CHAPTER XIII
WIPED OUT
"It's shore wicked the way you curse, Old Timer," said Pinkey,reprovingly, as Wallie came up from the corral carrying an empty milkbucket in one hand and testing the other for broken bones. "I could hearyou talkin' to Rastus from whur I'm settin'."
Wallie exhibited a row of bruised knuckles and replied fiercely:
"If ever I had an immortal soul I've lost it since that calf came!Between his bunting on one side and me milking on the other, the cowkicked the pail over."
"Quirl you a brownie and blow it threw your hackamore and forgit it,"said Pinkey, soothingly, as he handed him a book of cigarette papers,with a sack of tobacco and made room for him on the door-sill. "I ain'tused to cow milk anyhow; air-tight is better."
Wallie took the offering but remained standing, rolling it dextrously ashe looked off at his eighty acres of spring wheat showing emerald greenin the light of a July sunset.
Pinkey eyed him critically--the tufts of hair which stood out likebrushes through the cracks in what had once been a fine Panama hat, hisragged shirt, the faded overalls, the riding boots with heels so runover that he walked on the side of them.
Unconscious of the scrutiny, Wallie continued to gaze in a kind of holyecstasy at his wheat-field until Pinkey ejaculated:
"My, but you've changed horrible!"
"How, changed?" Wallie asked, absently.
"You're so danged dirty! I should think you'd have to sand that shirtbefore you could hold it to git into it."
"I hardly ever take it off," said Wallie. "I've been so busy I haven'thad time to think how I looked, but I hope now to have more leisure.Pinkey," impressively, "I believe my troubles are about over."
"Don't you think it!" replied Pinkey, bluntly. "A dry-farmer kin havesix months of hard luck three times a year for four and five years,hand-runnin'. In fact, they ain't no limit to the time and the kind ofthings that kin happen to a dry-farmer."
"But what _could_ happen now?" Wallie asked, startled.
"It's too clost to bed-time fer me to start in tellin' you," said Pinkey,drily.
"You're too pessimistic, Pinkey. I've prepared the soil and seedaccording to the instructions in the Farmers' Bulletins from Washington,and as a result I've got the finest stand of wheat around here--evenBoise Bill said so when he rode by yesterday."
"Rave on!" Pinkey looked at him mockingly. "It's pitiful to hear you.You read them bulletins awhile and you won't know nothin'. I seen afeller plant some corn his Congressman sent him and the ears was so hardthe pigs used to stand and squeal in front of 'em. But of course I'mglad you're feelin' so lucky; I'm scairt of the feelin' myself for itmakes me take chances and I always git a jolt for it."
Wallie's face was sober as he confided:
"If anything went wrong I'd be done for. I'm so near broke that I countmy nickels like some old woman with her butter-and-egg money."
"I guessed it," said Pinkey, calmly, "from the rabbit fur I see layin'around the dooryard."
"Nearly everything has cost double what I thought it would, but if I geta good crop and the price of wheat holds up I'll come out a-flying."
"If nothin' happens," Pinkey supplemented.
"I want to show you one of those bulletins."
"I've seen plenty of 'em. You can't stop 'em once you git 'em started.Them, and pamphlets tellin' us why we went to war, has killed off many amail-carrier that had to fight his way through blizzards, or be finedfer not deliverin' 'em on schedule. I ain't strong fer gover'mintliterature."
Wallie stepped inside the cabin and brought out a pamphlet with anillustration of twelve horses hitched to a combined harvester andthresher, standing in a wheat-field of boundless acreage.
"There," he said, proudly, "you see my ambition!"
Pinkey regarded it, unexcited.
"That's a real nice picture," he said, finally, "but I thought you aimedto go in for cattle?"
"I did. But I've soured on them since that calf came and I've beenmilking."
Pinkey agreed heartily:
"I'd ruther 'swamp' fer a livin' than do low-down work like milkin'."
"When I come in at night, dog-tired and discouraged, I get out thispicture and look at it and tell myself that some day I'll be drivingtwelve horses on a thresher. A chap thinks and does curious things whenhe has nobody but himself for company."
"That's me, too," said Pinkey, understandingly. "When I'm off alonehuntin' stock, I ride fer hours wonderin' if it's so that you kin makebooze out of a raisin."
"Let's walk out and look at the wheat," Wallie suggested.
Pinkey complied obligingly, though farming was an industry in which hetook no interest.
