The Lure of the Dim Trails

THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS

By B. M. Bower

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF THE WESTERN TONE

“What do you care, anyway?” asked Reeve-Howard philosophically. “It

isn't as if you depended on the work for a living. Why worry over the

fact that a mere pastime fails to be financially a success. You don't

need to write--”

“Neither do you need to slave over those dry-point things,” Thurston

retorted, in none the best humor with his comforter “You've an income

bigger than mine; yet you toil over Grecian-nosed women with untidy hair

as if each one meant a meal and a bed.”

“A meal and a bed--that's good; you must think I live like a king.”

“And I notice you hate like the mischief to fail, even though.”

“Only I never have failed,” put in Reeve-Howard, with the amused

complacency born of much adulation.

Thurston kicked a foot-rest out of his way. “Well, I have. The fashion

now is for swashbuckling tales with a haze of powder smoke rising

to high heaven. The public taste runs to gore and more gore, and

kidnappings of beautiful maidens-bah!”

“Follow the fashion then--if you must write. Get out of your pink tea

and orchid atmosphere, and take your heroines out West--away out, beyond

the Mississippi, and let them be kidnapped. Or New Mexico would do.”

“New Mexico is also beyond the Mississippi, I believe,” Thurston hinted.

“Perhaps it is. What I mean is, write what the public wants, since you

don't relish failure. Why don't you do things about the plains? It

ought to be easy, and you were born out there somewhere. It should come

natural.”

“I have,” Thurston sighed. “My last rejection states that the local

color is weak and unconvincing. Hang the local color!” The foot-rest

suffered again.

Reeve-Howard was getting into his topcoat languidly, as he did

everything else. “The thing to do, then,” he drawled, “is to go out and

study up on it. Get in touch with that country, and your local color

will convince. Personally though, I like those little society skits you

do--”

“Skits!” exploded Thurston. “My last was a four-part serial. I never did

a skit in my life.”

“Beg pardon-which is more than you did after accusing my studies of

having untidy hair. Don't look so glum, Phil. Go out and learn your

West; a month or so will put you up to date--and by Jove! I half envy

you the trip.”

That is what put the idea into Thurston's head; and as Thurston's ideas

generally bore fruit of one sort or another, he went out that very day

and ordered from his tailor a complete riding outfit, and because he

was a good customer the tailor consented to rush the work. It seemed to

Thurston, looking over cuts of the very latest styles in riding clothes,

that already he was breathing the atmosphere of the plains.

That night he stayed at home and dreamed, of the West. His memory,

coupled with what he had heard and idealized by his imagination,

conjured dim visions of what he had once known had known and forgotten;

of a land here men and conditions harked back to the raw foundations

of civilization; where wide plains flecked with sage-brush and ribboned

with faint, brown trails, spread away and away to a far sky-line. For

Phil Thurston was range-born, if not range-bred, His father had chosen

always to live out on the edge of things--out where the trails of men

are dim and far apart-and the silent prairie bequeaths a heritage of

distance-hunger to her sons.

While he brooded grew a keen longing to see again the little town

huddled under the bare, brown hills that shut out the world; to see the

gay-blanketed Indians who stole like painted shadows about the place,

and the broad river always hurrying away to the sunrise. He had been

afraid of the river and of the bare hills and the Indians. He felt that

his mother, also, had been afraid. He pictured again--and he picture was

blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father

mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their

feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their hands.

There had been a day of hushed voices and much weeping and gloom, and

he had been afraid to play. Then they had carried his father as

mysteriously away again, and his mother had hugged him close and cried

bitterly and long. The rest was blank. When one is only five, the

present quickly blurs what is past, and he wondered that, after

all these years, he should feel the grip of something very like

homesickness--and for something more than half forgotten. But though

he did not realize it, in his veins flowed the adventurous blood of his

father, and to it the dim trails were calling.

In four days he set his face eagerly toward the dun deserts and the

sage-brush gray.

At Chicago a man took the upper berth in Thurston's section, and settled

into the seat with a deep sigh--presumably of thankfulness. Thurston,

with the quick eye of those who write, observed the whiteness of his

ungloved hands, the coppery tan of cheeks and throat, the clear keenness

of his eyes, and the four dimples in the crown of his soft, gray hat,

and recognized him as a fine specimen of the Western type of farmer,

returning home from the stockman's Mecca. After that he went calmly back

to his magazine and forgot all about him.

Twenty miles out, the stranger leaned forward and tapped him lightly on

the knee. “Say, I hate to interrupt yuh,” he began in a whimsical drawl,

evidently characteristic of the man, “but I'd like to know where it is

I've seen yuh before.”

Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance and a

natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had no memory of

any previous meeting.

“Mebby not,” admitted the other, and searched the face of Thurston with

his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were also a bit wistful, but he

went unsympathetically back to his reading.

Five miles more and be touched Thurston again, apologetically yet

insistently. “Say,” he drawled, “ain't your name Thurston? I'll bet

a carload uh steers it is--Bud Thurston. And your home range is Fort

Benton.”

Phil stared and confessed to all but the “Bud.”

“That's what me and your dad always called yuh,” the man asserted.

“Well, I'll be hanged! But I knew it. I knew I'd run acrost yuh

somewheres. You're the dead image uh your dad, Bill Thurston. And me and

Bill freighted together from Whoop-up to Benton along in the seventies.

Before yuh was born we was chums. I don't reckon you'd remember me? Hank

Graves, that used to pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on

dried prunes--when dried prunes was worth money? Yuh used to call 'em

'frumes,' and--Why, it was me with your dad when the Indians pot-shot

him at Chimney Rock; and it was me helped your mother straighten things

up so she could pull out, back where she come from. She never took to

the West much. How is she? Dead? Too bad; she was a mighty fine woman,

your mother was.

“Well, I'll-be-hanged! Bud Thurston little, tow-headed Bud that used to

holler for 'frumes' if he seen me coming a mile off. Doggone your measly

hide, where's all them pink apurns yuh used to wear?” He leaned back and

laughed--a silent, inner convulsion of pure gladness.

Philip Thurston was, generally speaking, a conservative young man

and one slow to make friends; slower still to discard them. He was

astonished to feel a choky sensation in his throat and a stinging of

eyelids, and a leap in his blood. To be thus taken possession of by

a blunt-speaking stranger not at all in his class; to be addressed

as “Bud,” and informed that he once devoured dried prunes; to be told

“Doggone your measly hide” should have affronted him much. Instead, he

seemed to be swept mysteriously back into the primitive past, and to

feel akin to this stranger with the drawl and the keen eyes. It was the

blood of his father coming to its own.

From that hour the two were friends. Hank Graves, in his whimsical

drawl, told Phil things about his father that made his blood tingle

with pride; his father, whom he had almost forgotten, yet who had lived

bravely his life, daring where other men quailed, going steadfastly upon

his way when other men hesitated.

So, borne swiftly into the West they talked, and the time seemed short.

The train had long since been racing noisily over the silent prairies

spread invitingly with tender green--great, lonely, inscrutable, luring

men with a spell as sure and as strong as is the spell of the sea.

The train reeled across a trestle that spanned a deep, dry gash in the

earth. In the green bottom huddled a cluster of pygmy cattle and mounted

men; farther down were two white flakes of tents, like huge snowflakes

left unmelted in the green canyon.

“That's the Lazy Eight--my outfit,” Graves informed Thurston with the

unconscious pride of possession, pointing a forefinger as they whirled

on. “I've got to get off, next station. Yuh want to remember, Bud, the

Lazy Eight's your home from now on. We'll make a cow-puncher of yuh in

no time; you've got it in yuh, or yuh wouldn't look so much like your

dad. And you can write stories about us all yuh want--we won't kick.

The way I've got the summer planned out, you'll waller chin-deep in

material; all yuh got to do is foller the Lazy Eight through till

shipping time.”

Thurston had not intended learning to be a cow-puncher, or following

the Lazy Eight or any other hieroglyphic through 'till shipping

time--whenever that was.

But facing Hank Graves, he had not the heart to tell him so, or that he

had planned to spend only a month--or six weeks at most--in the West,

gathering local color and perhaps a plot or two? and a few types.

Thurston was great on types.

The train slowed at a little station with a dismal red section house in

the immediate background and a red-fronted saloon close beside. “Here

we are,” cried Graves, “and I ain't sorry; only I wisht you was going

to stop right now. But I'll look for yuh in three or four days at the

outside. So-long, Bud. Remember, the Lazy Eight's your hang-out.”

CHAPTER II. LOCAL COLOR IN THE RAW

For the rest of the way Thurston watched the green hills slide by--and

the greener hollows--and gave himself up to visions of Fort Benton;

visions of creaking bull-trains crawling slowly, like giant brown worms,

up and down the long hill; of many high-piled bales of buffalo hides

upon the river bank, and clamorous little steamers churning up against

the current; the Fort Benton that had, for many rushing miles, filled

and colored the speech of Hank Graves and stimulated his childish

half-memory.

But when he reached the place and wandered aimlessly about the streets,

the vision faded into half-resentful realization that these things were

no more forever. For the bull-trains, a roundup outfit clattered

noisily out of town and disappeared in an elusive dust-cloud; for the

gay-blanketed Indians slipping like painted shadows from view, stray

cow-boys galloped into town, slid from their saddles and clanked with

dragging rowels into the nearest saloon, or the post-office. Between

whiles the town cuddled luxuriously down in the deep little valley

and slept while the river, undisturbed by pompous steamers, murmured a

lullaby.

It was not the Fort Benton he had come far to see, so that on the second

day he went away up the long hill that shut out the world and, until the

east-bound train came from over the prairies, paced the depot platform

impatiently with never a vision to keep him company.

For a long time the gaze of Thurston clung fascinated to the wide

prairie land, feeling again the stir in his blood. Then, when a deep cut

shut from him the sight of the wilderness, he chanced to turn his head,

and looked straight into the clear, blue-gray eyes of a girl across

the aisle. Thurston considered himself immune from blue-gray--or any

other-eyes, so that he permitted himself to regard her calmly and

judicially, his mind reverting to the fact that he would need a heroine

to be kidnapped, and wondering if she would do. She was a Western girl,

he could tell that by the tan and by her various little departures from

the Eastern styles--such as doing her hair low rather than high. Where

he had been used to seeing the hair of woman piled high and skewered

with many pins, hers was brushed smoothly back-smoothly save for little,

irresponsible waves here and there. Thurston decided that the style was

becoming to her. He wondered if the fellow beside her were her brother;

and then reminded himself sagely that brothers do not, as a rule, devote

their time quite so assiduously to the entertainment of their sisters.

He could not stare at her forever, and so he gave over his speculations

and went back to the prairies.

Another hour, and Thurston was stiffing a yawn when the coaches bumped

sharply together and, with wheels screeching protest as the brakes

clutched them, the train, grinding protest in every joint, came, with a

final heavy jar, to a dead stop. Thurston thought it was a wreck, until

out ahead came the sharp crackling of rifles. A passenger behind him

leaned out of the window and a bullet shattered the glass above his

head; he drew back hastily.

Some one hurried through the front vestibule, the door was pushed

unceremoniously open and a man--a giant, he seemed to Thurston--stopped

just inside, glared down the length of the coach through slits in the

black cloth over his face and bawled, “Hands up!”

Thurston was so utterly surprised that his hands jerked themselves

involuntarily above his head, though he did not feel particularly

frightened; he was filled with a stupefied sort of curiosity to know

what would come next. The coach, so far as he could see, seemed filled

with uplifted, trembling hands, so that he did not feel ashamed of his

own. The man behind him put up his hands with the other--but one of them

held a revolver that barked savagely and unexpectedly close against the

car of Thurston. Thurston ducked. There was an echo from the front, and

the man behind, who risked so much on one shot, lurched into the aisle,

swaying uncertainly between the seats. He of the mask fired again,

viciously, and the other collapsed into a still, awkwardly huddled heap

on the floor. The revolver dropped from his fingers and struck against

Thurston's foot, making him wince.

Thurston had never before seen death come to a man, and the very

suddenness of it unnerved him. All his faculties were numbed before that

terrible, pitiless form in the door, and the limp, dead body at his feet

in the aisle. He did not even remember that here was the savage

local color he had come far a-seeking. He quite forgot to improve the

opportunity by making mental note of all the little, convincing details,

as was his wont.

Presently he awoke to the realization of certain words spoken

insistently close beside him. He turned his eyes and saw that the girl,

her eyes staring straight before her, her slim, brown hands uplifted,

was yet commanding him imperiously, her voice holding to that murmuring

monotone more discreet than a whisper.

“The gun--drop down--and get it. He can't see to shoot for the seat in

front. Get the gun. Get the gun!” was what she was saying.

Thurston looked at her helplessly, imploringly. In truth, he had never

fired a gun in all his peaceful life.

“The gun--get it--and shoot!” Her eyes moved quickly in a cautious,

side-long glance that commanded impatiently. Her straight eyebrows drew

together imperiously. Then, when he met her eyes with that same helpless

look, she said another word that hurt. It was “Coward!”

Thurston looked down at the gun, and at the huddled form. A tiny river

of blood was creeping toward him. Already it had reached his foot, and

his shoe was red along the sole. He moved his foot quickly away from it,

and shuddered.

“Coward!” murmured the girl contemptuously again, and a splotch of anger

showed under the tan of her cheek.

Thurston caught his breath and wondered if he could do it; he looked

toward the door and thought how far it was to send a bullet straight

when a man has never, in all his life, fired a gun. And without looking

he could see that horrible, red stream creeping toward him like some

monster in a nightmare. His flesh crimpled with physical repulsion, but

he meant to try; perhaps he could shoot the man in the mask, so that

there would be another huddled, lifeless Thing on the floor, and another

creeping red stream.

At that instant the tawny-haired young fellow beside the girl gathered

himself for a spring, flung himself headlong before her and into the

aisle; caught the dead man's pistol from the floor and fired, seemingly

with one movement. Then he sprang up, still firing as fast as the

trigger could move. From the door came answer, shot for shot, and the

car was filled with the stifling odor of burnt powder. A woman screamed

hysterically.

Then a puff of cool, prairie breeze came in through the shattered window

behind Thurston, and the smoke-cloud lifted like a curtain blown upward

in the wind. The tawny-haired young fellow was walking coolly down the

aisle, the smoking revolver pointing like an accusing finger toward the

outlaw who lay stretched upon his face, his fingers twitching.

Outside, rifles were crackling like corn in a giant popper. Presently

it slackened to an occasional shot. A brakeman, followed by two coatless

mail-clerks with Winchesters, ran down the length of the train calling

out that there was no danger. The thud of their running feet, and the

wholesome mingling of their shouting struck sharply in the silence after

the shooting. One of the men swung up on the steps of the day coach and

came in.

“Hello, Park,” he cried to the tawny haired boy. “Got one, did yuh?

That's good. We did, too got him alive. Think uh the nerve uh that

Wagner bunch! to go up against a train in broad daylight. Made an easy

getaway, too, except the feller we gloomed in the express car. How's

this one? Dead?”

“No. I reckon he'll get well enough to stretch a rope; he killed a man,

in here.” He motioned toward the huddled figure in the aisle. They came

together, lifted the dead man and carried him away to the baggage car.

A brakeman came with a cloth and wiped up the red pool, and Thurston

pressed his lips tightly together and turned away his head; he could not

remember when the sight of anything had made him so deathly sick. Once

he glanced slyly at the girl opposite, and saw that she was very white

under her tan, and that the hands in her lap were clasped tightly and

yet shook. But she met his eyes squarely, and Thurston did not look at

her again; he did not like the expression of her mouth.

News of the holdup had been telegraphed ahead, and all Shellanne--which

was not much of a crowd--gathered at the station to meet the train and

congratulate the heroes. Thurston alighted almost shamefacedly into the

midst of the loud-voiced commotion. While he was looking uncertainly

about him, wondering where to go and what to do, a voice he knew hailed

him with drawling welcome.

