The Range Dwellers, Page 2

  CHAPTER II.

  The White Divide.

  If a phrenologist should undertake to "read" my head, he would undoubtedlyfind my love of home--if that is what it is called--a sharply definedwelt. I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me withas virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestionis good. It wasn't that I could not bear the thought of hardship; I'vetaken hunting trips up into the mountains more times than I can remember,and ate ungodly messes of my own invention, and waded waist-deep in snowand slept under the stars, and enjoyed nearly every minute. So it wasn'tthe hardships that I had every reason to expect that got me down. I thinkit was the feeling that dad had turned me down; that I was in exile,and--in his eyes, at least--disgraced, it was knowing that he thought mepretty poor truck, without giving me a chance to be anything better.I humped over the rail at the stern, and watched the waves slap at usviciously, like an ill-tempered poodle, and felt for all the world like adog that's been kicked out into the rain. Maybe the medicine was good forme, but it wasn't pleasant. It never occurred to me, that night, to wonderhow dad felt about it; but I've often thought of it since.

  I had a section to myself, so I could sulk undisturbed; dad was not small,at any rate, and, though he hadn't let me have his car, he meant me to bedecently comfortable. That first night I slept without a break; the secondI sat in the smoker till a most unrighteous hour, cultivating theacquaintance of a drummer for a rubber-goods outfit. I thought that,seeing I was about to mingle with the working classes, I couldn't begintoo soon to study them. He was a pretty good sort, too.

  The rubber-goods man left me at Seattle, and from there on I was at thetender mercies of my own thoughts and an elderly lady with a startlinglyblond daughter, who sat directly opposite me and was frankly disposed tofriendliness. I had never given much time to the study of women, and sohad no alternative but to answer questions and smile fatuously upon theblond daughter, and wonder if I ought to warn the mother that "clothes donot make the man," and that I was a black sheep and not a desirableacquaintance. Before I had quite settled that point, they left the train.I am afraid I am not distinctly a chivalrous person; I hummed the Doxologyafter their retreating forms and retired into myself, with a feeling thatmy own society is at times desirable and greatly to be chosen.

  After that I was shy, and nothing happened except that on the last eveningof the trip, I gave up my sole remaining five dollars in the diner, andwalked out whistling softly. I was utterly and unequivocally strapped.I went into the smoker to think it over; I knew I had started out witha hundred or so, and that I had considered that sufficient to see methrough. Plainly, it was not sufficient; but it is a fact that I lookedupon it as a joke, and went to sleep grinning idiotically at the thoughtof me, Ellis Carleton, heir to almost as many millions as I was yearsold, without the price of a breakfast in his pocket. It seemed novel andinteresting, and I rather enjoyed the situation. I wasn't hungry, then!

  Osage, Montana, failed to rouse any enthusiasm in me when I saw the placenext day, except that it offered possibilities in the way of eating--atleast, I fancied it did, until I stepped down upon the narrow platform andlooked about me. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and I had fastedsince dinner the evening before. I was not happy.

  I began to see where I might have economized a bit, and so have gone oneating regularly to the end of the journey. I reflected that stewedterrapin, for instance, might possibly be considered an extravagance underthe circumstances; and a fellow sentenced to honest toil and exiled to thewilderness should not, it seemed to me then, cause his table to besprinkled, quite so liberally as I had done, with tall glasses--nor needhe tip the porter quite so often or so generously. A dollar looked biggerto me, just then, than a wheel of the _Yellow Peril_. I began to feelunkindly toward that porter! he had looked so abominably well-fed andsleek, and he had tips that I would be glad to feel in my own pocketagain. I stood alone upon the platform and gazed wistfully after theretreating train; many people have done that before me, if one may believethose who write novels, and for once in my life I felt a bond of sympathybetween us. It's safe betting that I did more solid thinking on frenziedfinance in the five minutes I stood there watching that train slid offbeyond the sky-line than I'd done in all my life before. I'd heard, ofcourse, about fellows getting right down to cases, but I'd neverpersonally experienced the sensation. I'd always had money--or, ifI hadn't, I knew where to go. And dad had caught me when I'd all butoverdrawn my account at the bank. I was always doing that, for dad paidthe bills. That last night with Barney MacTague hadn't been my night towin, and I'd dropped quite a lot there. And--oh, what's the use? I wasbroke, all right enough, and I was hungry enough to eat the proverbialcrust.

