CHAPTER XIII
A FOOL'S ERRAND
When Whitey arrived at the Star Circle Ranch, at about ten o'clock inthe morning, he was still a very tired boy. The Star Circle was a muchlarger ranch than the T Up and Down, with a much smaller manager, forWalt Lampson, who was also part owner of the place, was not much tallerthan Whitey, and he was serious-looking, too--didn't look at all likeCal Brayton.
After Whitey had delivered his letter to Walt Lampson and had eaten somebreakfast, which the cook had rustled for him, he began to tell Walt ofhis adventures in coming from the T Up and Down, and he was surprisedwhen Walt roared with laughter. This attracted some of the cowpunchers,and they roared, too. Whitey had to repeat the part about Felix goinghome. It seemed strange to Whitey that Cal Brayton who looked so merryshould be so solemn, and Walt Lampson who looked so solemn should be somerry.
After sleeping for about twelve hours at a stretch for three nightsWhitey might be said to be a trifle rested and able to look around andtake an interest in his surroundings. And he began to discover thingsabout the character of the men on the Star Circle Ranch. They were givento loud laughter, but he noticed that most of this laughter was at themisfortunes of others. And they were always playing jokes on one anotherand cutting up tricks; but beneath this playfulness there seemed to be asort of fierceness--something like the ferocity that lurks beneath theplay of a tiger.
He had plenty of time for these reflections and feelings, as WaltLampson did not seem to be in a hurry about attending to Mr. Sherwood'sbusiness, and Whitey caught Walt and the men looking at him in apeculiar way, when they thought he was not noticing them. On the thirdday after his arrival--an unpleasant, lowering day, for that time of theyear, with a cold wind--Walt spoke thus to Whitey:
"I'm havin' some stock cut out, t'day, t' send to your dad. How'd yelike t' go out on th' range an' take a look at it?"
"Is that the business Bill sent me on?" asked Whitey.
"Partly," Walt answered. "What d'ye say? You might as well do that asloaf around here."
"I'll go," said Whitey.
"All right. You c'n go with Hank Dawes. He's startin' pretty soon, an'he'll get you a hoss."
It was some relief to Whitey to be galloping over the prairie, thoughHank Dawes was not the man he would have chosen as a companion. Hank'scruelty to his horse turned Whitey against him. Whitey had seen manyanimals treated unfeelingly, but he never could understand how a mancould enjoy torturing one, as Hank seemed to. Finally, after an outburston Hank's part that included quirting and spurring and swearing, Whiteycould hold in no longer.
"If you'd treat your horse better he'd behave better," he said angrily."You ought to know that."
For a moment Hank looked blankly at Whitey, then burst out laughing. Hecould not understand any one's having consideration for a horse, andthe boy's anger struck him as being funny. Whitey turned from him indisgust, baffled by such a lack of understanding and feeling.
The writer knows many men in the West, and, having been born and raisedthere, naturally thinks Westerners the finest men in the world. But forhim to deny that there are good and bad among them would be idle. Asidle to deny that some of them were cruel to their horses. Among thesethe Indians and Mexicans bear the worst reputations with those who aresupposed to know. But, for the sake of truth, the author wishes to saythat he found the Indians uniformly kind to their horses. And as for theMexicans, not only were they always kind and considerate to theirmounts, but they were among the greatest horsemen in the world.
Whitey and Hank rode for a time in a silence broken only by Hank'soccasional profane mutterings at his patient horse, then Whitey descriedtwo objects moving toward him from the west. At first he mistook themfor two horsemen, then discovered that one horse was being led, thenthat the rider was Injun, and the led horse was Monty. With a whoop ofastonishment and joy Whitey galloped toward them.
"Hello, Injun, what's all this?" yelled Whitey when within speakingdistance, so glad that he was almost ready to embrace his friend.
Injun, as usual, showed no surprise, but there was a gleam of welcome inhis eye. "Monty, him stolen," he said. "Me find him."
Whitey wormed Injun's story from him, in jerky sentences, while HankDawes rode up and looked on, and listened indifferently. It seemed thattwo days before, at the Bar O Ranch Monty had "turned up missing."Injun, who knew Monty's hoofprints as one friend would know the color ofanother's eyes, had taken it upon himself to follow them. They had ledhim a long chase, ending at a night camp, many miles west of the spotwhere he and Whitey met.