Wallie's pride in his wheat was inordinate. He never could get over afeeling of astonishment that the bright green grain had come from seedsof his planting--that it was his--and he would reap the benefit. Naturewas more wonderful than he had realized and he never before hadappreciated her. He always forgot the heart-breaking and back-breakinglabour when he stood as now, surveying with glowing face the even greencarpet stretching out before him. In such moments he found hiscompensation for all he had gone through since he arrived in Wyoming,and he smiled pityingly as he thought of the people at The Colonial,rocking placidly on the veranda.
"Did you ever see anything prettier?" Wallie demanded, his eyes shining.
"It's all right," Pinkey murmured, absently.
"You're not looking," Wallie said, sharply.
"I was watchin' them cattle."
"I don't see any."
Pinkey pointed, but Wallie could see nothing.
"If they got cows on Mars, I'll bet I could read the bran's," Pinkeyboasted. "Can't you see them specks movin' off yonder?"
Wallie admitted he could not.
"It's cattle, and they act like somebody's drivin' 'em," Pinkeydeclared, positively. "Looks like it's too early to be movin' 'em to themountain."
His curiosity satisfied, he gave the wheat his attention.
"It looks fine, Wallie," he said with sincerity.
Wallie could not resist crowing:
"You didn't think I'd last, did you? Miss Spenceley didn't, either.She'll be disappointed very likely when she hears I've succeeded."
"Don't cackle till you've laid your aig, Gentle Annie. When you'vethrashed and sold your grain and got your money in the bank, then I'llhelp you. We'll git drunk if I have to rob a drug-store."
"You're always putting a damper on me. It was you who advised me to goin for dry-farming," Wallie reminded him.
"I figgered that if you lived through a year of it," Pinkey replied,candidly, "then almost anything else would look like a snap to you."
It was plain that in spite of his prospects Pinkey was not sanguine, butin this moment of his exultation failure seemed impossible to Wallie.
In various small ways Canby had tried to break him and had notsucceeded. Boise Bill had prophesied that he would not "winter"--yethere he was with every reason to believe that he would also "summer."Wallie felt rather invincible as he reflected upon it, and the auroraborealis did not exceed in colour the outlook his fancy painted thatevening.
"It's eight-thirty," Pinkey hinted. "When I set up till all hours Iover-sleep in the morning."
Wallie came to earth reluctantly, and as he returned to the cabin heagain permitted himself the luxury of pitying the folk of The Colonialwho knew nothing of such rapturous moments in that stale, uneventfulworld which was so remote and different from the present that it wasbeginning to seem like a dream to him.
They had been asleep for an hour, more possibly, when Pinkey nudgedWallie violently.
"What's that huffin', do you reckon?"
Wallie awoke with a start and listened.
"Huffing" was the right word. Lying next to the logs, some large animalwas breathing so heavily in Wallie's ear that it sounded like a bellows.He peered through a crack and saw something that looked like a mastodonin the darkness tugging at a sack he had used for chinking. It
was not ahorse and was too large for his Jersey. It flashed through his mind thatit might be a roaming silvertip from the mountain.
Pinkey was out of the bunk at a bound and around the corner of thecabin, where his suspicions were instantly verified.
"It's a bull!" he shouted. "I thought it. Looks like a thousand head ofcattle tramplin' down your wheat-field!"
Wallie turned sick. He could not move for a moment. His air-castles fellso hard he could almost hear them.
"Do you think they've been in long?" he asked, weakly.
"Can't tell till daylight." Pinkey was getting into his clotheshurriedly.
Wallie was now in the doorway and he could make out innumerable darkshapes browsing contentedly in his grain-field.
"What'll we do?" he asked, despairingly.
"Do?" replied Pinkey, savagely, tugging at his boot straps. "I'll sendone whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run athousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em. Git into yourclothes, Gentle Annie, and we'll smoke 'em up proper."
"I don't see how it could happen," said Wallie, his voice trembling."The fence was good!"
"If it had been twenty feet high 'twould 'a' been all the same," Pinkeyanswered. "Them cattle was _drove_ in."
"You mean----" Wallie's mouth opened.
"Shore--Canby! It come to my mind last night when I seen that bunchmovin'. Pretty coarse work I call it, but he thought you was alone andwouldn't ketch on to it."
"He'll pay for this!" cried Wallie, chokingly.
