Flying U Coulee lay deserted under the warm sunlight of early forenoon.
Deserted, and silent with the silence that tells where Death has stopped with his sickle. Even the Kid seemed to feel a strangeness in the atmosphere--a stillness that made his face sober while he looked around the little pasture and up at the hill trail. In all the way home they had not met anyone--but that may have been because Andy chose the way up Flying U Creek as being shorter and therefore more desirable.
At the lower line fence of the little pasture Andy refused to believe the Kid"s a.s.sertion of having opened and shut the gate, until the Kid got down and proved that he could open it--the shutting process being too slow for Andy"s raw nerves. He lifted the Kid into the saddle and shut the gate himself, and led the way up the creek at a fast trot.
"I guess Doctor Dell will be glad to see me," the Kid observed wistfully. "I"ve been gone most a year, I guess."
Neither Andy nor Miss Allen made any reply to this. Their eyes were searching the hilltop for riders, that they might signal. But there was no one in sight anywhere.
"Hadn"t you better shout?" suggested Miss Allen. "Or would it be better to go quietly--"
Andy did not reply; nor did he shout. Andy, at that moment, was fighting a dryness in his throat. He could not have called out if he had wanted to. They rode to the stable and stopped. Andy lifted the Kid down and set him on his two feet by the stable door while he turned to Miss Allen. For once in his life he was at a loss. He did not know how best to bring the Kid to the Little Doctor; How best to lighten the shock of seeing safe and well the manchild who she thought was dead. He hesitated. Perhaps he should have ridden on to the house with him.
Perhaps he should have fired the signal when first he came into the coulee. Perhaps...
The Kid himself swept aside Andy"s uncertainties. Adeline, the cat, came out of the stable and looked at them contemplatively. Adeline still had the string tied to her tail, and a wisp of paper tied to the string. The Kid pounced and caught her by the middle.
"I guess I can tie knots so they stay, by cripes!" he shouted vaingloriously. "I guess Happy Jack can"t tie strings any better "n me, can he? Nice kitty--c"m back here, you son-a-gun!"
Adeline had not worried over the absence of the Kid, but his hilarious arrival seemed to worry her considerably. She went bounding up the path to the house, and after her went the Kid, yelling epithets which were a bit shocking for one of his age.
So he came to the porch just when Chip and the Little Doctor reached it, white-faced and trembling. Adeline paused to squeeze under the steps, and the Kid catching her by the tail, dragged her back yowling. While his astounded parents watched him unbelievingly, the Kid gripped Adeline firmly and started up the steps.
"I ketched the son-a-gun!" he cried jubilantly.
"Say, I seen a skink, Daddy Chip, and I frowed a rock and knocked his block off "cause he was going to swipe my grub. Was you s"prised, Doctor Dell?"
Doctor Dell did not say. Doctor Dell was kneeling on the porch floor with the Kid held closer in her arms than ever he held the cat, and she was crying and laughing and kissing him all at once--though n.o.body except a mother can perform that feat.
CHAPTER 21. THE FIGHT GOES ON
It is amazing how quickly life swings back to the normal after even so harrowing an experience as had come to the Flying U. Tragedy had hovered there a while and had turned away with a smile, and the smile was reflected upon the faces and in the eyes of everyone upon whose souls had fallen her shadow. The Kid was safe, and he was well, and he had not suffered from the experience; on the contrary he spent most of his waking hours in recounting his adventures to an admiring audience. He was a real old cowpuncher. He had gone into the wilderness and he had proven the stuff that was in him. He had made "dry-camp" just exactly as well as any of the Happy Family could have done. He had slept out under the stars rolled in a blanket--and do you think for one minute that he would ever submit to lace-trimmed nighties again? If you do, ask the little Doctor what the Kid said on the first night after his return, when she essayed to robe him in spotless white and rock him, held tight in her starved arms. Or you might ask his Daddy Chip, who hovered pretty close to them both, his eyes betraying how his soul gave thanks.
Or--never mind, I"ll tell you myself.
The Little Doctor brought the nightie, and reached out her two eager arms to take the kid off Chip"s knees where he was perched contentedly relating his adventures with sundry hair-raising additions born of his imagination. The Kid was telling Daddy Chip about the skunk he saw, and he hated to be interrupted. He looked at his Doctor Dell and at the familiar, white garment with lace at the neck and wristbands, and he waved his hand with a gesture of dismissal.
