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The Flying U's Last Stand

B. M. Bower




  Produced by Mary Starr

  THE FLYING-U'S LAST STAND

  By B. M. Bower

  CONTENTS

  1. OLD WAYS AND NEW

  2. ANDY GREEN'S NEW ACQUAINTANCE

  3. THE KID LEARNS SOME THINGS ABOUT HORSES

  4. ANDY TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME

  5. THE HAPPY FAMILY TURN NESTERS

  6. THE FIRST BLOW IN THE FIGHT

  7. THE COMING OF THE COLONY

  8. FLORENCE GRACE HALLMAN SPEAKS PLAINLY

  9. THE HAPPY FAMILY BUYS A BUNCH OF CATTLE

  10. WHEREIN ANDY GREEN LIES TO A LADY

  ll. THE MOVING CHAPTER IN EVENTS

  12. SHACKS, LIVESTOCK AND PILGRIMS PROMPTLY AND PAINFULLY REMOVED

  13. IRISH WORKS FOR THE CAUSE

  14. JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

  15. THE KID HAS IDEAS OF HIS OWN

  16. "A RELL OLD COWPUNCHER"

  17. "LOST CHILD"

  18. THE LONG WAY ROUND

  19. HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY

  20. THE RELL OLD COWPUNCHER GOES HOME

  21. THE FIGHT GOES ON

  22. LAWFUL IMPROVEMENTS

  23. THE WATER QUESTION AND SOME GOSSIP

  24. THE KID IS USED FOR A PAWN IN THE GAME

  25. "LITTLE BLACK SHACK'S ALL BURNT UP!"

  26. ROSEMARY ALLEN DOES A SMALL SUM IN ADDITION

  27. "IT'S AWFUL EASY TO GET LOST"

  28. AS IT TURNED OUT

  THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND

  CHAPTER 1. OLD WAYS AND NEW

  Progress is like the insidious change from youth to old age, except thatprogress does not mean decay. The change that is almost imperceptibleand yet inexorable is much the same, however. You will see a communityapparently changeless as the years pass by; and yet, when the years havegone and you look back, there has been a change. It is not the same.It never will be the same. It can pass through further change, but itcannot go back. Men look back sick sometimes with longing for the thingsthat were and that can be no more; they live the old days in memory--buttry as they will they may not go back. With intelligent, persistenteffort they may retard further change considerably, but that is the mostthat they can hope to do. Civilization and Time will continue the marchin spite of all that man may do.

  That is the way it was with the Flying U. Old J. G. Whitmore foughtdoggedly against the changing conditions--and he fought intelligentlyand well. When he saw the range dwindling and the way to the wateringplaces barred against his cattle with long stretches of barbed wire, hesent his herds deeper into the Badlands to seek what grazing was in thehidden, little valleys and the deep, sequestered canyons. He cut morehay for winter feeding, and he sowed his meadows to alfalfa that hemight increase the crops. He shipped old cows and dry cows with his fatsteers in the fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raisedbigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, theyimproved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was muchthe same.

  It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was cunningly bestingthe situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against theencroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range.And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his owngame, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being thesame pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of his men,the Happy Family of the Flying U.

  Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and thenlaugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G. Whitmore had been going his wayand refusing to grow old for a long time--and then an accident, whichis Time's joker, turned the game against him. He stood for just a secondtoo long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between goingforward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to play an accident.A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him down and left him in a heapfor the ambulance from the nearest hospital to gather on its stretcher.

  The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range and he waspretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his beloved Flying U,with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed to easy chair and back again.

  The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him tirelessly;but it was long before there came a day when the Old Man gave his crutchto the Kid to use for a stick-horse, and walked through the living roomand out upon the porch with the help of a cane and the solicitous armof the Little Doctor, and with the Kid galloping gleefully before him onthe crutch.

  Later he discarded the help of somebody's arm, and hobbled down to thecorral with the cane, and with the Kid still galloping before him on"Uncle Gee Gee's" crutch. He stood for some time leaning against thecorral watching some of the boys halter-breaking a horse that was laterto be sold--when he was "broke gentle"--and then he hobbled back again,thankful for the soft comfort of his big chair.

  That was well enough, as far as it went. The Flying U took it forgranted that the Old Man was slowly returning to the old order of life,when rheumatism was his only foe and he could run things with his oldenergy and easy good management. But there never came a day when the OldMan gave his cane to the kid to play with. There never came a day whenhe was not thankful for the soft comfort of his chair. There never camea day when he was the same Old Man who joshed the boys and scolded themand threatened them. The day was always coming--of course!--when hisback would quit aching if he walked to the stable and back without along rest between, but it never actually arrived.

  So, imperceptibly but surely, the Old Man began to grow old. The thinspot on top of his head grew shiny, so that the Kid noticed it and madeblunt comments upon the subject. His rheumatism was not his worst foe,now. He had to pet his digestive apparatus and cut out strong coffeewith three heaping teaspoons of sugar in each cup, because the LittleDoctor told him his liver was torpid. He had to stop giving the Kidjolty rides on his knees,--but that was because the Kid was getting toobig for baby play, the Old Man declared. The Kid was big enough to ridereal horses, now, and he ought to be ashamed to ride knee-horses anymore.

  To two things the Old Man clung almost fiercely; the old regime ofranging his cattle at large and starting out the wagons in the springjust the same as if twenty-five men instead of twelve went with them;and the retention of the Happy Family on his payroll, just as if theywere actually needed. If one of the boys left to try other things andother fields, the Old Man considered him gone on a vacation and expectedhim back when spring roundup approached.

  True, he was seldom disappointed in that. For the Happy Family lookedupon the Flying U as home, and six months was about the limit forstraying afar. Cowpunchers to the bone though they were, they bent backsover irrigating ditches and sweated in the hay fields just for thesake of staying together on the ranch. I cannot say that they did ituncomplainingly--for the bunk-house was saturated to the ridge-pole withtheir maledictions while they compared blistered hands and pitchforkcallouses, and mourned the days that were gone; the days when theyrode far and free and scorned any work that could not be done from thesaddle. But they stayed, and they did the ranch work as well as therange work, which is the main point.

  They became engaged to certain girls who filled their dreams andall their waking thoughts--but they never quite came to the point ofmarrying and going their way. Except Pink, who did marry impulsively andunwisely, and who suffered himself to be bullied and called Percy forseven months or so, and who balked at leaving the Flying U for the cityand a vicarious existence in theaterdom, and so found himself free quiteas suddenly as he had been tied.

  They intended to marry and settle down--sometime. But there was alwayssomething in the way of carry
ing those intentions to fulfillment, sothat eventually the majority of the Happy Family found themselves noteven engaged, but drifting along toward permanent bachelorhood. Being ofthe optimistic type, however, they did not worry; Pink having set beforethem a fine example of the failure of marriage and having returned withmanifest relief to the freedom of the bunk-house.