CHAPTER X
GUESTS OF THE BOSS LADY
Vesta rode out to meet them as they were coming back, to make sure ofher thanks. She was radiant with gratitude, and at no loss any longerfor words to express it. Before they had ridden together on the returnjourney half a mile, Taterleg felt that he had known her all her life,and was ready to cast his fortunes with her, win or lose.
Lambert was leaving the conversation between her and Taterleg, for thegreater part. He rode in gloomy isolation, like a man with something onhis mind, speaking only when spoken to, and then as shortly aspoliteness would permit. Taterleg, who had words enough for a book,appeared to feel the responsibility of holding them up to the level ofgentlemen and citizens of the world. Not if talk could prevent it wouldTaterleg allow them to be classed as a pair of boors who could not gobeyond the ordinary cow-puncher's range in word and thought.
"It'll be some time, ma'am, before that feller Hargus and his boy'll tryto make a short cut to Glendora through your ranch ag'in," said he.
"It was the first time they were ever caught, after old man Hargus hadbeen cutting our fence for years, Mr. Wilson. I can't tell you how muchI owe you for humiliating them where they thought the humiliation wouldbe on my side."
"Don't you mention it, ma'am; it's the greatest pleasure in the world."
"He thought he'd come by the house and look in the window and defy mebecause I was alone."
"He's got a mean eye; he's got a eye like a wolf."
"He's got a wolf's habits, too, in more ways than one, Mr. Wilson."
"Yes, that man'd steal calves, all right."
"We've never been able to prove it on him, Mr. Wilson, but you've putyour finger on Mr. Hargus' weakness like a phrenologist."
Taterleg felt his oats at this compliment. He sat up like a major, hischest out, his mustache as big on his thin face as a Mameluke's. Italways made Lambert think of the handlebars on that long-horn safetybicycle that he came riding into the Bad Lands.
"The worst part of it is, Mr. Wilson, that he's not the only one."
"Neighbors livin' off of you, are they? Yes, that's the way it was downin Texas when the big ranches begun to fence, they tell me--I never wasthere, ma'am, and I don't know of my own knowledge and belief, as thelawyers say. Fence-ridin' down there in them days was a job where a mantook his life in both hands and held it up to be shot at."
"There's been an endless fight on this ranch, too. It's been a strainand a struggle from the first day, not worth it, not worth half of it.But father put the best years of his life into it, and established itwhere men boasted it couldn't be done. I'm not going to let them whip menow."
Lambert looked at her with a quick gleam of admiration in his eyes. Shewas riding between him and Taterleg, as easy in their company, and asnatural as if she had known them for years. There had been no heights offalse pride or consequence for her to descend to the comradeship ofthese men, for she was as unaffected and ingenuous as they. Lambertseemed to wake to a sudden realization of this. His interest in herbegan to grow, his reserve to fall away.
"They told us at Glendora that rustlers were running your cattle off,"said he. "Are they taking the stragglers that get through where thefence is cut, or coming after them?"
"They're coming in and running them off almost under our eyes. I've onlygot one man on the ranch beside Ananias; nobody riding fence at all butmyself. It takes me a good while to ride nearly seventy miles of fence."
"Yes, that's so," Lambert seemed to reflect. "How many head have you gotin this pasture?"
"I ought to have about four thousand, but they're melting away likesnow, Mr. Lambert."
"We saw a bunch of 'em up there where them fellers cut the fence,"Taterleg put in, not to be left out of the game which he had startedand kept going single-handed so long; "white-faced cattle, like they'vegot in Kansas."
"Ours--mine are all white-faced. They stand this climate better than anyother."
"It must have been a bunch of strays we saw--none of them was branded,"Lambert said.
"Father never would brand his calves, for various reasons, the humaneabove all others. I never blamed him after seeing it done once, and I'mnot going to take up the barbarous practice now. All otherconsiderations aside, it ruins a hide, you know, Mr. Lambert."
"It seems to me you'd better lose the hide than the calf, MissPhilbrook."
"It does make it easy for thieves, and that's the only argument in favorof branding. While we've--I've got the only white-faced herd in thiscountry, I can't go into court and prove my property without a brand,once the cattle are run outside of this fence. So they come in and takethem, knowing they're safe unless they're caught."
Lambert fell silent again. The ranchhouse was in sight, high on itspeninsula of prairie, like a lighthouse seen from sea.
"It's a shame to let that fine herd waste away like that," he said,ruminatively, as if speaking to himself.
"It's always been hard to get help here; cowboys seem to think it's adisgrace to ride fence. Such as we've been able to get nearly alwaysturned out thieves on their own account in the end. The one out with thecattle now is a farm boy from Iowa, afraid of his shadow."