"Aw, take that d.a.m.n" thing away!" he told her in the tone of the real old cowpuncher. "When I get ready to hit the bed-ground, a blanket is all I"ll need."
Lest you should think him less lovable than he really was, I must add that, when Chip set him down hastily so that he himself could rush off somewhere and laugh in secret, the Kid spread his arms with a little chuckle and rushed straight at his Doctor Dell and gave her a real bear hug.
"I want to be rocked," he told her--and was her own baby man again, except that he absolutely refused to reconsider the nightgown. "And I want you to tell me a story--about when Silver breaked his leg. Silver"s a good ole scout, you bet. I don"t know what I"d a done "theut Silver.
And tell about the bunch makin" a man outa straw to scare you, and the horses runned away. I was such a far ways, Doctor Dell, and I couldn"t get back to hear them stories and I"ve most forgot about "em. And tell about Whizzer, Doctor Dell."
The Little Doctor rocked him and told him of the old days, and she never again brought him his lace-trimmed nightie at bedtime. She never mentioned his language upon the subject, either. The Little Doctor was learning some things about her man-child, and one of them was this: When he rode away into the Badlands and was lost, other things were lost, and lost permanently; he was no longer her baby, for all he liked to be rocked. He had come back to her changed, so that she studied him amazedly while she worshipped. He had entered boldly into the life which men live, and he would never come back entirely to the old order of things. He would never be her baby; there would be a difference, even while she held him in her arms and him rocked him to sleep.
She knew that it was so, when the Kid insisted, next day, upon going home with the bunch; with Andy, rather, who was just now the Kid"s particular hero. He had to help the bunch he said; they needed him, and Andy needed him and Miss Allen needed him.
"Aw, you needn"t be scared, Doctor Dell," he told her shrewdly. "I ain"t going to find them brakes any more. I"ll stick with the bunch, cross my heart, and I"ll come back tonight if you"re scared "theut me. Honest to gran"ma, I"ve got to go and help the bunch lick the stuffen" outa them nesters, Doctor Dell."
The Little Doctor looked at him strangely, hugged him tight--and let him go. Chip would be with them, and he would bring the Kid home safely, and--the limitations of dooryard play no longer sufficed; her fledgling had found what his wings were for, and the nest was too little, now.
"We"ll take care of him," Andy promised her understandingly. "If Chip don"t come up, this afternoon, I"ll bring him home myself. Don"t you worry a minute about him."
"I"d tell a man she needn"t!" added the Kid patronizingly.
"I suppose he"s a lot safer with you boys than he is here at the ranch--unless one of us stood over him all the time, or we tied him up,"
she told Andy gamely. "I feel like a hen trying to raise a duck! Go on, Buck--but give mother a kiss first."
The Kid kissed her violently and with a haste that betrayed where his thoughts were, in spite of the fact that never before had his mother called him Buck.
To her it was a supreme surrender of his babyhood--to him it was merely his due. The Little Doctor sighed and watched him ride away beside Andy. "Children are such self-centred little beasts!" she told J. G.
rue-fully. "I almost wish he was a girl."
"Ay? If he was a girl he wouldn"t git lost, maybe, but some feller"d take him away from yuh just the same. The Kid"s all right. He"s just the kind you expect him to be and want him to be. You"re tickled to death because he"s like he is. Doggone it, Dell, that Kid"s got the real stuff in him! He"s a dead ringer fer his dad--that ought to do yuh."
"It does," the Little Doctor declared. "But it does seem as if he might be contented here with me for a little while--after such a horrible time--"
"It wasn"t horrible to him, yuh want to recollect. Doggone it, I wish that Blake would come back. You write to him, Dell, and tell him how things is stacking up. He oughta be here on the ground. No tellin" what them nesters"ll build up next."
So the Old Man slipped back into the old channels of worry and thought, just as life itself slips back after a stressful period. The little Doctor sighed again and sat down to write the letter and to discuss with the Old Man what she should say.
There was a good deal to say. For one thing, more contests had been filed and more shacks built upon claims belonging to the Happy Family.
