Читать книгу The Freebooters of the Wilderness - Agnes C. Laut - Страница 10

"Hullo, Dick! Who is talking of pictures and things?" The high falsetto announced the Missionary's boy of twelve, who promptly turned a hand spring over the slab bench, never pausing in a running fire of exuberant comment. "Get on y'r bib and tucker, Dickie! You're goin' t' have a s'prise party—right away! Senator Moses and Battle Brydges, handy-andy-dandy, comin' up with Dad and MacDonald! Oh, hullo, Miss Eleanor, how d' y' get here ahead? Did y' climb? We met His Royal High Mightiness and His Nibs goin' to the cow-camp. Say, Miss Eleanor, I don't care what they say, I'm goin' to take sheep all by my lonesome this time, sure; goin' t' ride Pinto 'cause he's got a big tummy t' keep him from sinking when he swims. You needn't laugh, it's so! You ask Dad if a tum-jack don't keep a horse from sinkin'! Say—" sticking forward his face in a whisper—"Senator oughtn't to sink—eh?"

"You don't swim sheep unless you're a pilgrim," admonished Wayland; but at that moment, the Senator himself came over the edge of the Ridge, bloused and white-vested and out of breath, a bunch of mountain flowers in one hand, his felt hat in the other; and three men bobbed up behind, Indian file, over the crest of the trail, the Missionary, Williams, stepping lightly, MacDonald swarthy and close-lipped, taking the climb with the ease of a mountaineer, Bat Brydges, the Senator's newspaper man, hat on the back of his head, coat and vest and collar in hand, blowing with the zest of a puffing locomotive.

"Whew!" The Senator dilated expansively and sank again. "Here we are at last! You here, Miss Eleanor? Evening—Wayland! Night to you, Calamity! How is the world using you since you stopped tramping over the hills?" Calamity shrank back to the cabin. "I thought this trail hard as a climb to Paradise. Now, I know it was," and the gentleman wheezed a bow to Eleanor that sent his neck creasing to his flowing collar and set his vest chortling.

"What! No flowers—either of you? You leave an old fellow like me to gather flowers and quote 'What so rare as a day in June' and all that? What's that lazy rascal of a Forest fellow doing? I would have spouted yards of good poetry when I was his age a night like this. Hasn't Wayland told you the flowers are the best part of the mountains in June? Pshaw! Like all the rest of them from the East—stuffed full of college chuck—can't tell a daisy from an aster! Takes an old stager who never had your dude Service suits on his back to know the secrets of these hills, Miss Eleanor. Has he told you about the echo? No, I'll bet you, not; nor the gorge in behind this old Holy Cross; nor the cave? Pshaw! See here,"—showing his bunch of wild flowers—"if you want to know what a sly old sphinx Dame Nature is and how she's up to tricks and wiles and ways, snow or shine, you get these little flower people to whisper their secrets! Whenever I find a new kind on the hills, I mark the place and have roots brought down in the fall. Now this little mountain anemone is still blooming on upper slopes. Little fool of a thing thinks it's April 'stead of June, paints her cheeks, see?—like an old girl trying to look young—"

"But she has a royal white heart," interposed Eleanor.

The Senator looked up to the face of the rancher's daughter and laughed, a big soft noiseless laugh that shook down inside the white vest.

"Typical of a woman, eh? Here, take 'em! Why am I an old bachelor? Now, here's the wind flower; opens to touch o' the wind like woman to love; find 'em like stars on the bleakest slopes—that's like a woman, too, eh? And like a woman, they wither when you pick 'em, eh? And see these little cheats—pale people—catch flies—know why they call 'em that? Stuck all over with false honey to snare the moths—stew the poor devils to death in sweetness—eh, now, isn't that a woman for you?" Spreading his broad palms, the Senator shook noiselessly at his own facetiousness.

"They keep the real honey for the royal butterflies," suggested Eleanor.

"Exactly! What chance on earth for an old bumble bee of a drudge like me without any wings and frills and things, all weighted down with cares of state?" And Moyese mopped the moisture from a good natured red face, that looked anything but weighted down by the cares of state. "You know, don't you," he added, "that the flies actually do prefer white flowers; bees t' th' blue; butterflies, red; and the moths, white?"

