Читать книгу Homestead Ranch - Elizabeth G. Young - Страница 3

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Now that the train had crossed the Rocky Mountains, most of the passengers in the tourist car were becoming bored and restless. The scenery was less absorbing; there was so much of it that even its magnificence had begun to pall! Yet Harriet Holliday was still deeply interested in everything. There were now only a few hours between her and her destination, and she had begun to look at the solitary ranches, wondering whether her brother's would look like them.

The train was passing across a seemingly endless desert, through ranges of hills without a sign of life, without water, grass or trees to break the monotony of sand and sagebrush. Once in a great while there appeared a row of buildings that, Harriet decided, must be a town—a few boxlike stores, a hotel with an imposing cement block front, a straggling line of cabins, some turf-roofed huts, some tents—then abruptly the gray solitude of the desert came into view once more.

Harriet thought of the clustering villages along the Connecticut shore—the white-and-green houses sheltered by elms, the church spire on the hill. Home seemed suddenly unutterably far away. A queer ache surged up in her throat. She felt not only endlessly far in miles from home, but in time, too—as if she had left the year 1912 behind her and come somehow into the vanished days of the first pioneers. To keep back the tears she glanced hastily up and down the car at the people who for several days had been her companions and nearly all of whom had given her glowing accounts of "the West."

A different promise had lured each, and each promise seemed golden. One family had sold the railroad shares from which they had drawn an income and had bought an apple orchard in Oregon. An old couple were on their way to California to invest in an orange grove. A newly married pair were on their way to a timber claim in Washington. A young public school teacher had given up a good position in Chicago to take a district school in Montana where she could homestead. Oddly enough, not one of those to whom Harriet had spoken so far was expecting to settle in Idaho.

Her roving glance came back along the seats. Just in front of her sat a broad-shouldered young fellow, staring out of the window. Harriet could see the boyish curve of his tanned cheek, his freckled nose and his light brown hair. Until this moment she had not set eyes on this young man. He must have got on at Ogden. While she was looking at him he turned and met her inquiring brown eyes with a pair of steady blue ones.

"This is Idaho," he said.

Then he blushed all over his tanned face. He had spoken as if the barren ranges had been mountains of gold, the gray sagebrush desert a vista of lakes and forests and gardens.

Harriet smiled. "Thank you," she said. "I'm glad to know." She was silent a moment; then, curiosity overcoming her reserve, she asked, "Have you any idea how much farther it is to Shoshone?"

"Say! You getting off there? It's the next stop." His blue eyes flashed when Harriet said she was, and he went on: "Homesteaders are coming in like rabbits round a haystack. If you're going to take up land you're wise to come now, before the best of it is all filed on."

"Oh, I'm not going to settle," Harriet protested. "I've been teaching but I have to rest my eyes so I've come out to visit my brother. He has a ranch."

"You'll stay though! I'm just back from Chicago. Took a bunch of cattle. I stayed East two months. Thought I'd like it. Not much! I'm glad I've hit the brush once more." His glance went to the window and seemed to feast hungrily on the gray plains.

Harriet looked out too, trying to see what he could find that lured him.

"You don't know where your brother's homestead is, do you?" he asked. "There are two districts that fellows are coming into; one south of those foothills yonder, the other on Camas Prairie."

"Yes. That's it, Camas Prairie. He sent me pictures of it. Here's one." She had been looking at the photographs a few moments before and drew it from her handbag.

"Well, what do you know about that!" the young fellow exclaimed as he glanced at the three pictures. "That's Sage Hen Springs, all right. There's the big quakin' asp that marks the section line. It's a landmark for all cattle men coming across the prairie."

He laughed to himself as he handed back the pictures. "I was just wondering what Joyce'll say when he finds some one has filed there. He's a sheepman and he's used that glen there for a lambing place for years. He's been meaning to put a man on there for two years anyhow. Yes, sir, I'll bet he's mad when he finds he's lost it."

"Isn't there some other place near by?"

"No, ma'am. That's just it. Water is mighty scarce in these hills anyhow, and Joyce knows the sheep have to have it."

"It's funny that he never took a homestead, living out here so long."

"Oh...." The young fellow hesitated. "He's got one," he said slowly, "but he needs a whole lot more than that."

