That afternoon Andy was riding back along the line when he saw a rider pull up at the first sign and read it carefully. He galloped in haste to the spot and found that his suspicions were correct; it was Miss Allen.
"Well," she said when he came near, "I suppose that means me. Does it?"
She pointed to the sign, which read like this:
WARNING!! NO TRESPa.s.sING EAST OF HERE All Shacks, Live-Stock and Pilgrims Promptly AND Painfully Removed From These Premises
"I"m over the line," she notified him, pulling her horse backward a few feet. "You"re getting awfully particular, seems to me. Oh, did you know that a lot of men are going to play it"s New Year"s Eve and hold watch meetings tonight?"
"Never heard a word about it," he declared truthfully, and waited for more.
"That"s not strange--seeing it"s a surprise party. Still--I"m sure you are expected to--attend."
"And where is all this to take place?" Andy looked at her intently, smiling a little.
"Oh, over there--and there--and there." She pointed to three new shacks--the official dwellings of certain contestants. "Stag parties, they are, I believe. But I doubt if they"ll have any very exciting time; most of these new settlers are too busy getting the ground ready for crops, to go to parties. Some people are pretty disgusted, I can tell you, Mr. Green. Some people talk about ingrat.i.tude and wonder why the colony doesn"t hang together better. Some people even wonder why it is that folks are interested mainly in their own affairs, and decline to attend watch meetings and--receptions. So I"m afraid very few, except your nearest neighbors, will be present, after all might I ask when you expect to--to MOVE again, Mr. Green?"
Smiling still, Andy shook his head. "I expect to be pretty busy this spring," he told her evasively. "Aren"t any of you ladies invited to those parties, Miss Allen?"
"Not a one. But let me tell you something, Mr. Green. Some folks think that perhaps we lady-settlers ought to organize a club for the well being of our intellects. Some folks are trying to get up parties just for women--see the point? They think it would be better for the--atmosphere."
"Oh." Andy studied the possibilities of such a move. If Florence Grace should set the women after them, he could see how the Happy Family would be hampered at every turn. "Well, I must be going. Say, did you know this country is full of wild animals, Miss Allen? They prowl around nights. And there"s a gang of wild men that hang out up there in those mountains--they prowl around nights, too. They"re outlaws. They kill off every sheriff"s party that tries to round them up, and they kidnap children and ladies. If you should hear any disturbance, any time, don"t be scared. Just stay inside after dark and keep your door locked. And if you should organize that ladies" club, you better hold your meetings in the afternoon, don"t you think?"
When he had ridden on and left her, Andy was somewhat ashamed of such puerile falsehoods. But then, she had started the allegorical method of imparting advice, he remembered. So presently went whistling to round up the boys and tell them what he had learned.
CHAPTER 13. IRISH WORKS FOR THE CAUSE
Big Medicine with Weary and Chip to bear him company, rode up to the shack nearest his own, which had been hastily built by a raw-boned Dane who might be called truly Americanized. Big Medicine did not waste time in superfluities or in making threats of what he meant to do. He called the Dane to the door--claim-jumpers were keeping close to their cabins, these days--and told him that he was on another man"s land, and asked him if he meant to move.
"Sure I don"t intend to move!" retorted the Dane with praiseworthy promptness. "I"m going to hold "er down solid."
"Yuh hear what says, boys." Big Medicine turned to his companions "He ain"t going to git off"n my land, he says. Weary, yuh better go tell the bunch I need"em."
Weary immediately departed. He was not gone so very long, and when he returned the Happy Family was with him, even to Patsy who drove the wagon with all the ease of a veteran of many roundups. The Dane tried bl.u.s.ter, but that did not seem to work. Nothing seemed to work, except the Happy Family.
There in broad daylight, with no more words than were needful, they moved the Dane, and his shack. When they began to raise the building he was so unwise as to flourish a gun, and thereby made it perfectly right and lawful that Big Medicine should take the gun away from him and march him ahead of his own forty-five.
They took the shack directly past one of the trespa.s.sing signs, and Big Medicine stopped accommodatingly while the Dane was permitted to read the sign three times aloud. That the Dane did not seem truly appreciative of the privilege was no fault of Big Medicine"s, surely.
They went on, skidding the little building sledlike over the uneven prairie. They took it down into Antelope Coulee and left it there, right side up and with not even a pane of gla.s.s broken in the window.
"There, darn yuh, live there awhile!" Andy gritted to when the timbers were withdrawn from beneath the cabin and they were ready to leave. "You can"t say we damaged your property--this time. Come back, and there"s no telling what we"re liable to do."
Since Big Medicine kept his gun, the Dane could do nothing but swear while he watched them ride up the hill and out of sight.
They made straight for the next interloper, remarking frequently that it was much simpler and easier to do their moving in daylight. There they had an audience, for Florence Grace rode furiously up just as they were getting under way. The Happy Family spoke very nicely to Florence Grace, and when she spoke very sharply to them they were discreetly hard of hearing and became absorbed in their work.