So this was the manner of man representing the forces challenging to the great national fight, a lover of flowers paying tribute to all things beautiful; good-natured, smiling, easy-going, soft-speaking; the embodiment of vested rights done up in a white waist-coat. Soldiers of the firing line had fought dragons in the shape of savages and white bandits in the early days; but this dragon had neither horns nor hoofs. It was a courtly glossy-faced pursuer of gainful occupations according to a limited light and very much according to a belief that freedom meant freedom to make and take and break independent of the other fellow's rights. In fact, as Eleanor looked over the dragon with its wide strong jaw and plausible eyes and big gripping hand she very much doubted whether the conception had ever dawned on the big dome head that the other fellow had any rights. The man was not the baby-eating monster of the muck-rakers. Neither was he a gentleman—he had had a narrow escape from that—the next generation of him would probably be one. He gave the impression of a passion for only one thing—getting. If people or things or laws came in the way of that getting, so much the worse for them.

Strident laughter blew up on the wind from the cow camp of the Arizona drovers in the Valley.

"Rough rascals," ejaculated Moyese fanning himself with his hat. "I wish you wouldn't wander round too much alone when these drover fellows are here from Arizona. Birds of passage, you know? Sheriff can't pursue 'em into another State! When it's pay day, whiskey flows pretty free—pretty free! Wish you wouldn't wander alone too much when they're up this way."

"Mr. Senator, I move we come to business, and leave poetry and flowers and palaver out of it—"

The Senator turned suavely and faced the impatient sheep-rancher.

"To be sure! Let us get down to business, MacDonald, by all means; but before we go any farther, let me ask you a straight question! Clearing the field before action, Miss Eleanor! Bat come over here and entertain Miss Eleanor. Miss MacDonald, this is my man Friday—Brydges, Miss MacDonald: it's Brydges, you know, sets us all down fools to posterity by reporting our speeches for the newspapers."

Brydges winked as he got his limp collar back to his neck. It wasn't his part to tell how many speeches came in reported before delivered; how many were never delivered at all.

The Senator had stopped fanning himself. He was caressing his shaven chin and taking the measure of the rancher; a tall man, straight and lithe as a whip, lean and clean-limbed and swarthy.

"MacDonald, why don't you take out your naturalization papers so you can vote at election? In the eyes of the law, you're still an alien."

"Alien? What has that to do with paying grazing fees for sheep on the Forest Range?" MacDonald's black eyes closed to a tiny slit of shiny light. "Mr. Senator," he said tersely, "how much do you want?"

Mr. Senator refused to be perturbed by the edge of that question.

"You ask Wayland how much the grazing fee is. You know it's my belief there ought to be no grazing fee. We stockmen can take care of ourselves without Washington worrying—"

"Yes," interrupted Williams, "you took such good care of the sheep herders last spring, some of you put them to eternal sleep."

"We're not living in Paradise or Utopia," assented Moyese. "We can take care of our own. Men who won't listen to warning must look out for stronger arguments; and it's a great deal quicker than carrying long-drawn legal cases up to the Supreme Court. You sheepmen are asking us to take care of you. I'm asking MacDonald to vote so he can take care of us. Majority rules. What I'm trying to get at is which side you are on! We're not taking care of neutrals and aliens—"

"Aliens." The low tense voice bit into the word like acid. "And I suppose you're not taking care of pea-nut politicians either. My ancestors have lived in this country since 1759. Mr. Senator, how many generations have your people lived in this country?"

Eleanor became conscious that a question had been asked fraught with explosion; but the Senator smiled the big soft voiceless smile down in his waist-coat as if not one of the group knew that memories of the ghetto had not faded from his own generation.

"We're not strong on ancestry out West," he rubbed his whiskerless chin. "It goes back too often to—" he looked up quietly at MacDonald, "to bow and arrow aristocracy, scalps, in fact; but as for myself," if a little oily, still the smile remained genial, "for myself, from what my name means in French, I should judge we were Hugenots—what do you call 'em?—Psalm singing lot that came over in that big boat, growing bigger every year; boat that brought all the true blues over here; Mayflower—that's what I'm trying to say—all our ancestors came over in the Mayflower—"

The sheep rancher's thin lips slowly curled in a contemptuous smile. "Then I guess my ancestors on one side of the house were chanting war whoops to welcome you—"

Bat Brydges uttered a snort. Eleanor puckered her brows as at news. The Senator was fanning himself again with his hat. Even Wayland was smiling. He had heard political opponents of Moyese say that dynamite wouldn't disturb the Senator. "Only way you could raise him was yeast cake stamped with S: two sticks through it."

