Laramie Holds the Range

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE HOME OF LARAMIE

  Almost due north of Sleepy Cat the Lodge Pole Mountains, tumbling overone another in an upheaval southward, are flung suddenly to the westand spread in a declining ridge to the Superstition range. South ofthe Lodge Poles the country is very rough, but at the point where therange is so sharply deflected there spreads fanlike to the east an openbasin with good soil and water. It is known locally as the FallingWall country, and, as the names of the region indicate, it was oncefamous as a hunting ground, and so, as a fighting ground, for thepowerful tribes of early days. And an ample Reservation in thisbasin--ending just where the good lands begin--is the stamping groundof the last of the mountain red men.

  But the struggle for possession of the Falling Wall country did not endwith the red men. White men, too, have coveted the lands of theFalling Wall and fought for them. Among the blind the one-eyed arekings, and the Falling Wall basin lies amid inhospitable deserts,barren hills and landscapes slashed to rags and ribbons by mountainstorms--regions that have failed to tempt even a white man's cupidity.The Indians fought for the basin with arrows, bullets, tomahawks andscalping knives; the whites have fought chiefly in the land offices andcourts, but, exasperated by delays and inflamed by defeat, they have attimes boiled over and appealed to the rifle and the hip holster fordecrees to quiet title.

  It is for these reasons, and others, that the Falling Wall country hasborne a hard and somewhat sinister name, even in a region where menhave been habitually indifferent to restraint and tolerant of violentappeals to frontier justice. In the very early days of the white manthe Indian clung to the Falling Wall country as his last stand; for thebad lands along the canyon of the Falling Wall river made, as they yetmake, an almost impenetrable fastness for sally and retreat.

  But even before the Indians were driven into their barren cage to thenorth, white adventurers had penetrated the basin and it became, withthe shifting of possession, a region for men of hard repute. Itstraditions have been bad and few in the Falling Wall country have feltconcern over the fact.

  Yet, from the earliest days, despite the many difficulties of living inthe widely known but not large park, a few hardy settlers managed fromthe beginning, in secluded portions of the region, to keep their scalpsand their horses and to live through Indian days and outlawdays--though not often in peace, and never in quiet.

  Among these early adventurers was one known as "Texas" Laramie, becausehe had the extraordinary courage, or hardihood, to bring into theFalling Wall the first cattle ever driven into the mountains from thePanhandle. In a country where the sobriquet is usually the only nameby which it is courteous or safe to address a man, and where it isinvariably apt, few men are accorded two. But Laramie had also beenknown as "Pump" Laramie because he brought into that country the firstWinchester rifle; and the instinctive significance the mind attaches tothe combination of cows and a repeating rifle was, in this instance,justified--there was between the two a direct, even dynamic,connection. Laramie thus figured prominently in the older Falling Wallfeuds. It would have been difficult for him to figure obscurely, anddo it more than once.

  Enemies said that he stole the bunch of cattle he first drove into theFalling Wall. It was not true but it made a good story. And in anyevent, Texas Laramie defended his steers vigorously against all menadvancing claim to them between darkness and daylight--as enterprisingneighbors not infrequently undertook to do. With the cattle, Laramiehad brought into the mountains a wife from Texas. She was a youngmother with a little boy, Jim; a good mother, never happy in thecountry so far away from the Staked Plain--and not very long to livethere. But she lived long enough to send Jim year after year to theSisters' School on the Reservation.

  To obtain for a boy any sort of an education in a region so wild and soinhospitable would have seemed impossible. Yet devotedSisters--refined and aristocratic American women--were already in thismountain country devoting their lives to the Indian Missions. Undersuch women little Jim learned his Catechism and his reading and fromthem and their example a few of the amenities of life--so far removedfrom him in every other direction. Under their care he grew up, afterhe had lost his mother, among the Indian boys. With these he learnedto fish and hunt, to trap for pocket money, to use a bow and arrow anda knife, to trail and stalk patiently, to lie uncomplainingly in coldand wet, to ride without saddle or bridle or spur, to face a grizzlywithout excitement, to use a rifle where the price of every cartridgewas reckoned and a poor aim sometimes cost life itself.