“Hello, Bud. Got back quicker than you expected, didn't yuh? It's lucky

I happened to be in town--yuh can ride out with me. Say, yuh got quite

a bunch uh local color for a story, didn't yuh? You'll be writing

blood-and-thunder for a month on the strength of this little episode, I

reckon.” his twinkling eyes teased, though his face was quite serious,

as was his voice.

She of the blue-gray eyes turned and measured Thurston with a

deliberate, leisurely glance, and her mouth still had that unpleasant

expression. Thurston colored guiltily, but Hank Graves lifted his hat

and called her Mona, and asked her if she wasn't scared stiff, and if

she were home to stay. Then he beckoned to the tawny-haired fellow with

his finger, and winked at Mona--a proceeding which shocked Thurston

considerably.

“Mona--here, hold on a minute, can't yuh? Mona, this is a friend uh

mine; Bud Thurston's his name. He's come out to study us up and round up

a hunch uh real Western atmosphere. He's a story-writer. I used to whack

bulls all over the country with his father. Bud, this is Mona Stevens;

she ranges down close to the Lazy Eight, so the sooner yuh git

acquainted, the quicker.” He did not explain what would be the quicker,

and Thurston's embarrassment was only aggravated by the introduction.

Miss Stevens gave him a chilly smile, the kind that is worse than none

at all and turned her back, thinly pretending that she heard her brother

calling her, which she did not. Her brother was loudly explaining what

would have happened if he had been on that train and had got a whack at

the robbers, and his sister was far from his mind.

Graves slapped the shoulder of the fellow they had called Park.

“You young devil, next time I leave the place for a week--yes, or

overnight--I'll lock yuh up in the blacksmith shop. Have yuh got to be

Mona's special escort, these days?”

“Wish I was,” Park retorted, unmoved.

“Different here--yuh ain't much account, as it is. Bud, this here's my

wagon-boss, Park Holloway; one of 'em, that is. I'm going to turn yuh

over to him and let him wise yuh up. Say, you young bucks ought to get

along together pretty smooth. Your dads run buffalo together before

either of yuh was born. Well, let's be moving--we ain't home yet. Got a

war-bag, Bud?”

Late that night Thurston lay upon a home-made bed and listened to the

frogs croaking monotonously in the hollow behind the house, and to

the lone coyote which harped upon the subject of his wrongs away on a

distant hillside, and to the subdued snoring of Hank Graves in the room

beyond. He was trying to adjust himself to this new condition of things,

and the new condition refused utterly to be measured by his accepted

standard.

According to that standard, he should feel repulsed and annoyed by the

familiarity of strangers who persisted in calling him “Bud” without

taking the trouble to find out whether or not he liked it. And what

puzzled Thurston and put him all at sea was the consciousness that he

did like it, and that it struck familiarly upon his ears as something to

which he had been accustomed in the past.

Also, according to his well-ordered past, he should hate this raw life

and rawer country where could occur such brutal things as he had that

day witnessed. He should dislike a man like Park Holloway who, having

wounded a man unto death, had calmly dismissed the subject with the

regret that his aim had not been better, so that he could have saved the

county the expense of trying and hanging the fellow. Thurston was amazed

to find that, down in the inner man of him, he admired Park Holloway

exceedingly, and privately resolved to perfect himself in the use of

fire-arms, he who had been wont to deplore the thinly veneered savagery

of men who liked such things.

After much speculation he decided that Mona Stevens would not do for a

kidnapped heroine. He could not seem to “see” her in such a position,

and, besides, he told himself that such a type of girl did not attract

him at all. She had called him a coward--and why? simply because he,

straight from the trammels of civilization, had not been prepared to

meet the situation thrust upon him-which she had thrust upon him. She

had demanded of him something he had not the power to accomplish, and

she had called him a coward. And in his heart Thurston knew that it was

unjust, and that he was not a coward.

CHAPTER III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Thurston, dressed immaculately in riding clothes of the latest English

cut, went airily down the stairs and discovered that he was not early,

as he had imagined. Seven o'clock, he had told himself proudly, was not

bad for a beginner; and he had smiled in anticipation of Hank Graves'

surprise which was fortunate, since he would otherwise have been cheated

of smiling at all. For Hank Graves, he learned from the cook, had eaten

breakfast at five and had left the ranch more than an hour before; the

men also were scattered to their work.

Properly humbled in spirit, he sat down to the kitchen table and ate his

belated breakfast, while the cook kneaded bread at the other end of the

same table and eyed Thurston with frank amusement. Thurston had never

before been conscious of feeling ill at ease in the presence of a

servant, and hurried through the meal so that he could escape into the

clear sunshine, feeling a bit foolish in the unaccustomed bagginess of

his riding breeches and the snugness of his leggings; for he had never

taken to outdoor sports, except as an onlooker from the shade of a grand

stand or piazza.

While he was debating the wisdom of writing a detailed description of

yesterday's tragedy while it was still fresh in his mind and stowing it

away for future “color,” Park Holloway rode into the yard and on to the

stables. He nodded at Thurston and grinned without apparent cause, as

the cook had done. Thurston followed him to the corral and watched him

pull the saddle off his horse, and throw it carelessly to one side. It

looked cumbersome, that saddle; quite unlike the ones he had inspected

in the New York shops. He grasped the horn, lifted upon it and said,

“Jove!”

“Heavy, ain't it?” Park laughed, and slipped the bridle down over the

ears of his horse and dismissed him with a slap on the rump. “Don't yuh

like the looks of it?” he added indulgently.

Thurston, engaged in wondering what all those little strings were for,

felt the indulgence and straightened. “How should I know?” he retorted.

“Anyone can see that my ignorance is absolute. I expect you to laugh at

me, Mr. Holloway.”

“Call me Park,” said he of the tawny hair, and leaned against the fence

looking extremely boyish and utterly incapable of walking calmly down

upon a barking revolver and shooting as he went. “You're bound to learn

all about saddles and what they're made for,” he went on. “So long as

yuh don't get swell-headed the first time yuh stick on a horse that

side-steps a little, or back down from a few hard knocks, you'll be all

right.”

Thurston had not intended getting out and actually living the life he

had come to observe, but something got in his nerves and his blood and

bred an impulse to which he yielded without reserve. “Park, see

here,” he said eagerly. “Graves said he'd turn me over to you, so you

could--er--teach me wisdom. It's deuced rough on you, but I hope you

won't refuse to be bothered with me. I want to learn--everything. And I

want you to find fault like the mischief, and--er--knock me into shape,

if it's possible.” He was very modest over his ignorance, and his voice

rang true.

Park studied him gravely. “Bud,” he said at last, “you'll do. You're

greener right now than a blue-joint meadow in June, but yuh got the

right stuff in yuh, and it's a go with me. You come along with us after

that trail-herd, and you'll get knocked into shape fast enough. Smoke?”

Thurston shook his head. “Not those.”

“I dunno I'm afraid yuh can't be the real thing unless yuh fan your

lungs with cigarette smoke regular.” The twinkle belied him, though.

“Say, where did you pick them bloomers?”

“They were made in New York.” Thurston smiled in sickly fashion. He had

all along been uncomfortably aware of the sharp contrast between his own

modish attire and the somewhat disreputable leathern chaps of his host's

foreman.

“Well,” commented Park, “you told me to find fault like the mischief,

and I'm going to call your bluff. This here's Montana, recollect, and I

raise the long howl over them habiliments. The best thing you can do is

pace along to the house and discard before the boys get sight of yuh.

They'd queer yuh with the whole outfit, sure. Uh course,” he went on

soothingly when he saw the resentment in Thurston's eyes, “I expect

they're real stylish--back East--but the boys ain't educated to stand

for anything like that; they'd likely tell yuh they set like the hide

on the hind legs of an elephant--which is a fact. I hate to say it, Kid,

but they sure do look like the devil.”

“So would you, in New York,” Thurston flung back at him.

“Why, sure. But this ain't New York; this here's the Lazy Eight corral,

and I'm doing yuh a favor. You wouldn't like to have the boys shooting

holes through the slack, would yuh? You amble right along and get some

pants on--and when you've wised up some you'll thank me a lot. I'm going

on a little jaunt down the creek, before dinner, and you might go along;

you'll need to get hardened to the saddle anyway, before we start for

Billings, or you'll do most uh riding on the mess-wagon.”

Thurston, albeit in resentful mood, went meekly and did as he was

commanded to do; and no man save Park and the cook ever glimpsed those

smart riding clothes of English cut.

“Now yuh look a heap more human,” was the way Park signified his

approval of the change. “Here's a little horse that's easy to ride and

dead gentle if yuh don't spur him in the neck, which you ain't liable

to do at present; and Hank says you can have this saddle for keeps. Hank

used to ride it, but he out-growed it and got one longer in the seat.

When we start for Billings to trail up them cattle, of course you'll get

a string of your own to ride.”

“A string? I'm afraid I don't quite understand.”

“Yuh don't savvy riding a string? A string, m'son, is ten or a dozen

saddle-horses that yuh ride turn about, and nobody else has got any

right to top one; every fellow has got his own string, yuh see.”

Thurston eyed his horse distrustfully. “I think,” he ventured, “one will

be enough for me. I'll scarcely need a dozen.” The truth was that he

thought Park was laughing at him.

Park slid sidewise in the saddle and proceeded to roll another

cigarette. “I'd be willing to bet that by fall you'll have a good-sized

string rode down to a whisper. You wait; wait till it gets in your

blood. Why, I'd die if you took me off the range. Wait till yuh set out

in the dark, on your horse, and count the stars and watch the big dipper

swing around towards morning, and listen to the cattle breathing close

by--sleeping while you ride around 'em playing guardian angel over their

dreams. Wait till yuh get up at daybreak and are in the saddle with

the pink uh sunrise, and know you'll sleep fifteen or twenty miles from

there that night; and yuh lay down at night with the smell of new grass

in your nostrils where your bed had bruised it.

“Why, Bud, if you're a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little

old East.” Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope

which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept

the pace doggedly.

“I've got to go down to the Stevens place,” Park informed him. “You

met Mona yesterday--it was her come down on the train with me, yuh

remember.” Thurston did remember very distinctly. “Hank says yuh compose

stories. Is that right?”

Thurston's mind came back from wondering how Mona Stevens' mouth looked

when she was pleased with one, and he nodded.

“Well, there's a lot in this country that ain't ever been wrote about, I

guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But

the trouble is, them that know ain't in the writing business, and them

that write don't know. The way I've figured it, they set back East

somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it's a hell of a

job they make of it.”

Thurston, remembering the time when he, too, “set back East” and wrote

it like he thought maybe it was, blushed guiltily. He was thankful that

his stories of the West had, without exception, been rejected as of

little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the

hands of Park Holloway.

“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in

the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a

climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when

he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you'd tell me

just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing

a herd.”

“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered,

surprised. “What we're going to do when we get there is to receive a

shipment of cattle young steer that's coming up from the Panhandle which

is a part uh Texas. And we trail 'em up here and turn 'em loose this

side the river. After that we'll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight

runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other;

we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew,

twenty-five or thirty men.”

“I didn't know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle

into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying

some?”

“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds,

this spring; some seasons it's more. We get in young stock every year

and turn 'em loose on the range till they're ready to ship. It's cheaper

than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you'll see

some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain't

a commencement. Cattle's cheap down South, this year, and seems like

everybody's buying. Hank didn't buy as much as some, because he runs

quite a bunch uh cows; we'll brand six or seven thousand calves this

spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.”

Thurston agreed as politely as he could for the jolting. They had

again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was

heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had

written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his

luring dreams, about “the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland

meets the sky,” and he was gritting his teeth now over the idiotic

lines.

When they reached the ranch and Mona's mother came to the door and

invited them in, he declined almost rudely, for he had a feeling that

once out of the saddle he would have difficulty in getting into it

again. Besides, Mona was not at home, according to her mother.

So they did not tarry, and Thurston reached the Lazy Eight alive, but

with the glamour quite gone from his West. If he had not been the son of

his father, he would have taken the first train which pointed its

nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing

of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping

blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a

sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did

the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western

made him swear mild, city-bred oaths.

He choked back his awe of the cook and asked him, quite humbly, what

was good to take the soreness from one's muscles; afterward he had crept

painfully up the stairs, clasping to his bosom a beer bottle filled with

pungent, home-made liniment which the cook had gravely declared “out uh

sight for saddle-galls.”

Hank Graves, when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the

cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. “The

son-of-a-gun! He's the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He's

his dad over again, from the ground up.” And loved him the better.

CHAPTER IV. THE TRAIL-HERD

Thurston tucked the bulb of his camera down beside the bellows and

closed the box with a snap. “I wonder what old Reeve would say to that

view,” he mused aloud.

“Old who?”

“Oh, a fellow back in New York. Jove! he'd throw up his dry-point heads

and take to oils and landscapes if he could see this.”

The “this” was a panoramic view of the town and surrounding valley of

Billings. The day was sunlit and still, and far objects stood up with

sharp outlines in the clear atmosphere. Here and there the white tents

of waiting trail-outfits splotched the bright green of the prairie.

Horsemen galloped to and from the town at top speed, and a long, grimy

red stock train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where

the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of pounding

surf in the distance.

Thurston--quite a different Thurston from the trim, pale young man who

had followed the lure of the West two weeks before--drew a long breath

and looked out over the hurrying waters of the Yellowstone. It was good

to be alive and young, and to live the tented life of the plains; it

was good even to be “speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky

“--for two weeks in the saddle had changed considerably his view-point.

He turned again to the dust and roar of the stockyards a mile or so

away.

“Perhaps,” he remarked hopefully, “the next train will be ours.” Strange

how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions and new aims. He

had come West to look upon the life from the outside, and now his chief

thought was of the coming steers, which he referred to unblushingly as

“our cattle.” Such is the spell of the range.

“Let's ride on over, Bud,” Park proposed. “That's likely the Circle Bar

shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours does, and I want to

see how they stack up.”

Thurston agreed and went to saddle up. He had mastered the art of

saddling and could, on lucky days and when he was in what he called

“form,” rope the horse he wanted; to say nothing of the times when his

loop settled unexpectedly over the wrong victim. Park Holloway, for

instance, who once got it neatly under his chin, much to his disgust and

the astonishment of Thurston.

“I'm going to take my Kodak,” said he. “I like to watch them unload, and

I can get some good pictures, with this sunlight.”

“When you've hollered 'em up and down the chutes as many times as I

have,” Park told him, “yuh won't need no pictures to help yuh remember

what it's like.”

It was an old story with Park, and Thurston's enthusiasm struck him as

a bit funny. He perched upon a corner of the fence out of the way, and

smoked cigarettes while he watched the cattle and shouted pleasantries

to the men who prodded and swore and gesticulated at the wild-eyed

huddle in the pens. Soon his turn would come, but just now he was

content to look on and take his ease.

“For the life of me,” cried Thurston, sidling gingerly over to him, “I

can't see where they all come from. For two days these yards have never

been empty. The country will soon be one vast herd.”

“Two days--huh! this thing'll go on for weeks, m'son. And after all is

over, you'll wonder where the dickens they all went to. Montana is some

bigger than you realize, I guess. And next fall, when shipping starts,

you'll think you're seeing raw porterhouse steaks for the whole world.

Let's drift out uh this dust; you'll have time to get a carload uh

pictures before our bunch rolls in.”

As a matter of fact, it was two weeks before the Lazy Eight consignment

arrived. Thurston haunted the stockyards with his Kodak, but after the

first two or three days he took no pictures. For every day was but a

repetition of those that had gone before: a great, grimy engine shunting

cars back and forth on the siding; an endless stream of weary, young

cattle flowing down the steep chutes into the pens, from the pens to the

branding chutes, where they were burned deep with the mark of their new

owners; then out through the great gate, crowding, pushing, wild to flee

from restraint, yet held in and guided by mounted cowboys; out upon the

green prairie where they could feast once more upon sweet grasses and

drink their fill from the river of clear, mountain water; out upon the

weary march of the trail, on and on for long days until some boundary

which their drivers hailed with joy was passed, and they were free at

last to roam at will over the wind-brushed range land; to lie down in

some cool, sweet-scented swale and chew their cuds in peace.

