
“So this is the Dunk Whittaker that's been raising merry hell around here! And talks about sending for the sheriff, huh? I've always heard that a lot uh gall is the best disguise a man can hide under, but, by gracious, this beats the deuce!” He turned to the astounded Happy Family with growing excitement in his manner.
“Boys, we don't have to worry much about this gazabo! We'll just freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There'll sure be something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person really is! And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh, Lord!” He looked with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk's glance flickered again and dropped, just as his hand dropped to the pocket of his coat.
“No, yuh don't, by cripes!” Big Medicine's hand gripped Dunk's arm on the instant. With his other he plucked the gun from Dunk's pocket, and released him as he would let go of something foul which he had been compelled to touch.
“He'll be good, or he'll lose his dinner quick,” drawled the Native Son, drawing his own silver-mounted six-shooter and resting it upon the saddle horn so that it pointed straight at Dunk's diaphragm. “You take Weary off somewhere and tell him something about this deal, Andy. I'll watch this slippery gentleman.” He smiled slowly and got an answering grin from Andy Green, who immediately rode a few rods away, with Weary and Pink close behind.
“Say, by golly, what's Dunk wanted fer?” Slim blurted inquisitively after a short silence.
“Not for riding or driving over a bridge faster than a walk Slim,” purred the Native Son, shifting his gun a trifle as Dunk moved uneasily in the saddle. “You know the man. Look at his face—and use your imagination, if you've got any.”
“Well, I hope this farce is about over,” Dunk sneered, with as near an approach to his old, supercilious manner as he could command, when the three who had ridden apart returned presently. “Perhaps, Weary, you'll be good enough to have this fellow put up his gun, and these—” he hesitated, after a swift glance, to apply any epithet whatever to the Happy Family. “I have two witnesses here to swear that you have without any excuse assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you may consider yourselves lucky if I do not insist—”
“Ah, cut that out,” Andy advised wearily. “I don't know how it strikes the rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don't overlook the fact that two of us happen to know all about you; and we know just where to send word, to dig up a lot more identification. So bluffing ain't going to help you out, a darned bit.”
“Miguel, you can go with Andy,” Weary said with brisk decision. “Take Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here—if it's straight goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can take Dunk in to-morrow, ourselves.” He turned and fixed a cold, commanding eye upon the slack-jawed herders. “Come along, you two, and get these sheep headed outa here.”
“Say, we'll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on back,” Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. “He couldn't get out in a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvil with a log-chain.” He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed countenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did without a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.
“What's it all about, Weary?” Irish asked, when the three were gone. “What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty fierce, the way he wilted down into the saddle.”
“You'll have to wait and ask the boys.” Weary rode off to hurry the herders on the far side of the band.
So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject and for that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel as well. They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and they called it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.
There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and the dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep down upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently it happens that perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer. The Happy Family had been extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before. They had frequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled without committing any real act of violence. But that day had held a long series of petty annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from them as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook his head and said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of lying, and his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as anyone can readily understand.
When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started them moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against that shuffling, nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long, weary hours in the saddle with the other band. But it was Irish who first took measures to accelerate that pace.
He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across the nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few paces and returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it names and whacked another.
After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing it have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close to the heels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped to look up at him foolishly and blat, and the buck charged ahead in a panic at the noise and the spat of the bullet behind him.
“Hit him agin in the same place!” yelled Big Medicine, and drew his own gun. The Happy Family, at that high tension where they were ready for anything, caught the infection and began shooting and yelling like crazy men.
The effect was not at all what they expected. Instead of adding impetus to the band, as would have been the case if they had been driving cattle, the result was exactly the opposite. The sheep ran—but they ran to a common center. As the shooting went on they bunched tighter and tighter, until it seemed as though those in the center must surely be crushed flat. From an ambling, feeding company of animals, they become a lumpy gray blanket, with here and there a long, vacuous face showing idiotically upon the surface.
The herders grinned and drew together as against a common enemy—or as with a new joke to be discussed among themselves. The dogs wandered helplessly about, yelped half-heartedly at the woolly mass, then sat down upon their haunches and lolled red tongues far out over their pointed little teeth, and tilted knowing heads at the Happy Family.
“Look at the darned things!” wailed Pink, riding twice around the huddle, almost ready to shed tears of pure rage and helplessness. “Git outa that! Hi! Woopp-ee!” He fired again and again, and gave the range-old cattle-yell; the yell which had sent many a tired herd over many a weary mile; the yell before which had fled fat steers into the stockyards at shipping time, and up the chutes into the cars; the yell that had hoarsened many a cowpuncher's voice and left him with a mere croak to curse his fate with; a yell to bring results—but it did not start those sheep.