"But I thought a man could only homestead once," Harriet said in surprise.

"That's right. But there's ways of crawling through the fence when the gate's shut. I shouldn't wonder but he'll try to buy your brother out."

"Oh, Rob would never sell! He's going to raise cattle!"

"That's good money, all right; but if Joyce wants that water hole as bad as I reckon he does, he'll put up a bunch of money for it. Well," he added, glancing out, "we're pretty near there."

Harriet began to collect her luggage and the young man rose. "My name's Garnett," he said hesitatingly. "Maybe we'll meet up on the prairie."

"Oh, I hope so," Harriet said smiling, and held out her hand.

As the train pulled into the station she looked eagerly among the crowd waiting on the platform, but did not see her brother. She had stepped down upon the cindery track and was wondering what she had better do when a voice exclaimed, "Hello, sis! Got here safely, did you?"

"Bobs!" Harriet turned quickly and then faltered. She had expected to find a slim, pale boy, wearing glasses and very fastidious about his collars and neckties. She was facing a big, sunbrowned man without glasses, who wore overalls, a gray flannel shirt, a sheepskin vest and huge laced boots; but he was smiling and he gripped her arm and kissed her.

"Bobs!" she cried. "I didn't know you."

"Don't worry," Rob told her. "You won't know yourself either in six weeks. Let's see. Got your traps? We'll go right over to Kenny's. Supper'll be ready as soon as you've washed the cinders out of your eyes. I've been so busy loading up for the ranch that I almost forgot to meet the train."

"Kenny's," the old hotel of the cattle days before there had been a town, stood just across the street, and every one who had left the train appeared to be going there for supper. When Harriet and Rob went in, a circle of miners, ranchers, sheep herders and cattle men had already gathered around the big office stove. They were gossiping in a cloud of tobacco smoke; another group hung over the clerk's desk.

Among them moved a big, red-cheeked woman, the hotel-keeper's wife. She nodded to Rob. "How do, Mr. Holliday? Your sister's come, I see."

As Rob introduced Harriet to Mrs. Kenny, the good-hearted Irishwoman held out her hand with words of welcome.

The big dining room was rigorously clean; the oilclothed floor almost reflected the electric lights; plates and glasses shone; two trim young women waited on the guests. But the guests themselves! They were all men, dressed in what Harriet mentally called "workmen's clothes"—overalls, flannel shirts, corduroy trousers, vests, but no coats. Unshaved, weatherbeaten, scarred and lined by hard experience, these men seemed as rough and repellent to the dainty, carefully reared girl as the mountains of this stranger land. As she was eating her supper, taking furtive glances down the long table, she heard a voice at her shoulder and saw Rob turn to speak to an old man.

"Axcuse me, Holliday, but it's just a worrud I'm wantin' wit' yourself."

Harriet saw beside her a little, bent old man; his legs were bowed from a life in the saddle and his neck was tanned and wrinkled from years of weathering. He wore a much mended flannel shirt, a drooping vest, and short overalls that revealed gray socks and congress gaiters much run down at heel. Harriet thought that, except for his merry, honest face, he looked very much like a tramp.

She was rather surprised when her brother introduced the old man to her. After greeting her cordially he went on to explain to Rob that he had not, after all, a fresh cow in the herd good enough to sell for a milk cow, but that he would send out the heifers he had promised and a cow that would be fresh in the fall. Then he turned to Harriet, wished her "good luck" and moved away.

"Rob, do all the cowboys dress in that—well, shabby sort of way?" Harriet asked as she and her brother left the dining room together.

"So that's what you didn't like!" said Rob. "Dan Brannan isn't a cowboy though. He's one of the richest cattle men around here. Worth over a hundred thousand, I've heard. That's why he can afford to wear old clothes."

"He might at least be neat."

Rob laughed. "I'll remind you of that some day about two months from now, when you've quit wearing starched shirtwaists."

As they were to start for the ranch early in the morning, they went to bed soon after supper. Harriet fell asleep at once and did not wake until a sharp tattoo rattled on her door.

"Roll out, sis," Rob was calling, "nearly six and we want to hit the trail by seven."

When Harriet came down into the office, she found it thronged, and humming with suppressed excitement.