Two weeks, and then came a telegram for Park. In the reading of it he

shuffled off his attitude of boyish irresponsibility and became in a

breath the cool, business-like leader of men. Holding the envelope still

in his hand he sought out Thurston, who was practicing with a rope. As

Park approached him he whirled the noose and cast it neatly over the

peak of the night-hawk's teepee.

“Good shot,” Park encouraged, “but I'd advise yuh to take another

target. You'll have the tent down over Scotty's ears, and then you'll

think yuh stirred up a mess uh hornets.

“Say, Bud, our cattle are coming, and I'm going to be short uh men. If

you'd like a job I'll take yuh on, and take chances on licking yuh into

shape. Maybe the wages won't appeal to yuh, but I'm willing to throw in

heaps uh valuable experience that won't cost yuh a cent.” He lowered an

eyelid toward the cook-tent, although no one was visible.

Thurston studied the matter while he coiled his rope, and no longer.

Secretly he had wanted all along to be a part of the life instead of an

onlooker. “I'll take the job, Park--if you think I can hold it down.”

The speech would doubtless have astonished Reeve-Howard in more ways

than one; but Reeve-Howard was already a part of the past in Thurston's

mind. He was for living the present.

“Well,” Park retorted, “it'll be your own funeral if yuh get fired.

Better stake yourself to a pair uh chaps; you'll need 'em on the trip.”

“Also a large, rainbow-hued silk handkerchief if I want to look the

part,” Thurston bantered.

“If yuh don't want your darned neck blistered, yuh mean,” Park flung

over his shoulders. “Your wages and schooling start in to-morrow at

sunup.”

It was early in the morning when the first train arrived, hungry,

thirsty, tired, bawling a general protest against fate and man's mode

of travel. Thurston, with a long pole in his hand, stood on the narrow

plank near the top of a chute wall and prodded vaguely at an endless,

moving incline of backs. Incidentally he took his cue from his

neighbors, and shouted till his voice was a croak-though he could

not see that he accomplished anything either by his prodding or his

shouting.

Below him surged the sea of hide and horns which was barely suggestive

of the animals as individuals. Out in the corrals the dust-cloud hung

low, just as it had hovered every day for more than two weeks; just as

it would hover every day for two weeks longer. Across the yards near the

big, outer gate Deacon Smith's crew was already beginning to brand. The

first train was barely unloaded when the second trailed in and out

on the siding; and so the third came also. Then came a lull, for the

consignment had been split in two and the second section was several

hours behind the first.

Thurston rode out to camp, aching with the strain and ravenously hungry,

after toiling with his muscles for the first time in his life; for his

had been days of physical ease. He had yet to learn the art of working

so that every movement counted something accomplished, as did the

others; besides, he had been in constant fear of losing his hold on the

fence and plunging headlong amongst the trampling hoofs below, a fate

that he shuddered to contemplate. He did not, however, mention that

fear, or his muscle ache, to any man; he might be green, but he was not

the man to whine.

When he went back into the dust and roar, Park ordered him curtly to

tend the branding fire, since both crews would brand that afternoon and

get the corrals cleared for the next shipment. Thurston thanked Park

mentally; tending branding-fire sounded very much like child's play.

Soon the gray dust-cloud took on a shade of blue in places where the

smoke from the fires cut through; a new tang smote the nostrils: the

rank odor of burning hair and searing hides; a new note crept into the

clamoring roar: the low-keyed blat of pain and fright.

Thurston turned away his head from the sight and the smell, and piled

on wood until Park stopped him with. “Say, Bud, we ain't celebrating any

election! It ain't a bonfire we want, it's heat; just keep her going and

save wood all yuh can.” After an hour of fire-tending Thurston decided

that there were things more wearisome than “hollering 'em down the

chutes.” His eyes were smarting intolerably with smoke and heat, and the

smell of the branding was not nice; but through the long afternoon he

stuck to the work, shrewdly guessing that the others were not having any

fun either. Park and “the Deacon” worked as hard as any, branding the

steers as they were squeezed, one by one, fast in the little branding

chutes. The setting sun shone redly through the smoke before Thurston

was free to kick the half-burnt sticks apart and pour water upon them as

directed by Park.

“Think yuh earned your little old dollar and thirty three cents, Bud?”

Park asked him. And Thurston smiled a tired, sooty smile that seemed all

teeth.

“I hope so; at any rate, I have a deep, inner knowledge of the joys of

branding cattle.”

“Wait 'till yuh burn Lazy Eights on wriggling, blatting calves for two

or three hours at a stretch before yuh talk about the joys uh branding.”

Park rubbed eloquently his aching biceps.

At dusk Thurston crept into his blankets, feeling that he would like the

night to be at least thirty six hours long. He was just settling into

a luxurious, leather-upholstered dream chair preparatory to telling

Reeve-Howard his Western experiences when Park's voice bellowed into the

tent:

“Roll out, boys--we got a train pulling in!”

There was hurried dressing in the dark of the bed-tent, hasty mounting,

and a hastier ride through the cool night air. There were long hours at

the chutes, prodding down at a wavering line of moving shadows, while

the “big dipper” hung bright in the sky and lighted lanterns bobbed back

and forth along the train waving signals to one another. At intervals

Park's voice cut crisply through the turmoil, giving orders to men whom

he could not see.

The east was lightening to a pale yellow when the men climbed at last

into their saddles and galloped out to camp for a hurried breakfast.

Thurston had been comforting his aching body with the promise of rest

and sleep; but three thousand cattle were milling impatiently in the

stockyards, so presently he found himself fanning a sickly little blaze

with his hat while he endeavored to keep the smoke from his tired eyes.

Of a truth, Reeve-Howard would have stared mightily at sight of him.

Once Park, passing by, smiled down upon him grimly. “Here's where yuh

get the real thing in local color,” he taunted, but Thurston was

too busy to answer. The stress of living had dimmed his eye for the

picturesque.

That night, one Philip Thurston slept as sleeps the dead. But he awoke

with the others and thanked the Lord there were no more cattle to unload

and brand.

When he went out on day-herd that afternoon he fancied that he was

getting into the midst of things and taking his place with the veterans.

He would have been filled with resentment had he suspected the truth:

that Park carefully eased those first days of his novitiate. That was

why none of the night-guarding fell to him until they had left Billings

many miles behind them.

CHAPTER V. THE STORM

The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on the

middle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two. The outfit had

camped near the head of a long, shallow basin that had a creek running

through; down the winding banks of it lay the white-tented camps of

seven other trail-herds, the cattle making great brown blotches against

the green at sundown. Thurston hoped they would all be there in the

morning when the sun came up, so that he could get a picture.

“Aw, they'll be miles away by then,” Bob assured him unfeelingly. “By

the signs, you can take snap-shots by lightning in another hour. Got

your slicker, Bud?”

Thurston said he hadn't, and Bob shook his head prophetically. “You'll

sure wish yuh had it before yuh hit camp again; when yuh get wise,

you'll ride with your slicker behind the cantle, rain or shine. They'll

need singing to, to-night.”

Thurston prudently kept silent, since he knew nothing whatever about it,

and Bob gave him minute directions about riding his rounds, and how to

turn a stray animal back into the herd without disturbing the others.

The man they relieved met them silently and rode away to camp. Off

to the right an animal coughed, and a black shape moved out from the

shadows.

Bob swung towards it, and the shape melted again into the splotch of

shade which was the sleeping herd. He motioned to the left. “Yuh can go

that way; and yuh want to sing something, or whistle, so they'll know

what yuh are.” His tone was subdued, as it had not been before. He

seemed to drift away into the darkness, and soon his voice rose, away

across the herd, singing. As he drew nearer Thurston caught the words,

at first disjointed and indistinct, then plainer as they met. It was a

song he had never heard before, because its first popularity had swept

far below his social plane.

“She's o-only a bird in a gil-ded cage,

A beautiful sight to see-e-e;

You may think she seems ha-a-aappy and free from ca-a-re..”

The singer passed on and away, and only the high notes floated across to

Thurston, who whistled softly under his breath while he listened. Then,

as they neared again on the second round, the words came pensively:

“Her beauty was so-o-old

For an old man's go-o-old, She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-age.”

Thurston rode slowly like one in a dream, and the lure of the range-land

was strong upon him. The deep breathing of three thousand sleeping

cattle; the strong, animal odor; the black night which grew each moment

blacker, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the clear, untrained voice

of a cowboy singing to his charge. If he could put it into words; if

he could but picture the broody stillness, with frogs cr-ekk, er-ekking

along the reedy creek-bank and a coyote yapping weirdly upon a distant

hilltop! From the southwest came mutterings half-defiant and ominous.

A breeze whispered something to the grasses as it crept away down the

valley.

“I stood in a church-yard just at ee-eve,

While the sunset adorned the west.”

It was Bob, drawing close out of the night. “You're doing fine, Kid;

keep her a-going,” he commended, in an undertone as he passed, and

Thurston moistened his unaccustomed lips and began industriously

whistling “The Heart Bowed Down,” and from that jumped to Faust. Fifteen

minutes exhausted his memory of the whistleable parts, and he was not

given to tiresome repetitions. He stopped for a moment, and Bob's voice

chanted admonishingly from somewhere, “Keep her a-go-o-ing, Bud, old

boy!” So Thurston took breath and began on “The Holy City,” and came

near laughing at the incongruity of the song; only he remembered that he

must not frighten the cattle, and checked the impulse.

“Say,” Bob began when he came near enough, “do yuh know the words uh

that piece? It's a peach; I wisht you'd sing it.” He rode on, still

humming the woes of the lady who married for gold.

Thurston obeyed while the high-piled thunder-heads rumbled deep

accompaniment, like the resonant lower tones of a bass viol.

“Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair;

I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there.”

A steer stepped restlessly out of the herd, and Thurston's horse,

trained to the work, of his own accord turned him gently back.

“I heard the children singing; and ever as they sang,

Me thought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang.”

From the west the thunder boomed, drowning the words in its

deep-throated growl.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing.”

“Hit her up a little faster, Bud, or we'll lose some. They're getting on

their feet with that thunder.”

Sunfish, in answer to Thurston's touch on the reins, quickened to a

trot. The joggling was not conducive to the best vocal expression, but

the singer persevered:

“Hosanna in the highest,

Hosanna to your King!”

Flash! the lightning cut through the storm-clouds, and Bob, who had

contented himself with a subdued whistling while he listened, took up

the refrain:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”

It was as if a battery of heavy field pieces boomed overhead. The entire

herd was on its feet and stood close-huddled, their tails to the coming

storm. Now the horses were loping steadily in their endless circling--a

pace they could hold for hours if need be. For one blinding instant

Thurston saw far down the valley; then the black curtain dropped as

suddenly as it had lifted.

“Keep a-hollering, Bud!” came the command, and after it Bob's voice

trilled high above the thunder-growl:

“Hosanna in the high-est.

Hosanna to your King!”

A strange thrill of excitement came to Thurston. It was all new to him;

for his life had been sheltered from the rages of nature. He had never

before been out under the night sky when it was threatening as now. He

flinched when came an ear-splitting crash that once again lifted the

black curtain and showed him, white-lighted, the plain. In the dark that

followed came a rhythmic thud of hoofs far up the creek, and the rattle

of living castanets. Sunfish threw up his head and listened, muscles

a-quiver.

“There's a bunch a-running,” called Bob from across the frightened herd.

“If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keep

on the outside!”

Thurston yelled “All right!” but the pounding roar of the stampede

drowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore down upon

him--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds, though he did not know

it then, his mind was all a daze, with one sentence zigzagging through

it like the lightning over his head, “Give Sunfish his head, and keep on

the outside!”

That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few

minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and

the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close

upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it

were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind

and wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew well

enough.

In his story of the West--the one that had failed to be convincing--he

had in his ignorance described a stampede, and it had not been in the

least like this one. He blushed at the memory, and wondered if he should

ever again feel qualified to write of these things.

Great drops of rain pounded him on the back as he rode--chill drops,

that went to the skin. He thought of his new canary-colored slicker in

the bed-tent, and before he knew it swore just as any of the other

men would have done under similar provocation; it was the first real,

able-bodied oath he had ever uttered. He was becoming assimilated with

the raw conditions of life.

He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shape

of a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, “Hello!”

“What outfit is this?” the man cried again.

“The Lazy Eight!” snapped Thurston, sure that the other had come with

the stampede. Then, feeling the anger of temporary authority, “What in

hell are you up to, letting your cattle run?” If Park could have heard

him say that for Reeve-Howard!

Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselves

other herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is not

pretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede at

night, keeping up the stragglers and taking the chance of a broken neck

with the rain to make matters worse.

Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found him

they rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and by

the lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing,

they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels.

The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up,

peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delay

it would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked the

Lord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track of

the maddened herds.

Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight.

When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sent

Thurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid off

his horse in a hurry.

“Yuh hurt, Bud?” he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston,

from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himself

the indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watched

unobtrusively over his welfare--and Bob MacGregor went farther and

loved him whole-heartedly. His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocally

frightened.

Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had not

been so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle. “I'm 'kinda sorter

shuck up like,”' he quoted ruefully. “And my nose is skinned, thank you.

Where's that devil of a horse?”

Bob stood over him and grinned. “My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud! What

would your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh? Anyway, yuh ain't

got any call to cuss Sunfish; he ain't to blame. He's used to fellows

that can ride.”

“Shut up!” Thurston commanded inelegantly. “I'd like to see you ride a

horse when he's upside down!”

“Aw, come on,” urged Bob, giving up the argument. “We'll be plumb lost

from the herd if we don't hustle.”

They got into their saddles again and went on, riding by sound and the

rare glimpses the lightning gave them as it flared through the storm

away to the east.

“Wet?” Bob sung out sympathetically from the streaming shelter of his

slicker. Thurston, wriggling away from his soaked clothing, grunted a

sarcastic negative.

The cattle were drifting now before the storm which had settled to a

monotonous downpour. The riders--two or three men for every herd that

had joined in the panic--circled, a veritable picket line without the

password. There would be no relief ride out to them that night, and they

knew it and settled to the long wait for morning.

Thurston took up his station next to Bob; rode until he met the next

man, and then retraced his steps till he faced Bob again; rode until the

world seemed unreal and far away, with nothing left but the night and

the riding back and forth on his beat, and the rain that oozed through

his clothes and trickled uncomfortably down inside his collar. He lost

all count of time, and was startled when at last came gray dawn.

As the light grew brighter his eyes widened and forgot their

sleep-hunger; he had not thought it would be like this. He was riding

part way across one end of a herd larger than his imagination had ever

pictured; three thousand cattle had seemed to him a multitude--yet

here were more than twenty thousand, wet, draggled, their backs humped

miserably from the rain which but a half hour since had ceased. He was

still gazing and wondering when Park rode up to him.

“Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?” he greeted.

“No, only Sunfish,” snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when Philip

Thurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great the

provocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental man

of him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector,

follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, ate

his breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slicker

deliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though the

sun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly twinkled, it

was so clean of clouds.

Bob watched him with eyes that laughed. “My, you're an ambitious

son-of-a-gun,” he chuckled. “And you've got the slicker question settled

in your mind, I see; yuh learn easy; it takes two or three soakings to

learn some folks.”

“We've got to go back and help with the herd, haven't we?” Thurston

asked. “The horses are all out.”

“Yep. They'll stay out, too, till noon, m'son. We hike to bed, if

anybody should ask yuh.”

So it was not till after dinner that he rode back to the great

herd--with his Kodak in his pocket--to find the cattle split up

into several bunches. The riders at once went to work separating the

different brands. He was too green a hand to do anything but help hold

the “cut,” and that was so much like ordinary herd-ing that his interest

flagged. He wanted, more than anything, to ride into the bunch and

single out a Lazy Eight steer, skillfully hazing him down the slope to

the cut, as he saw the others do.