  It seemed to me it might be a good idea to hunt up the gentleman namedPerry Potter, whom dad called his foreman. I turned around and caught atall, brown-faced native studying my back with grave interest. He didn'tblush when I looked him in the eye, but smiled a tired smile and said hereckoned I was the chap he'd been sent to meet. There was no welcome inhis voice, I noticed. I looked him over critically.

  "Are you the gentleman with the alliterative cognomen?" I asked himairily, hoping he would be puzzled.

  He was not, evidently. "Perry Potter? He's at the ranch." He was damnablytolerant, and I said nothing. I hate to make the same sort of fool ofmyself twice. So when he proposed that we "hit the trail," I followedmeekly in his wake. He did not offer to take my suit-case, and I was aboutto remind him of the oversight when it occurred to me that possibly hewas not a servant--he certainly didn't act like one. I carried my ownsuitcase--which was, I have thought since, the only wise move I had madesince I left home.

  A strong but unsightly spring-wagon, with mud six inches deep on thewheels, seemed the goal, and we trailed out to it, picking up layers ofsoil as we went. The ground did not _look_ muddy, but it was; I have sincelearned that that particular phase of nature's hypocrisy is called "doby."I don't admire it, myself. I stopped by the wagon and scraped my shoes onthe cleanest spoke I could find, and swore. My guide untied the horses,gathered up the reins, and sought a spoke on his side of the wagon; helooked across at me with a gleam of humanity in his eyes--the first I hadseen there.

  "It sure beats hell the way it hangs on," he remarked, and from thatminute I liked him. It was the first crumb of sympathy that had fallen tome for days, and you can bet I appreciated it.

  We got in, and he pulled a blanket over our knees and picked up the whip.It wasn't a stylish turnout--I had seen farmers driving along therailroad-track in rigs like it, and I was surprised at dad for keepingsuch a layout. Fact is, I didn't think much of dad, anyway, about thattime.

  "How far is it to the Bay State Ranch?" I asked.

  "One hundred and forty miles, air-line," said he casually. "The train waslate, so I reckon we better stop over till morning. There's a town overthe hill, and a hotel that beats nothing a long way."

  A hundred and forty miles from the station, "air-line," sounded to me likea pretty stiff proposition to go up against; also, how was a fellow goingto put up at a hotel when he hadn't the coin? Would my mysterious guidebe shocked to learn that John A. Carleton's son and heir had landed in astrange land without two-bits to his name? Jerusalem! I couldn't have paidstreet-car fare down-town; I couldn't even have bought a paper on thestreet. While I was remembering all the things a millionaire's son can'tdo if he happens to be without a nickel in his pocket, we pulled up beforea place that, for the sake of propriety, I am willing to call a hotel; atthe time, I remember, I had another name for it.

  "In case I might get lost in this strange city," I said to my companion asI jumped out, "I'd like to know what people call you when they're in agood humor."

  He grinned down at me. "Frosty Miller would hit me, all right," heinformed me, and drove off somewhere down the street. So I went in andasked for a room, and got it.

  This sounds sordid, I know, but the truth must be told, though theartistic sense be shocked. Barred from
the track as I was, sent out tograss in disgrace while the little old world kept moving without me tohelp push, my mind passed up all the things I might naturally be supposedto dwell upon and stuck to three little no-account grievances that I hateto tell about now. They look small, for a fact, now that they're away outof sight, almost, in the past; but they were quite big enough at thetime to give me a bad hour or two. The biggest one was the state of myappetite; next, and not more than a nose behind, was the state of mypockets; and the last was, had Rankin packed the gray tweed trousers thatI had a liking for, or had he not? I tried to remember whether I hadspoken to him about them, and I sat down on the edge of the bed in thatlittle box of a room, took my head between my fists, and called Rankinseveral names he sometimes deserved and had frequently heard from my lips.I'd have given a good deal to have Rankin at my elbow just then.