"They didn't want no fence in here in the first place--that's what settheir teeth ag'in' you," Taterleg said.
"If I could only get some real men once," she sighed; "men who couldhandle them like you boys did this morning. Even father never seemed tounderstand where to take hold of them to hurt them, the way you do."
They were near the house now. Lambert rode on a little way in silence.Then:
"It's a shame to let that herd go to pieces," he said.
"It's a sin!" Taterleg declared.
She dropped her reins, looking from one to the other, an eager appealin her hopeful face.
"Why can't you boys stop here a while and help me out?" she asked,saying at last in a burst of hopeful eagerness what had been in herheart to say from the first. She held out her hand to each of them in apretty way of appeal, turning from one to the other, her gray eyespleading.
"I hate to see a herd like that broken up by thieves, and all of yourinvestment wasted," said the Duke, thoughtfully, as if considering itdeeply.
"It's a sin _and_ a shame!" said Taterleg.
"I guess we'll stay and give you a hand," said the Duke.
She pulled her horse up short, and gave him, not a figurative hand, buta warm, a soft and material one, from which she pulled her buckskinglove as if to level all thought or suggestion of a barrier betweenthem. She turned then and shook hands with Taterleg, warming him so withher glowing eyes that he patted her hand a little before he let it go,in manner truly patriarchal.
"You're all right, you're _all_ right," he said.
Once pledged to it, the Duke was anxious to set his hand to the workthat he saw cut out for him on that big ranch. He was like a physicianwho had entered reluctantly into a case after other practitioners hadleft the patient in desperate condition. Every moment must be employedif disaster to that valuable herd was to be averted.
Vesta would hear of nothing but that they come first to the house fordinner. So the guests did the best they could at improving theirappearance at the bunkhouse after turning their horses over to theobsequious Ananias, who appeared with a large bandage, and a strongsmell of turpentine, on his bruised head.
Beyond brushing off the dust of the morning's ride there was little tobe done. Taterleg brought out his brightest necktie from the portablepossessions rolled up in his slicker; the Duke produced his calfskinvest. There was not a coat between them to save the dignity of theirprofession at the boss lady's board. Taterleg's green-velvet waistcoathad suffered damage during the winter when a spark from his pipe burneda hole in it as big as a dollar. He held it up and looked at it,concluding in the end that it would not serve.
With his hairy chaps off, Taterleg did not appear so bow-legged, but hewaddled like a crab as they went toward the house to join the companionof their ride. The Duke stopped on the high gr
ound near the house,turned, looked off over the great pasture that had been Philbrook'sbattle ground for so many years.
"One farmer from Iowa out there to watch four thousand cattle, andthieves all around him! Eatin' looks like burnin' daylight to me."
"She'd 'a' felt hurt if we'd 'a' shied off from her dinner, Duke. Youknow a man's got to eat when he ain't hungry and drink when he ain't drysometimes in this world to keep up appearances."
"Appearances!" The Duke looked him over with humorous eye, from hissomewhat clean sombrero to his capacious corduroy trousers gathered intohis boot tops. "Oh, well, I guess it's all right."
Vesta was in excellent spirits, due to the broadening of her prospects,which had appeared so narrow and unpromising but a few hours before.One of this pair, she believed, was worth three ordinary men. She askedthem about their adventures, and the Duke solemnly assured her that theynever had experienced any.
Taterleg, loquacious as he might be on occasion, knew when to hold histongue. Lambert led her away from that ground into a discussion of herown affairs, and conditions as they stood between her neighbors andherself.
"Nick Hargus is one of the most persistent offenders, and we might aswell dispose of him first, since you've met the old wretch and know whathe's like on the outside," she explained. "Hargus was in the cattlebusiness in a hand-to-mouth way when we came here, and he raised abigger noise than anybody else about our fences, claiming we'd cut himoff from water, which wasn't true. We didn't cut anybody off from theriver.
"Hargus is married to an Indian squaw, a little old squat, black-facedthing as mean as a snake. They've got a big brood of children, that boyyou saw this morning is the senior of the gang. Old Hargus usuallyharbors two or three cattle thieves, horse thieves or other crooks ofthat kind, some of them just out of the pen, some preparing their way toit. He does a sort of general rustling business, with this ranch as hismain source of supply. We've had a standing fight on with him ever sincewe came here, but today was the first time, as I told you, that he everwas caught.
"You heard what he said about cutting the fence this morning. That's theattitude of the country all around. You couldn't convict a man forcutting a fence in this country. So all a person can do is shoot them ifyou catch them at it. I don't know what Hargus will do to get even withthis morning's humiliation."
"I think he'll leave that fence alone like it was charged withlightnin'," Taterleg said.
"He'll try to turn something; he's wily and vindictive."