Bob told him it was the biggest mix-up he had ever seen, and Bob had

ridden the range in every State where beef grows wild. He was in the

thickest of the huddle, was Bob, working as if he did not know the

meaning of fatigue. Thurston, watching him thread his way in and out of

the restless, milling herd, only to reappear unexpectedly at the edge

with a steer just before the nose of his horse, rush it out from among

the others--wheeling, darting this way and that, as it tried to dodge

back, and always coming off victor, wondered if he could ever learn to

do it.

Being in pessimistic mood, he told himself that he would probably always

remain a greenhorn, to be borne with and coached and given boy's work to

do; all because he had been cheated of his legacy of the dim trails and

forced to grow up in a city, hedged about all his life by artificial

conditions, his conscience wedded to convention.

CHAPTER VI. THE BIG DIVIDE

The long drive was nearly over. Even Thurston's eyes brightened when

he saw, away upon the sky-line, the hills that squatted behind the home

ranch of the Lazy Eight. The past month had been one of rapid living

under new conditions, and at sight of them it seemed only a few days

since he had first glimpsed that broken line of hills and the bachelor

household in the coulee below.

As the travel-weary herd swung down the long hill into the valley of the

Milk River, stepping out briskly as they sighted the cool water in the

near distance, the past month dropped away from Thurston, and what had

gone just before came back fresh as the happenings of the morning.

There was the Stevens ranch, a scant half mile away from where the tents

already gleamed on their last camp of the long trail; the smoke from

the cook-tent telling of savory meats and puddings, the bare thought of

which made one hurry his horse.

His eyes dwelt longest, however, upon the Stevens house half hidden

among the giant cottonwoods, and he wondered if Mona would still smile

at him with that unpleasant uplift at the corner of her red mouth. He

would take care that she did not get the chance to smile at him in any

fashion, he told himself with decision.

He wondered if those train-robbers had been captured, and if the one

Park wounded was still alive. He shivered when he thought of the dead

man in the aisle, and hoped he would never witness another death;

involuntarily he glanced down at his right stirrup, half expecting to

see his boot red with human blood. It was not nice to remember that

scene, and he gave his shoulders an impatient hitch and tried to think

of something else.

Mindful of his vow, he had bought a gun in Billings, but he had not yet

learned to hit anything he aimed at; for firearms are hushed in roundup

camps, except when dire necessity breeds a law of its own. Range cattle

do not take kindly to the popping of pistols. So Thurston's revolver was

yet unstained with powder grime, and was packed away inside his bed.

He was promising his pride that he would go up on the hill, back of the

Lazy Eight corrals, and shoot until even Mona Stevens must respect his

marksmanship, when Park galloped back to him--“The world has moved some

while we was gone,” he announced in the tone of one who has news to tell

and enjoys thoroughly the telling. “Yuh mind the fellow I laid out in

the hold-up? He got all right again, and they stuck him in jail along

with another one old Lauman, the sheriff, glommed a week ago. Well, they

didn't do a thing last night but knock a deputy in the head, annex his

gun, swipe a Winchester and a box uh shells out uh the office and hit

the high places. Old Lauman is hot on their trail, but he ain't met

up with 'em yet, that anybody's heard. When he does, there'll sure be

something doing! They say the deputy's about all in; they smashed his

skull with a big iron poker.”

“I wish I could handle a gun,” Thurston said between his teeth. “I'd

go after them myself. I wish I'd been left to grow up out here where I

belong. I'm all West but the training--and I never knew it till a month

ago! I ought to ride and rope and shoot with the best of you, and I

can't do a thing. All I know is books. I can criticize an opera and a

new play, and I'm considered something of an authority on clothes, but I

can't shoot.”

“Aw, go easy,” Park laughed at him. “What if yuh can't do the

double-roll? Riding and shooting and roping's all right--we couldn't

very well get along without them accomplishments. But that's all they

are; just accomplishments. We know a man when we see him, and it don't

matter whether he can ride a bronk straight up, or don't know which way

a saddle sets on a horse. If he's a man he gets as square a deal as we

can give him.” Park reached for his cigarette book. “And as for hunting

outlaws,” he finished, “we've got old Lauman paid to do that. And he's

dead onto his job, you bet; when he goes out after a man he comes pretty

near getting him, m'son. But I sure do wish I'd killed that jasper while

I was about it; it would have saved Lauman a lot uh hard riding.”

Thurston could scarcely explain to Park that his desire to hunt

train-robbers was born of a half-defiant wish to vindicate to Mona

Stevens his courage, and so he said nothing at all. He wondered if Park

had heard her whisper, that day, and knew how he had failed to obey

her commands; and if he had heard her call him a coward. He had often

wondered that, but Park had a way of keeping things to himself, and

Thurston could never quite bring himself to open the subject boldly. At

any rate, if Park had heard, he hoped that he understood how it was and

did not secretly despise him for it. Women, he told himself bitterly,

are never quite just.

After the four o'clock supper he and Bob MacGregor went up the valley

to relieve the men on herd. There was one nice thing about Park as a

foreman: he tried to pair off his crew according to their congeniality.

That was why Thurston usually stood guard with Bob, whom he liked better

than any of the others-always excepting Park himself.

“I brought my gun along,” Bob told him apologetically when they were

left to themselves. “It's a habit I've got when I know there's bad men

rampaging around the country. The boys kinda gave me the laugh when

they seen me haul it out uh my war bag, but I just told 'em to go to

thunder.”

“Do you think those--”

“Naw. Uh course not. I just pack it on general principles, same as an

old woman packs her umbrella.”

“Say, this is dead easy! The bunch is pretty well broke, ain't it? I'm

sure glad to see old Milk River again; this here trailing cattle gets

plumb monotonous.” He got down and settled his back comfortably against

a rock. Below them spread the herd, feeding quietly. “Yes, sir, this is

sure a snap,” he repeated, after he had made himself a smoke. “They's

only two ways a bunch could drift if they wanted to which they don't-up

the river, or down. This hill's a little too steep for 'em to tackle

unless they was crowded hard. Good feed here, too.

“Too bad yuh don't smoke, Bud. There's nothing like a good, smooth rock

to your back and a cigarette in your face, on a nice, lazy day like

this. It's the only kind uh day-herding I got any use for.”

“I'll take the rock to my back, if you'll just slide along and make

room,” Thurston laughed. “I don't hanker for a cigarette, but I do wish

I had my Kodak.”

“Aw, t'ell with your Kodak!” Bob snorted. “Can't yuh carry this layout

in your head? I've got a picture gallery in mine that I wouldn't trade

for a farm; I don't need no Kodak in mine, thankye. You just let this

here view soak into your system, Bud, where yuh can't lose it.”

Thurston did. Long after he could close his eyes and see it in every

detail; the long, green slope with hundreds of cattle loitering in the

rank grass-growth; the winding sweep of the river and the green, rolling

hills beyond; and Bob leaning against the rock beside him, smoking

luxuriously with half-closed eyes, while their horses dozed with

drooping heads a rein-length away.

“Say, Bud,” Bob's voice drawled sleepily, “I wisht you'd sing that

Jerusalem song. I want to learn the words to it; I'm plumb stuck on that

piece. It's different from the general run uh songs, don't yuh think?

Most of 'em's about your old home that yuh left in boyhood's happy days,

and go back to find your girl dead and sleeping in a little church-yard

or else it's your mother; or your girl marries the other man and you get

it handed to yuh right along--and they make a fellow kinda sick to his

stomach when he's got to sing 'em two or three hours at a stretch on

night-guard, just because he's plumb ignorant of anything better. This

here Jerusalem one sounds kinda grand, and--the cattle seems to like it,

too, for a change.”

“The composer would feel flattered if he heard that,” Thurston laughed.

He wanted to be left alone to day-dream and watch the clouds trail

lazily across to meet the hills; and there was an embryonic poem

forming, phrase by phrase, in his mind. But he couldn't refuse Bob

anything, so he sat a bit straighter and cleared his throat. He sang

well--well enough indeed to be sought after at informal affairs among

his set at home. When he came to the refrain Bob took his cigarette from

between his lips and held it in his fingers while he joined his voice

lustily to Thurston's:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

Lift up your gates and sing

Hosanna in the high-est.

Hosanna to your King!”

The near cattle lifted their heads to stare stupidly a moment, then

moved a few steps slowly, nosing for the sweetest grass-tufts. The

horses shifted their weight, resting one leg with the hoof barely

touching the earth, twitched their ears at the flies and slept again.

“And then me thought my dream was changed,

The streets no longer rang,

Hushed were the glad Hosannas

The little children sang--”

Tamale lifted his head and gazed inquiringly up the hill; but Bob was

not observant of signs just then. He was Striving with his recreant

memory for the words that came after:

“The sun grew dark with mystery,

The morn was cold and still,

As the shadow of a cross arose

Upon a lonely hill.”

Tamale stirred restlessly with head uplifted and ears pointed straight

before up the steep bluff. Old Ironsides, Thurston's mount, was not the

sort to worry about anything but his feed, and paid no attention. Bob

turned and glanced the way Tamale was looking; saw nothing, and settled

down again on the small of his back.

“He sees a badger or something,” he Said. “Go on, Bud, with the chorus.”

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

Lift up your gates and sing.”

“Lift up your hands damn quick!” mimicked a voice just behind. “If yuh

ain't got anything to do but lay in the shade of a rock and yawp, we'll

borrow your cayuses. You ain't needin' 'em, by the looks!”

They squirmed around until they could stare into two black

gun-barrels--and then their hands went up; their faces held a

particularly foolish expression that must have been amusing to the men

behind the guns.

One of the gun-barrels lowered and a hand reached out and quietly took

possession of Tamale's reins; the owner of the hand got calmly into

Bob's saddle. Bob gritted his teeth. It was evident their movements had

been planned minutely in advance, for, once settled to his liking, the

fellow tested the stirrups to make sure they were the right length, and

raising his gun pointed it at the two in a business-like manner that

left no doubt of his meaning. Whereupon the man behind them came forward

and appropriated Old Ironsides to his own use.

“Too bad we had to interrupt Sunday-school,” he remarked ironically.

“You can go ahead with the meetin' now--the collection has been took

up.” He laughed without any real mirth in his voice and gathered up the

reins. “If yuh want our horses, they're up on the bench. I don't

reckon they'll ever turn another cow, but such as they are you're quite

welcome. Better set still, boys, till we get out uh sight; one of us'll

keep an eye peeled for yuh. So long, and much obliged.” They turned and

rode warily down the slope.

“Now, wouldn't that jar yuh?” asked Bob in deep disgust His hands

dropped to his sides; in another second he was up and shooting savagely.

“Get behind the rock, Bud,” he commanded.

Just then a rifle cracked, and Bob toppled drunkenly and went limply to

the grass.

“My God!” cried Thurston, and didn't know that he spoke. He snatched up

Bob's revolver and fired shot after shot at the galloping figures. Not

one seemed to do any good; the first shot hit a two-year-old square in

the ribs. After that there were no cattle within rifle range.

One of the outlaws stopped, took deliberate aim with the stolen

Winchester and fired, meaning to kill; but he miscalculated the range a

bit and Thurston crumpled down with a bullet in his thigh. The revolver

was empty now and fell smoking at his feet. So he lay and cursed

impotently while he watched the marauders ride out of sight up the

valley.

When the rank timber-growth hid their flying figures he crawled over to

where Bob lay and tried to lift him.

“Art you hurt?” was the idiotic question he asked.

Bob opened his eyes and waited a breath, as if to steady his thought.

“Did I get one, Bud?”

“I'm afraid not,” Thurston confessed, and immediately after wished that

he had lied and said yes. “Are you hurt?” he repeated senselessly.

“Who, me?” Bob's eyes wavered in their directness. “Don't yuh bother

none about me,” evasively.

“But you've got to tell me. You--they--” He choked over the words.

“Well--I guess they got me, all right. But don't let that worry yuh; it

don't me.” He tried to speak carelessly and convincingly, but it was

a miserable failure. He did not want to die, did Bob, however much he

might try to hide the fact.

Thurston was not in the least imposed upon. He turned away his head,

pretending to look after the outlaws, and set his teeth together tight.

He did not want to act a fool. All at once he grew dizzy and sick, and

lay down heavily till the faintness passed.

Bob tried to lift himself to his elbow; failing that, he put out a hand

and laid it on Thurston's shoulder. “Did they--get you--too?” he queried

anxiously.

“The damn coyotes!”

“It's nothing; just a leg put out of business,” Thurston hurried to

assure him. “Where are you hurt, Bob?”

“Aw, I ain't any X-ray,” Bob retorted weakly but gamely. “Somewheres

inside uh me. It went in my side but the Lord knows where it wound

up. It hurts, like the devil.” He lay quiet a minute. “I wish--do yuh

feel--like finishing--that song, Bud?”

Thurston gulped down a lump that was making his throat ache. When he

answered, his voice was very gentle:

“I'll try a verse, old man.”

“The last one--we'd just come to the last. It's most like church. I--I

never went--much on religion, Bud; but when a fellow's--going out over

the Big Divide.”

“You're not!” Thurston contradicted fiercely, as if that could make it

different. He thought he could not bear those jerky sentences.

“All right--Bud. We won't fight over it. Go ahead. The last verse.”

Thurston eased his leg to a better position, drew himself up till his

shoulders rested against the rock and began, with an occasional, odd

break in his voice:

“I saw the holy city

Beside the tideless Sea;

The light of God was on its street

The gates were open wide.

And all who would might enter

And no one was denied.”

“Wonder if that there--applies--to bone-headed--cowpunchers,” Bob

muttered drowsily. “'And all--who would--” Thurston glanced quickly at

his face; caught his breath sharply at what he saw there written, and

dropped his head upon his arms.

And so Park and his men, hurrying to the sound of the shooting, found

them in the shadow of the rock.

CHAPTER VII. AT THE STEVENS PLACE

When the excitement of the outrage had been pushed aside by the

insistent routine of everyday living, Thurston found himself thrust from

the fascination of range life and into the monotony of invalidism, and

he was anything but resigned. To be sure, he was well cared for at the

Stevens ranch, where Park and the boys had taken him that day, and Mrs.

Stevens mothered him as he could not remember being mothered before.

Hank Graves rode over nearly every day to sit beside the bed and curse

the Wagner gang back to their great-great-grandfathers and down to more

than the third generation yet unborn, and to tell him the news. On the

second visit he started to give him the details of Bob's funeral; but

Thurston would not listen, and told him so plainly.

“All right then, Bud, I won't talk about it. But we sure done the right

thing by the boy; had the best preacher in Shellanne out, and flowers

till further notice: a cross uh carnations, and the boys sent up to

Minot and had a spur made uh--oh, well, all right; I'll shut up about

it, I know how yuh feel, Bud; it broke us all up to have him go that

way. He sure was a white boy, if ever there was one, and--ahem!”

“I'd give a thousand dollars, hard coin, to get my hands on them

Wagners. It would uh been all off with them, sure, if the boys had run

acrost 'em. I'd uh let 'em stay out and hunt a while longer, only old

Lauman'll get 'em, all right, and we're late as it is with the calf

roundup. Lauman'll run 'em down--and by the Lord! I'll hire Bowman

myself and ship him out from Helena to help prosecute 'em. They're dead

men if he takes the case against 'em, Bud, and I'll get him, sure--and

to hell with the cost of it! They'll swing for what they done to you and

Bob, if it takes every hoof I own.”

Thurston told him he hoped they would be caught and--yes, hanged; though

he had never before advocated capital punishment.

But when he thought of Bob, the care-naught, whole-souled fellow.

He tried not to think of him, for thinking unmanned him. He had the

softest of hearts where his friends were concerned, and there were

times when he felt that he could with relish officiate at the Wagners'

execution.

He fought against remembrance of that day; and for sake of diversion he

took to studying a large, pastel portrait of Mona which hung against the

wall opposite his bed. It was rather badly; done, and at first, when he

saw it, he laughed at the thought that even the great, still plains of

the range land cannot protect one against the ubiquitous picture

agent. In the parlor, he supposed there would be crayon pictures of

grandmothers and aunts-further evidence of the agent's glibness.

