CHAPTER XX.
_The Shadow Lies Long_.
What time he was compelled to be in the house, in the few remainingdays before round-up, he avoided Flora or was punctiliously polite.Only once did he address her directly by name, and then he called herMiss Bridger with a stiff formality that made Mama Joy dimple withspiteful satisfaction. Flora replied by calling him Mr. Boyle, andwould not look at him.
Then it was all in the past, and Billy was out on the range learningafresh how sickeningly awry one's plans may go. As mile after mileof smiling grass-land was covered by the sweep of the Double-Crankcircles, the disaster pressed more painfully upon him. When the wagonshad left the range the fall before, Billy had estimated roughly thateight or nine thousand head of Double-Crank stock wandered at will inthe open. But with the gathering and the calf-branding he knew thatthe number had shrunk woefully. Of the calves he had left with theirmothers in the fall, scarce one remained; of the cows themselves hecould find not half, and the calf-branding was becoming a grim jokeamong the men.
"Eat hearty," they would sometimes banter one another. "We got tobuckle down and _work_ this afternoon. They's three calves millingaround out there waiting to be branded!"
"Aw, come off! There ain't but two," another would bellow.
If it were not quite as bad as that, it was in all conscience badenough, and when they swung up to the reservation line and found therea fence in the making, and saw the Indian cowboys at work throwing outall but reservation stock, Billy mentally threw up his hands and leftthe outfit in Jim Bleeker's charge while he rode home to consult Dill.For Billy Boyle, knowing well his range-lore, could see nothing beforethe Double-Crank but black failure.
"It begins to look, Dilly," he began, "as though I've stuck yuh onthis game. Yuh staked the wrong player; yuh should uh backed the manthat stacked the deck on me. There's hell to pay on the range, Dilly.Last winter sure put a crimp in the range-stuff--_that's_ what I cometo tell yuh. I knew it would cut into the bunch. I could tell by theway things was going close around here--but I didn't look for it tobe as bad as it is. And they're fencing in the reservation thisspring--that cuts off a big chunk uh mighty good grazing and wintershelter along all them creeks. And I see there's quite a bunch uhgrangers come in, since I was along east uh here. They've got cattleturned on the range, and there's half a dozen shacks scattered--"
"Mr. Brown is selling off tracts of land with water-rights--under thatbig ditch, you understand. He's working a sort of colonization scheme,as near as I can find out. He is also fencing more land to the northand west--toward Hardup, in fact. I believe they already have most ofthe posts set. We'll soon be surrounded, William. And while we're uponthe subject of our calamities, I might state that we shall not be ableto do any irrigating this season. Mr. Brown is running his ditch halffull and has been for some little time. He kindly leaves enough forour stock to drink, however!"
"Charitable old cuss--that same Brown! I was figuring on the hay tokinda ease through next winter. Do yuh know, Dilly, the range is justgoing t' be a death-trap, with all them damn fences for the stock todrift into. Another winter half as bad as the last one was will sureput the finishing touches to the Double-Crank--unless we get busy and_do_ something." Billy, his face worn and his eyes holding that tiredlook which comes of nights sleepless and of looking long upon trouble,turned and began to pull absently at a splintered place in thegatepost. He had stopped Dill at the corral to have a talk with him,because to him the house was as desolate as if a dear one lay deadinside. Flora was at home--trust his eyes to see her face appearbriefly at the window when he rode up!--but he could not yet quiteendure to face her and her cold greeting.
Dill, looking to Billy longer and lanker and mere melancholy thanever, caressed his chin meditatively and regarded Billy in hiswistful, half-deprecating way. With the bitter knowledge that hiscastle, and with it Dill's fortune, was toppling, Billy could hardlybear to meet that look. And he had planned such great things, and hadmeant to make Dilly a millionaire!
"What would you advise, William, under the present unfavorableconditions?" asked Dill hesitatingly.
"Oh, I dunno. I've laid awake nights tryin' to pick a winning card. Ifit was me, and me alone, I'd pull stakes and hunt another range--andI'd go gunning after the first damn' man that stuck up a post to hangbarb-wire on. But after me making such a rotten-poor job uh runningthe Double-Crank, I don't feel called on to lay down the law toanybody!"
"If you will permit me to pass judgment, William, I will say that youhave shown an ability for managing men and affairs which I considerremarkable; _quite_ remarkable. You, perhaps, do not go deep enough insearching for the cause of our misfortunes. It is not bad managementor the hard winter, or Mr. Brown, even--and I blame myself bitterlyfor failing to read aright the 'handwriting on the wall,' to quotescripture, which I seldom do. If you have ever read history, William,you must know--even if you have _not_ read history you should knowfrom observation--how irresistible is the march of progress; howutterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I shouldhave known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on theWest--the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboywho tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpablycareless.
"Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank tome. _He_ saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowedwith the open range he very wisely changed his business; he becameallied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we arebeing 'broken' on the wheel of evolutionary change, he will make hismillions--"
"Damn him!" gritted Billy savagely, under his breath.
"He is to be admired, William. Such a man is bound in the very natureof things to succeed. It is the range and--and you, William, and thoselike you, that must go. It is hard--no doubt it is _extremely_hard, but it is as irresistible as--as death itself. Civilization iscompelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize thesoil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in thelife of humans, also.
"I am explaining at length, William, so that you will quite understandwhy I do not think it wise to follow your suggestion. As I say, it isnot Brown, or the fences, or anything of that sort--taken in a largesense--which is forcing us to the wall. It is the press of naturalprogress, the pushing farther and farther of civilization. We mightmove to a more unsettled portion of the country and delay for a timethe ultimate crushing. We could not avoid it entirely; we might, atbest, merely postpone it.
"My idea is to gather everything and sell for as high a price aspossible. Then--perhaps it would be well to follow Mr. Brown'sexample, and turn this place into a farm; or sell it, also, and trysomething else. What do you think, William?"
But Billy, his very soul sickening under the crushing truth of whatDill in his prim grammatical way was saying, did not answer at all. Hewas picking blindly, mechanically at the splinter, his face shaded byhis worn, gray hat; and he was thinking irrelevantly how a condemnedman must feel when they come to him in his cell and in formal wordsread aloud his death-warrant. One sentence was beating monotonouslyin his brain: "It is the range--and you, William, and those likeyou--that must go." It was not a mere loss of dollars or of cattle oreven of hopes; it was the rending, the tearing from him of a lifehe loved; it was the taking of the range--land--the wide, beautiful,weather-worn land--big and grand in its freedom of all that wasnarrow and sordid, and it was cutting and scarring it, harnessing itto the petty uses of a class he despised with all the frank egotismof a man who loves his own outlook; giving it over to the "nester"and the "rube" and burying the sweet-smelling grasses with plows. Itwas--he could not, even in the eloquence of his utter despair, findwords for all it meant to him.
"I should, of course, leave the details to you, so far as getting themost out of the stock is concerned. I have been thinking of this forsome little time, and your report of range conditions merely confirmsmy own judgment. If you think we would better sell at once--"
"I'd let 'em go
till fall," said Billy lifelessly, snapping thesplinter back into place and reaching absently for his tobacco andpapers. "They're bound to pick up a lot--and what's left is mostlybig, husky steers that'll make prime beef. With decent prices yuhought to pull clear uh what yuh owe Brown, and have a little left. Ididn't make anything like a count; they was so thin I handled 'em aslight as I could and get the calves branded--what few there was. But Ifeel tolerable safe in saying you can round up six--well, between sixand seven thousand head. At a fair price yuh ought to pull clear."
"Well, after dinner--"
"I can't stay for dinner, Dilly. I--there's--I've got to ride overhere a piece--I'll catch up a fresh hoss and start right off. I--" Hewent rather hurriedly after his rope, as hurriedly caught the horsethat was handiest and rode away at a lope. But he did not go so veryfar. He just galloped over the open range to a place where, look wherehe might, he could not see a fence or sign of habitation (and itwrung the heart of him that he must ride into a coulee to find sucha place), got down from his horse and lay a long, long while in thegrass with his hat pulled over his face.
* * * * *
For the first time in years the Fourth of July saw Billy in camp andin his old clothes. He had not hurried the round-up--on the contraryhe had been guilty of dragging it out unnecessarily by all sorts ofdelays and leisurely methods--simply because he hated to return to theranch and be near Flora. The Pilgrim he meant to settle with, but hefelt that he could wait; he hadn't much enthusiasm even for a fight,these days.
But, after all, he could not consistently keep the wagons forever onthe range, so he camped them just outside the pasture fence; whichwas far enough from the house to give him some chance of not beingtormented every day by the sight of her, and yet was close enoughfor all practical purposes. And here it was that Dill came with freshnews.
"Beef is falling again, William," he announced when he had Billy quiteto himself. "Judging from present indications, it will go quite as lowas last fall--even lower, perhaps. If it does, I fail to see how wecan ship with any but disastrous financial results."
"Well, what yuh going to do, then?" Billy spoke more irritably thanwould have been possible a year ago. "Yuh can't winter again and comeout with anything but another big loss. Yuh haven't even got hay tofeed what few calves there is. And, as I told yuh, the way the fencesare strung from hell to breakfast, the stock's bound to die off likepoisoned flies every storm that comes."
"I have kept that in mind, William. I saw that I should be quiteunable to make a payment this fall, so I went to Mr. Brown to makewhat arrangements I could. To be brief, William, Brown has offered tobuy back this place and the stock, on much the same terms he offeredme. I believe he wants to put this section of land under irrigationfrom his ditch and exploit it with the rest; the cattle he canturn into his immense fields until they can be shipped at a profit.However, that is not our affair and need not concern us.
"He will take the stock as they run, at twenty-one dollars a head.If, as you estimate, there are somewhere in the neighborhood ofsix thousand, that will dear me of all indebtedness and leave a fewthousands with which to start again--at something more abreast of thetimes, I hope. I am rather inclined to take the offer. What do youthink of it, William?"
"I guess yuh can't do any better. Twenty-one dollars a head as theyrun--and everything else thrown in, uh course?"
"That is the way I bought it, yes," said Dill.
"Well, we ought to scare up six thousand, if we count close. I knowold Brown fine; he'll hold yuh right down t' what yuh turn over, andhe'll tally so close he'll want to dock yuh if a critter's shy onehorn--damn him. That's why I was wishing you'd bought that way,instead uh lumping the price and taking chances. Only, uh course, Iknew just about what was on the range."
"Then I will accept the offer. I have been merely considering it untilI saw you. And perhaps it will be as well to go about it immediately."
"It's plenty early," objected Billy. "I was going to break some morehosses for the saddle-bunch--but I reckon I'll leave 'em now for Brownto bust. And for _God_-sake, Dilly, once yuh get wound up here, goon back where yuh come from. If the range is going--and they's no usesaying it ain't--this ain't going to be no place for any white man."Which was merely Billy's prejudice speaking.