The Happy Family, riding furiously round and round, fired every cartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper thing they could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes were starting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep so tight together that dynamite could scarcely have pried them apart.
And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely over hunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low tones, and grinned.
Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them pointing derisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great oath and made for them, calling aloud that he would knock those grins so far in that they would presently find themselves smiling wrong-side-out from the back of their heads.
Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of a burrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand in reversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came bellowing up from the far side of the huddle like a bull challenging to combat from across a meadow. Big Medicine did not know what it was all about, but he scented battle, and that was sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equally ignorant of the cause, started at a lope toward the trouble center.
It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon those herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much so that the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails toward the rim of Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the west.
“Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep it,” exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from him that day.
While he was still laughing, there was a shot from the ridge toward which they were running; the sharp, vicious crack of a rifle. The Happy Family heard the whistling hum of the bullet, singing low over their heads; quite low indeed; altogether too low to be funny. And they had squandered all their ammunition on the prairie sod, to hurry a band of sheep that flatly refused to hurry anywhere except under one another's odorous, perspiring bodies.
From the edge of the coulee the rifle spoke again. A tiny geyser of dust, spurting up from the ground ten feet to one side of Cal Emmett, showed them all where the bullet struck.
“Get outa range, everybody!” yelled Weary, and set the example by tilting his rowels against Glory's smooth hide, and heading eastward. “I like to be accommodating, all right, but I draw the line on standing around for a target while my neighbors practise shooting.”
The Happy Family, having no other recourse, therefore retreated in haste toward the eastern skyline. Bullets followed them, overtook them as the shooter raised his sights for the increasing distance, and whined harmlessly over their heads. All save one.
Big Medicine, Irish and Pink, racing almost abreast, heard a scream behind them and pulled up their horses with short, stiff-legged plunges. A brown horse overtook them; a brown horse, with Happy Jack clinging to the saddle-horn, his body swaying far over to one side. Even as he went hurtling past them his hold grew slack and he slumped, head foremost, to the ground. The brown horse gave a startled leap away from him and went on with empty stirrups flapping.
They sprang down and lifted him to a less awkward position, and Big Medicine pillowed the sweat-dampened, carroty head in the hollow of his arm. Those who had been in the lead looked back startled when the brown horse tore past them with that empty saddle; saw what had happened, wheeled and galloped back. They dismounted and stood silently grouped about poor, ungainly Happy Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big Medicine's arms. Not one of them remembered then that there was a man with a rifle not more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they quite forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves. They were thinking of Happy Jack.
Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker, the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest, the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had “betched” there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had laughed at him, swore at him, lied to him, “joshed” him unmercifully, and kept him in a state of chronic indignation, never dreaming that the memory of it would choke them and strike them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their chests with which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of weeping.
“Where's he hurt?” asked Weary, in the repressed tone which only tragedy can bring into a man's voice, and knelt beside Big Medicine.
“I dunno—through the lungs, I guess; my sleeve's gitting soppy right under his shoulder.” Big Medicine did not bellow; his voice was as quiet as Weary's.
Weary looked up briefly at the circle of staring faces. “Pink, you pile onto Glory and go wire for a doctor. Try Havre first; you may get one up on the nine o' clock train. If you can't, get one down on the 'leven-twenty, from Great Falls. Or there's Benton—anyway, git one. If you could catch MacPherson, do it. Try him first, and never mind a Havre doctor unless you can't get MacPherson. I'd rather wait a couple of hours longer, for him. I'll have a rig—no, you better get a team from Jim. They'll be fresh, and you can put 'em through. If you kill 'em,” he added grimly, “we can pay for 'em.” He had his jack-knife out, and was already slashing carefully the shirt of Happy Jack, that he might inspect the wound.
Pink gave a last, wistful look at Happy Jack's face, which seemed unfamiliar with all the color and all the expression wiped out of it like that, and turned away. “Come and help me change saddles, Cal,” he said shortly. “Weary's stirrups are too darned long.” Even with the delay, he was mounted on Glory and galloping toward Flying U coulee before Weary was through uncovering the wound; and that does not mean that Weary was slow.
The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty feet beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or gave any other sign of realization that they were still the target; they were staring, with that frowning painfully intent look men have at such moments, at a purplish hole not much bigger than if punched by a lead pencil, just under the point of Happy Jack's shoulder blade; and at the blood oozing sluggishly from it in a tiny stream across the girlishly white flesh and dripping upon Big Medicine's arm.
