Читать книгу The Cattle-Baron's Daughter - Harold Bindloss - Страница 11

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The windows of Fremont homestead were open wide, and Larry Grant sat by one of them in a state of quiet contentment after a long day’s ride. Outside, the prairie, fading from grey to purple, ran back to the dusky east, and the little cool breeze that came up out of the silence and flowed into the room had in it the qualities of snow-chilled wine. A star hung low to the westward in a field of palest green, and a shaded lamp burned dimly at one end of the great bare room.

By it the Fräulein Muller, flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry’s eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fräulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he had now and then daringly pictured sitting there. Her father, perhaps from force of habit, sat with a big meerschaum in hand, by the empty stove, and if his face expressed anything at all it was phlegmatic content. Opposite him sat Breckenridge, a young Englishman, lately arrived from Minnesota.

“What do you think of the land, now you’ve seen it?” asked Grant.

Muller nodded reflectively. “Der land is good. It is der first-grade hard wheat she will grow. I three hundred and twenty acres buy.”

“Well,” said Grant, “I’m willing to let you have it; but I usually try to do the square thing, and you may have trouble before you get your first crop in.”

“Und,” said Muller, “so you want to sell?”

Grant laughed. “Not quite; and I can’t sell that land outright. I’ll let it to you while my lease runs, and when that falls in you’ll have the same right to homestead a quarter or half section for nothing as any other man. In the meanwhile, I and one or two others are going to start wheat-growing on land that is ours outright, and take our share of the trouble.”

“Ja,” said Muller, “but dere is much dot is not clear to me. Why you der trouble like?”

“Well,” said Grant, “as I’ve tried to tell you, it works out very much like this. It was known that this land was specially adapted to mixed farming quite a few years ago, but the men who ran their cattle over it never drove a plough. You want to know why? Well, I guess it was for much the same reason that an association of our big manufacturers bought up the patents of an improved process, and for a long while never made an ounce of material under them, or let any one else try. We had to pay more than it was worth for an inferior article that hampered some of the most important industries in the country, and they piled up the dollars in the old-time way.”

“Und,” said Muller, “dot is democratic America!”

“Yes,” said Grant. “That is the America we mean to alter. Well, where one man feeds his cattle, fifty could plough and make a living raising stock on a smaller scale, and the time’s quite close upon us when they will; but the cattle-men have got the country, and it will hurt them to let go. It’s not their land, and was only lent them. Now I’m no fonder of trouble than any other man, but this country fed and taught me, and kept me two years in Europe looking round, and I’d feel mean if I took everything and gave it nothing back. Muller will understand me. Do you, Breckenridge?”

The English lad laughed. “Oh, yes; though I don’t know that any similar obligation was laid on myself. The country I came from had apparently no use for a younger son at all, and it was kicks and snubs it usually bestowed on me; but if there’s a row on hand I’m quite willing to stand by you and see it through. My folks will, however, be mildly astonished when they hear I’ve turned reformer.”

Grant nodded good-humouredly, for he was not a fanatic, but an American with a firm belief in the greatness of his country’s destiny, who, however, realized that faith alone was scarcely sufficient.

“Well,” he said, “if it’s trouble you’re anxious for, it’s quite likely you’ll find it here. Nobody ever got anything worth having unless he fought for it, and we’ve taken on a tolerably big contract. We’re going to open up this state for any man who will work for it to make a living in, and substitute its constitution for the law of the cattle-barons.”

“Der progress,” said Muller, “she is irresistible.”

Breckenridge laughed. “From what I was taught, it seems to me that she moves round in rings. You start with the luxury of the few, oppression, and brutality, then comes revolution, and worse things than you had before, progress growing out of it that lasts for a few generations until the few fittest get more than their fair share of wealth and control, and you come back to the same point again.”

Muller shook his head. “No,” he said, “it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on der volute is nod constant.”