  And every summer at home his father added extension courses in thesaddle and bridle, spur, hackamore and lariat to his education. Hetaught him to rope, throw and mark, to use a coffee pot and frying pan,and at last on the great day--the Commencement day, so to say of theboy's frontier education--he presented him with his degree--a Colt'srevolver and a box of cartridges--and died. As he lay on his deathbed,Texas Laramie left a parting advice to his young son: "You've learnedto shoot, Jim--you don't shoot bad for a youngster. A man's got toshoot. But the less shooting you do, after you've learned--withoutyou're forced to it, mind you--the more comfortable you'll feel whenyou get where I am now. All I can say is: I never killed an honest manthat I knowed of. In fact," his breath came very slowly, "I never yetseen an honest man in the Falling Wall to kill."

  And Jim began life with the ranch, youth, a little bunch of cattle, nomoney and much health in the Falling Wall. His first year alone henever forgot, for in the spring he drove all his steers--not a greatmany--into the new railroad town, south--Sleepy Cat--and sold them formore money than he had ever seen at one time in his life. He wanderedfrom the bank into Harry Tenison's gambling rooms--Harry having soldout his livery stable to Joe Kitchen shortly before that--just to lookon for a little while before starting home. When Laramie did starthome, Tenison had all his steer money and Laramie owed the sober-facedgambler, besides, one hundred dollars. Laramie then went to work onthe range for twenty-five dollars a month. He worked four months, andit was hard work, took his pay check in and handed it to Tenison. Thatwas strangely enough the beginning of a friendship that was neverbroken. Tenison tried to give the check back to Laramie. He couldnot. But Laramie never again tried to clean out the bank at Tenison's.

  The Laramie cabin on Turkey Creek--the son built afterward on the samespot--stood on a slight conical rise some distance back from the littlestream that watered the ranch. From his windows Jim Laramie could lookon gently falling ground in all directions. Toward the creek lay analfalfa field which, with a crude irrigating ditch and water from thecreek, he had brought to a prosperous stand. Below the alfalfa stoodthe barn and the corral.

  The day after Kate Doubleday's adventure with him at the Junction,Laramie was riding up the creek to his cabin when a man standing at thecorral gate hailed him. It wag Ben Simeral. Ben, old and ragged, metevery man with a smile--a bearded, seamed and shabby smile, but anhonest smile. Ben was a derelict of the range, a stray whose appealcould be only to patient men. Whenever he wandered into the FallingWall country, where he had a claim, he made Laramie's cabin a sort ofheadquarters and spent weeks at a time there, looking after the stockin return for what John Lefever termed the "court'sies" of the ranch.

  Laramie, greeting Ben, made casual inquiry about the stock. Ben lookedat him as if expectant; but Ben was not aggressive for news or anythingelse. He grinned as he looked Laramie over: "Well, you're back again,Jim."

  Laramie responded in kindly fashion: "Anybody been here?"

  "Nary critter," declared the custodian, "'cept Abe Hawk--he came overto borry your Marlin rifle."

  "What did he want with that?"

  "Said he was going up into the mountains but he's comin' over againbefore he starts. I knowed he helped you track them wire scouts overto Barb's. The blame critters tore off all the wire t'other side thecreek, too. Get any track of 'em?" he asked, sympathetically alive towhat had been most on Laramie's mind when he had started from home.

 
Laramie barely hesitated but he looked squarely at Ben and answered ineven tones: "No track, Ben."

  Ben looked at him, still smiling with a kindly hope:

  "Hear from the contest on the creek quarter?"

  "They told me at Medicine Bend it had gone against me."