“Hadn't we better get a rig to take him home with?” Irish suggested.
Weary, exploring farther, had just disclosed a ragged wound under the arm where the bullet had passed out; he made no immediate reply.
“Well, he ain't got it stuck inside of 'im, anyway,” Big Medicine commented relievedly. “Don't look to me like it's so awful bad—went through kinda anglin', and maybe missed his lungs. I've saw men shot up before—”
“Aw—I betche you'd—think it was bad—if you had it—” murmured Happy Jack peevishly, lifting his eyelids heavily for a resentful glance when they moved him a little. But even as Big Medicine grinned joyfully down at him he went off again into mental darkness, and the grin faded into solicitude.
“You'd kick, by golly, if you was goin' to be hung,” Slim bantered tritely and belatedly, and gulped remorsefully when he saw that he was “joshing” an unconscious man.
“We better get him home. Irish, you—” Weary looked up and discovered that Irish and jack Bates were already headed for home and a conveyance. He gave a sigh of approval and turned his attention toward wiping the sweat and grime from Happy's face with his handkerchief.
“Somebody else is goin' to git hit, by golly, if we stay here,” Slim blurted suddenly, when another bullet dug up the dirt in that vicinity.
“That gol-darned fool'll keep on till he kills somebody. I wisht I had m' thirty-thirty here—I'd make him wisht his mother was a man, by golly!”
Big Medicine looked toward the coulee rim. “I ain't got a shell left,” he growled regretfully. “I wisht we'd thought to tell the boys to bring them rifles. Say, Slim, you crawl onto your hoss and go git 'em. It won't take more'n a minute. There'll likely be some shells in the magazines.”
“Go on, Slim,” urged Weary grimly. “We've got to do something. They can't do a thing like this—” he glanced down at Happy Jack— “and get away with it.”
“I got half a box uh shells for my thirty-thirty, I'll bring that.” Slim turned to go, stopped short and stared at the coulee rim. “By golly, they're comm' over here!” he exclaimed.
Big Medicine glanced up, took off his hat, crumpled it for a pillow and eased Happy Jack down upon it. He got up stiffly, wiped his fingers mechanically upon his trouser legs, broke his gun open just to make sure that it was indeed empty, put it back and picked up a handful of rocks.
“Let 'em come,” he said viciously. “I c'n kill every damn' one with m' bare hands!”
“Say, ain't that Andy and Mig following along behind?” Cal asked after a minute of watching the approach. “Sure, it is. Now what—”
“They're drivin' 'em, by cripes!” Big Medicine, under the stress of the moment, returned to his usual bellowing tone. “Who's that tall, lanky feller in the lead? I don't call to mind ever seem him before. Them four herders I'd know a mile off.”
“That?” Weary shaded his eyes with his hat-brim, against the slant rays of the westering sun. “That's Oleson, Dunk's partner.”
“His mother'd be a-weepin',” Big Medicine observed bodefully, “if she knowed what was due to happen to her son right away quick. Must be him that done the shootin'.”
They came on steadily, the four herders and Oleson walking reluctantly ahead, with Andy Green and the Native Son riding relentlessly in the rear, their guns held unwaveringly in a line with the backs of their captives. Andy was carrying a rifle, evidently taken from one of the men—Oleson, they judged for the guilty one. Half the distance was covered when Andy was seen to turn his head and speak briefly with the Native Son, after which he lunged past the captives and galloped up to the waiting group. His quick eye sought first the face of Happy Jack in anxious questioning; then, miserably, he searched the faces of his friends.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed mechanically, dismounted and bent over the figure on the ground. For a long minute he knelt there; he laid his ear close to Happy Jack's mouth, took off his glove and laid his hand over Happy's heart; reached up, twitched off his neckerchief, shook out the creases and spread it reverently over Happy Jack's face. He stood up then and spoke slowly, his eyes fixed upon the stumbling approach of the captives.
“Pink told us Happy had been shot, so we rode around and come up behind 'em. It was a cinch. And—say, boys, we've got the Dots in a pocket. They've got to eat outa our hands, now. So don't think about—our own feelings, or about—” he stopped abruptly and let a downward glance finish the sentence. “We've got to keep our own hands clean, and—now don't let your fingers get the itch, Bud!” This, because of certain manifestations of a murderous intent on the part of Big Medicine.
“Oh, it's all right to talk, if yuh feel like talking,” Big Medicine retorted savagely. “I don't.” He made a catlike spring at the foremost man, who happened to be Oleson, and got a merciless grip with his fingers on his throat, snarling like a predatory animal over its kill. From behind, Andy, with Weary to help, pulled him off.