Certainly—Eleanor was thinking—there was some good in the worst of dragons. St. George had put his foot on one ancient beast. Wasn't it possible to tame this one, to tame all modern dragons, put a bit in their mouths and harness them to good nation building?

"Girt round with mine enemies, Miss Eleanor," he laughed, "and I slay them with the jaw bone of an ass."

The white waist-coat chortled; and she laughed. This dragon didn't spout flame but gentle ridicule, which was elusive as quicksilver slipping through your fingers.

"The point is," explained the Ranger, coming forward, "the sheep have almost grazed off up here; at least, far as we allow them to graze—"

"Besides, it's too cold for the lambs," effervesced the Missionary's boy, bouncing out of the woods.

"Shut up, Fordie," ordered Williams, holding aloof.

"Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Williams want to transfer from this Divide to the Mesas above the Rim Rocks," continued Wayland.

"Well, Mr. Forest Ranger, that is your business! The Rim Rocks are National Forest, tho' to save my life, I have never seen one tree on those Mesas. What in the world they are in the National Forest for, I don't know! You know very well I think there oughtn't to be any National Forests—each State look after its own job. Have you issued the grazing permits, Wayland? I don't see that it's any of my business."

The Senator had leisurely seated himself on the slab. Eleanor knew now why he wielded such power in the Valley. He was human: he was the man in the street: something with red blood giving and taking in a game of win and lose among men. In a word, she had to acknowledge, the Dragon of the Valley was decidedly likable; and behind the genial front were the big hands that would crush; behind the plausible eyes, the craft that would undermine what the hands could not crush. Anaemic teachers and preachers might as well throw paper wads at a wall as attempt to dislodge this man with argument. Right was an empty term to him. Might he understood; not right.

He sat waiting for them to go on. She remembered afterwards how he made them play down from the first; and how, all the time that he was watching them, plans of his own were busy as shuttles in behind the plausible eyes.

"The point," continued Wayland, "is to get fifteen-thousand sheep up there."

"Fifteen-thousand." It was the number, not the getting there that touched him.

"A deep stone gully runs between the Holy Cross and the bench of the Rim Rocks," explained the Missionary. "Look—behind the cabin—you can see where the cut runs through the timber, a notch right in the saddle of the sky line."

"How many of those fifteen-thousand are yours, Mr. Missionary?"

The Senator was gazing down in the Valley. Just for a second, Eleanor thought the genial look hardened and centred.

"About two-thousand, Senator! I've just brought a thousand angoras in to see if we can't teach weaving to the Indians. It would mean a good deal if we could teach them to be self-supporting—"

"It would mean the loss of a lot of possible patronage to this Valley," said the Senator absently. "Are you still determined not to accept Government aid?"

"Absolutely sir: my work is to Christianize these Indians, not just leave them educated savages."

"Hm," from the Senator. "What do you suppose they think we are?"

"I don't see very well how I can train them to be honest men if, out of every dollar assigned to aid the Indian school, sixty cents goes to Government contracts and party heelers?"

"Hm!" Moyese was stroking his bare chin with a crookt forefinger. "I suppose if I were the story-book villain, I'd say 'yes, you must teach 'em to be honest'; but I don't. Fact is, Mr. Missionary, if you go into the ethics of things, you're stumped the first bat: who gave us their land, in the first place? This whole business isn't a golden rule job: it's an iron proposition; and if I were an under-dog beaten in the game by the law that rules all life, I'd take half a bone rather than no meat. I make a point of never quarreling with the conditions that existed when I came into the world. I accept 'em and make the best of 'em; and I advise you to do the same."

"You can't take the contracts of a bargain-counter to regulate the things of the spirit, Mr. Senator."

"Oh, as for things of the spirit," deprecated the Senator, smiling the big soft smile that lost itself down in his vest; and he spread his broad palms in suave protest, "don't please quote spirit to me! I have all I can do managing things right here on earth. To put it briefly, far as this sheep business is concerned, if you can't get the sheep across the saddle between the Holy Cross and the Rim Rocks, you want to bring 'em along the trail through my ranch?"

"That's it," assented Wayland. "I've issued grazing permits for the Upper Range: and it only remains to get your permission to drive them across the land that is not Forest Range."

The Senator crossed his legs and hung his hat on one knee.