  "Psho! Never! You've got another 'go' to Washington, hain't y'?"

  Laramie nodded and got down from his horse. Ben, removing the saddle,asked more questions--none of them important--and after putting up thehorse the two men started for the house. Its rude walls were well laidup in good logs on which rested a timbered roof, shingled.

  A living-room with a fireplace roughly fashioned in stone made up thelarger interior of the cabin. To the right of the fireplace a kitchenopened off the living-room and adjoining this, to the right as oneentered the front door, was a bedroom. To the left stood a smalltable, on which were scattered a few old books, a metal lamp andwell-thumbed copies of old magazines. Beside the table stood a heavyoak Morris chair of the kind sold by mail-order houses. Two otherchairs, heavily built in oak, were disposed about the room, and on theleft of the entrance--there was but one door--stood a cot bed. On thefloor between the door and the fireplace lay a huge silver tipbearskin, the head set up by an Indian taxidermist. It was some timeafterward when Kate saw the cabin, but she remembered, even after itlay in ruins, just how the interior had looked.

  The four walls were really more furnished than the rest of the room.To the right and left of the fireplace hung twin bighorn heads, and elkand stag antlers on the other walls supplied racks for an ample varietyof rifles, polished by familiar use and kept, through love of trustyfriends, in good order. Trophies of the hunt, disposed sometimes ineffective and sometimes in mere man fashion, flanked the racks andshowed the tastes of the owner of the isolated habitation; for fewtrails led within miles of Laramie's ranch on the Turkey.

  "Breakfast?" Simeral looked at his companion, who stood vacantlymusing at the door of the kitchen.

  "Coffee," answered Laramie, taking off his jacket, laying his Colt's onthe table and slipping off his breast harness.

  "I got no bread," announced Ben, to forestall objection. "Flour's low'n' I didn't bake."

  "Crackers will do."

  "Ain't no crackers, neither," returned Ben, raising his voice and hissmile in self-defense.

  "Give me coffee and bacon," suggested Laramie, impatiently.

  "'N' I'll fry some potatoes," muttered Ben, shuffling with a show ofspeed into the kitchen, and calling inquiries back in his unsteadyvoice to the living-room, patiently digging at Laramie for scraps ofnews from Sleepy Cat, volunteering, in return, scraps from the rangeand ranch. Laramie sat down in the nearest chair, tilted it slightlyback, and resting one arm on the table gazed into the empty fireplace.He appeared as if much preoccupied--nor would, nor could, he talk ofwhat was in his mind, nor think of anything else.

  Some minutes later he began in the same absent-minded manner on a hugeplateful of bacon, with a pot of coffee in keeping, and was eating insilence when the stillness of the sunshine was broken by the sound of ahorse's hoofs. Laramie looked out and saw, through the open door, ahorseman riding in leisurely fashion up from the creek.

  The man was tall. He swung lightly out of his saddle near the door,and as he walked into the house it could be seen that he wasproportioned in his frame to his height; strength and agility revealedthemselves in every move. A rifle slung in a scabbard hung beside theshoulder of the horse, and the man's rig proclaimed the cowboy, thoughaside from a broad-brimmed Stetson hat his garb was simplicity itself.

  It was the way in which he carried his height and shoulders thatarrested attention, nor was his face one easily to be forgotten. Hewore a jet-black beard that grew close and dropped compactly down. Itwas neither bushy nor scraggly and with his black brows it made astriking setting for strong and rather deep-set eyes which if notactually black were certainly very dark. His smile revealed white,regular teeth under his dark mustache, and his olive complexion, thoughtanned, seemed different from those of men that rode the range withhim--perhaps it was owing to the glossy, black beard.

  Abe Hawk was evidently at home in Laramie's cabin. He stepped throughthe door and pushing his hat back on his forehead took a chair and satdown. The two men, masters of taciturnity, looked at each other whilethis was taking place, and as Hawk seated himself Laramie called for acup and pushed the coffee pot toward his visitor. Paying no attentionto the unspoken invitation, Hawk's features assumed the quizzical linesthey sometimes wore when he relaxed and poked questions at his friend.