She must tell Blake that. Also, Blake must help make some arrangement whereby the Happy Family could hire an outfit to gather their stock and the alien stock which they meant to drive back out of the Badlands. And there was Irish, who had quietly taken to the hills again as soon as the Kid returned. Blake was needed to look into that particular bit of trouble and try and discover just how serious it was. The man whom Irish had floored with a chair was apparently hovering close to death--and there were these who emphasized the adverb and a.s.serted that the hurt was only apparent, but could prove nothing.
"And you tell "im," directed the Old Man querulously, "that I"ll stand good for his time while he"s lookin" after things for the boys. And tell "im if he"s so doggoned scared I"ll buy into the game, he needn"t to show up here at the ranch at all; tell him to stay in Dry Lake if he wants to--serve him right to stop at that hotel fer a while. But tell him for the Lord"s sake git a move on. The way it looks to me, things is piling up on them boys till they can"t hardly see over the top, and something"s got to be done. Tell "im--here! Give me a sheet of paper and a pencil and I"ll tell him a few things myself. Chances are you"d smooth "em out too much, gitting "em on paper. And the things I"ve got to say to Blake don"t want any smoothing."
The things he wrote painfully with his rheumatic hand were not smoothed for politeness" sake, and it made the Old Man feel better to get them off his mind. He read the letter over three times, and lingered over the most scathing sentences relishfully. He sent one of his new men to town for the express purpose of mailing that letter, and he felt a glow of satisfaction at actually speaking his mind upon the subject.
Perhaps it was just as well he did not know that Blake was in Dry Lake when the letter reached his office in Helena, and that it was forwarded to the place whence it had started. Blake was already "getting a move on," and he needed no such spur as the Old Man"s letter. But the letter did the Old Man a lot of good, so that it served its purpose.
Blake had no intention of handling the case from the Flying U porch, for instance. He had laid his plans quite independently of the Flying U outfit. He had no intention of letting Irish be arrested upon a trumped up charge, and he managed to send a word of warning to that hot-headed young man not to put himself in the way of any groping arm of the law; it was so much simpler than arrest and preliminary trial and bail, and all that. He had sent word to Weary to come and see him, before ever he received the Old Man"s letter, and he had placed at Weary"s disposal what funds would be needed for the immediate plans of the Happy Family.
He had attended in person to the hauling of the fence material to their boundary line on the day he arrived and discovered by sheer accident that the stuff was still in the warehouse of the general store.
After he did all that, the Honorable Blake received the Old Man"s letter, read it through slowly and afterwards stroked down his Vand.y.k.e beard and laughed quietly to himself. The letter itself was both peremptory and profane, and commanded the Honorable Blake to do exactly what he had already done, and what he intended to do when the time came for the doing.
CHAPTER 22. LAWFUL IMPROVEMENTS
Florence Grace Hallman must not be counted a woman without principle or kindness of heart or these qualities which make women beloved of men.
She was a pretty nice young woman, unless one roused her antagonism. Had Andy Green, for instance, accepted in good faith her offer of a position with the Syndicate, he would have found her generous and humorous and loyal and kind. He would probably have fallen in love with her before the summer was over, and he would never have discovered in her nature that hardness and that ability for spiteful scheming which came to the surface and made the whole Happy Family look upon her as an enemy.
Florence Grace Hillman was intensely human, as well as intensely loyal to her firm. She had liked Andy Green better than anyone--herself included--realized. It was not altogether her vanity that was hurt when she discovered how he had worked against her--how little her personality had counted with him. She felt chagrined and humiliated and as though nothing save the complete subjugation of Andy Green and the complete thwarting of his plans could ease her own hurt.
Deep in her heart she hoped that he would eventually want her to forgive him his treachery. She would give him a good, hard fight--she would show him that she was mistress of the situation. She would force him to respect her as a foe; after that--Andy Green was human, certainly. She trusted to her feminine intuition to say just what should transpire after the fight; trusted to her feminine charm also to bring her whatever she might desire.
That was the personal side of the situation. There was also the professional side, which urged her to do battle for the interests of her firm. And since both the personal and the professional aspects of the case pointed to the same general goal, it may be a.s.sumed that Florence Grace was prepared to make a stiff fight.
Then Andy Green proceeded to fall in love with that sharp-tongued Rosemary Allen; and Rosemary Allen had no better taste than to let herself be lost and finally found by Andy, and had the nerve to show very plainly that she not only approved of his love but returned it.