"The sheriff has just come into town with two horse thieves," Rob explained. "They rounded 'em up on the Malade river, just above here, with a string of ponies. Another of the fellows got away after wounding one of the sheriff's men. It must be cold hiding out in the foothills this time of year. Well, let's eat and move on. We want to make the Hyslop ranch before dark."

As they stepped out into the street after breakfast Harriet shivered. "It's cold at night in the mountains all right," Bob admitted, "but it's hot enough as soon as the sun gets up. You'll see."

Turning the corner to the livery stable he stopped and pointed to a new farm wagon, ready loaded. "That's ours. You get up while I hitch and we'll be off in a jiffy."

Harriet stared at the wagon in dismay. The sloping roof of canvas that was roped over the load looked to her as insurmountable as one of the snow-covered peaks the train had passed. The wagon seat had been lifted from the sockets and was balanced on top of a bale of hay. Several reels of barbed wire, a plow and her trunk gave Harriet a hint of what company she might find herself in if the wagon should roll into the ditch.

She managed, however, to get aboard. While she was watching her brother hitch the team, a clatter of hoofs made them both look up.

"Why, hello, Jones!" Rob exclaimed. "When did you get in?"

"Oh, a day or two ago."

The man on horseback was small, slim and dark. A felt hat shaded his eyes. He glanced at Harriet and said quick and low to Rob:

"Can I speak to you?"

Rob went across the road. The man on horseback leaned forward and began to talk rapidly.

Harriet turned her face away, but now and then she caught a word, a sentence: "if they get onto me," "my brand," "keep it quiet as you can," "I wouldn't say anything at all." And then in a natural tone the stranger said suddenly, "Well, see you later," and rode off.

Rob came back, finished hitching, climbed into the wagon and they started. Harriet expected her brother to say something about the mysterious young man; but although Rob began almost at once to talk, asking all about their father and mother and the life at home since he had left and speaking freely about his own experiences through the past four years, he said nothing at all about the stranger. Harriet was unable to restrain her curiosity.

"Was that a cowboy, Rob?" she asked.

"Who?"

"I mean that man on horseback who was talking to you."

"Oh! That?" Rob hesitated. "Jones, you mean? He's a fellow I've met. He has some horses he wants me to take care of for a while." He stopped, then after a moment added, "If any one asks when I'm not home, just say I'm boarding them for a fellow." He stopped and after a few moment's silence began talking of other things.

There was so much to see and so many questions to ask that Harriet soon forgot about Jones. They were passing through one of the irrigation tracts which marked the new development of the West. Wherever the sagebrush had been cleared from a new piece of land, lay the smooth, level acres: wheat, pasture, young orchard or stubble. The fields were all of one size and were intersected squarely by the irrigation ditches. The barns and dwellings of these ranches were always near the road. Built of new unpainted boards, and unshielded by trees, they glared crudely in the blazing sunshine.

"Pretty good-looking ranches some of these fellows have," observed Rob, nodding toward a forty-acre stretch of young rye, green and flat as a billiard table.

"But how ugly the houses are! And so small!"

"You've got your ideas cut to fit the regulation New England colonial mansion, that's all. When I can afford a shack like that,—" he pointed to the two-room cabin they were passing, "I'll think I'm rich."

"Bobby! The idea. Why, what do you live in now?"

"A tent. I only filed on my homestead this spring, you know, and haven't had time to build. All last winter I was working for wages, feeding cattle for Dan Brannan, getting a line on feeding my own—and ever since I came in on to my land this spring after the break-up I've been so busy getting my springs fenced that I haven't had time to sleep scarcely. You can live in a tent for a while, can't you?"

"Why, of course!" Harriet hesitated, not wanting to hurt her brother's feelings by being too critical. "But where do you keep the food and such things? Is it safe to go away like this and leave it all open?"

"Sure. Who'd steal a few blankets and grub? My nearest neighbor is eight miles away and nobody much passes except cow punchers and sheepmen and they're honest, generally speaking."

Harriet was silent a moment, slowly putting this picture in place of the one imagination had painted. "But won't the cows and sheep get into the garden, spoil the hay or something?"

Over Rob's sunburned face came an embarrassed smile. "Sorry to say there isn't any garden—yet."

"Oh!... Then you haven't a real farm?"

"No, indeed. Not what Easterners would call a farm, but it's worth a lot. It's this way. You see those hills we're climbing up to? Well, my place is over on the other side of them, a quarter section of government land that looks about like this; covered with sagebrush and bunch grass, but I've got some good springs. That's what makes my land worth something. There are thousands of acres of government land like this open to homesteaders, but worthless because there's no water. So the man who owns water, by fencing it, keeps stock away and controls the range near him. All this government land is free pasture; but it's no good without water. There is water—small springs and streams—scattered through the hills, enough to keep a little place, forty acres or so. Those are what people from the East keep coming in and taking up. Men will homestead so long as they can find water, for there's plenty of good land."

"I see," Harriet said slowly, gazing ahead over the interminable miles of gray-green brush and bright, new, wild grass to the jagged, black lava summit of the foothills. "But why didn't you take some land down here?" she asked, with a gesture toward the green-and-gold oasis made by the irrigated land around them.

"Oh, this costs more. The land is cheap but the irrigation water is brought in and you have to pay a lot for that. Besides, this isn't a stock country and that's what I'm after. A fellow ought to make good with all that free range."

Harriet made no answer and for several minutes they rode in silence, the creak of the wagon suggesting many things.

"I meant to tell you all this when I wrote to you," Rob began abruptly. "But honestly, Harry, there was so much that was more important to say that I forgot about the tent and how many miles to the next ranch and so on. I'm so used to living that way that I didn't realize how you might take it. As soon as mother wrote about your eyes, and how discouraged you were at having to give up teaching, I sat down and wrote right off the bat for you to come. It seemed as if it would be the real thing to have you out here this first year on the place. It'll be more like camping than farming. I can't raise a crop until the land's cleared and we ought to get time for lots of fishing and shooting trips up into the Sawtooth forest. The climate is great—not a drop of rain for months at a time. You'll like it, I'm sure. Still, if you don't you can go back any time."

"Of course I'll like it," Harriet, or "Harry," as Rob had always called her, said hurriedly, for she had caught the note of disappointment in her brother's voice and felt a prick of self-reproach at being so critical when Rob had thought only of the benefit to her and the happiness it would be for both of them at being together again.

Although Rob was five years older than his sister they had always been chums through childhood, had written to each other regularly while they were away at separate schools and had never lost interest in each other's work. As soon as Rob had decided to stay in the West he had looked forward to having Harry come out to live with him.

As the morning passed the sun grew hot on their backs. Harry took off her coat and wished for a parasol. Rob with his hat over his eyes slouched forward comfortably and gave his attention to the team. "Rock! Move up there," he ordered. "Get out of that, you! Hit the collar, there, Rye! Keep in the road!"

The last few days of travel had tired Harry more than she realized and now the slow motion of the wagon and the unbroken silence of the desert proved very restful to her. The green of budding sage, of buck brush and rabbit brush and new bunch grass melted into a soft mantle spreading over the world as far as she could see. At long intervals they passed immense flocks of sheep scattered through the brush and among the rocky buttes.

"Who takes care of them?" Harry asked. "I should think their owners would be afraid to leave so many alone."

"They're being taken care of. See that tent up there?" Rob pointed to a patch of white canvas a mile away. "The Mex brings the band out to their feed ground early in the morning, leaves the dogs on guard and then goes back to his tent and sleeps half the day. He won't have to bother with the sheep until it's time to move them to their bedding ground for the night."

"What's a 'Mex'?"

"Oh, short for Mexican. So many of the sheep herders are Mexicans and Bascoes nowadays that people call them all 'Mexes.' That stick up there with the rag on it marks the line between his range and the next herder's and neither of them can cross it to feed. The sheep are all on their way to the reserve now, in the mountains on the other side of the prairie. They stay here in the foothills as long as the grass lasts, then work north. That's when our trouble begins. I expect they'll bother us a lot, since I haven't finished fencing."

"Why, I thought you said you had fenced," Harry exclaimed.

"Just the main springs. Not the whole hundred and sixty acres."

"It must be hard to tell where your land begins and ends," Harry laughed thoughtlessly.

"Oh, I guess I know what's mine," Rob said rather dryly. "It takes considerable wire and posts to get around that much land and money to buy 'em. I had to work like a steer this winter so as to have some cash to put into the place. To comply with the homestead law I've got to have a house built before next winter and clear and plow just so much land. Besides the glen that's fenced, there's two miles of fencing and cross fencing for corral and garden. I'll have to work outside for wages too, to get my feed for next winter; hay and grain for the critters and groceries for you and me."

As he told off the items slowly in a matter-of-course way, Harry realized what a big thing it was he had undertaken. Although he had joked about it, she knew he did not consider it a small one by any means, and for a time she felt not only disappointed by the contrast to what she had expected, but vaguely oppressed.

There was too much else to think of, however, to brood over that. As the day waned they climbed steadily higher. The road became rougher. Often Harriet held her breath as the horses scrambled over a lava ridge, lurched down into a wallow of mud and struggled out only to strike a worse spot farther on. At the top of each rise Rob paused to breathe the team. Several times he and Harriet got down and walked beside the wagon.

"Tired?" he asked. "It's tough the first time you come over this trail, but you'll get used to it."

"I don't mean to travel it often enough."

"You may have to," Rob warned her. "When I'm too busy to go to town I'll send you."

Harry looked back at the rough trail and laughed. "As if I'd travel this rough road alone!"

It was after six o'clock when they topped the last rise and, saw ahead in the shadow of the great cañon walls the string of buildings, haystacks and corrals of the Hyslop ranch.

"We'll camp here, outside the fence," Rob said, as he turned off into the brush and pulled up beside the stream flowing from a fissure in the cañon wall.

It was growing colder now, a dry, clear cold that stirred Harriet's blood and made her realize how hungry she was. While Rob unhitched and fed the team she gathered dry sticks for the fire.

Soon coffee, bacon, and canned beans were on the fire, and, with tin plates in their hands, the two hungry travelers sat down with sighs of anticipation. Harry had taken a first mouthful, when suddenly she pointed. "Look! What is it?"

Rob turned, and saw in the darkness the gleam of yellow eyes. "A coyote!" he exclaimed, overturning his plate as he scrambled to his feet. "If only I had my rifle with me now!"

He snatched up a bit of blazing sagebrush to fling at the animal, which, oddly enough, had not fled.

"Why, it's a dog!" Harry cried suddenly.

Trembling with fear, yet unable to resist the smell of food, the little animal crawled forward until he was close to the fire.

"It's starved, that's what's the matter," declared Harry, who had put down her plate and was coaxing the dog close enough to pat it. "Just feel his poor bones. And look at his foot, too. He's been beaten nearly to death."

"He's hardly more than a puppy. He must belong to some of these herders round here. Brutes some of 'em are. I've heard they'll beat a dog to death if they get mad at him. And they'd even tie up a horse without food or water all day and night. You'd better turn him loose, Harry. If he should belong to a 'Mex' the fellow'll be around after him."

"I'll wait till he comes."

She put down a plate of food for the dog who devoured it with mad hunger. Then he crawled into the shelter of the canvas which Rob had let down beside the wagon as a windbreak, and lay there until supper was finished and the beds unrolled. When Harry lay down in her roll of quilts, the little, black, sheep dog crept up beside her.

"You dear thing," she murmured. "Whoever owned you didn't deserve to, and I'm going to keep you."

For a few moments she was conscious of her strange, new surroundings: the cañon walls, thousands of stars above her, the monotone of the stream. The next she knew daylight was pouring into the cañon, Rob was cutting brush for the fire and the black puppy, shivering silently, was watching her with one eye.

Harry reached out and drew him up beside her. "I'm certainly going to keep you, you little black rascal. You're as black as Othello. There! That's your name."

After breakfast when they were ready to start she lifted the dog up into the wagon. "He can ride, can't he, Bobs?"

Rob smiled but answered gravely: "Honestly, I'd turn him loose, Harry. If you want a dog I'll get you one, in fact we'll have to have one to work for us. But it's risky picking up one that may belong to some crazy sheep herder. You don't realize what these fellows are. Nearly every one of them is off his nut from living alone, and if they do get a notion you're trying to do them out of anything, like as not they'll have it in for you."

"Oh, Bobs! Please don't make me leave him," Harry begged. "See him look at me."

"All right. But don't get scared when some 'Mex' begins to look at him."

"Scared! Just refer any one that wants him to me."