  "Well," he demanded, banteringly, "where's Jimmie been?"

  "Medicine, Sleepy Cat--pretty near everywhere."

  "I hear you got a job."

  "I was offered one."

  "Deputy marshal, eh?"

  "Farrell Kennedy got me down to Medicine Bend to talk it over."

  "What's the matter, couldn't you hold it?"

  "I didn't want it."

  "You're out of practise on this law-and-order stuff--you've lived uphere too long among thieves, Jim. Find out who tore down your wire?"

  Laramie replied in even tones but his voice was hard: "I trailed themacross the Crazy Woman. It was somebody from Doubleday's ranch."

  "They had a story at Stormy Gorman's you'd gone over there to blowBarb's head off."

  "Barb wasn't home."

  Hawk was conscious of the evasion. "Was Stormy's talk true?" hedemanded curtly.

  "I expected to ask Barb whether he wanted to put my wire back. I wasgoing to give him a chance."

  "It wouldn't be hard to guess how that would come out. Where was he?"asked Hawk, with evident disappointment.

  "They said he was in Sleepy Cat. I rode in and missed him there. He'dgone to the mines. I took the train up to the Junction, There Iaccidentally got switched off my job and came home."

  "How'd you get switched off?" asked Hawk, resenting the outcome.

  Laramie's manner showed he disliked being bored into. He leanedforward with a touch of asperity and looked, straight at his visitor:"By not 'tending strictly to my own business, Abe."

  Hawk knew from the expression of Laramie's eyes he must drop thesubject, and though he lost none of his bantering manner, he desisted:"They didn't have a warrant for me down at the marshal's office, didthey?"

  "They were short of blanks," retorted Laramie coolly.

  "How you fixed for flour?"

  "Plenty of it." Laramie spoke loudly for fear Simeral might protest.Then he called promptly to the kitchen: "Ben, get up some flour forAbe."

  Ben quavered a protest.

  "Get it up now before you forget it," insisted Laramie.

  "Is Tom Stone still foreman over at Doubleday's?"

  "I guess he is," returned Laramie.

  "What does Doubleday aim to do with Stone?" asked Hawk, cynically,"steal his own cattle from himself?"

  "A cattleman nowadays might as well steal his own cattle as to wait forsomebody else to steal 'em." Laramie spoke with some annoyance."There's going to be trouble for these Falling Wall rustlers."

  "Meaning me?" asked Hawk, contemptuously.

  "I never mean you without saying you, Abe--you ought to know that bythis time. But this running off steers is getting too raw. From theundertalk in Sleepy Cat there's going to be something done."

  "Who by?"

  "By the cattlemen."

  "I thought," Hawk spoke again contemptuously, "you meant by thesheriff."

  "But I didn't," said Laramie. "I meant by the bunch at the range. Andwhen they start they'll stir things up over this way."

  Hawk hazarded a guess on another subject: "It looks like VanHorn--putting in Stone over at Doubleday's."

  "It is Van Horn."

  Hawk looked in silence out of the open door at the distant snow-cappedmountains. "Why don't you kill him, Jim?" he asked after a moment,possibly in earnest, possibly in jest, for his iron tone sometimesmeant everything, sometimes nothing.


  Laramie, at all events, took the words lightly. He answered Hawk'squestion with another. But his retort and manner were as easy asHawk's question and expression were hard. "Why don't you?"

  The bearded man across the table did not hesitate nor did he cast aboutfor words. On the contrary, he replied with embarrassing promptness:"I will, sometime."

  "A man that didn't know you, Abe, might think you meant it," commentedLaramie, filling his coffee cup.

  Hawk's white teeth showed just for the instant that he smiled; then hetalked of other things.