  They were not in the suit-case--or, if they were, I had not run acrossthem. Rankin had a way of stowing things away so that even he had to dosome tall searching, and he had another way of filling up my suit-caseswith truck I'd no immediate use for. I yanked the case toward me, unlockedit, and turned it out on the bed, just to prove Rankin's generalincapacity as valet to a fastidious fellow like me.

  There was the suit I had worn on that memorable excursion to the CliffHouse--I had told Rankin to pitch it into the street, for I haddiscovered Teddy Van Greve in one almost exactly like it, and--Hello!Rankin had certainly overlooked a bet. I never caught him at it before,that's certain. He had a way of coming to my left elbow, and, in aparticularly virtuous tone, calling my attention to the fact that I hadleft several loose bills in my pockets. Rankin was that honest I oftentold him he would land behind the bars as an embezzler some day. ButRankin had done it this time, for fair; tucked away in a pocket of thewaistcoat was money--real, legal, lawful tender--m-o-n-e-y! I don'tsuppose the time will ever come when it will look as good to me as it didright then. I held those bank-notes--there were two of them, doubleXX's--to my face and sniffed them like I'd never seen the like before andnever expected to again. And the funny part was that I forgot all aboutwanting the gray trousers, and all about the faults of Rankin. My feetwere on bottom again, and my head on top. I marched down-stairs,whistling, with my hands in my pockets and my chin in the air, and toldthe landlord to serve dinner an hour earlier than usual, and to make it agood one.

  He looked at me with a curious mixture of wonder and amusement. "Dinner,"he drawled calmly, "has been over for three hours; but I guess we can giveyuh some supper any time after five."

  I suppose he looked upon me as the rankest kind of a tenderfoot. Icalculated the time of my torture till I might, without embarrassingexplanations, partake of a much-needed repast, and went to the door;waiting was never my long suit, and I had thoughts of getting outside andtaking a look around. At the second step I changed my mind--there was thatdeceptive mud to reckon with.

  So from the doorway I surveyed all of Montana that lay between me and thesky-line, and decided that my bets would remain on California. The sky wasa dull slate, tumbled into what looked like rain-clouds and depressing tothe eye. The land was a dull yellowish-brown, with a purple line of hillsoff to the south, and with untidy snow-drifts crouching in the hollows.That was all, so far as I could see, and if dulness and an unpeopledwilderness make for the reformation of man, it struck me that I was in afair way to become a saint if I stayed here long. I had heard thecattle-range called picturesque; I couldn't see the joke.

  Frosty Miller sat opposite me at table when, in the course of humanevents, I ate again, and the way I made the biscuit and ham and boiledpotatoes vanish filled him with astonishment, if one may judge a man'sfeelings by the size of his eyes. I told him that the ozone of the plainshad given me an appetite, and he did not contradict me; he looked at myplate, and then smiled at his own, and said nothing--which was polite ofhim.

  "Did you ever skip two meals and try to make it up on the third?" I askedhim when we went out, and he said "Sure," and rolled a cigarette. In thosefirst hours of our acquaintance Frosty was not what I'd call loquacious.

  That night I took out the letter addressed to one Perry Potter, which dadhad given me and which I had not had time to seal in his presence, andread it cold-bloodedly. I don't do such things as a rule, but I wasgetting a suspicion that I was being queered; that I'd got to start myexile under a handicap of the contempt of the natives. If dad had stackedthe deck on me, I wanted to know it. But I misjudged him--or, perhaps, heknew I'd read it. All he had written wouldn't hurt the reputation of anyone. It was:

  The bearer, Ellis H. Carleton, is my son. He will probably be with you for some time, and will not try to assume any authority or usurp your position as foreman and overseer. You will treat him as you do the other boys, and if he wants to work, pay him the same wages--if he earns them.

  It wasn't exactly throwing flowers in the path my young feet should tread,but it might have been worse. At least, he did not give Perry Potter hisunbiased opinion of me, and it left me with a free hand to warp theirjudgment somewhat in my favor. But--"If he wants to work, pay him the samewages--if he earns them." Whew!

