Читать книгу Desert Conquest; or, Precious Waters - A. M. Chisholm - Страница 6

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Casey Dunne pulled a fretful buckskin to a halt as he topped a rise and looked down on Talapus Ranch. It lay before him, the thousand-odd acres of it, lush and green beneath the sloping, afternoon sun, an oasis in a setting of brown, baked earth and short, dry grasses which seldom felt the magic of the rains. The ranch was owned by Donald McCrae, a pioneer of the district, and it was the show place of the country. It was Exhibit A to incomers, a witness to the results of irrigation. The broad, fat acres were almost level. There was no waste land, no coulées, no barren hills to discount its value. Every foot of it could be irrigated, and most of it was actually irrigated and cultivated.

Dunne's eye followed the lines of the ditches, marked by margins of green willows. They cut through the fields of wheat, of oats, of alfalfa, timothy, and red clover. They were the main arteries. From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life—the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. At that distance, in the clear, dry air, they looked like toys, miniatures, sharply defined in angle and shadow. So, too, the stock grazing in the fields were of lilliputian dimensions.

From where he sat in the saddle Dunne could see the Coldstream, scarcely more than a large creek, dignified in that land of dryness by the name of river, whose source was in the great green glaciers and everlasting snows of the hills. Its banks were green with willow and cottonwood. It was a treasure stream of untold value. With it the land prospered; without it the land and the men who peopled the land must fail.

"And that ranch, and others like it," Dunne muttered through his teeth, "must go dry and back to brown prairie unless the owners sell out to that old holdup, York, at his own price. Well, Mr. York——You yellow devil!"

The last words did not refer to Cromwell York. For, without provocation or preliminaries, the buckskin's head had dived between his legs, his back arched like an indignant cat's, and with a vicious squeal he began to pitch.

Dunne drew his quirt and let him have it. The brown, plaited leather played like lightning on quarters, flanks, cached head, and flattened ears.

"No work, and a bellyful of oats three times a day!" he gritted. "Forgotten who's your boss, hey? I'll show you, you hammer-headed, saffron-hided——"

"Stay with him, Casey!"

Dunne turned his head, and shut his teeth upon forthcoming references to his steed's pedigree. A girl, brown, lean, aquiline of feature, sat astride a big slashing bay, and watched the contest with amusement. Dunne's face, red from exertion, deepened in colour; for some of his remarks, though exceedingly apposite, had not been intended for feminine ears. He answered, between pitches, in the vernacular:

"You bet I will, Sheila! Go to it, old son! Bump to glory if you like!"

But as suddenly as he had begun the buckskin desisted. He heaved a sigh, stood still, and turned a mildly inquiring, backward eye on his rider. It was as if he had said: "What! Still there? You surprise me!"

Sheila McCrae laughed. "He's passing it off as a joke, Casey."

"He nearly got me, the old sinner," said Dunne. "Now he'll be good till next time. You miserable, imitation bad horse, some day I'll manhandle you."

"Shiner knows you won't," the girl commented.

"He knows you're fond of him. You'll quirt him when he pitches, and then give him an extra feed."

"Well, maybe," Casey admitted shamelessly. "I like the old hyena. I've frazzled out leather on his hide that cost more than he did, but I never went after him right. He certainly can drift when he has to. What's the news, Sheila? All well at the ranch?"

She nodded, running a keen eye over his face. "All well. But you're the news bureau, Casey."

"Am I?" he said. "Well, then, I haven't a piece of good news in my saddlebags—not one."

"I knew it," she said. "Well, it can't be helped, Casey. There will be some way out. Let's go on to the ranch. Supper will be ready. Most of the men won't come till afterward. I won't be at your council of war, but I want you to let me know just what you decide on."

"Of course," he replied. "You've got a better head than most men, Sheila. I don't know what we will do—haven't a notion. It looks as though we were up against a tough proposition."

His dejection was apparent, and, womanlike, she tried to cheer him. Some way would be found. The action of the railway was so high-handed and unjust that it could not succeed. But though she spoke cheerfully, her keen eyes were troubled, and her face was clouded as they rode up to the ranch.

They found Donald McCrae at the stables. He was a dark-faced giant of a man, and for all his years carried himself as straight as a young pine. All his life had been spent on the frontier. He had seen it move westward, and had moved with it from the Great Lakes across the Great Plains. He had seen it vanish, as the wild pigeon and the buffalo had gone—mysteriously, in a season, almost. Wheat fields, etched in green and gold, lay where he had made his lonely camps; orchards nestled by little lakes and in mountain valleys where he had trapped the beaver; strings of brass-bound, vestibuled coaches whirled where he had ridden his pony with the pack train shuffling behind. And here, on the Coldstream, he had made his last stand, taken up land, and turned, when past his prime, to the quiet life of a rancher.

"Light down, light down, Casey!" he called. "Put your cayuse in the stable. Give me Beaver Boy, Sheila. Go up to the house and fix us some whiskey with a chip of ice in it, like a good girl. Stir up the Chink as you go through, and make him rustle supper in a hurry. We'll be right in." He took his daughter's horse, and in the stable turned to Dunne.

"Well?" he demanded tersely.

"Nothing," Casey replied. "They stand their hand."

"I was afraid of it," said McCrae. "And they outhold us, Casey."

"Yes. Too much money."

"Will they buy us?"

"No. York offered to buy me. I was to be a decoy for the rest, I think. I refused. Now he will freeze us out."