CHAPTER XV
COWLAND TOPSY-TURVY
To Bud Larkin enough had already happened to make him as philosophical asSocrates. Epictetus remarks that our chief happiness should consist inknowing that we are entirely indifferent to calamity; that disgrace isnothing if our consciences are right and that death, far from being acalamity is, in fact, a release.
But the world only boasts of a few great minds capable of believing thesetheories, and Larkin's was not one of them. He was distinctly andcompletely depressed at the prospect ahead of him.
It was about ten o'clock at night and he sat in the chair beside histable, upon which a candle was burning, running over the pages of anancient magazine.
The knowledge of what the cowmen had decided to do with him had beenbrought by a committee of three of the men just before the supper hour andsince that time Larkin had been fuming and growling with rage.
There seems to be something particularly shameful in a whipping that makesit the most dreaded of punishments. It was particularly so at the time inwhich this story is laid, for echoes of '65 were still to be heardreverberating from one end of the land to the other. In the West whippingswere of rare occurrence, if not unknown, except in penitentiaries, wherethey had entirely too great a vogue.
Larkin's place of captivity was now changed. Some enterprising cowboy, atBissell's orders, had fashioned iron bars and these were fixed verticallyacross the one window. The long-unused lock of the door had been fittedwith a key and other bars fastened across the doorway horizontally so thatshould Larkin force the lock he would still meet opposition.
Since Juliet's unpleasant episode with her father Bud had seen her justonce--immediately afterward. Then, frankly and sincerely, she had told himwhat had happened and why, and Larkin, touched to the heart, had pleadedwith her for the greatest happiness of his life.
The realization of their need for each other was the natural outcome ofthe position of each, and the fact that, whatever happened, Juliet foundherself forced to espouse Bud's cause.
In that interview with her father she had come squarely to the parting ofthe ways, and had chosen the road that meant life and happiness to her.The law that human intellects will seek their own intellectual level,providing the person is sound in principle, had worked out in her case,and, once she had made her decision, she clung to it with all thesteadfastness of a strong and passionate nature.
It was Bissell's discovery of a new and intimate relation between hisdaughter and the sheepman that had resulted in the latter's closeconfinement, and from the time that this occurred the two had seen nothingof each other except an occasional glimpse at a distance when Bud wastaken out for a little exercise.
To-night, therefore, as Larkin sat contemplating the scene to be enactedat dawn, his sense of shame increased a hundredfold, for he knew that, aslong as she lived, Julie could not forget the occurrence.
It should not be thought that all this while he had not formulated plansof escape. Many had come to him, but had been quickly dismissed asimpracticable. Day and night one of the Bar T cowboys watched him. Andeven though he had been able to effect escape from his room, he knew thatwithout a horse he was utterly helpless on the broad, level stretches ofprairie. And to take a horse from the Bar T corral would lay him open tothat greatest of all range crimes--horse-stealing.
To-night his guards had been doubled. One paced up and down outside hiswindow and the other sat in the dining-room on which his door opened.
Now, at ten o'clock the entire Bar T outfit was asleep. Since placing thebunk-house at the disposal of the cowmen from other ranches, the punchersslept on the ground--rolled in their blankets as they always did whenovertaken by night on the open range.
At ten-thirty Bud put out his candle, undressed, and went to bed. But hecould not sleep. His mind reverted to Hard-winter Sims and the sheep campby the Badwater. He wondered whether the men from Montana had arrivedthere yet, and, most intensely of all, he wondered whether Ah Sin had gotsafely through with his message.
He calculated that the Chinaman must have arrived three days before unlessunexpectedly delayed, and he chafed at the apparent lack of effort made onhis behalf. The only explanation that offered itself was--that Sims,taking advantage of the events happening at the Bar T, had seized theopportunity to hurry the gathering sheep north across the range. If suchwas the case, Larkin resigned himself to his fate, since he had given Simsfull power to do as he thought best.
At about midnight he was dimly conscious of a scuffling sound outside hiswindow, and, getting softly out of bed, went to the opening. In a fewminutes the head of a man rose gradually above the window-sill close tothe house, and a moment later he was looking into the face of Hard-winterSims.