  I might have saved him the trouble of writing that, if I had only knownit. Dad could go too far in this thing, I told myself chestily. I hadcome, seeing that he insisted upon it, but I'd be damned if I'd work forany man with a circus-poster name, and have him lord it over me. I hadn'tbeen brought up to appreciate that kind of joke. I meant to earn myliving, but I did not mean to get out and slave for Perry Potter. Theremust be something respectable for a man to do in this country besidesranch work.

  In the morning we started off, with my trunks in the wagon, toward theline of purple hills in the south. Frosty Miller told me, when I askedhim, that they were forty-eight miles away, that they marked the MissouriRiver, and that we would stop there overnight. That, if I remember,was about the extent of our conversation that day. We smokedcigarettes--Frosty Miller made his, one by one, as he needed them--andthought our own thoughts. I rather suspect our thoughts were a good manymiles apart, though our shoulders touched. When you think of it, peoplemay rub elbows and still have an ocean or two between them. I don't knowwhere Frosty was, all through that long day's ride; for me, I was back inlittle old Frisco, with Barney MacTague and the rest of the crowd; andpart of the time, I know, I was telling dad what a mess he'd made ofbringing up his only son.

  That night we slept in a shack at the river--"Pochette Crossing" was thename it answered to--and shared the same bed. It was not remarkable forits comfort--that bed. I think the mattress was stuffed with potatoes; itfelt that way.

  Next morning we were off again, over the same bare, brown, unpeopledwilderness. Once we saw a badger zigzagging along a side-hill, and Frostywhipped out a big revolver--one of those "Colt 45's," I suppose--and shotit; he said in extenuation that they play the very devil with the range,digging holes for cow-punchers to break their necks over.

  I was surprised at Frosty; there he had been armed, all the time, and Inever guessed it. Even when we went to bed the night before, I had notglimpsed a weapon. Clearly, he could not be a cowboy, I reflected, elsehe would have worn a cartridge-belt sagging picturesquely down over onehip, and his gun dangling from it. He put the gun away, and I don't knowwhere; somewhere out of sight it went, and Frosty turned off the trail andwent driving wild across the prairie. I asked him why, and he said, "Shortcut."

  Then a wind crept out of the north, and with it the snow. We were climbinglow ridges and dodging into hollows, and when the snow spread a white veilover the land, I looked at Frosty out of the tail of my eye, wondering ifhe did not wish he had kept to the road--trail, it is called in therangeland.

  If he did, he certainly kept it to himself; he went on climbing hills andsetting the brake at the top, to slide into a hollow, and his face keptits inscrutable calm; whatever he thought was beyond guessing at.

  When he had watered the horses at a little creek that was already skimmedwith ice, and unwrapped a package of sandwich
es on his knee and offeredme one, I broke loose. Silence may be golden, but even old King Midas gottoo big a dose of gold, once upon a time, if one may believe tradition.

  "I hate to butt into a man's meditations," I said, looking him straight inthe eye, "but there's a limit to everything, and you've played right up toit. You've had time, my friend, to remember all your sins and plan enoughmore to keep you hustling the allotted span; you've been given anopportunity to reconstruct the universe and breed a new philosophy oflife. For Heaven's sake, _say_ something!"

  Frosty eyed me for a minute, and the muscles at the corners of his mouthtwitched. "Sure," he responded cheerfully. "I'm something like you; I hateto break into a man's meditations. It looks like snow."

  "Do you think it's going to storm?" I retorted in the same tone; it hadbeen snowing great guns for the last three hours. We both laughed, andFrosty unbent and told me a lot about Bay State Ranch and the countryaround it.

  Part of the information was an eye-opener; I wished I had known it whendad was handing out that roast to me--I rather think I could have made himcry enough. I tagged the information and laid it away for futurereference.

