Читать книгу The Freebooters of the Wilderness - Agnes C. Laut - Страница 12

Bat straddled the slab and lighted his pipe.

"Old man been giving you some good advice?"

"I don't know whether you'd call it good or not. Let's heap the logs on, Brydges, and make the shadows dance."

Brydges did some hard thinking and let the Ranger do the heaping.

"Sort of razzle-dazzler, MacDonald's daughter; she's a winner; but you can't get at her! Sort of feel when she's talking to you as if her other self was 'way down East. Wonder what the old curmudgeon brought her back here for? If she'd let down her high airs a peg, she'd have every fellow in the Valley on a string. She could have Moyese's scalp now if she wanted it—all that's left of it?"

"You can bunk inside! I'll take the hammock." Wayland emerged from the cabin trailing a gray blanket and a lynx skin robe. Bat continued to emit smoke in puffs and curls and wreaths at the top of the trees.

"How many acres do you patrol, Dickie?"

"About a hundred-thousand."

"Is that all? How many horses does the Govment allow?"

"None! Buy our own!"

"Great Guns! And you're loyal to that kind of Service? It's bally loyal I'd be! Why, Moyese allows me the use of any bronch on his ranch; and, when there's a quick turn to be made, it's a motor car. Why don't you let me send you up a couple of Moyese's nags? You could pasture 'em here and get their use for nothing. I could do that right off my own responsibility. Need be no connection with the old man."

"Bat," said the Ranger, "did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"I don't know whether I did or not; but, now that I am here, I say it anyway; and I say a whole lot more—don't be a bally fool and buck into a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves, and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and all that? You can't buck the combination, Dick! It isn't only Moyese! He's a mere tool himself in this game. It's the Ring you're up against, and you can chase yourself all your life round that Ring, and never get anywhere. The big dubs at Washington, the politicians, they are only spokes themselves in that wheel. If you buck into that wheel, you get yourself tangled into a pulp; and if any of those dubs down in Washington thinks he won't fit into the Ring, why he'll find himself broken and jerked out so quick he won't know what has happened till he sees the Wheel going round again with a new spoke in his place."

"Bat, did you stay up here to say that to me?"

"No, I did not." With a twig Bat pushed down the tobacco in his pipe. "I stayed up here, if you want to know, because we were on our way to the cow camp when the parson and his kid joined us. I guess every man has his limit. That cow-camp gang is mine. I want to live a little longer; and I don't want to know things that might make it useful for me to die. When Moyese wants to deal with that gang, he can go it alone."

"Brydges," said Wayland, "you have given me some frank advice. I'm going to reciprocate. You know what is going on out here. You know why that Arizona gang comes up here. You know why we can't touch them—they are off the Range of the Forest. You know about the stolen coal for the Smelter Ring, thousands of acres of it; and the stolen timber limits for the Lumber Ring, millions of acres of them. If the public knew, Bat, we'd win our fight. It would be a walk over. Every man jack of them would lie down, and stay put. Why don't you tell in your paper? Why don't you tell the truth when you send the dispatches East? If you did, Bat, we could clean out the gang in a month. Why don't you play the game a man should play? Every newspaper man likes a clean sporty fight; and no knifing in the back. Why don't you put up that fight for us, now, Brydges, and stop giving us side jabs?"

Brydges' pipe fell from his teeth.

"Wayland—what in hell—do you think—I'm working for?"

There was a big silence.

The look of masterdom came back to Wayland's face; but he paused, looking straight ahead in space. Perhaps he was looking for the hard grip of the next grapple. He had a curious trick at such times of clinching his teeth very tight behind open lips; and the pupil of his eye became a blank.

"You are at least sincere, Brydges," he said. Bat gathered up his shattered pipe.

"I'm not a past-master, yet," he said. "I haven't reached the point where I can believe my own lies; so I don't tell 'em and get caught. I've dug down in the mortuaries of other men too often—long as a man doesn 't believe his own lies, he's on guard and doesn't get caught. It's when he comes ping against a buzz-saw and finds it's a fact that he has to pay or back down or lose out. You can't budge a fact, damn it! Thing always shows the same!"

Bat had found the pieces of his pipe. Fitting the meerschaum to the wood, he had gained confidence and was going ahead full steam.

"Saw 'Macbeth' in Smelter City Theatre last night. 'Member the place where he says 'Thou canst not say I did it?' Well, that's the beginning of the end for that old boy; fooled himself that time. If he'd remembered that, though he didn't do it with his own hand, he did do it all the same, he wouldn't have believed his own lie and got all tangled up. One of the first things Moyese told me when I went on his paper was never to monkey with the dee-fool who wastes time justifying himself: do it and go ahead! Fact is, Dick, I look on a newspaper man same as I do a lawyer: he has his price; and he finds his market for his wares; and it's none of his business what his private convictions are of the right or wrong. He's paid to defend or attack like a lawyer; and he goes ahead—"

"And doesn't pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat?

Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me if I grin."

"Who's the old party talking to your road gang down by the white tent?" asked Brydges, pointing where the Range sloped down to the Homestead Settlement and a long canvass bunk house marked the domicile of the road hands for the Forests.

"Oh, no, you don't get away from the argument so easily, Bat! You make the Senator's job and your job and public service all round a bunco game, a bunco game with marked cards; while we Service and Land fellows act the decent sign for a blind pig—"

"Hullo, he's coming up," interrupted Brydges. "Seems your night for deputations, Wayland! Looks like a parson! By George, I didn't know Senator had his drag net out for parsons as dummy entrymen! Nothing like imparting quality! By George, hanged if I know—he looks like a peddler—has a pack horse—"

"Peddler o' th' Gospel, Son! Good eé-vening to you, Gentlemen."

The newcomer sang out greeting in a high thin falsetto that belied the ruddy youth of shaven cheeks and accorded more with his masses of white hair.

"Is this the Ranger place perched on top o' th' warld? Y'r workmen in the white tent told me A'd find a short trail here-by t' th' next Valley. 'Tis y'r Missionary Williams A'm seekin'; A thought if A'd push on, push on, an' cat-er-corner y'r mountain here, A'd strike y'r River by moonlight! So A have! So A have! But it's Satan's own waste o' windfall 'mong these big trees! Such a leg-breakin' trail A have na' beaten since A peddled Texas tickler done up in Gospel hymn books filled wi' whiskey—"

"Well—I'll—be—hanged," slowly ejaculated Mr. Bat Brydges. "Come far?" he asked aloud, fumbling his brain for a clue.

The old man, emerging from the timbers, took off his hat and swabbed the sweat from his brow. Then he righted the saddle on his broncho.

"Eh, woman, do A scare y'?" This to Calamity, just turning down the Ridge trail with a dun gray blanket filled with odds and ends on her shoulders, when the padded thud of the pack horse coming through the heavy timber was followed by the stalwart form of the newcomer. Face and form were frontiersman; vesture, clerical; but Old Calamity trotted back to the Range cabin.

"Come far, did y' ask? More or less, more or less. A've come farther on unholier missions. We'd call it a nice bit snow-shoe run in the old days. Two months since A left Saskatchewan! We've taken our time, Bessie an' me—" caressing the mare with resounding slaps. "We're not so young as we were, Bessie an' me, when we sarved Satan hot-foot back an' forth these same trails till by the Grace o' God we broke halter from Hell for holier trail—"