Controlling the shock this apparition gave him, Larkin placed his fingeron his lips and whispered in a tone so low it was scarcely more than abreath:
"Did you get the fellow outside?"
Sims nodded.
"There's another one in the dining-room just outside my door. He ought tobe relieved at one o'clock, but he'll have to go out and wake up hisrelief. He'll go out the kitchen door, and when he does nab him, but don'tlet him yell. Now pass me a gun."
Without a sound, Sims inserted a long .45 between the clumsy bars, andfollowed it with a cartridge belt.
"How'll we get yuh out?" he whispered.
"After fixing the man inside come out again and loosen these bars; thedoor is barred, too."
"Where are the cowmen?" asked Sims.
"All in the bunk-house, and the punchers are sleeping out near thecorral."
"Yes, I seen 'em. Now you go back to bed an' wait till I hiss through thewindow. Then we'll have yuh out o' here in a jiffy."
The herder's form vanished in the darkness, and Larkin, his heart beatinghigh with hope and excitement, returned to his bed. Before lying down,however, he dressed himself completely and strapped on the cartridge beltand gun.
The minutes passed like hours. Listening with every nerve fiber on thealert, Bud found the night peopled with a multitude of sounds that on anordinary occasion would have passed unnoticed. So acute did his sense ofhearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting underthe night coolness seemed to him almost like a pistol shot.
When at last it appeared that Sims must have failed and that dawn wouldsurely begin to break, he heard a heavy sound in the dining-room and satbolt upright. It was merely the cow-puncher there preparing to go out andwaken his successor. Although the man made as little noise as possible, itseemed to Bud that his footsteps must wake everybody in the house.
The man went out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys,closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was outof the prisoner's ken.
After a while, however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss atthe window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in hisstocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both wereprying at the bars of the window with instruments muffled in cloth.
"Did you get him?" asked Bud.
"Shore! He won't wake up for a week, that feller," answered Simsplacidly.
For a quarter of an hour the two worked at the clumsy bars, assisted byBud from the inside. At the end of that time two of them came loose at thelower ends and were bent upward. Then the combined efforts of the threemen were centered on the third bar, which gave way in a few minutes.
Handing his boots out first, Larkin crawled headforemost out of the windowand put his arms around the shoulders of his rescuers, resting most ofhis weight upon their bent backs. Then they walked slowly away from thehouse and Bud's feet and legs came out noiselessly. Still in the shadow ofthe walls they set him down and he drew on his boots.
It was not until then that Sims's assistant made himself known.
"Hello, boss," he said and took off his broad hat so that Larkin could seehis face.
"Jimmie Welsh, by George!" whispered Bud joyfully, wringing his hand. "Didyou bring many of the boys
down with you?"
"Fifty," replied the other.
"Bully for you! I don't know what would become of me if it weren't for youand Hard-winter."
As they talked they were moving off toward the little river that woundpast the Bar T house.
"Got a horse for me?" asked Bud.
"Yes," said Sims, "over here in the bottoms where the rest of the boysare."
"What do you plan to do now?"
Sims told him and Bud grinned delightedly at the same time that his facehardened with the triumph of a revenge about to be accomplished.
"Let's get at it," he said.
"Wait here and I'll get the rest of the bunch."
Hard-winter left them, and in a few minutes returned with a dozen brawnysheepmen, mostly recruited from Larkin's own ranch in Montana. Whengreetings had been exchanged they moved off quietly toward theranch-house.
The corral of the Bar T was about fifty yards back of the cook's shantyand as you faced it had a barn on the right-hand side, where the familysaddle horses were kept in winter, as well as the small amount of hay thatBissell put up every year.
To the left of the corral the space was open, and here the Bar T punchershad made their camp since leaving their former quarters. The bunk-house onthe other hand stood perhaps fifty feet forward of the barn. It was towardthis building that the expedition under Sims took its way.
Silently the rough door swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, witha revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remainedoutside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursingthat grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver buttcoming in contact with a human skull. After that there was practically nonoise whatever.
The men outside watched anxiously, fearful that the single outcry hadraised an alarm. But there was no sound from either the house or thecowboys' camp. Presently Welsh stuck his head out of the door.
"How is she? Safe?" he asked.
