CHAPTER IV
AT THE FOSS RIVER RANCH
Spring is already upon the prairie. The fur coat has already been exchanged for the pea-jacket. No longer is the fur cap crushed down upon the head and drawn over the ears until little more than the oval of the face is exposed to the elements; it is still worn occasionally, but now it rests upon the head with the jaunty cant of an ordinary headgear.
The rough coated broncho no longer stands "tucked up" with the cold, with its hind-quarters towards the wind. Now he stands grazing on the patches of gra.s.s which the melting snow has placed at his disposal. The cattle, too, hurry to and fro as each day extends their field of fodder.
When spring sets in in the great North-West it is with no show of reluctance that grim winter yields its claims and makes way for its gracious and all-conquering foe. Spring is upon everything with all the characteristic suddenness of the Canadian climate. A week--a little seven days--and where all before had been cheerless wastes of snow and ice, we have the promise of summer with us. The snow disappears as with the sweep of a "chinook" in winter. The brown, saturated gra.s.s is tinged with the bright emerald hue of new-born pasture. The bared trees don that yellowish tinge which tells of breaking leaves. Rivers begin to flow. Their icy coatings, melting in the growing warmth of the sun, quickly returning once more to their natural element.
With the advent of spring comes a rush of duties to those whose interest are centered in the breeding of cattle. The Foss River Settlement is already teeming with life. For the settlement is the center of the great spring "round-up." Here are a.s.sembling the "cow-punchers" from all the outlying ranches, gathering under the command of a captain (generally a man elected for his vast experience on the prairie) and making their preparations to scour the prairie east and west, north and south, to the very limits of the far-reaching plains which spread their rolling pastures at the eastern base of the Rockies. Every head of cattle which is found will be brought into the Foss River Settlement and thence will be distributed to its lawful owners. This is but the beginning of the work, for the task of branding calves and re-branding cattle whose brands have become obscured during the long winter months is a process of no small magnitude for those who number their stocks by tens of thousands.
At John Allandale"s ranch all is orderly bustle. There is no confusion.
Under Jacky"s administration the work goes on with a simple directness which would astonish the uninitiated. There are the corrals to repair and to be put in order. Sheds and out-buildings to be whitewashed.
Branding apparatus to be set in working order, fencing to be repaired, preparations for seeding to commence; a thousand and one things to be seen to; and all of which must be finished before the first "bands" of cattle are rounded up into the settlement.
It is nearly a month since we saw this daughter of the prairie garbed in the latest mode, attending the Polo Ball at Calford, and widely different is her appearance now from what it was at the time of our introduction to her.
She is returning from an inspection of the wire fencing of the home pastures. She is riding her favorite horse, n.i.g.g.e.r, up the gentle slope which leads to her uncle"s house. There is nothing of the woman of fashion about her now--and, perhaps, it is a matter not to be regretted.
She sits her horse with the easy grace of a childhood"s experience. Her habit, if such it can be called, is a "dungaree" skirt of a hardly recognizable blue, so washed out is it, surmounted by a beautifully beaded buckskin shirt. Loosely encircling her waist, and resting upon her hips, is a cartridge belt, upon which is slung the holster of a heavy revolver, a weapon without which she never moves abroad. Her head is crowned by a Stetson hat, secured in true prairie fashion by a strap which pa.s.ses under her hair at the back, while her beautiful hair itself falls in heavy ringlets over her shoulders, and waves untrammelled in the fresh spring breeze as her somewhat unruly charger gallops up the hill towards the ranch.
The great black horse was heading for the stable. Jacky leant over to one side and swung him sharply towards the house. At the veranda she pulled him up short. High mettled, headstrong as the animal was, he knew his mistress. Tricks which he would often attempt to practice upon other people were useless here--doubtless she had taught him that such was the case.
The girl sprang, unaided, to the ground and hitched her picket rope to a tying-post. For a moment she stood on the great veranda which ran down the whole length of the house front. It was a one-storied, bungalow-shaped house, built with a high pitch to the roof and entirely constructed of the finest red pine-wood. Six French windows opened on to the veranda. The outlook was westerly, and, contrary to the usual custom, the ranch buildings were not overlooked by it. The corrals and stables were in the background.