Injun had tied his pony some distance from the camp. This that he mightnot whinney a greeting to Monty. Then Injun had crept up on thecamper-thief, and waited patiently until "him snore heap." Then Injunhad quietly extracted Monty from that camp, and silently faded awayinto the night. He was now on his way to the Bar O.
"Didn't you see who the thief was?" asked Whitey.
"Him fire out. Me 'fraid make light," said Injun, unknowingly giving ahint of the time he must have visited at the camp.
Monty was showing his joy at meeting Whitey, who was patting the pony'sneck.
"This isn't my saddle!" Whitey cried suddenly.
"Him Bill Jordan's saddle," said Injun, grinning. It seemed to appeal toInjun's peculiar sense of humor that the clever Mr. Jordan should havehad his saddle stolen.
"Did Bill suspect any one?" inquired Whitey.
"Guess heap, can't tell," Injun replied. "Henry Dorgan, him leaveMonday," Injun added darkly, plainly willing to connect the man hedisliked with the theft.
Whitey hardly thought that Dorgan would risk a return to the ranch forMonty, though he always had admired the pony. If Dorgan had stolenMonty, it was pleasant to think that he was now wending his way acrossthe plains on foot.
Another idea occurred to Whitey. "Why don't you stay with me, Injun?" hedemanded. "Then we can ride back to the Bar O together."
Injun grinned his agreement to the idea, not saying that he had thoughtof it first. So Whitey transferred his person to Monty, and, leading theStar Circle horse, he and Injun and Hank Dawes continued on their way.And Mr. Dawes was allowed to ride ahead while Whitey told Injun what hadbefallen him since leaving the Bar O Ranch, and of his present errand.
Injun cast a knowing eye at the sky. "No cut out cows t'day," he said."Heap storm comin'."
"What's the difference?" Whitey asked. "Maybe we can ride night herd.It'll be great fun."
Riding night herd was not Injun's idea of fun, but he was so glad to bewith Whitey again that he made no objection. He seldom made objections,anyway. It occurred to neither of the boys that after Injun's longpursuit of the horse-thief, it would be a hardship for him to ride allthat day and possibly that night. And, of course, Injun wasn't hungry.He had not been fool enough to start out on a long chase withoutproviding himself with food.
So the boys rode on. Even had they known into what they were riding itis unlikely that they would have turned back. Had Walt Lampson known ofthe coming peril he would not have been at the Star Circle, laughinglytelling his men of sending Whitey on a wild-goose chase, that would endwith his spending a night in the saddle, facing a blinding storm.Lampson and all the men he could summon would have been heavily armed,dashing at full speed toward the threatened herd.
Buck Milton, the range boss, made a better impression on Whitey than anyother man he had seen at the Star Circle. He was tall, blond, sinewy. Hewas thoughtful and serious, and not ill-natured. He looked like a manwho could take a joke which he might not understand any too well, andput up a fight in which he would prove a deadly factor. In short, hewas a character you would look at twice, and Whitey was surprised tofind him in the Star Circle outfit.
Hank Dawes handed Buck a letter, which Whitey took to be instructionsfrom Walt Lampson, and Buck read it, talked to Hank a moment, and whenBuck rode over to where Whitey waited with Injun, he was smiling.
"There won't be no cuttin' out t'day," he said. "Too late, for onething, and for another
it's goin' t' storm. You boys like t' stay withth' herd t'night? Be kinda rough."
"Why, yes. We'd like it immensely. It'll be a sort of adventure," Whiteyreplied.
"Well, some folks might call it that," said Buck. "You might stick alongwith me." And he and the boys rode off together.
You must know of the old, old enmity that existed between the cowmen andthe sheepmen of those early days of the Western ranges. In theneighborhood in which Whitey found himself, this enmity was particularlybitter, for more and more had the sheep been encroaching on the plainsthat the cattlemen regarded as their own. And the reason for thisenmity: once the white-coated flocks had passed over the land it wasdead as a feeding-ground for cattle.
So little wonder that the cattlemen thought of the sheep as pests orvermin, and considered their owners as deadly foes, and in turn wereregarded as foes by the sheepmen. The cattlemen were in possession ofmost of the ranges, and possession was nine points of the law in acountry in which there was little law, except that of the gun.