He was glad that it was Mona who smiled down at him instead of a

grand-mother or an aunt. For Mona did smile, and in spite of the cheap

crudity the smile was roguish, with little dimply creases at the corners

of the mouth, and not at all unpleasant. If the girl would only look

like that in real life, he told himself, a fellow would probably get to

liking her. He supposed she thought him a greater coward than ever now,

just because he hadn't got killed. If he had, he would be a hero now,

like Bob. Well, Bob was a hero; the way he had jumped up and begun

shooting required courage of the suicidal sort. He had stood up and

shot, also and had succeeded only in being ridiculous; he hoped nobody

had told Mona about his hitting that steer. When he could walk again he

would learn to shoot, so that the range stock wouldn't suffer from his

marksmanship.

After a week of seeing only Mrs. Stevens or sympathetic men

acquaintances, he began to wonder why Mona stayed so persistently away.

Then one morning she came in to take his breakfast things out. She did

not, however, stay a second longer than was absolutely necessary, and

she was perfectly composed and said good morning in her most impersonal

tone. At least Thurston hoped she had no tone more impersonal than that.

He decided that she had really beautiful eyes and hair; after she had

gone he looked up at the picture, told himself that it did not begin

to do her justice, and sighed a bit. He was very dull, and even her

companionship, he thought, would be pleasant if only she would come down

off her pedestal and be humanly sociable.

When he wrote a story about a fellow being laid up in the same house

with a girl--a girl with big, blue-gray eyes and ripply brown hair--he

would have the girl treat the fellow at least decently. She would read

poetry to him and bring him flowers, and do ever so many nice things

that would make him hate to get well. He decided that he would write

just that kind of story; he would idealize it, of course, and have the

fellow in love with the girl; you have to, in stories. In real life it

doesn't necessarily follow that, because a fellow admires a girl's hair

and eyes, and wants to be on friendly terms, he is in love with her.

For example, he emphatically was not in love with Mona Stevens. He only

wanted her to be decently civil and to stop holding a foolish grudge

against him for not standing up and letting himself be shot full of

holes because she commanded it.

In the afternoons, Mrs. Stevens would sit beside him and knit things

and talk to him in a pleasantly garrulous fashion, and he would lie and

listen to her--and to Mona, singing somewhere. Mona sang very well, he

thought; he wondered if she had ever had any training. Also, he wished

he dared ask her not to sing that song about “She's only a bird in a

gilded cage.” It brought back too vividly the nights when he and Bob

stood guard under the quiet stars.

And then one day he hobbled out into the dining-room and ate dinner with

the family. Since he sat opposite Mona she was obliged to look at

him occasionally, whether she would or no. Thurston had a strain of

obstinacy in his nature, and when he decided that Mona should not only

look at him, but should talk to him as well, he set himself diligently

to attain that end. He was not the man to sit down supinely and let a

girl calmly ignore him; so Mona presently found herself talking to him

with some degree of cordiality; and what is more to the point, listening

to him when he talked. It is probable that Thurston never had tried so

hard in his life to win a girl's attention.

It was while he was still hobbling with a cane and taxing his

imagination daily to invent excuses for remaining, that Lauman, the

sheriff, rode up to the door with a deputy and asked shelter for

themselves and the two Wagners, who glowered sullenly down from their

weary horses. When they had been safely disposed in Thurston's bedroom,

with one of the ranch hands detailed to guard them, Lauman and his man

gave themselves up to the joy of a good meal. Their own cooking, they

said, got mighty tame especially when they hadn't much to cook and dared

not have a fire.

They had come upon the outlaws by mere accident, and it is hard telling

which was the most surprised. But Lauman was, perhaps, the quickest man

with a gun in Valley County, else he would not have been serving his

fourth term as sheriff. He got the drop and kept it while his deputy

did the rest. It had been a hard chase, he said, and a long one if you

counted time instead of miles. But he had them now, harmless as rattlers

with their fangs fresh drawn. He wanted to get them to Glasgow before

people got to hear of their capture; he thought they wouldn't be any too

safe if the boys knew he had them.

If he had known that the Lazy Eight roundup had just pulled in to the

home ranch that afternoon, and that Dick Farney, one of the Stevens

men, had slipped out to the corral and saddled his swiftest horse, it

is quite possible that Lauman would not have lingered so long over his

supper, or drank his third cup of coffee--with real cream in it--with so

great a relish. And if he had known that the Circle Bar boys were camped

just three miles away within hailing distance of the Lazy Eight trail,

he would doubtless have postponed his after-supper smoke.

He was sitting, revolver in hand, watching the Wagners give a practical

demonstration of the extent of their appetites, when Thurston limped in

from the porch, his eyes darker than usual. “There are a lot of riders

coming, Mr. Lauman,” he announced quietly. “It sounds like a whole

roundup. I thought you ought to know.”

The prisoners went white, and put down knife and fork. If they had never

feared before, plainly they were afraid then.

Lauman's face did not in the least change. “Put the hand-cuffs on,

Waller,” he said. “If you've got a room that ain't easy to get at from

the outside, Mrs. Stevens, I guess I'll have to ask yuh for the use of

it.”

Mrs. Stevens had lived long in Valley County, and had learned how to

meet emergencies. “Put 'em right down cellar,” she invited briskly.

“There's just the trap-door into it, and the windows ain't big enough

for a cat to go through. Mona, get a candle for Mr. Lauman.” She turned

to hurry the girl, and found Mona at her elbow with a light.

“That's the kind uh woman I like to have around,” Lauman chuckled. “Come

on, boys; hustle down there if yuh want to see Glasgow again.”

Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace

of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the

darkness swallowed them. Lauman beckoned to his deputy.

“You go with 'em, Waller,” he ordered. “If anybody but me offers to lift

this trap, shoot. Don't yuh take any chances. Blow out that candle soon

as you're located.”

It was then that fifty riders clattered into the yard and up to the

front door, grouping in a way that left no exit unseen. Thurston,

standing in the doorway, knew them almost to a man. Lazy Eight boys,

they were; men who night after night had spread their blankets under the

tent-roof with him and with Bob MacGregor; Bob, who lay silently out

on the hill back of the home ranch-house, waiting for the last, great

round-up. They glanced at him in mute greeting and dismounted without a

word. With them mingled the Circle Bar boys, as silent and grim as their

fellows. Lauman came up and peered into the dusk; Thurston observed that

he carried his Winchester unobtrusively in one hand.

“Why, hello, boys,” he greeted cheerfully. But for the rifle you never

would have guessed he knew their errand.

“Hello, Lauman,” answered Park, matching him for cheerfulness. Then:

“We rode over to hang them Wagners.” Lauman grinned. “I hate to

disappoint yuh, Park, but I've kinda set my heart on doing that little

job myself. I'm the one that caught 'em, and if you'd followed my trail

the last month you'd say I earned the privilege.”

“Maybe so,” Park admitted pleasantly, “but we've got a little personal

matter to settle up with those jaspers. Bob MacGregor was one of us, yuh

remember.”

“I'll hang 'em just as dead as you can,” Lauman argued.

“But yuh won't do it so quick,” Park lashed back. “They're spoiling the

air every breath they draw. We want 'em, and I guess that pretty near

settles it.”

“Not by a damn sight it don't! I've never had a man took away from me

yet, boys, and I've been your sheriff a good many years. You hike right

back to camp; yuh can't have 'em.”

Thurston could scarcely realize the deadliness of their purpose. He knew

them for kind-hearted, laughter-loving young fellows, who would give

their last dollar to a friend. He could not believe that they would

resort to violence now. Besides, this was not his idea of a mob; he

had fancied they would howl threats and wave bludgeons, as they did in

stories. Mobs always “howled and seethed with passion” at one's doors;

they did not stand about and talk quietly as though the subject was

trivial and did not greatly concern them.

But the men were pressing closer, and their very calmness, had he known

it, was ominous. Lauman shifted his rifle ready for instant aim.

“Boys, look here,” he began more gravely, “I can't say I blame yuh,

looking at it from your view-point. If you'd caught these men when yuh

was out hunting 'em, you could uh strung 'em up--and I'd likely uh had

business somewhere else about that time. But yuh didn't catch 'em; yuh

give up the chase and left 'em to me. And yuh got to remember that I'm

the one that brought 'em in. They're in my care. I'm sworn to protect

'em and turn 'em over to the law--and it ain't a question uh whether

they deserve it or not. That's what I'm paid for, and I expect to go

right ahead according to orders and hang 'em by law. You can't have

'em--unless yuh lay me out first, and I don't reckon any of yuh would go

that far.”

“There's never been a man hung by law in this county yet,” a voice cried

angrily and impatiently.

“That ain't saying there never will be,” Lauman flung back. “Don't yuh

worry, they'll get all that's coming to them, all right.”

“How about the time yuh had 'em in your rotten old jail, and let 'em get

out and run loose around the country, killing off white men?” drawled

another-a Circle-Bar man.

“Now boys.”

A hand--the hand of him who had stood guard over the Wagners in the

bedroom during supper--reached out through the doorway and caught his

rifle arm. Taken unawares from behind, he whirled and then went down

under the weight of men used to “wrassling” calves. Even old Lauman was

no match for them, and presently he found himself stretched upon the

porch with three Lazy Eight boys sitting on his person; which, being

inclined to portliness, he found very uncomfortable.

Moved by an impulse he had no name for, Thurston snatched the sheriff's

revolver from its scabbard. As the heap squirmed pantingly upon the

porch he stepped into the doorway to avoid being tripped, which was the

wisest move he could have made, for it put him in the shadow--and

there were men of the Circle Bar whose trigger-finger would not have

hesitated, just then, had he been in plain sight and had they known his

purpose.

“Just hold on there, boys,” he called, and they could see the glimmer of

the gun-barrel. Those of the Lazy Eight laughed at him.

“Aw, put it down, Bud,” Park admonished. “That's too dangerous a toy for

you to be playing with--and yuh know damn well yuh can't hit anything.”

“I killed a steer once,” Thurston reminded him meekly, whereat the laugh

hushed; for they remembered.

“I know I can't shoot straight,” he went on frankly, “but you're taking

that much the greater chance. If I have to, I'll cut loose--and there's

no telling where the bullets may strike.”

“That's right,” Park admitted. “Stand still, boys; he's more dangerous

than a gun that isn't loaded. What d'yuh want, m'son?”

“I want to talk to you for about five minutes. I've got a game leg, so

that I can neither run nor fight, but I hope you'll listen to me. The

Wagners can't get away--they're locked up, with a deputy standing over

them with a gun; and on top of that they're handcuffed. They're as

helpless, boys, as two trapped coyotes.” He looked down over the crowd,

which shifted uneasily; no one spoke.

“That's what struck me most,” he continued. “You know what I thought of

Bob, don't you? And I didn't thank them for boring a hole in my leg; it

wasn't any kindness of theirs that it didn't land higher--they weren't

shooting at me for fun. And I'd have killed them both with a clear

conscience, if I could. I tried hard enough. But it was different then;

out in the open, where a man had an even break. I don't believe if I

had shot as straight as I wanted to that I'd ever have felt a moment's

compunction. But now, when they're disarmed and shackled and altogether

helpless, I couldn't walk up to them deliberately and kill them could

you?

“It could be done, and done easily. You have Lauman where he can't do

anything, and I'm not of much account in a fight; so you've really only

one deputy sheriff and two women to get the best of. You could drag

these men out and hang them in the cottonwoods, and they couldn't raise

a hand to defend themselves. We could do it easily--but when it was done

and the excitement had passed I'd have a picture in my memory that I'd

hate to look at. I'd have an hour in my life that would haunt me. And

so would you. You'd hate to look back and think that one time you helped

kill a couple of men who couldn't fight back.

“Let the law do it, boys. You don't want them to live, and I don't;

nobody does, for they deserve to die. But it isn't for us to play judge

and jury and hangman here to-night. Let them get what's coming to them

at the hands of the officers you've elected for that purpose. They won't

get off. Hank Graves says they will hang if it takes every hoof he owns.

He said he would bring Bowman down here to help prosecute them. I don't

know Bowman--”

“I do,” a voice spoke, somewhere in the darkness. “Lawyer from Helena.

Never lost a case.”

“I'm glad to hear it, for he's the man that will prosecute. They haven't

a ghost of a show to get out of it. Lauman here is responsible for their

safe keeping and I guess, now that he knows them better, we needn't be

afraid they'll escape again. And it's as Lauman said; he'll hang them

quite as dead as you can. He's drawing a salary to do these things, make

him earn it. It's a nasty job, boys, and you wouldn't get anything out

of it but a nasty memory.”

A hand that did not feel like the hand of a man rested for an instant on

his arm. Mona brushed by him and stepped out where the rising moon shone

on her hair and into her big, blue-gray eyes.

“I wish you all would please go away,” she said. “You are making mamma

sick. She's got it in her head that you are going to do something awful,

and I can't convince her you're not. I told her you wouldn't do anything

so sneaking, but she's awfully nervous about it. Won't you please go,

right now?”

They looked sheepishly at one another; every man of them feared the

ridicule of his neighbor.

“Why, sure we'll go,” cried Park, rallying. “We were going anyway in a

minute. Tell your mother we were just congratulating Lauman on rounding

up these Wagners. Come on, boys. And you, Bud, hurry up and get well

again; we miss yuh round the Lazy Eight.”

The three who were sitting on Lauman got up, and he gave a sigh of

relief. “Say, yuh darned cowpunchers don't have no mercy on an old man's

carcass at all,” he groaned, in exaggerated self-pity. “Next time yuh

want to congratulate me, I wish you'd put it in writing and send it by

mail.”

A little ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Then they swung up

on their horses and galloped away in the moonlight.

CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE

“That was your victory, Miss Stevens. Allow me to congratulate you.” If

Thurston showed any ill grace in his tone it was without intent. But it

did seem unfortunate that just as he was waxing eloquent and felt sure

of himself and something of a hero, Mona should push him aside as though

he were of no account and disperse a bunch of angry cowboys with half a

dozen words.

She looked at him with her direct, blue-gray eyes, and smiled. And

her smile had no unpleasant uplift at the corners; it was the dimply,

roguish smile of the pastel portrait only several times nicer. Re could

hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared. When he came

to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with

the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened--unless one

observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks--while her mother, who showed

not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of

a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX

across the center.

“I knew all the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right

to the point,” she declared. “Bless their hearts, they thought they

would--but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad. If yuh go

at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy. It done me good to hear yuh

talk right up to 'em, Bud.” Mrs. Stevens had called hi Bud from

the first time she laid eyes on him. “That's all under the sun they

needed--just somebody to set 'em thinking about the other side. You're a

real good speaker; seems to me you ought to study to be a preacher.”

Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his

amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the

chilly smile, actually giggled--giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot

him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash

of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy

and for no reason under the sun that he could name.

He had promised his conscience that he would go home to the Lazy Eight

in the morning, but he didn't; he somehow contrived, overnight, to

invent a brand new excuse for his conscience to swallow or not, as it

liked. Hank Graves had the same privilege; as for the Stevens trio, he

blessed their hospitable souls for not wanting any excuse whatever for

his staying. They were frankly glad to have him there; at least Mrs.

Stevens and Jack were. As for Mona, he was not so sure, but he hoped she

didn't mind.

This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write

a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his

heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study

his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves,

for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank

was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple.

Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday

throat--and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat,

eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in

his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the

West--and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified

to be their real selves--and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself:

“That's all right, Bud. You stay right here as long as yuh want to. I

don't blame yuh--if I was you I'd want to spend a lot uh time studying

this particular brand uh female girl myself. She's out uh sight,

Bud--and I don't believe any uh the boys has got his loop on her so far;

though I could name a dozen or so that would be tickled to death if they

had. You just go right ahead and file your little, old claim--”

“You're getting things mixed,” Thurston interrupted, rather testily.

“I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to

paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you

could look at them--wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to--to

own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your

interest would be, er, entirely impersonal.”

“Uh-huh,” Hank agreed, his keen eyes searching Phil's face amusedly.

“Therefore, it doesn't follow that I'm getting foolish about a girl just

because I--hang it! what the Dickens makes you look at a fellow that

way? You make me?”

“Uh-huh,” said Hank again, smoothing the lower half of his face with one

hand. “You're a mighty nice little boy, Bud. I'll bet Mona thinks so,

too and when yuh get growed up you'll know a whole lot more than yuh do

right now. Well, I guess I'll be moving. When yuh get that--er--story

done, you'll come back to the ranch, I reckon. Be good.”

Thurston watched him ride away, and then flounced, oh, men do flounce at

times, in spirit, if not in deed; and there would be no lack of the deed

if only they wore skirts that could rustle indignantly in sympathy with

the wearer--to his room. Plainly, Hank did not swallow the excuse any

more readily than did his conscience.

To prove the sincerity of his assertion to himself, his conscience,

and to Hank Graves, he straightway got out a thick pad of paper and

sharpened three lead pencils to an exceeding fine point. Then he sat him

down by the window--where he could see the kitchen door, which was the

one most used by the family--and nibbled the tip off one of the pencils

like any school-girl. For ten minutes he bluffed himself into believing

that he was trying to think of a title; the plain truth is, he was

wondering if Mona would go for a ride that afternoon and if so, might he

venture to suggest going with her.

He thought of the crimply waves in Mona's hair, and pondered what

adjectives would best describe it without seeming commonplace.

“Rippling” was too old, though it did seem to hit the case all right.

He laid down the pad and nearly stood on his head trying to reach his

Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms without getting out of his chair.

While he was clawing after it--it lay on the floor, where he had thrown

it that morning because it refused to divulge some information he

wanted--he heard some one open and close the kitchen door, and came near

kinking his neck trying to get up in time to see who it was. He failed

to see anyone, and returned to the dictionary.

“'Ripple--to have waves--like running water.'” (That was just the way

her hair looked, especially over the temples and at the nape of her

neck--Jove, what a tempting white neck it was!) “Um-m. 'Ripple; wave;

undulate; uneven; irregular.'” (Lord, what fools are the men who write

dictionaries!) “'Antonym--hang the antonyms!”

The kitchen door slammed. He craned again. It was Jack--going to town

most likely. Thurston shrewdly guessed that Mrs. Stevens leaned far more

upon Mona than she did upon Jack, although he could hardly accuse her

of leaning on anyone. But he observed that the men looked to her for

orders.

He perceived that the point was gone from his pencil, and proceeded to

sharpen it. Then he heard Mona singing in the kitchen, and recollected

that Mrs. Stevens had promised him warm doughnuts for supper. Perhaps

Mona was frying them at that identical moment--and he had never seen

anyone frying doughnuts. He caught up his cane and limped out to

investigate. That is how much his heart just then was set upon writing a

story that would breathe of the plains.

One great hindrance to the progress of his story was the difficulty he

had in selecting a hero for his heroine. Hank Graves suggested that he

use Park, and even went so far as to supply Thurston with considerable

data which went to prove that Park would not be averse to figuring in

a love story with Mona. But Thurston was not what one might call

enthusiastic, and Hank laughed his deep, inner laugh when he was well

away from the house.

Thurston, on the contrary, glowered at the world for two hours after.

Park was a fine fellow, and Thurston liked him about as well as any man

he knew in the West, but--And thus it went. On each and every visit to

the Stevens ranch--and they were many--Hank, learning by direct inquiry

that the story still suffered for lack of a hero, suggested some fellow

whom he had at one time and another caught “shining” around Mona. And

with each suggestion Thurston would draw down his eyebrows till he came

near getting a permanent frown.

A love story without a hero, while it would no doubt be original and

all that, would hardly appeal to an editor. Phil tried heroes wholly

imaginary, but he had a trick of making his characters seem very real

to himself and sometimes to other people as well. So that, after a few

passages of more or less ardent love-making, he would in a sense grow

jealous and spoil the story by annihilating the hero thereof.

Heaven only knows how long the thing would have gone on if he hadn't,

one temptingly beautiful evening, reverted to the day of the hold-up and

apologized for not obeying her command. He explained as well as he could

just why he sat petrified with his hands in the air.

And then having brought the thing freshly to her mind, he somehow lost

control of his wits and told her he loved her. He told her a good deal

in the next two minutes that he might better have kept to himself just

then. But a man generally makes a glorious fool of himself once or twice

in his life and it seems the more sensible the man the more thorough a

job he makes of it.

Mona moved a little farther away from him, and when she answered she

did not choose her words. “Of all things,” she said, evenly, “I admire

a brave man and despise a coward. You were chicken-hearted that day, and

you know it; you've just admitted it. Why, in another minute I'd have

had that gun myself, and I'd have shown you--but Park got it before

I really had a chance. I hated to seem spectacular, but it served you

right. If you'd had any nerve I wouldn't have had to sit there and tell

you what to do. If ever I marry anybody, Mr. Thurston, it will be a

man.”

“Which means, I suppose, that I'm not one?” he asked angrily.

“I don't know yet.” Mona smiled her unpleasant smile--the one that

did not belong in the story he was going to write. “You're new to the

country, you see. Maybe you've got nerve; you haven't shown much, so far

as I know--except when you talked to the boys that night. But you must

have known that they wouldn't hurt you anyway. A man must have a little

courage as much as I have; which isn't asking much--or I'd never marry

him in the world.”

“Not even if you--liked him?” his smile was wistful.

“Not even if I loved him!” Mona declared, and fled into the house.

Thurston gathered himself together and went down to the stable and

borrowed a horse of Jack, who had just got back from town, and rode home

to the Lazy Eight.

When Hank heard that he was home to stay--at least until he could join

the roundup again--he didn't say a word for full five minutes. Then,

“Got your story done?” he drawled, and his eyes twinkled.

Thurston was going up the stairs to his old room, and Hank could not

swear positively to the reply he got. But he thought it sounded like,

“Oh, damn the story!”

CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS

Weeks slipped by, and to Thurston they seemed but days. His

world-weariness and cynicism disappeared the first time he met Mona

after he had left there so unceremoniously; for Mona, not being aware of

his cynicism, received him on the old, friendly footing, and seemed to

have quite forgotten that she had ever called him a coward, or refused

to marry him. So Thurston forgot it also--so long as he was with her.

How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain it

is that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories were

concerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask what

was keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much by

staying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to begin

packing his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearly

receiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book which

he had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, he

stopped and considered:

There was the Wagner trial coming off in a month or so; he couldn't get

out of attending it, for he had been subpoenaed as a witness for the

prosecution. And there was the beef roundup going to start before

long--he really ought to stay and take that in; there would be some fine

chances for pictures. And really he didn't care so much for the Barry

Wilson bunch and the long list of festivities which trailed ever in

its wake; at any rate, they weren't worth rushing two-thirds across the

continent for.

He sat down and wrote at length to Reeve-Howard, explaining very

carefully--and not altogether convincingly--just why he could not

possibly go home at present. After that he saddled and rode over to the

Stevens place with the book, leaving his trunk yawning emptily in the

middle of his badly jumbled belongings.

After that he spent three weeks on the beef roundup. At first he was

full of enthusiasm, and worked quite as if he had need of the wages, but

after two or three big drives the novelty wore off quite suddenly, and

nothing then remained but a lot of hard work. For instance, standing

guard on long, rainy nights when the cattle walked and walked might at

first seem picturesque and all that, but must at length, cease to be

amusing.

Likewise the long hours which he spent on day-herd, when the wind

was raw and penetrating and like to blow him out of the saddle; also

standing at the stockyard chutes and forcing an unwilling stream of

rollicky, wild-eyed steers up into the cars that would carry them to

Chicago.

After three weeks of it he awoke one particularly nasty morning and

thanked the Lord he was not obliged to earn his bread at all, to say

nothing of earning it in so distressful a fashion. There was a lull

in the shipping because cars were not then available. He promptly took

advantage of it and rode by the very shortest trail to the ranch--and

Mona. But Mona was visiting friends in Chinook, and there was no telling

when she would return. Thurston, in the next few days, owned to himself

that there was no good reason for his tarrying longer in the big,

un-peopled West, and that the proper thing for him to do was go back

home to New York.

He had come to stay a month, and he had stayed five. He could ride and

rope like an old-timer, and he was well qualified to put up a stiff

gun-fight had the necessity ever arisen--which it had not.

He had three hundred and seventy-one pictures of different phases of

range life, not counting as many that were over-exposed or under-exposed

or out of focus. He had six unfinished stories, in each of which the

heroine had big, blue-gray eyes and crimply hair, and the title and bare

skeleton of a seventh, in which the same sort of eyes and hair would

probably develop later. He had proposed to Mona three times, and had

been three times rebuffed--though not, it must be owned, with that tone

of finality which precludes hope.

He was tanned a fine brown, which became him well. His eyes had lost the

dreamy, introspective look of the student and author, and had grown keen

with the habit of studying objects at long range. He walked with that

peculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in the

saddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually and

had forgotten the feel of a dress-suit.

He answered to the name “Bud” more readily than to his own, and he made

practical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without any

mental quotation marks.

By all these signs and tokens he had learned his West, and should have

taken himself back to civilization when came the frost. He had come to

get into touch with his chosen field of fiction, that he might write

as one knowing whereof he spoke. So far as he had gone, he was in touch

with it; he was steeped to the eyes in local color--and there was the

rub The lure of it was strong upon him, and he might not loosen its

hold. He was the son of his father; he had found himself, and knew that,

like him, he loved best to travel the dim trails.

Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after him.

“She's sure coming,” he complained, while he pulled the icicles from

his mustache and cast them into the fire. “She's going to be a real, old

howler by the signs. What yuh doing, Bud? Writing poetry?”

Thurston nodded assent with certain mental reservations; so far the

editors couldn't seem to make up their minds that it was poetry.

“Well, say, I wish you'd slap in a lot uh things about hazy, lazy, daisy

days in the spring--that jingles fine!--and green grass and the

sun shining and making the hills all goldy yellow, and prairie dogs

chip-chip-chipping on the 'dobe flats. (Prairie dogs would go all right

in poetry, wouldn't they? They're sassy little cusses, and I don't know

of anything that would rhyme with 'em, but maybe you do.) And read it

all out to me after supper. Maybe it'll make me kinda forget there's a

blizzard on.”

“Another one?” Thurston got up to scratch a trench in the half-inch

layer of frost on the cabin window. “Why, it only cleared up this

morning after three days of it.”

“Can't help that. This is just another chapter uh that same story. When

these here Klondike Chinooks gets to lapping over each other they never

know when to quit. Every darn one has got to be continued tacked onto

the tail of it the winter. All the difference is, you can't read the

writing; but I can.”

“I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh if

you'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start the

Wagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being in

the writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to take

notes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder and

sudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuh

might have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pass this up.”

“Oh, go easy. It turns me sick when I think about it; how they looked

when they got their sentence, and all that. I certainly don't care to

see them hanged, though they do deserve it. Where are the letters?”

Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard;

he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner--an address

that started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reached

that blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one of

the “Eight Leading” without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloated

over his successes, and was cast into the deeps by his failures.

He held the envelope to the light, shook it tentatively, like any woman,

guessed hastily and hopefully at the contents, and tore off an end

impatiently. From the great fireplace Gene watched him curiously and

half enviously. He wished he could get important-looking letters from

New York every few days. It must make a fellow feel that he amounted to

something.

“Gene, you remember that story I read to you one night--that yarn about

the fellow that lived alone in the hills, and how the wolves used to

come and sit on the ridge and howl o' nights--you know, the one you

said was 'out uh sight'? They took it, all right, and--here, what do you

think of that?” He tossed the letter over to Gene, who caught it just as

it was about to be swept into the flame with the draught in Thurston, in

the days which he spent one of the half-dozen Lazy Eight line-camps with

Gene, down by the river, had been writing of the West--writing in

fear and trembling, for now he knew how great was his subject and his

ignorance of it. In the long evenings, while the fire crackled and the

flames played a game they had invented, a game where they tried which

could leap highest up the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooed

around the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the one

little window; while shivering, drifting range cattle tramped restlessly

through the sparse willow-growth seeking comfort where was naught but

cold and snow and bitter, driving wind; while the gray wolves hunted in

packs and had not long to wait for their supper, Thurston had written

better than he knew. He had sent the cold of the blizzards and the howl

of the wolves; he had sent bits of the wind-swept plains back to New

York in long, white envelopes. And the editors were beginning to watch

for his white envelopes and to seize them eagerly when they came, greedy

for what was within. Not every day can they look upon a few typewritten

pages and see the range-land spread, now frowning, now smiling, before

them.

“Gee! they say here they want a lot the same brand, and at any old price

yuh might name. I wouldn't mind writing stories myself.” Gene kicked

a log back into the flame where it would do the most good. His big,

square-shouldered figure stood out sharply against the glow.

Thurston, watching him meditatively, wanted to tell him that he was

the sort of whom good stories are made. But for men like Gene--strong,

purposeful, brave, the West would lose half its charm. He was like Bob

in many ways, and for that Thurston liked him and, stayed with him in

the line-camp when he might have been taking his ease at the home ranch.

It was wild and lonely down there between the bare hills and the frozen

river, but the wildness and the loneliness appealed to him. It was

primitive and at times uncomfortable. He slept in a bunk built against

the wall, with hard boards under him and a sod roof over his head. There

were times when the wind blew its fiercest and rattled dirt down into

his face unless he covered it with a blanket. And every other day he

had to wash the dishes and cook, and when it was Gene's turn to cook,

Thurston chopped great armloads of wood for the fireplace to eat o'

nights. Also he must fare forth, wrapped to the eyes, and help Gene

drive back the cattle which drifted into the river bottom, lest they

cross the river on the ice and range where they should not.

But in the evenings he could sit in the fire-glow and listen to the wind

and to the coyotes and the gray wolves, and weave stories that even the

most hyper-critical of editors could not fail to find convincing. By

day he could push the coffee-box that held his typewriter over by the

frosted window--when he had an hour or two to spare--and whang away at

a rate which filled Gene with wonder. Sometimes he rode over to the home

ranch for a day or two, but Mona was away studying music, so he found no

inducement to remain, and drifted back to the little, sod-roofed cabin

by the river, and to Gene.

The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and never

a chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast.

Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter for

days, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds.

By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When the

wind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushed

reluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene and

Thurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn them

pitilessly back into the teeth of the storm.

They came by hundreds--thin, gaunt from cold and hunger. They came by

thousands, lowing their misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking that

which none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilled

bodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave over

trying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch a

dozen others were straggling out from shore, the timid following

single file behind a leader more venturesome or more desperate than his

fellows.

So the march went on and on: big, Southern-bred steer grappling the

problem of his first Northern winter; thin-flanked cow with shivering,

rough-coated calf trailing at her heels; humpbacked yearling with little

nubs of horns telling that he was lately in his calfhood; red cattle,

spotted cattle, white cattle, black cattle; white-faced Herefords,

Short-horns, scrubs; Texas longhorns--of the sort invariably pictured

in stampedes--still they came drifting out of the cold wilderness and on

into wilderness as cold.

Through the shifting wall of the worst blizzard that season Thurston

watched the weary, fruitless, endless march of the range. “Where do they

all come from?” he exclaimed once when the snow-veil lifted and showed

the river black with cattle.

“Lord! I dunno,” Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against the

pity of it. “I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in the

Cypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the whole

darned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run.

I'm looking for reindeer next.”

“Something ought to be done,” Thurston declared uneasily, turning away

from the sight. “I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my ears

day and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves.”

“It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse,” Gene

told him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bit

through even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in the

fireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. “There's

going to be the biggest loss this range has ever known.”

“It's the owners' fault,” snapped Thurston, whose nerves were in

that irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Even

argument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be a

relief. “It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't they

take care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in the

house and watch them starve through the winter?”

“What if yuh owned more than yuh could feed? It'd be a case uh have-to

then. There's fifty thousand Lazy Eight cattle walking the range

somewhere today. How the dickens is old Hank going to feed them fifty

thousand? or five thousand? It takes every spear uh hay he's got to feed

his calves.”

“He could buy hay,” Thurston persisted.

“Buy hay for fifty thousand cattle? Where would he get it? Say, Bud, I

guess yuh don't realize that's some cattle. All ails you is, yuh don't

savvy the size uh the thing. I'll bet yuh there won't be less than three

hundred thousand head cross this river before spring.”

“Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself.”

“I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cow

States. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runs

the range, you're plumb foolish.”

“Anyway, it's a damnable pity!” Thurston asserted petulantly.

“Sure it is. The grass is there, but it's under fourteen inches uh snow

right now, and more coming; they say it's twelve feet deep up in the

mountains. You'll see some great old times in the spring, Bud, if yuh

stay. You will, won't yuh?”

Thurston laughed shortly. “I suppose it's safe to say I will,” he

answered. “I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It will

probably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, but

I won't.”

“You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last spring

wasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives till

spring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll be

scattered clean down to the Yellowstone, and every Northern outfit has

got to go down and help work the range from there back. I tell yuh, Bud,

yuh want to lay in a car-load uh films and throw away all them little,

jerk-water snap-shots yuh got. There's going to be roundups like these

old Panhandle rannies tell about, when the green grass comes.” Gene,

thinking blissfully of the tented life, sprawled his long legs toward

the snapping blaze and crooned dreamily, while without the blizzard

raged more fiercely, a verse from an old camp song:

“Out on the roundup, boys, I tell yuh what yuh get

Little chunk uh bread and a little chunk uh meat;

Little black coffee, boys, chuck full uh alkali,

Dust in your throat, boys, and gravel in your eye!

So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns,

For we're bound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.”

CHAPTER X. THE CHINOOK

One night in late March a sullen, faraway roar awakened Thurston in

his bunk. He turned over and listened, wondering what on earth was the

matter. More than anything it sounded like a hurrying freight train only

the railroad lay many miles to the north, and trains do not run at large

over the prairie. Gene snored peacefully an arm's length away. Outside

the snow lay deep on the levels, while in the hollows were great, white

drifts that at bedtime had glittered frostily in the moonlight. On the

hill-tops the gray wolves howled across coulees to their neighbors, and

slinking coyotes yapped foolishly at the moon.

Thurston drew the blanket up over his ears, for the fire had died to a

heap of whitening embers and the cold of the cabin made the nose of

him tingle. The roar grew louder and nearer-then the cabin shivered and

creaked in the suddenness of the blast that struck it. A clod of dirt

plumbed down upon his shoulder, bringing with it a shower of finer

particles. “Another blizzard!” he groaned, “and the worst we've had yet,

by the sound.”

The wind shrieked down the chimney and sought the places where the

chinking was loose. It howled up the coulees, putting the wolves

themselves to shame. Gene flopped over like a newly landed fish, grunted

some unintelligible words and slept again.

For an hour Thurston lay and listened to the blast and selfishly thanked

heaven it was his turn at the cooking. If the storm kept up like that,

he told himself, he was glad he did not have to chop the wood. He

lifted the blanket and sniffed tentatively, then cuddled back into cover

swearing that a thermometer would register zero at that very moment on

his pillow.

The storm came in gusts as the worst blizzards do at times. It made him

think of the nursery story about the fifth little pig who built a cabin

of rocks, and how the wolf threatened: “I'll huff and I'll puff, and

I'll blow your house down!” It was as if he himself were the fifth

little pig, and as if the wind were the wolf. The wolf-wind would stop

for whole minutes, gather his great lungs full of air and then without

warning would “huff and puff” his hardest. But though the cabin was

not built of rocks, it was nevertheless a staunch little shelter and

sturdily withstood the shocks.

He pitied the poor cattle still fighting famine and frost as only

range-bred stock can fight. He pictured them drifting miserably before

the fury of the wind or crowding for shelter under some friendly

cutback, their tails to the storm, waiting stolidly for the dawn that

would bring no relief. Then, with the roar and rattle in his ears, he

fell asleep.

In that particular line-camp on the Missouri the cook's duties began

with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly,

shivered in anticipation under the blankets, gathered together his

fortitude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth

chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire

hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the

wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no

longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the

bare, red faces of the cliffs frowning down upon him.

“I don't suppose you could see to the river bank,” he mused, “and Gene

will certainly tear the third commandment to shreds before he gets the

water-hole open.”

He went over to the window, meaning to scratch a peep-hole in the frost,

just as he had done every day for the past three months; lifted a hand,

then stopped bewildered. For instead of frost there was only steam with

ridges of ice yet clinging to the sash and dripping water in a tiny

rivulet. He wiped the steam hastily away with his palm and looked out.

“Good heavens, Gene!” he shouted in a voice to wake the Seven Sleepers.

“The world's gone mad overnight. Are you dead, man? Get up and look out.

The whole damn country is running water, and the hills are bare as this

floor!”

“Uh-huh!” Gene knuckled his eyes and sat up. “Chinook struck us in the

night. Didn't yuh hear it?”

Thurston pulled open the door and stood face to face with the miracle of

the West. He had seen Mother Nature in many a changeful mood, but never

like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of

green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully

into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and

soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It

looked like rain, he thought.

The bare hills were sodden with snow-water, and the drifts in the

coulees were dirt-grimed and forbidding. The great river lay, a gray

stretch of water-soaked snow over the ice, with little, clear pools

reflecting the drab clouds above. A crow flapped lazily across the

foreground and perched like a blot of fresh-spilled ink on the top of a

dead cottonwood and cawed raucous greeting to the spring.

The wonder of it dazed Thurston and made him do unusual things that

morning. All winter he had been puffed with pride over his cooking, but

now he scorched the oatmeal, let the coffee boil over, and blackened the

bacon, and committed divers other grievous sins against Gene's clamoring

appetite. Nor did he feel the shame that he should have felt. He simply

could not stay in the cabin five minutes at a time, and for it he had no

apology.

After breakfast he left the dishes un-washed upon the table and went out

and made merry with nature. He could scarce believe that yesterday he

had frosted his left ear while he brought a bucket of water up from the

river, and that it had made his lungs ache to breathe the chill air. Now

the path to the river was black and dry and steamed with warmth. Across

the water cattle were feeding greedily upon the brown grasses that only

a few hours before had been locked away under a crust of frozen snow.

“They won't starve now,” he exulted, pointing them out to Gene.

“No, you bet not!” Gene answered. “If this don't freeze up on us the

wagons 'll be starting in a month or so. I guess we can be thinking

about hitting the trail for home pretty soon now. The river'll break up

if this keeps going a week. Say, this is out uh sight! It's warmer out

uh doors than it is in the house. Darn the old shack, anyway! I'm plumb

sick uh the sight of it. It looked all right to me in a blizzard, but

now--it's me for the range, m'son.” He went off to the stable with long,

swinging strides that matched all nature for gladness, singing cheerily:

“So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns,

For we're hound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes.”

CHAPTER XI. FOLLOWING THE DIM TRAILS!

Thurston did not go on the horse roundup. He explained to the boys,

when they clamored against his staying, that he had a host of things to

write, and it would keep him busy till they were ready to start with

the wagons for the big rendezvous on the Yellowstone, the exact point of

which had yet to be decided upon by the Stock Association when it met.

The editors were after him, he said, and if he ever expected to get

anywhere, in a literary sense, it be-hooved him to keep on the smiley

side of the editors.

That sounded all right as far as it went, but unfortunately it did

not go far. The boys winked at one another gravely behind his back and

jerked their thumbs knowingly toward Milk River; by which pantomime they

reminded one another--quite unnecessarily that Mona Stevens had come

home. However, they kept their skepticism from becoming obtrusive, so

that Thurston believed his excuses passed on their face value. The boys,

it would seem, realized that it is against human nature for a man to

declare openly to his fellows his intention of laying last, desperate

siege to the heart of a girl who has already refused him three times,

and to ask her for the fourth time if she will reconsider her former

decisions and marry him.

That is really what kept Thurston at the Lazy Eight. His writing became

once more a mere incident in his life. During the winter, when he did

not see her, he could bring himself to think occasionally of other

things; and it is a fact that the stories he wrote with no heroine at

all hit the mark the straightest.

Now, when he was once again under the spell of big, clear, blue gray

eyes and crimply brown hair, his stories lost something of their

virility and verged upon the sentimental in tone. And since he was not a

fool he realized the falling off and chafed against it and wondered why

it was. Surely a man who is in love should be well qualified to write

convincingly of the obsession but Thurston did not. He came near going

to the other extreme and refusing to write at all.

The wagons were out two weeks--which is quite long enough for a crisis

to arise in the love affair of any man. By the time the horse roundup

was over, one Philip Thurston was in pessimistic mood and quite ready

to follow the wagons, the farther the better. Also, they could not start

too soon to please him. His thoughts still ran to blue-gray eyes and

ripply hair, but he made no attempt to put them into a story.

He packed his trunk carefully with everything he would not need on

the roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himself

bitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with every

other sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic--only he

said melodramatic--he might possibly force her to think well of him.

But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, and

girls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death need

not complain if they are left knightless at the last.

He wrote to Reeve-Howard, the night before they were to start, and

apologized gracefully for having neglected him during the past three

weeks and told him he would certainly be home in another month. He said

that he was “in danger of being satiated with the Western tone” and

would be glad to shake the hand of civilized man once more. This was

distinctly unfair, because he had no quarrel with the masculine portion

of the West. If he had said civilized woman it would have been more just

and more illuminating to Reeve-Howard who wondered what scrape Phil had

gotten himself into with those savages.

For the first few days of the trip Thurston was in that frame of mind

which makes a man want to ride by himself, with shoulders hunched

moodily and eyes staring straight before the nose of his horse.

But the sky was soft and seemed to smile down at him, and the clouds

loitered in the blue of it and drifted aimlessly with no thought of

reaching harbor on the sky-line. From under his horse's feet the prairie

sod sent up sweet, earthy odors into his nostrils and the tinkle of the

bells in the saddle-bunch behind him made music in his ears--the sort of

music a true cowboy loves. Yellow-throated meadow larks perched swaying

in the top of gray sage bushes and sang to him that the world was good.

Sober gray curlews circled over his head, their long, funny bills thrust

out straight as if to point the way for their bodies to follow and

cried, “Kor-r-eck, kor-r-eck!”--which means just what the meadow larks

sang. So Thurston, hearing it all about him, seeing it and smelling it

and feeling the riot of Spring in his blood, straightened the hunch out

of his shoulders and admitted that it was all true: that the world was

good.

At Miles City he found himself in the midst of a small army, the

regulars of the range---which grew hourly larger as the outfits rolled

in. The rattle of mess-wagons, driven by the camp cook and followed by

the bed-wagon, was heard from all directions. Jingling cavvies (herds of

saddle horses they were, driven and watched over by the horse wrangler)

came out of the wilderness in the wake of the wagons. Thurston got out

his camera and took pictures of the scene. In the first, ten different

camps appeared; he mourned because two others were perforced omitted.

Two hours later he snapped the Kodak upon fifteen, and there were four

beyond range of the lens.

Park came along, saw what he was doing and laughed. “Yuh better wait

till they commence to come,” he said. “When yuh can stand on this little

hill and count fifty or sixty outfits camped within two or three miles

uh here, yuh might begin taking pictures.”

“I think you're loading me,” Thurston retorted calmly, winding up the

roll for another exposure.

“All right--suit yourself about it.” Park walked off and left him

peering into the view-finder.

Still they came. From Swift Current to the Cypress Hills the Canadian

cattlemen sent their wagons to join the big meet. From the Sweet Grass

Hills to the mouth of Milk River not a stock-grower but was represented.

From the upper Musselshell they came, and from out the Judith Basin;

from Shellanne east to Fort Buford. Truly it was a gathering of the

clans such as eastern Montana had never before seen.

For a day and a night the cowboys made merry in town while their foremen

consulted and the captains appointed by the Association mapped out the

different routes. At times like these, foremen such as Park and Deacon

Smith were shorn of their accustomed power, and worked under orders as

strict as those they gave their men.

Their future movements thoroughly understood, the army moved down upon

the range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's work

began; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winter

had wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunes

from the wilderness, and to hold once more their sway over the

range-land.

Their method called for concerted action, although it was simple enough.

Two of the Lazy Eight wagons, under Park and Gene Wasson (for Hank that

spring was running four crews and had promoted Gene wagon-boss of one),

joined forces with the Circle-Bar, the Flying U, and a Yellowstone

outfit whose wagon-boss, knowing best the range, was captain of the five

crews; and drove north, gathering and holding all stock which properly

ranged beyond the Missouri.

That meant day after day of “riding circle”--which is, being

interpreted, riding out ten or twelve miles from camp, then turning and

driving everything before them to a point near the center of the circle

thus formed. When they met the cattle were bunched, and all stock which

belonged on that range was cut out, leaving only those which had crossed

the river during the storms of winter. These were driven on to the

next camping place and held, which meant constant day-herding and

night-guarding work which cowboys hate more than anything else.

There would be no calf roundup proper that spring, for all calves were

branded as they were gathered. Many there were among the she-stock that

would not cross the river again; their carcasses made unsightly blots in

the coulee-bottoms and on the wind-swept levels. Of the calves that had

followed their mothers on the long trail, hundreds had dropped out of

the march and been left behind for the wolves. But not all. Range-bred

cattle are blessed with rugged constitutions and can bear much of cold

and hunger. The cow that can turn tail to a biting wind the while she

ploughs to the eyes in snow and roots out a very satisfactory living

for herself breeds calves that will in time do likewise and grow fat and

strong in the doing. He is a sturdy, self-reliant little rascal, is the

range-bred calf.

When fifteen hundred head of mixed stock, bearing Northern brands, were

in the hands of the day-herders, Park and his crew were detailed to take

them on and turn them loose upon their own range north of Milk River.

Thurston felt that he had gleaned about all the experience he needed,

and more than enough hard riding and short sleeping and hurried eating.

He announced that he was ready to bid good-by to the range. He would

help take the herd home, he told Park, and then he intended to hit the

trail for little, old New York.

He still agreed with the meadow larks that the world was good, but he

had made himself believe that he really thought the civilized portion

of it was better, especially when the uncivilized part holds a girl who

persists in saying no when she should undoubtedly say yes, and insists

that a man must be a hero, else she will have none of him.

CHAPTER XII. HIGH WATER

It was nearing the middle of June, and it was getting to be a very hot

June at that. For two days the trail-herd had toiled wearily over the

hills and across the coulees between the Missouri and Milk River. Then

the sky threatened for a day, and after that they plodded in the rain.

“Thank the Lord that's done with,” sighed Park when he saw the last

of the herd climb, all dripping, up the north bank of the Milk River.

“To-morrow we can turn 'em loose. And I tell yuh, Bud, we didn't get

across none too soon. Yuh notice how the river's coming up? A day later

and we'd have had to hold the herd on the other side, no telling how

long.”

“It is higher than usual; I noticed that,” Thurston agreed absently. He

was thinking more of Mona just then than of the river. He wondered if

she would be at home. He could easily ride down there and find out.

It wasn't far; not a quarter of a mile, but he assured himself that he

wasn't going, and that he was not quite a fool, he hoped Even if she

were at home, what good could that possibly do him? Just give him

several bad nights, when he would lie in his corner of the tent and

listen to the boys snoring with a different key for every man. Such

nights were not pleasant, nor were the thoughts that caused them.

From where they were camped upon a ridge which bounded a broad coulee

on the east, he could look down upon the Stevens ranch nestling in the

bottomland, the house half hidden among the cottonwoods. Through the

last hours of the afternoon he watched it hungrily. The big corral ran

down to the water's edge, and he noted idly that three panels of the

fence extended out into the river, and that the muddy water was creeping

steadily up until at sundown the posts of the first panel barely showed

above the water.