“I didn't mean to—to kill anybody,” gasped Oleson, pasty white. “I heard a lot of shooting, and so I ran up the hill—and the herders came running toward me, and I thought I was defending my property and men. I had a right to defend—”
“Defend hell!” Big Medicine writhed in the restraining grasp of those who held him. “Look at that there! As good hearted a boy as ever turned a cow! Never harmed a soul in 'is life. Is all your dirty, stinkin' sheep, an' all your lousy herders, worth that boy's life? Yuh shot 'im down like a dog—lemme go, boys.” His voice was husky. “Lemme tromp the life outa him.”
“I thought you were killing my men, or I never—I never meant to—to kill—” Oleson, shaking till he could scarcely stand, broke down and wept; wept pitiably, hysterically, as men of a certain fiber will weep when black tragedy confronts them all unawares. He cowered miserably before the Happy Family, his face hidden behind his two hands.
“Boys, I want to say a word or two. Come over here.” Andy's voice, quiet as ever, contrasted strangely with the man's sobbing. He led them back a few paces—Weary, Cal, Big Medicine and Slim, and spoke hurriedly. The Native Son eyed them sidelong from his horse, but he was careful to keep Oleson covered with his gun—and the herders too, although they were unarmed. Once or twice he glanced at that long, ungainly figure in the grass with the handkerchief of Andy Green hiding the face except where a corner, fluttering in the faint breeze which came creeping out of the west, lifted now and then and gave a glimpse of sunbrowned throat and a quiet chin and mouth.
“Quit that blubbering, Oleson, and listen here.” Andys voice broke relentlessly upon the other's woe. “All these boys want to hang yuh without any red tape; far as I'm concerned, I'm dead willing. But we're going to give yuh a chance. Your partner, as we told yuh coming over, we've got the dead immortal cinch on, right now. And—well you can see what you're up against. But we'll give yuh a chance. Have you got any family?”
Oleson, trying to pull himself together, shook his head.
“Well, then, you can get rid of them sheep, can't yuh? Sell 'em, ship 'em outa here—we don't give a darn what yuh do, only so yuh get 'em off the range.”
“Y-yes, I'll do that.” Oleson's consent was reluctant, but it was fairly prompt. “I'll get rid of the sheep,” he said, as if he was minded to clinch the promise. “I'll do it at once.”
“That's nice.” Andy spoke with grim irony. “And you'll get rid of the ranch, too. You'll sell it to the Flying U—cheap.”
“But my partner—Whittaker might object—”
“Look here, old-timer. You'll fix that part up; you'll find a way of fixing it. Look here—at what you're up against.” He waited, with pointing finger, for one terrible minute. “Will you sell to the Flying U?”
“Y-yes!” The word was really a gulp. He tried to avoid looking where Andy pointed; failed, and shuddered at what he saw.
“I thought you would. We'll get that in writing. And we're going to wait just exactly twenty-four hours before we make a move. It'll take some fine work, but we'll do it. Our boss, here, will fix up the business end with you. He'll go with yuh right now, and stay with yuh till you make good. And the first crooked move you make—” Andy, in unconscious imitation of the Native Son, shrugged a shoulder expressively and urged Weary by a glance to take the leadership.
“Irish, you come with me. The rest of you fellows know about what to do. Andy, I guess you'll have to ride point till I get back.” Weary hesitated, looked from Happy Jack to Oleson and the herders, and back to the sober faces of his fellows. “Do what you can for him, boys—and I wish one of you would ride over, after Pink gets back, and—let me know how things stack up, will you?”
Incredible as was the situation on the face of it, nevertheless it was extremely matter-of-fact in the handling; which is the way sometimes with incredible situations; as if, since we know instinctively that we cannot rise unprepared to the bigness of its possibilities, we keep our feet planted steadfastly on the ground and refuse to rise at all. And afterward, perhaps, we look back and wonder how it all came about.
At the last moment Weary turned back and exchanged guns with Andy Green, because his own was empty and he realized the possible need of one—or at least the need of having the sheep-men perfectly aware that he had one ready for use. The Native Son, without a word of comment, handed his own silver-trimmed weapon over to Irish, and rolled a cigarette deftly with one hand while he watched them ride away.
“Does this strike anybody else as being pretty raw?” he inquired calmly, dismounting among them. “I'd do a good deal for the outfit, myself; but letting that man get off—Say, you fellows up this way don't think killing a man amounts to much, do you?” He looked from one to the other with a queer, contemptuous hostility in his eyes.