  As I got the country mapped out in my mind, we were in a huge capital H.The eastern line, toward which we were angling, was a river they call theMidas--though I'll never tell you why, unless it's a term ironical. Thewestern line is another river, the Joliette, and the cross-bar is a rangeof hills--they might almost be called mountains--which I had been facingall that morning till the snow came between and shut them off; WhiteDivide, it is called, and we were creeping around the end, between themand the Midas. It seemed queer that there was no way of crossing, for theBay State lies almost in a direct line south from Osage, Frosty told me,and the country we were traversing was rough as White Divide could be, andI said so to Frosty. Right here is where I got my first jolt.

  "There's a fine pass cut through White Divide by old Mama Nature," Frostysaid, in the sort of tone a man takes when he could say a lot more, butrefrains.

  "Then why in Heaven's name don't you travel it?"

  "Because it isn't healthy for Ragged H folks to travel that way," he said,in the same eloquent tone.

  "Who are the Ragged H folks, and what's the matter with them?" I wanted toknow--for I smelled a mystery.

  He looked at me sidelong. "If you didn't look just like the old man," hesaid, "I'd think yuh were a fake; the Ragged H is the brand your ranch isknown by--the Bay State outfit. And it isn't healthy to travel King'sHighway, because there's a large-sized feud between your father and oldKing. How does it happen yuh aren't wise to the family history?"

  "Dad never unbosomed himself to me, that's why," I told him. "He haslabored for twenty-five years under the impression that I was a kid justable to toddle alone. He didn't think he needed to tell me things; I knowwe've got a place called the Bay State Ranch somewhere in this part of theworld, and I have reason to think I'm headed for it. That's about theextent of my knowledge of our interest here. I never heard of the WhiteDivide before, or of this particular King. I'm thirsting for information."

  "Well, it strikes me you've got it coming," said Frosty. "I always hadyour father sized up as being closed-mouthed, but I didn't think he madesuch a thorough job of it as all that. Old King has sure got it in for theRagged H--or Bay State, if yuh'd rather call us that; and the Ragged Hboys don't sit up nights thinking kind and loving thoughts about him,either. Thirty years ago your father and old King started jangling overwater-rights, and I guess they burned powder a-plenty; King goes lame tothis day from a bullet your old man planted in his left leg."

  I dropped the flag and started him off again. "It's news to me," I put in,"and you can't tell me too much about it."

  "Well," he said, "your old man was in the right of it; he owns all theland along Honey Creek, right up to White Divide, where it heads; uhcourse, he overlooked a bet there; he should have got a cinch on thatpass, and on the head uh the creek. But he let her slide, and first heknew old King had come in and staked a claim and built him a shack rightin our end of the pass, and camped down to stay. Your dad wasn't joyful.The Bay State had used that pass to trail herds through and as the easiestand shortest trail to the railroad; and then old King takes it up, stringsa five-wired fence across at both ends of his place, and warns us off.I've heard Potter tell what warm times there were. Your father stayedright here and had it out with him. The Bay State was all he had, then,and he ran it himself. Perry Potter worked for him, and knows all aboutit. Neither old King nor your dad was married, and it's a wonder theydidn't kill each other off--Potter says they sure tried. The time King gotit in the leg your father and his punchers were coming home from a breeddance, and they were feeling pretty nifty, I guess; Potter told me theystarted out with six bottles, and when they got to White Divide therewasn't enough left to talk about. They cut King's fence at the north end,and went right through, hell-bent-for-election. King and his men boiledout, and they mixed good and plenty. Your father went home with a hole inhis shoulder, and old King had one in his leg to match, and since thenit's been war. They tried to fight it out in court, and King got the bestof it there. Then they got married and kind o' cooled off, and pretty soonthey both got so much stuff to look after that they didn't have much timeto take pot-shots at each other, and now we're enjoying what yuh mightcall armed peace. We go round about sixty miles, and King's Highway is badmedicine.

  "King owns the stage-line from Osage to Laurel, where the Bay State getsits mail, and he owns Kenmore, a mining-camp in the west half uh WhiteDivide. We can go around by Kenmore, if we want to--but King's Highway?Nit!"

  I chuckled to myself to think of all the things I could twit dad about ifever he went after me again. It struck me that I hadn't been acircumstance, so far, to what dad must have been in his youth. At myworst, I'd never shot a man.