"Yes, bring 'em out," answered Bud, and the next minute a strangeprocession issued from the bunk-house.
The cowmen, gagged, and with their hands bound behind them, walked singlefile, accompanied by one of the sheepmen. Without a word the line turnedin the direction of the river bottoms, where the rest of the band and thehorses were waiting.
To do this it was necessary to pass behind the cook-house. Bud leaned overand spoke to Sims.
"Can't we get Bissell in this party? He's the fellow that has made all thetrouble."
"Sure, Jimmy and I will go in and get him. I had forgotten all abouthim."
But they were saved the trouble, for just as they were opposite thecook-house, Larkin saw a burly form outlined for an instant in the doorwayof the cowboys' dining-room. With three bounds he was upon this form andarrived just in time to seize a hand that was vainly tugging at arevolver strapped on beneath his night clothes.
Had fortune not tangled Bissell's equipment that night Bud Larkin wouldhave been a dead man. Snatching off his hat, he smashed it over the cattleking's mouth, and an instant later Bissell, writhing and struggling, butsilent, was being half-carried out to join his friends.
Matters now proceeded with speed and smoothness. The prisoners werehurried to where the remainder of the band awaited them. Then, still boundand gagged, they were mounted on spare horses.
Only thirty of Welsh's raiders had come on this trip, the rest remainingto help with the sheep, but their horses had been brought so that theremight be ample provision for everybody.
With a feeling of being once more at home, Larkin climbed into a deepsaddle, and a wave of triumph surged over him. He was again free, and atthe head of a band of brave men. He had the ascendency at last over hismisfortune, and he intended to keep it. Then when everything was finishedhe could come back and he would find Juliet--
The remembrance of her brought him to a pause. Must he go away without asmuch as a word from her, the one for whom he cared more than all the restof the world? Quietly he dismounted.
"Let Jimmie go on with the prisoners and the rest of the boys," he said toSims. "You wait here with me. I must leave one message."
A minute later the cavalcade stole away, following the winding river bankfor a mile before setting foot on the plain.
Then, with Sims crouching, armed, behind the nearest protection, BudLarkin walked softly to the house. He knew which was her window and wentstraight there, finding it open as he had expected. Listening carefully heheard no sound from within. Then he breathed the one word, "Julie," andimmediately there came a rustling of the bed as she rose.
Knowing that she had been awake and was coming to him, he turned away hiseyes until he felt her strong little hand on his shoulder. Then he lookedup to find her in an overwrap with her luxuriant hair falling down overher shoulders, her eyes big and luminously dusky.
"Darling," she said, "I have heard everything, and I am so glad."
"Then you could have given the alarm at any time?"
"Yes."
"God bless your faithful little heart!" he said fervently, and, reachingup, drew down her face to his and kissed her.
It was their second kiss and they both thrilled from head to foot withthis tantalization of the hunger of their love. All the longing of theirenforced separation seemed to burst the dam that had held it, and, for atime, they forgot all things but the living, moving tide of their ownlove.
At last the girl disengaged herself from his eager hands, with hot cheeksand bright, flame-lit eyes. Her breath came fast, and it was a momentbefore she could compose herself.
"Where are you going now, Bud?" she asked.
"Back to the sheep."
"Can I do anything to help you?"
"I can only think of one thing, and that is to marry me."
"Everything in time, sir!" she reproved him. "Get your muttons out of theway and then you can have me."
Larkin groaned. Then he said:
"If anything comes for me or anybody wants me, I want you to do as I woulddo if I were here. Things are coming to a climax now and I must know allthat goes on. Watch Stelton especially. He is crooked somewhere, and I'mgoing to get him if it takes me the rest of my life."
Suddenly there was a loud knock from outside the girl's bedroom door, andthey both listened, hardly daring to breathe.
"Julie, let me in!" cried Mrs. Bissell's querulous voice. "Where's yourfather?"
"Run, dear boy, for your life!" breathed the girl.
Larkin kissed her swiftly and hurried back to the underbrush, where Simswas awaiting him in an access of temper.
"Great Michaeljohn, boss!" he growled as they rode along the bank, "ain'tyuh got no consideration fer me? From the way yuh go on a person'd thinkyuh were in love with the girl."