Several settlers came before that shack was moved, but they only stood around and talked among themselves, and were careful not to get in the way or to hinder, and to lower their voices so that the Happy Family need not hear unless they chose to listen.
So they slid that shack into the coulee, righted it carefully and left it there--where it would be exceedingly difficult to get it out, by the way; since it is much easier to drag a building down hill than up, and the steeper the hill and the higher, the greater the difference.
They loaded the timbers into the wagon and methodically on to the next shack, their audience increased to a couple of dozen perturbed settlers.
The owner of this particular shack, feeling the strength of numbers behind him, was disposed to argue the point.
"Oh, you"ll sweat for this!" he shouted impotently when the Happy Family was placing the timbers.
"Ah, git outa the way!" said Andy, coming toward him with a crowbar.
"We"re sweating now, if that makes yuh feel any better."
The man got out of the way, and went and stood with the group of onlookers, and talked vaguely of having the law on them--whatever he meant by that.
By the time they had placed the third shack in the bottom of the coulee, the sun was setting. They dragged the timbers up the steep bluff with their ropes and their saddle-horses, loaded them on to the wagon and threw the crowbars and rolling timbers in, and turned to look curiously and unashamed at their audience. Andy, still tacitly their leader, rode a few steps forward.
"That"ll be all today," he announced politely. "Except that load of lumber back here on the bench where it don"t belong--we aim to haul that over the line. Seeing your considerable interest in our affairs, I"ll just say that we filed on our claims according to law, and we"re living on "em according to law. Till somebody proves in court that we"re not, there don"t any shack, or any stock, stay on our side the line any longer than it takes to get them off. There"s the signs, folks--read "em and take "em to heart. You can go home now. The show"s over."
He lifted his hat to the women--and there were several now--and went away to join his fellows, who had ridden on slowly till he might overtake them. He found Happy Jack grumbling and predicting evil, as it was his nature to do, but he merely straightened his aching back and laughed at the prophecies.
"As I told you before, there"s more than one way to kill a cat," he a.s.serted tritely but never the less impressively. "n.o.body can say we wasn"t mild; and n.o.body can say we hadn"t a right to get those chickencoops off our land. If you ask me, Florence Grace will have to go some now if she gets the best of the deal. She overlooked a bet.
We haven"t been served with any contest notices yet, and so we ain"t obliged to take their say-so. Who"s going to stand guard tonight? We"ve got to stand our regular shifts, if we want to keep ahead of the game.
I"m willing to be It. I"d like to make sure they don"t slip any stock across before daylight."
"Say, it"s lucky we"ve got a bunch of boneheads like them to handle,"
Pink observed thankfully. "Would a bunch of natives have stood around like that with their hands in their pockets and let us get away with the moving job? Not so you could notice!"
"What we"d better do," cut in the Native Son without any misleading drawl, "is try and rustle enough money to build that fence."
"That"s right," a.s.sented Cal. "Maybe the Old Man--"
"We don"t go to the Old Man for so much as a bacon rind!" cried the Native Son impatiently. "Get it into your systems, boys, that we"ve got to ride away around the Flying U. We ought to be able to build that fence, all right, without help from anybody. Till we do we"ve got to hang and rattle, and keep that nester stock from getting past us. I"ll stand guard till midnight."
A little more talk, and some bickering with Slim and Happy Jack, the two chronic kickers, served to knock together a fair working organization.
Weary and Andy Green were informally chosen joint leaders, because Weary could be depended upon to furnish the mental ballast for Andy"s imagination. Patsy was told that he would have to cook for the outfit, since he was too fat to ride. They suggested that he begin at, once, by knocking together some sort of supper. Moving houses, they declared, was work. They frankly hoped that they would not have to move many more--and they were very positive that they would not be compelled to move the same shack twice, at any rate.
"Say, we"ll have quite a collection of shacks down in Antelope Coulee if we keep on," Jack Bates reminded them. "Wonder where they"ll get water?"
"Where"s the rest of them going to get water?" Cal Emmett challenged the crowd. "There"s that spring the four women up here pack water from--but that goes dry in August. And there"s the creek--that goes dry too.
On the dead, I feel sorry for the women--and so does Irish," he added dryly.
Irish made an uncivil retort and swung suddenly away from the group.
"I"m going to ride into town, boys," he announced curtly. "I"ll be back in the morning and go on day-herd."
"Maybe you will and maybe you won"t," Weary amended somewhat impatiently. "This is certainly a poor time for Irish to break out," he added, watching his double go galloping toward the town road.
"I betche he comes back full and tries to clean out all them nesters,"
Happy Jack predicted. For once no one tried to combat his pessimism--for that was exactly what every one of them believed would happen.
"He"s stayed sober a long while--for him," sighed Weary, who never could quite shake off a sense of responsibility for the moral defections of his kinsman. "Maybe I better go along and ride herd on him." Still, he did not go, and Irish presently merged into the dusky distance.