"As I make it out, here's our situation! I ask MacDonald here, who is the richest sheepman west of the Mississippi, what's he willing to do for the party. Far as I can see without a telescope or microscope, he doesn't raise a finger—won't even take out papers so he can vote! I ask Parson Williams here what he is willing to do for the party; and he objects to his copper-gentry taking a free-for-all forty cents on the dollar. Then, you both come asking me to pass fifteen-thousand sheep across my ranch to the Rim Rocks, though they ruin the pasture and there isn't room enough for all the cattle, let alone sheep. I hate 'em! I'm free to say I hate 'em! Every cattleman hates the sheep business. We haven't Range enough for our cattle, let alone sheep and this fool business of fencing off free pasturage in Forest Reserves. And your sheep herders never make settlers. You know how it is. We'd run your sheep to Hades if we could! We aren't all in the missionary business like Williams. We are in for what we can get; and this nation is the biggest nation on earth because all men are free to go in for all they can get. The sheep destroy the Range: and I'm cattle! You neither of you raise a hand to help the party; and I'm a plain party man; yes, I guess, Miss Eleanor—I'm a spoilsman, all right; and you come asking favors of me. It isn't reasonable; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll show you that I'm ready to meet you in a fair half-way! MacDonald, you and Williams and the Kid, there, go along and see if that saddle can be crossed, here to the Rim Rocks. If it can't, you can come down through the Valley and pass your sheep up through my ranch. I guess it's light enough yet for you to see. The gully is not five minutes away. Bat, you go off and entertain Miss Eleanor. I want to talk to Wayland here."

Wayland was in no mood for straddling, for palaver, for "carrying water on both shoulders." He was weary to death of talk and compromise and temporize and discretionize and all the other "izes" by which the politicians were hedging right and wrong and somehow euchring the many in the interests of the few and transforming democracy into plutocracy. Besides, memory that merged to conscious realization was playing in lambent flames through his whole being round the form of the figure against the skyline of the Ridge.

The light of the cow-boy camp blinked through the lilac mist of the Valley. A veil impalpable as dreams hovered over the River. The boom and roll of a snow cornice falling somewhere in the Gorge behind the Holy Cross came in dull rolling muffled thunder through the spruce forests. Had her eyes flashed it in that recognition of love; or had she said it; or had the thought been born of the peace that had come? It kept coming back and back to Wayland as the boom of falling snow faded, as if one man or generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than a man could stop an avalanche by refusing to heed the law of the snowflake!

He heard the wordless chant that the suff of the evening wind sang; that the storm wind of the mountains shouted in spring as from a million trumpets; that the dream winds of the ghost mornings forerunner of fresh life for the sons of men whispered, singing, chanting, trumpeting the message that snowflake and avalanche told: yet beside him on the slab seat sat a man who heard none of those voices, and knew no law but the law of his own desire to get.

The Ranger drew a deep breath of the pervading fragrance, a tang of resin and balsam, a barky smell of clean earth-mould and moss, an odor as of some illusive frankincense proffered from the vesper chalices and censer cups of the flower world.

"Great thing to be alive night like this," opened the Senator. Then he pulled down his waist coat and pulled up his limp spine and wheeled on the slab seat facing the Ranger. Very quietly, in a soft even voice he was reasoning—

"We have been fighting each other for four years now?"

"We certainly have, Mr. Senator."

"You're a good fighter, Wayland! I like the way you fight! You fight square; and you fight hard; and you never let up."

No answer from the Forest Ranger.

"I wouldn't really have enough respect for you to say what I am going to say, if you hadn't fought exactly as you have fought—"

What Wayland was saying to himself was what Moyese would not have understood: it was a foolish, quotation about the Greeks when they come bearing gifts.

"But my dear fellow, we differ on fundamentals. You are for Federal authority. I am for the Federal authority everlastingly minding its own business most severely, and the States managing their own business! I am for States Rights. The Federal Government is an expensive luxury, Wayland. It wastes two dollars for every dollar it gives back to the country. There's an army of petty grafters and party heelers to be paid off at every turn! All the States want is to be let alone.

"For three years, Wayland, you have been fighting over those two-thousand acres of coal land where the Smelter stands. You say it was taken illegally. I know that; but they didn't take it! It was jugged through by an English promoter—"

"Just as foreign immigrants are jugging through timber steals to-day," thought Wayland; but he answered; "I acknowledge all that, Senator; but when goods are stolen, the owner has the right to take them back where found; and that land was stolen from the U. S. Reserves—ninety-million dollars worth of it."