Park came up to him and looked down upon the little valley. “I never

did see any sense in Jack Stevens building where he did,” he remarked.

“There ain't a June flood that don't put his corral under water, and

some uh these days it's going to get the house. He was too lazy to dig

a well back on high ground; he'd rather take chances on having the whole

business washed off the face uh the earth.”

“There must be danger of it this year if ever,” Thurston observed

uneasily. “The river is coming up pretty fast, it seems to me. It must

have raised three feet since we crossed this afternoon.”

“I'll course there's danger, with all that snow coming out uh the

mountains. And like as not Jack's in Shellanne roosting on somebody's

pool table and telling it scary, instead uh staying at home looking

after his stuff. Where yuh going, Bud?”

“I'm going to ride down there,” Thurston answered constrainedly. “The

women may be all alone.”

“Well, I'll go along, if you'll hold on a minute. Jack ain't got a lick

uh sense. I don't care if he is Mona's brother.”

“Half brother,” corrected Thurston, as he swung up into the saddle. He

had a poor opinion of Jack and resented even that slight relation to

Mona.

The road was soggy with the rain which fell steadily; down in the

bottom, the low places in the road were already under water, and the

river, widening almost perceptibly in its headlong rush down the narrow

valley, crept inch by inch up its low banks. When they galloped into the

yard which sloped from the house gently down to the river fifty yards

away, Mona's face appeared for a moment in the window. Evidently she had

been watching for some one, and Thurston's heart flopped in his chest

as he wondered, fleetingly, if it could be himself. When she opened the

door her eyes greeted him with a certain wistful expression that he had

never seen in them before. He was guilty of wishing that Park had stayed

in camp.

“Oh, I'm glad you rode over,” she welcomed--but she was careful, after

that first swift glance, to look at Park. “Jack wasn't at camp, was he?

He went to town this morning, and I looked for hi back long before now.

But it's a mistake ever to look for Jack until he's actually in sight.”

Park smiled vaguely. He was afraid it would not be polite to agree with

her as emphatically as he would like to have done. But Thurston had no

smile ready, polite or otherwise. Instead he drew down his brows in a

way not complimentary to Jack.

“Where is your mother?” he asked, almost peremptorily.

“Mamma went to Great Falls last week,” she told him primly, just

grazing him with one of her impersonal glances which nearly drove him to

desperation. “Aunt Mary has typhoid fever--there seems to be so much of

that this spring and they sent for mamma. She's such a splendid nurse,

you know.”

Thurston did know, but he passed over the subject. “And you're alone?”

he demanded.

“Certainly not; aren't you two here?” Mona could be very pert when she

tried. “Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all

on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to see some one.

“Um-m-yes, of course.” It was Park, still trying to be polite and not

commit himself on the subject of Jack. The “some one” whom Jack went

oftenest to see was the bartender in the Palace saloon, but it was not

necessary to tell her that.

“The river's coming up pretty fast, Mona,” he ventured. “Don't yuh think

yuh ought to pull out and go visiting?”

“No, I don't.” Mona's tone was very decided. “I wouldn't drop down on a

neighbor without warning just because the river happens to be coming up.

It has 'come up' every June since we've been living here, and there have

been several of them. At the worst it never came inside the gate.”

“You can never tell what it might do,” Park argued. “Yuh know yourself

there's never been so much snow in the mountains. This hot weather we've

been having lately, and then the rain, will bring it a-whooping. Can't

yuh ride over to the Jonses? One of us'll go with yuh.”

“No, I can't.” Mona's chin went up perversely. “I'm no coward, I hope,

even if there was any danger which there isn't.”

Thurston's chin went up also, and he sat a bit straighter. Whether she

meant it or not, he took her words as a covert stab at himself. Probably

she did not mean it; at any rate the blood flew consciously to her

cheeks after she had spoken, and she caught her under lip sharply

between her teeth. And that did not help matters or make her temper more

yielding.

“Anyway,” she added hurriedly, “Jack will be here; he's likely to come

any minute now.”

“Uh course, if Jack's got some new kind of half-hitch he can put on

the river and hold it back yuh'll be all right,” fleered Park, with the

freedom of an old friend. He had known Mona when she wore dresses to her

shoe-tops and her hair in long, brown curls down her back.

She wrinkled her nose at him also with the freedom of an old friend and

Thurston stirred restlessly in his chair. He did not like even Park to

be too familiar with Mona, though he knew there was a girl in Shellanne

whose name Park sometimes spoke in his sleep.

She lifted the big glass lamp down from its place on the clock shelf

and lighted it with fingers not quite steady. “You men,” she remarked,

“think women ought to be wrapped in pink cotton and put in a glass

cabinet. If, by any miracle, the river should come up around the house,

I flatter myself I should be able to cope with the situation. I'd just

saddle my horse and ride out to high ground!”

“Would yuh?” Park grinned skeptically. “The road from here to the hill

is half under water right now; the river's got over the bank above, and

is flooding down through the horse pasture. By the time the water got up

here the river'd be as wide and deep one side uh yuh as the other. Then

where'd yuh be at?”

“It won't get up here, though,” Mona asserted coolly. “It never has.”

“No, and the Lazy Eight never had to work the Yellowstone range on

spring roundup before either,” Park told her meaningly.

Whereupon Mona got upon her pedestal and smiled her unpleasant smile,

against which even Park had no argument ready.

They lingered till long after all good cowpunchers are supposed to be

in their beds--unless they are standing night-guard--but Jack failed to

appear. The rain drummed upon the roof and the river swished and gurgled

against the crumbling banks, and grumbled audibly to itself because the

hills stood immovably in their places and set bounds which it could not

pass, however much it might rage against their base.

When the clock struck a wheezy nine Mona glanced at it significantly

and smothered a yawn more than half affected. It was a hint which no man

with an atom of self-respect could overlook. With mutual understanding

the two rose.

“I guess we'll have to be going,” Park said with some ceremony. “I kept

think ing maybe Jack would show up; it ain't right to leave yuh here

alone like this.”

“I don't see why not; I'm not the least bit afraid,” Mona said. Her tone

was impersonal and had in it a note of dismissal.

So, there being nothing else that they could do, they said good-night

and took themselves off.

“This is sure fierce,” Park grumbled when they struck the lower ground.

“Darn a man like Jack Stevens! He'll hang out there in town and bowl up

on other men's money till plumb daylight. It's a wonder Mona didn't go

with her mother. But no--it'd be awful if Jack had to cook his own grub

for a week. Say, the water has come up a lot, don't yuh think, Bud?

If it raises much more Mona'll sure have a chance to 'cope with the

situation. It'd just about serve her right, too.”

Thurston did not think so, but he was in too dispirited a mood to argue

the point. It had not been good for his peace of mind to sit and

watch the color come and go in Mona's cheeks, and the laughter spring

unheralded into her dear, big eyes, and the light tangle itself in the

waves of her hair.

He guided his horse carefully through the deep places, and noted

uneasily how much deeper it was than when they had crossed before. He

cursed the conventions which forbade his staying and watching over the

girl back there in the house which already stood upon an island, cut off

from the safe, high land by a strip of backwater that was widening and

deepening every minute, and, when it rose high enough to flow into the

river below, would have a current that would make a nasty crossing.

On the first rise he stopped and looked back at the light which shone

out from among the dripping cottonwoods. Even then he was tempted to go

back and brave her anger that he might feel assured of her safety.

“Oh, come on,” Park cried impatiently. “We can't do any good sitting

out here in the rain. I don't suppose the water will get clear up to

the house; it'll likely do things to the sheds and corrals, though, and

serve Jack right. Come on, Bud. Mona won't have us around, so the sooner

we get under cover the better for us. She's got lots uh nerve; I guess

she'll make out all right.”

There was common sense in the argument, and Thurston recognized it and

rode on to camp. But instead of unsaddling, as he would naturally have

done, he tied Sunfish to the bed-wagon and threw his slicker over his

back to protect him from the rain. And though Park said nothing, he

followed Thurston's example.

CHAPTER XIII. “I'll STAY--ALWAYS”

For a long time Thurston lay with wide-open eyes staring up at nothing,

listening to the rain and thinking. By and by the rain ceased and he

could tell by the dim whiteness of the tent roof that the clouds must

have been swept away from before the moon, then just past the full.

He got up carefully so as not to disturb the others, and crept over two

or three sleeping forms on his way to the opening, untied the flap and

went out. The whole hilltop and the valley below were bathed in mellow

radiance. He studied critically the wide sweep of the river. He might

almost have thought it the Missouri itself, it stretched so far

from bank to bank; indeed, it seemed to know no banks but the hills

themselves. He turned toward where the light had shone among the

cottonwoods below; there was nothing but a great blot of shade that told

him nothing.

A step sounded just behind. A hand, the hand of Park, rested upon his

shoulder. “Looks kinda dubious, don't it, kid? Was yuh thinking about

riding down there?”

“Yes,” Thurston answered simply. “Are you coming?”

“Sure,” Park assented.

They got upon their horses and headed down the trail to the Stevens

place. Thurston would have put Sunfish to a run, but Park checked him.

“Go easy,” he admonished. “If there's swimming to be done and it's a

cinch there will be, he's going to need all the wind he's got.”

Down the hill they stopped at the edge of a raging torrent and strained

their eyes to see what lay on the other side. While they looked, a

light twinkled out from among the tree-tops. Thurston caught his breath

sharply.

“She's upstairs,” he said, and his voice sounded strained and unnatural.

“It's just a loft where they store stuff.” He started to ride into the

flood.

“Come on back here, yuh chump!” Park roared. “Get off and loosen the

cinch before yuh go in there, or yuh won't get far. Sunfish'll need

room to breathe, once he gets to bucking that current. He's a good water

horse, just give him his head and don't get rattled and interfere with

him. And we've got to go up a ways before we start in.”

He led the way upstream, skirting under the bluff, and Thurston, chafing

against the delay, followed obediently. Trees were racing down, their

clean-washed roots reaching up in a tangle from the water, their

branches waving like imploring arms. A black, tar-papered shack went

scudding past, lodged upon a ridge where the water was shallower, and

sat there swaying drunkenly. Upon it a great yellow cat clung and yowled

his fear.

“That's old Dutch Henry's house,” Park shouted above the roar. “I'll bet

he's cussing things blue on some pinnacle up there.” He laughed at the

picture his imagination conjured, and rode out into the swirl.

Thurston kept close behind, mindful of Park's command to give Sunfish

his head. Sunfish had carried him safely out of the stampede and he had

no fear of him now.

His chief thought was a wish that he might do this thing quite alone.

He was jealous of Park's leading, and thought bitterly that Mona would

thank Park alone and pass him by with scant praise and he did so want

to vindicate himself. The next minute he was cursing his damnable

selfishness. A tree had swept down just before him, caught Park and his

horse in its branches and hurried on as if ashamed of what it had done.

Thurston, in that instant, came near jerking Sunfish around to follow;

but he checked the impulse as it was formed and left the reins alone

which was wise. He could not have helped Park, and he could very easily

have drowned himself. Though it was not thought of himself but of Mona

that stayed his hand.

They landed at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure

footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot

deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door

with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its

customary assurance, answered faintly from the loft.

He shouted again, giving directions in a tone of authority which must

have sounded strange to her, but which she did not seem to resent and

obeyed without protest. She had to wade from the stairs to the door and

when Thurston stooped and lifted her up in front of him, she looked as

if she were very glad to have him there.

“You didn't 'cope with the situation,' after all,” he remarked while she

was settling herself firmly in the saddle.

“I went to sleep and didn't notice the water till it was coming in at

the door,” she explained. “And then--” She stopped abruptly.

“Then what?” he demanded maliciously. “Were you afraid?”

“A little,” she confessed reluctantly.

Thurston gloated over it in silence--until he remembered Park. After

that he could think of little else. As before, now Sunfish battled as

seemed to him best, for Thurston, astride behind the saddle, held Mona

somewhat tighter than he need to have done, and let the horse go.

So long as Sunfish had footing he braced himself against the mad rush of

waters and forged ahead. But out where the current ran swimming deep

he floundered desperately under his double burden. While his strength

lasted he kept his head above water, struggling gamely against the flood

that lapped over his back and bubbled in his nostrils. Thurston felt his

laboring and clutched Mona still tighter. Of a sudden the horse's head

went under; the black water came up around Thurston's throat with a

hungry swish, and Sunfish went out from under him like an eel.

There was a confused roaring in his ears, a horrid sense of suffocation

for a moment. But he had learned to swim when he was a boy at school,

and he freed one hand from its grip on Mona and set to paddling with

much vigor and considerably less skill. And though the under-current

clutched him and the weight of Mona taxed his strength, he managed to

keep them both afloat and to make a little headway until the deepest

part lay behind them.

How thankful he was when his feet touched bottom, no one but himself

ever knew! His ears hummed from the water in them, and the roar of

the river was to him as the roar of the sea; his eyes smarted from the

clammy touch of the dingy froth that went hurrying by in monster flakes;

his lungs ached and his heart pounded heavily against his ribs when he

stopped, gasping, beyond reach of the water-devils that lapped viciously

behind.

He stood a minute with his arm still around her, and coughed his voice

clear. “Park went down,” he began, hardly knowing what it was he was

saying. “Park--” He stopped, then shouted the name aloud. “Park! Oh-h,

Park!”

And from somewhere down the river came a faint reassuring whoop.

“Thank the Lord!” gasped Thurston, and leaned against her for a second.

Then he straightened. “Are you all right?” he asked, and drew her toward

a rock near at hand--for in truth, the knees of him were shaking. They

sat down, and he looked more closely at her face and discovered that

it was wet with something more than river water. Mona the self-assured,

Mona the strong-hearted, was crying. And instinctively he knew that not

the chill alone made her shiver. He was keeping his arm around her waist

deliberately, and it pleased him that she let it stay. After a minute

she did something which surprised him mightily--and pleased him more:

she dropped her face down against the soaked lapels of his coat, and

left it there. He laid a hand tenderly against her cheek and wondered if

he dared feel so happy.

“Little girl--oh, little girl,” he said softly, and stopped. For the

crowding emotions in his heart and brain the English language has no

words.

Mona lifted her face and looked into his eyes. Her own were soft and

shining in the moonlight, and she was smiling a little--the roguish

little smile of the imitation pastel portrait. “You--you'll unpack your

typewriter, won't you please, and--and stay?”

Thurston crushed her close. “Stay? The range-land will never get rid

of me now,” he cried jubilantly. “Hank wanted to take me into the Lazy

Eight, so now I'll buy an interest, and stay--always.”

“You dear!” Mona snuggled close and learned how it feels to be kissed,

if she had never known before.

Sunfish, having scrambled ashore a few yards farther down, came up to

them and stood waiting, as if to be forgiven for his failure to carry

them safe to land, but Thurston, after the first inattentive glance,

ungratefully took no heed of him.

There was a sound of scrambling foot-steps and Park came dripping up to

them. “Well, say!” he greeted. “Ain't yuh got anything to do but set here

and er--look at the moon? Break away and come up to camp. I'll rout out

the cook and make him boil us some coffee.”

Thurston turned joyfully toward him. “Park, old fellow, I was afraid.”

“Yuh better reform and quit being afraid,” Park bantered. “I got out uh

the mix-up fine, but I guess my horse went on down--poor devil. I was

poking around below there looking for him.”

“Well, Mona, I see yuh was able to 'cope with the situation,' all

right--but yuh needed Bud mighty bad, I reckon. The chances is yuh won't

have no house in the morning, so Bud'll have to get busy and rustle one

for yuh. I guess you'll own up, now, that the water can get through the

gate.” He laughed in his teasing way.

Mona stood up, and her shining eyes were turned to Thurston. “I don't

care,” she asserted with reddened cheeks. “I'm just glad it did get

through.”

“Same here,” said Thurston with much emphasis.

Then, with Mona once more in the saddle, and with Thurston leading

Sunfish by the bridle-rein, they trailed damply and happily up the long

ridge to where the white tents of the roundup gleamed sharply against

the sky-line.