"You can't do nothin' with him but deal him misery. He's got too muchmoney and pull fer you. Do you know what I think's gnawin' on him?"
"My taking up a homestead----"
"That, too, but mostly because Helene dressed him down for sellin' thatlocoed team to you. He's jealous."
Even in his despair Wallie felt pleased that any one, especially Canby,should be jealous of him because of Helene Spenceley.
"He aims to marry her," Pinkey added. "I wisht you could beat his timeand win yerself a home somehow. I don't think you got any show, but if Iwas you I'd take another turn around my saddle-horn and hang on.Whenever I kin," kindly, "I'll speak a good word for you. Throw yoursaddle on your horse and step, young feller. I'm gone!"
The faint hope which Wallie had nursed that the damage might not be sogreat as he had feared vanished with daylight. Not only was the graintrampled so the field looked like a race course, but panel after panelof the fence was down where the quaking-asp posts had snapped likelead-pencils.
As Pinkey and Wallie surveyed it in the early dawn Wallie's voice had acatch in it when he said finally:
"I guess I'm done farming. They made a good job of it."
"I'm no 'sharp' but it looks to me like some of that wheat wouldstraighten up if it got a good wettin'."
Wallie said grimly:
"The only thing I forgot to buy when I was outfitting in Philadelphiawas a rain-making apparatus."
"On the level," Pinkey declared, earnestly, "I bleeve we're goin' tohave a shower--the clouds bankin' up over there in the northwest is whatmade me think of it."
Wallie's short laugh was cynical.
"It might drown somebody half a mile from me but it wouldn't settle thedust in my dooryard."
"I see you're gittin' homesteaditis," Pinkey commented, "but jest thesame them clouds look like they meant business."
Wallie felt a glimmer of hope in spite of himself and he scrutinized theclouds closely.
"They do look black," he admitted. "But since it hasn't rained for twomonths it seems too much to expect that it will rain when I need it sodesperately."
"It's liable to do anything. I've seen it snow here in August. Afur-lined linen duster is the only coat fer this country. I'll gambleit's goin' to do _somethin'_, but only the Big Boss knows what."
During breakfast they got up at intervals to look through the doorway,and while they washed dishes and tidied the cabin they watched thenorthwest anxiously.
"She's movin' right along," Pinkey reported. "It might be a stiddy rain,and then agin it might be a thunder-shower, though you don't often lookfor 'em in the morning."
The light grew subdued with the approaching storm and Wallie commentedupon the coolness. Then he went out in the dooryard and stood a moment.
"The clouds are black as ink, and how still it is," he said,wonderingly. "There isn't a breath of air stirring."
Pinkey was sitting on the floor oiling his saddle when he tilted hishead suddenly, and listened. He got up abruptly and stood in thedoorway, concentrating all his faculties upon some sound of which healone was cognizant, for Wallie was aware of nothing unusual save theuncanny stillness.
"Hear that?" The sharp note in Pinkey's voice filled Wallie with anameless fear.
"No--what?"
"That roar--can't you hear it?"
Wallie listened intently.
"Yes--like a crashing--what is it?"
"Hail! And a terror! We've got to run the stock in." He was off withWallie following and together they got the cow and horses under shelterwith all the haste possible.
The sound preceded the storm by some little time, but each moment theroar and the crash of it grew louder and when it finally reached themWallie gazed open-mouthed.
Accustomed to hail like tapioca, he never had seen anything like thebig, jagged chunks of ice which struck the ground with such force thatthey bounded into the air again. Any one of them would have knocked aman unconscious. It seemed as if they would batter his roof in, and theycame so thick that the stable and corral could be seen onlyindistinctly.
They both stood in the doorway, fascinated and awe-stricken.
"Hear it pound! This is the worst I've seen anywhur. You're licked,Gentle Annie."
"Yes," said Wallie with a white face. "This finishes me."
"You'll have to kiss your wheat good-bye. It'll be beat into the groundtoo hard ever to straighten." He laid an arm about Wallie's shoulder andthere was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:
"You've put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are countedout, it's no shame to you. You've done good fer a Scissor-bill, GentleAnnie."
Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm whilehis tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:
"I'm not licked! I _won't_ be licked! _I'm going to stick, somehow!_ Andwhat's more," he turned to Pinkey fiercely, "if you don't stop callingme 'Gentle Annie,' I'll knock your block off!"
Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamedapprovingly.