The Free Range. Sullivan Francis William
think it would benefit all of us if you drilled some of that common-sense into your father.”
CHAPTER IV
THE SIX PISTOL SHOTS
The next morning, after breakfast, which shortly followed the rising of the sun, Bissell called Bud Larkin aside just as that young man had headed for the corral to rope and saddle Pinte.
Gone was any hint of the man of the night before. His red face was sober, and his brown eyes looked into Bud’s steel-gray ones with a piercing, almost menacing, intensity.
“I hope any friend of Julie’s will continue to be my friend,” was all he said, but the glance and manner attending this delicate hint left no doubt as to his meaning. His whole attitude spelled “sheep!”
“That depends entirely upon you, Mr. Bissell,” was Larkin’s rejoinder.
The cowman turned away without any further words, and Bud continued on to the corral. At the enclosure he found Stelton roping a wiry and vicious calico pony, and when he had finally cinched the saddle on Pinte, he turned to see Julie at his side.
“You had better invite me to ride a little way with you,” she said, laughing, “because I am coming anyhow.”
“Bless you! What a treat!” cried Bud happily, and helped to cinch up the calico, who squealed at every tug.
Stelton, his dark face flushed to the color of mahogany, sullenly left him the privilege and walked away.
Presently they mounted, and Bud, with a loud “So-long” and a wave of the hand to some of the punchers, turned south. Julie, loping beside him, looked up curiously at this.
“I thought you were going north, Bud,” she cried.
“Changed my plans overnight,” he replied non-committally, and she did not press the subject further, feeling, with a woman’s intuition, that war was in the air.
Ten miles south, at the ford of the southern branch of Grass Creek, she drew up her horse as the signal for their separation, and faced north. Bud, still headed southward, put Pinte alongside of her and took her hand.
“It’s been a blessing to see you, you’re so civilized,” she said, half-seriously. “Do come again.”
“Then you do sometimes miss the things you have been educated to?”
“Yes, Bud, I do, but not often. Seeing you has brought back a flood of memories that I am happier without.”
“And that is what you have done for me, dear girl,” he said in a low tone as he pressed her hand. The next moment, with a nonchalant “So-long,” the parting of the plains, he had dug the spurs into his horse and ridden away.
For a minute the girl sat looking after this one link between her desolate existence and the luxury and society he still represented in her eyes.
“His manners have changed for the worse,” she thought, recalling his abrupt departure, “but I think he has changed for the better.”
Which remark proves that her sense of relative masculine values was still sound.
Larkin continued on directly south-east for twenty miles, until he crossed the Big Horn at what is now the town of Kirby. Thence his course lay south rather than east until he should raise the white dust of his first flock.
With regard to his sheep, Larkin, in all disputed cases, took the advice of his chief herder, Hard-winter Sims, the laziest man on the range, and yet one who seemed to divine the numbed sheep intelligence in a manner little short of marvelous.
Sims he had picked up in Montana, when that individual, unable to perform the arduous duties of a cowboy, had applied for a job as a sheep-herder – not so much because he liked the sheep, but because he had to eat and clothe himself. By one of those rare accidents of luck Sims at last found his métier, and Larkin the prince of sheepmen.
When Bud had determined to “walk” ten thousand animals north, Sims had accompanied him to help in the buying, and was now superintending the long drive.
On his advice the drive had been divided into five herds of two thousand, he contending that it was dangerous, as well as injurious to the sheep, to keep more than that number together. The others were following at intervals of a few days. Larkin had left the leaders just north of the hills that formed the hooked southern end of the Big Horn Mountains, and expected that in two days’ time they would have come north almost to the junction of Kirby Creek and the Big Horn, near where it was calculated to cross them.
After grazing his horse for an hour at noon, and taking a bite to eat himself, Larkin pushed on, and, in a short time, made out a faint, whitish mist rising against the horizon of hills. It was the dust of his leaders. Presently, in the far distance, a man appeared on horseback making toward him, and Bud wondered if anything had happened.
His fears were partially justified when he discovered the horseman to be Sims, and were entirely confirmed when he had conversed with the herder.
“We’ve sure got to get them sheep to water, and that mighty quick,” was the latter’s laconic announcement.
“Nonsense! There’s plenty of water. What’s the matter with ’em?”
“Ten miles out of the hills we found a water-hole, but the cattle had been there first, and the sheep wouldn’t look at it. At the camp last night there was another hole, but some imp had deviled the herd an’ they lay alongside the water, dyin’ of thirst, but they wouldn’t drink. We pushed ’em in an’ they swam around; we half-drowned some of ’em, but still they wouldn’t drink.
“So we made a night march without finding water, and we haven’t found any to-day. They’re gettin’ frantic now.”
Bud quirted the tired Pinte into a gallop, and they approached the herd, about which the dark, slim figures of the dogs were running. From the distance the first sound was the ceaseless blethering of the flock that proclaimed its misery. The next was the musical tinkling of the bells the leaders wore.
“Reckon they’ve found another hole,” said Sims. “Thought I seen one when I was ridin’ out.”
On nearer approach it was seen that the herd was “milling,” that is, revolving in a great circle, with a number of inner circles, half smothered in the dust they raised, without aim or knowledge of what they did, or why. About the herd at various points stood the half-dozen shepherds, their long crooks in their hands. Whenever a blatting animal made a dash for liberty the dogs drove it into the press, barking and nipping.
Larkin rode to a tall, dark-skinned shepherd, a Basque from the California herding.
“What is it, Pedro?” he asked. “What is the matter with them?”
“Only the good God can tell. The leaders they take fright at something, I do not know, and we ’mill’ them before any damage is done.”
Larkin rode around the trampling, bawling mass to the rear, where were the cook wagon and a couple of spare horses. He at once dismounted and changed his uncomfortable riding-boots for the brogans of the herder. Pinte he relegated to the string, for the use of a horse with sheep is ludicrous, since the dogs are the real herders, and obey the orders given by the uplifted arms of the men.
When he rejoined Sims, the sheep had become calmer. The flock-mind, localized in the leaders, had come to the conclusion that, after all, there was nothing to fear, and the circling motion was gradually becoming slower and slower. In a quarter of an hour comparative quiet had been restored, and Sims gave the order to get the flock under way. Since they had not come upon water at this place, as the herder had hoped, it was necessary to continue the merciless drive until they found it.
Immediately the dogs cut into the dirty-white revolving mass (the smell of which is like no other in the world), and headed the leaders north. But the leaders and tail-enders were inextricably mixed, and for a long time there was great confusion.
Sheep on the march have one invariable position, either among the leaders, middlers or tailers, and until each animal has found his exact post, nothing