"I know! I know! But what have you gained? That is what I ask! Federal Government has blocked every move you have made to take action for these lands, hasn't it? Very soon, the Statute of Limitations will block you altogether."

The Senator shifted a knee. Wayland waited.

"You have gained nothing—less than nothing: you have laid up a lot of ill will for yourself that will block your promotion. Been four years here, haven't you, at seventy-five dollars a month? I pay my cow men more; and they haven't spent five years at Yale. Now take the timber cases. You hold the Smelter shouldn't take free timber from the Forests?"

"No more than the poorest thief who steals a stick of wood from a yard—"

"Pah! Poor man! Dismiss that piffle from your brain! What does the poor man do for the Valley? Why does any man stay poor in this land? Because he is no good! We've brought in thousands of workmen. We've built up a city. We have developed this State."

"All for your own profit—"

"Exactly! What else does the poor man work for? But I'm not going to argue that kindergarten twaddle of the college highbrows, Wayland. I'm out for all I can make; so is the Smelter; so are you; but the point is you've fought this timber thing; you have filed and filed and filed your recommendations for suit to be instituted; so have the Land Office men; have they done any good, Wayland? Has your boasted Federal Government, so superior to the State, taken any action?"

"No," answered Wayland, "somebody has monkeyed with the wheels of justice."

"Then, why do you distress yourself? You have played a losing game for four years, cut your fingers on those same wheels of justice. Quit it, Wayland! What good does it do? Come over to the right side and build up big industries, big development! I've watched you fighting for four years, Wayland! You are the squarest, pluckiest fighter I've ever known. But you can't do a thing! You can't get anywhere! You're wasting the best years of your life mouthing up here in the Mountains at the moon; and who of all the public you are fighting for, my boy, who of all the public gives one damn for right or wrong? If we turn you down, who is going to raise a finger for you? Answer that my boy! They are paying you poorer wages now than we pay any ignorant foreigner down in the Smelter; that's a way the dear people have of caring for their ownest! Chuck it, Wayland! Chuck it! Waken up, man; look out for number one; and, in the words of the illustrious Vanderbilticus, let the public be d—ee—d! Come down to my ranch where you'll have a chance to carry out your fine ideas of Range and Forest! Hell, what are you gaining here, man? A sort o' moral hysterics—that's all! It's all very well for those Down Easterners, who have lots of money and are keen on the lime light, to go spouting all over the country about running the Government the way you'd run a Sunday School." The Senator had become so tense that he had raised his voice. "Chuck those damfool theories, Wayland! Chuck them, I tell you! Get down to business, man! What are you howling about timber for posterity for? If you don't look alive, you'll go lean frying fat for posterity! Oh, rot, the thing makes me so tired I can't talk about it! Come down to my ranch. I want a thorough man! I want a man who can fight like the devil if he has to and handle that gang in the cow camp with branding irons! I want 'em run out, do you hear? They're blackguards! I want a man that's a man; and, for pay, you can name your own price. I'll want a partner as I grow older. And don't you do any fool rash thing that I'll have to fight and down you for! I like you, Wayland—"

Then three things happened instantaneously. Wayland glanced up. Eleanor MacDonald was looking straight into his eyes. And the sheep rancher's choppy voice was saying to the Missionary, "Some men go up in the mountains to fish for trout; but others stay right down in the Valley and grow rich catching suckers."

"We can't cross that gully," shouted the boy. "We, can't cross it nohow! We got to cross the ranch trail to go up to them Rim Rocks."

"Why, all right, Fordie," the Senator rose, kicking the folds from the knees of his trousers, "if you boss the job, Fordie, I'll let you cross the ranch! You'll take a few of the herders up with you? And you'll not let the sheep spread over the fields? Better do it towards evening when it's cool for the climb! All right, we'll call that a bargain! Fordie's on the job to pass the sheep up the trail; and just to show you I'm fair, here is Miss Eleanor for my witness, you can drive the whole bunch over my ranch! Good night, all! Everybody coming now? Come on! We'll lead the way, Miss Eleanor. It's getting dark. I'll pad the fall if anybody behind trips. Good night, Wayland; think that offer of mine over? Not coming, Brydges? All right, give Wayland a piece of your mind, as a newspaper man, about this business! Night! Good night, Calamity!"