"He needs a chunk of lead about the middle of his appetite," Taterlegdeclared.
"Who comes next?" Lambert inquired.
"There's a man they call Walleye Bostian--his regular name is Jesse--onthe farther end of this place that's troubled with a case of incurableresentment against a barbed-wire fence. He's a sheepman, one of thelast that would do a lawless deed, you'd think, from the look of him,but he's mean to the roots of his hair."
"All sheepmen's onery, ma'am, they tell me," said Taterleg, a cowman nowfrom core to rind, and loyal to his calling accordingly.
"I don't know about the rest of them, but Walleye Bostian is a mightymean sheepman. Well, I know I got a shot at him once that he'llremember."
"_You_ did?" Taterleg's face was as bright as a dishpan with admiration.He chuckled in his throat, eying the Duke slantingly to see how he tookthat piece of news.
The Duke sat up a little stiffer, his face grew a shade more serious,and that was all the change in him that Taterleg could see.
"I hope we can take that kind of work off your hands in the future, MissPhilbrook," he said, his voice slow and grave.
She lifted her grateful eyes with a look of appreciation that seemed tohim overpayment for a service proposed, rather than done. She went on,then, with a description of her interesting neighbors.
"This ranch is a long, narrow strip, only about three miles wide bytwenty deep, the river at this end of it, Walleye Bostian at the other.Along the sides there are various kinds of reptiles in human skin, noneof them living within four or five miles of our fences, the averagebeing much farther than that, for people are not very plentiful rightaround here.
"On the north of us Hargus is the worst, on the south a man named Kerr.Kerr is the biggest single-handed cattleman around here. His onegrievance against us is that we shut a creek that he formerly used alonginside our fences that forced him to range down to the river for water.As the creek begins and ends on our land--it empties into the riverabout a mile above here--it's hard for an unbiased mind to grasp Kerr'spoint of objection."
"Have you ever taken a shot at him?" the Duke asked, smiling a littledry smile.
"No-o," said she reflectively, "not at Kerr himself. Kerr is what isusually termed a gentleman; that is, he's a man of education and wearshis beard cut like a banker's, but his methods of carrying on a feud areextremely low. Fighting is beneath his dignity, I guess; he hires itdone."
"You've seen some fightin' in your time, ma'am," Taterleg said.
"Too much of it," she sighed wearily. "I've had a shot at his men morethan once, but there are one or two in that Kerr family I'd like tosling a gun down on!"
It was strange to hear that gentle-mannered, refined girl talk offighting as if it were the commonest of everyday business. There was nonote of boasting, no color of exaggeration in her manner. She was asnatural and sincere as the calm breeze, coming in through the openwindow, and as wholesome and pure. There was not a doubt of that in themind of either of the men at the table with her. Their admiration spokeout of their eyes.
"When you've had to fight all your life," she said, looking up earnestlyinto Lambert's face, "it makes you old before your time, andquick-tempered and savage, I suppose, even when you fight inself-defense. I used to ride fence when I was fourteen, with a rifleacross my saddle, and I wouldn't have thought any more of shooting aman I saw cutting our fence or running off our cattle than I would arabbit."
She did not say what her state of mind on that question was at present,but it was so plainly expressed in her flushed cheeks and defiant eyesthat it needed no words.
"If you'd 'a' had your gun on you this morning when them fellers knockedthat old coon down I bet there'd 'a' been a funeral due over at oldHargus' ranch," said Taterleg.
"I'd saddled up to go to the post office; I never carry a gun with mewhen I go to Glendora," she said.
"A country where a lady has to carry a gun at all ain't no country tospeak of. It needs cleanin' up, ma'am, that's what it needs."
"It surely does, Mr. Wilson: you've got it sized up just right."
"Well, Taterleg, I guess we'd better be hittin' the breeze," the Dukesuggested, plainly uneasy between the duty of courtesy and the longlines of unguarded fence.
Taterleg could not accustom himself to that extraordinary bunkhouse whenthey returned to it, on such short time. He walked about in it, necktiein his hand, looking into its wonders, marveling over its conveniences.
"It's just like a regular human house," said he.
There was a bureau with a glass to it in every room, and there wererooms for several men. The Duke and Taterleg stowed away their slenderbelongings in the drawers and soon were ready for the saddle. As he putthe calfskin vest away, the Duke took out the little handkerchief, fromwhich the perfume of faint violet had faded long ago, and pressed ittenderly against his cheek.
"You'll wait on me a little while longer, won't you?" he asked.
Then he laid it away between the folds of his remarkable garment verycarefully, and went out, his slicker across his arm, to take up his lifein that strip of contention and strife between Vesta Philbrook'sfar-reaching wire fences.