She was about to turn in at one of the windows when she suddenly observed n.i.g.g.e.r"s ears c.o.c.ked, and his head turned away towards the shimmering peaks of the distant mountains. The movement fixed her attention instantly. It was the instinct of one who lives in a country where the eyes and ears of a horse are often keener and more far-reaching than those of its human masters. The horse was gazing with statuesque fixedness across a waste of partially-melted snow. A stretch of ten miles lay flat and smooth as a billiard-table at the foot of the rise upon which the house was built. And far out across this the beast was gazing.
Jacky shaded her eyes with her hand and followed the direction of the horse"s gaze. For a moment or two she saw nothing but the dazzling glare of the snow in the bright spring sunlight. Then her eyes became accustomed to the brilliancy, and far in the distance, she beheld an animal peacefully moving along from patch to patch of bare gra.s.s, evidently in search of fodder.
"A horse," she muttered, under her breath. "Whose?"
She could find no answer to her monosyllabic inquiry. She realized at once that to whomsoever it belonged its owner would never recover it, for it was grazing on the far side of the great "Muskeg," that mighty bottomless mire which extends for forty miles north and south and whose narrowest breadth is a span of ten miles. She was looking across it now, and innocent enough that level plain of terror appeared at that moment.
And yet it was the curse of the ranching district, for, annually, hundreds of cattle met an untimely death in its cruel, absorbing bosom.
She turned away for the purpose of fetching a pair of field-gla.s.ses. She was anxious to identify the horse. She pa.s.sed along the veranda towards the furthest window. It was the window of her uncle"s office.
Just as she was nearing it she heard the sound of voices coming from within. She paused, and an ominous pucker drew her brows together. Her beautiful dark face clouded. She had no wish to play the part of an eavesdropper, but she had recognized the voices of her uncle and Lablache. She had also heard the mention of her own name. What woman, or, for that matter, man, can refrain from listening when they hear two people talking about them. The window was open; Jacky paused--and listened.
Lablache"s thick voice lolled heavily upon the brisk air.
"She is a good girl. But don"t you think you are considering her future from a rather selfish point of view, John?"
"Selfish?" The old man laughed in his hearty manner "Maybe you"re right, though. I never thought of that. You see I"m getting old now. I can"t get around like I used to. Bless me, she"s two-an"-twenty.
Three-and-twenty years since my brother d.i.c.k--G.o.d rest his soul!--married that half-breed girl, Josie. Yes, I guess you"re right, she"s bound to marry soon."
Jacky smiled a curious dark smile. Something told her why Lablache and her uncle were discussing her future.
"Why, of course she is," said Lablache, "and when that happy event is accomplished I hope it will not be with any improvident--harum-scarum man like--like--"
"The Hon. Bunning-Ford I suppose you would say, eh?"
There was a somewhat sharp tone in the old man"s voice which Jacky was not slow to detect.
"Well," went on Lablache, with one of those deep whistling breaths which made him so like an ancient pug, "since you mention him, for want of a better specimen of improvidence, his name will do."
"So I thought--so I thought," laughed the old man. But his words rang strangely. "Most people think," he went on, "that when I die Jacky will be rich. But she won"t."
"No," replied Lablache, emphatically.
There was a world of meaning in his tone.
"However, I guess we can let her hunt around for herself when she wants a husband. Jacky"s a girl with a head. A sight better head than I"ve got on my old shoulders. When she chooses a husband, and comes and tells me of it, she shall have my blessing and anything else I have to give. I"m not going to interfere with that girl"s matrimonial affairs, sir, not for any one. That child, bless her heart, is like my own child to me. If she wants the moon, and there"s nothing else to stop her having it but my consent, why, I guess that moon"s as good as fenced in with triple-barbed wire an" registered in her name in the Government Land Office."
"And in the meantime you are going to make that same child work for her daily bread like any "hired man," and keep company with any scoun--"
"Hi, stop there, Lablache! Stop there," thundered "Poker" John, and Jacky heard a thud as of a fist falling upon the table. "You"ve taken the unwarrantable liberty of poking your nose into my affairs, and, because of our old acquaintance, I have allowed it. But now let me tell you this is no d----d business of yours. There"s no make with Jacky.
What she does, she does of her own accord."
At that moment the girl in question walked abruptly in from the veranda.
She had heard enough.
"Ah, uncle," she said, smiling tenderly up into the old man"s face, "talking of me, I guess. You shouted my name just as I was coming along.
Say, I want the field-gla.s.ses. Where are they?"
Then she turned on Lablache as if she had only just become aware of his presence.
"What, Mr. Lablache, you here? And so early, too. Guess this isn"t like you. How is your store--that temple of wealth and high interest--to get on without you? How are the "improvident"--"harum-scarums" to live if you are not present to minister to their wants--upon the best of security?" Without waiting for a reply the girl picked up the gla.s.ses she was in search of and darted out, leaving Lablache glaring his bilious-eyed rage after her.
"Poker" John stood for a moment a picture of blank surprise; then he burst into a loud guffaw at the discomfited money-lender. Jacky heard the laugh and smiled. Then she pa.s.sed out of earshot and concentrated her attention upon the distant speck of animal life.
The girl stood for some moments surveying the creature as it moved leisurely along, its nose well down amongst the roots of the tawny gra.s.s, seeking out the tender green shoots of the new-born pasture. Then she closed her gla.s.ses and her thoughts wandered to other matters.
The gorgeous landscape was, for a moment, utterly lost upon her. The snowy peaks of the Rockies, stretching far as the eye could see away to the north and south, like some giant fortification set up to defend the rolling pastures of the prairies from the ceaseless attack of the stormy Pacific Ocean, were far from her thoughts. Her eyes, it is true, were resting on the level flat of the muskeg, beyond the grove of slender pines which lined the approach to the house, but she was not thinking of that. No, recollection was struggling back through two years of a busy life, to a time when, for a brief s.p.a.ce, she had watched over the welfare of another than her uncle, when the dark native blood which flowed plentifully in her veins had a.s.serted itself, and a nature which was hers had refused to remain buried beneath a superficial European training. She was thinking of a man who had formed a secret part of her life for a few short years, when she had allowed her heart to dictate a course for her actions which no other motive but that of love could have brought about. She was thinking of Peter Retief, a pretty scoundrel, a renowned "bad man," a man of wild and reckless daring. He had been the terror of the countryside. A cattle-thief who feared neither man nor devil; a man who for twelve months and more had carried, his life in his hands, the sworn enemy of law and order, but who, in his worst moments, had never been known to injure a poor man or a woman. The wild blood of the half-breed that was in her had been stirred, as only a woman"s blood can be, by his reckless dealings, his courage, effrontery, and withal his wondrous kindliness of disposition. She was thinking of this man now, this man whom she knew to be numbered amongst the countless victims of that dreadful mire. And what had conjured this thought? A horse--a horse peacefully grazing far out across the mire in the direction of the distant hills which she knew had once been this desperado"s home.
Her train of recollection suddenly became broken, and a sigh escaped her as the sound of her uncle"s voice fell upon her ears. She did not move, however, for she knew that Lablache was with him, and this man she hated with the fiery hatred only to be found in the half-breeds of any native race.
"I"m sorry, John, we can"t agree on the point," Lablache was saying in his wheezy voice, as the two men stood at the other end of the veranda, "but I"m quite determined Upon the matter myself. The land intersects mine and cuts me clean off from the railway siding, and I am forced to take my cattle a circle of nearly fifteen miles to ship them. If he would only be reasonable and allow a pa.s.sage I would say nothing. I will force him to sell."
"If you can," put in the rancher. "I reckon you"ve got chilled steel to deal with when you endeavor to "force" old Joe Norton to sell the finest wheat land in the country."
At this point in the conversation three men came round from the back of the house. They were "cow" hands belonging to the ranch. They approached Jacky with the easy a.s.surance of men who were as much companions as servants of their mistress. All three, however, touched their wide-brimmed hats in unmistakable respect. They were clad in buckskin shirts and leather "chaps," and each had his revolver upon his hip. The girl lost the rest of the conversation between her uncle and Lablache, for her attention was turned to the men.
"Well?" she asked shortly, as the men stood before her.
One of the men, a tall, lank specimen of the dark-skinned prairie half-breed, acted as spokesman.
He ejected a squirt of tobacco juice from his great, dirty mouth before he spoke. Then with a curious backward jerk of the head he blurted out a stream of Western jargon.
"Say, missie," he exclaimed in a high-pitched nasal voice, "it ain"t no use in talkin", ye kent put no tenderfoot t" boss the round-up. There"s them all-fired Donoghue lot jest sent right in t" say, "cause, I s"pose, they reckon as they"re the high muck-i-muck o" this location, that that tarnation Sim Lory, thar head man, is to cap" the round-up. Why, he ain"t cast a blamed foot on the prairie sence he"s been hyar. An" I"ll swear he don"t know the horn o" his saddle from a monkey stick. Et ain"t right, missie, an" us fellers t" work under him an" all."