Andy Green took a forward step and laid a hand familiarly on his rigid shoulder. “Quit it, Mig. We would do a lot for the outfit; that's the God's truth. And I played the game right up to the hilt, I admit. But nobody's killed. I told Happy to play dead. By gracious, I caught him just in the nick uh time; he'd been setting up, in another minute.” To prove it, he bent and twitched the handkerchief from the face of Happy Jack, and Happy opened his eyes and made shift to growl.
“Yuh purty near-smothered me t'death, darn yuh.”
“Dios!” breathed the Native Son, for once since they knew him jolted out of his eternal calm. “God, but I'm glad!”
“I guess the rest of us ain't,” insinuated Andy softly, and lifted his hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “I will say that—” After all, he did not. Instead, he knelt beside Happy Jack and painstakingly adjusted the crumpled hat a hair's breadth differently.
“How do yuh feel, old-timer?” he asked with a very thin disguise of cheerfulness upon the anxiety of his tone.
“Well, I could feel a lot—better, without hurtin' nothin,” Happy Jack responded somberly. “I hope you fellers—feel better, now. Yuh got 'em—tryin' to murder—the hull outfit; jes' like I—told yuh they would—” Gunshot wounds, contrary to the tales of certain sentimentalists, do not appreciably sweeten, or even change, a man's disposition. Happy Jack with a bullet hole through one side of him was still Happy Jack.
“Aw, quit your beefin',” Big Medicine advised gruffly. “A feller with a hole in his lung yuh could throw a calf through sideways ain't got no business statin' his views on nothin', by cripes!”
“Aw gwan. I thought you said—it didn't amount t' nothin',” Happy reminded him, anxiety stealing into his face.
“Well, it don't. May lay yuh up a day or two; wouldn't be su'prised if yuh had to stay on the bed-ground two or three meals. But look at Slim, here. Shot through the leg—shattered a bone, by cripes!—las' night, only; and here he's makin' a hand and ridin' and cussin' same as any of us t'day. We ain't goin' to let yuh grouch around, that's all. We claim we got a vacation comm' to us; you're shot up, now, and that's fun enough for one man, without throwin' it into the whole bunch. Why, a little nick like that ain't nothin'; nothin' a-tall. Why, I've been shot right through here, by cripes”—Big Medicine laid an impressive finger-tip on the top button of his trousers—“and it come out back here”—he whirled and showed his thumb against the small of his back—“and I never laid off but that day and part uh the next. I was sore,” he admitted, goggling Happy Jack earnestly, “but I kep' a-goin'. I was right in fall roundup, an' I had to. A man can't lay down an' cry, by cripes, jes' because he gets pinked a little—”
“Aw, that's jest because—it ain't you. I betche you'd lay 'em down—jest like other folks, if yuh got shot—through the lungs. That ain't no—joke, lemme tell yuh!” Happy Jack was beginning to show considerable spirit for a wounded man. So much spirit that Andy Green, who had seen men stricken down with various ills, read fever signs in the countenance and in the voice of Happy, and led Big Medicine somewhat peremptorily out of ear-shot.
“Ain't you got any sense?” he inquired with fine candor. “What do you want to throw it into him like that, for? You may not think so, but he's pretty bad off—if you ask me.”
Big Medicine's pale eyes turned commiseratingly toward Happy Jack. “I know he is; I ain't no fool. I was jest tryin' to cheer 'im up a little. He was beginnin' to look like he was gittin' scared about it; I reckon maybe I made a break, sayin' what I did about it, so I jest wanted to take the cuss off. Honest to gran'ma—”
“If you know anything at all about such things, you must know what fever means in such a case. And, recollect, it's going to be quite a while before a doctor can get here.”
“Oh, I'll be careful. Maybe I did throw it purty strong; I won't, no more.” Big Medicine s meekness was not the least amazing incident of the day. He was a big-hearted soul under his bellow and bluff, and his sympathy for Happy Jack struck deep. He went back walking on his toes, and he stood so that his sturdy body shaded Happy Jack's face from the sun, and he did not open his mouth for another word until Irish and Jack Bates came rattling up with the spring wagon hurriedly transformed with mattress, pillows and blankets into an ambulance.
They had been thoughtful to a degree. They brought with them a jug of water and a tin cup, and they gave Happy Jack a long, cooling drink of it and bathed his face before they lifted him into the wagon. And of all the hands that ministered to his needs, the hands of Big Medicine were the eagerest and gentlest, and his voice was the most vibrant with sympathy; which was saying a good deal.