“On the top?” said Breckenridge. “Principalities and powers, traditional and aristocratic, or monetary. Well, it seems to me they squeeze progress down tolerably flat between them occasionally. Take our old cathedral cities and some of your German ones, and, if you demand it, I’ll throw their ghettos in. Then put the New York tenements or most of the smaller western towns beside them, and see what you’ve arrived at.”

“No,” said Muller tranquilly. “Weight above she is necessary while der civilization is incomblete, but der force is from der bottom. It is all time positive and primitive, for it was make when man was make at der beginning.”

Grant nodded. “Well,” he said, “our work’s waiting right here. What other men have done in the Dakotas and Minnesota we are going to do. Nature has been storing us food for the wheat plant for thousands of years, and there’s more gold in our black soil than was ever dug out of Mexico or California. Still, you have to get it out by ploughing, and not by making theories. Breckenridge, you will stay with me; but you’ll want a house to live in, Muller.”

Muller drew a roll of papers out of his pocket, and Grant, who took them from him, stared in wonder. They were drawings and calculations relating to building with undressed lumber, made with Teutonic precision and accuracy.

“I have,” said Muller, “der observation make how you build der homestead in this country.”

“Then we’ll start you in to-morrow,” said Grant. “You’ll get all the lumber you want in the birch bluff, and I’ll lend you one or two of the boys I brought in from Michigan. There’s nobody on this continent handier with the axe.”

Muller nodded and refilled his pipe, and save for the click of the fräulein’s needles there was once more silence in the bare room. She had not spoken, for the knitting and the baking were her share, and the men whose part was the conflict must be clothed and fed. They knew it could not be evaded, and, springing from the same colonizing stock, placid Teuton with his visions and precision in everyday details, eager American, and adventurous Englishman, each made ready for it in his own fashion. Free as yet from passion, or desire for fame, they were willing to take up the burden that was to be laid upon them; but only the one who knew the least awaited it joyously. Others had also the same thoughts up and down that lonely land, and the dusty cars were already bringing the vanguard of the homeless host in. They were for the most part quiet and resolute men, who asked no more than leave to till a few acres of the wilderness, and to eat what they had sown; but there were among them others of a different kind—fanatics, outcasts, men with wrongs—and behind them the human vultures who fatten on rapine. As yet, the latter found no occupation waiting them, but their sight was keen, and they knew their time would come.

It was a week later, and a hot afternoon, when Muller laid the big crosscut saw down on the log he was severing and slowly straightened his back. Then he stood up, red and very damp in face, a burly, square-shouldered man, and, having mislaid his spectacles, blinked about him. On three sides of him the prairie, swelling in billowy rises, ran back to the horizon; but on the fourth a dusky wall of foliage followed the crest of a ravine, and the murmur of water came up faintly from the creek in the hollow. Between himself and its slender birches lay piled amidst the parched and dusty grass, and the first courses of a wooden building, rank with the smell of sappy timber, already stood in front of him. There was no notch in the framing that had not been made and pinned with an exact precision. In its scanty shadow his daughter sat knitting beside a smouldering fire over which somebody had suspended a big blackened kettle. The crash of the last falling trunk had died away, and there was silence in the bluff; but a drumming of hoofs rose in a sharp staccato from the prairie.

“Now,” said Muller quietly, “I think the chasseurs come.”

The girl looked up a moment, noticed the four mounted figures that swung over the crest of a rise, and then went on with her knitting again. Still, there was for a second a little flash in her pale blue eyes.

The horsemen came on, the dust floating in long wisps behind them, until, with a jingle of bridle and stirrup, they pulled up before the building. Three of them were bronzed and dusty, in weather-stained blue shirts, wide hats, and knee-boots that fitted them like gloves; and there was ironical amusement in their faces. Each sat his horse as if he had never known any other seat than the saddle; but the fourth was different from the rest. He wore a jacket of richly embroidered deerskin, and the shirt under it was white; while he sat with one hand in a big leather glove resting on his hip. His face was sallow and his eyes were dark.

“Hallo, Hamburg!” he said, and his voice had a little commanding ring. “You seem kind of busy.”

Muller blinked at him. He had apparently not yet found his spectacles, but he had in the meanwhile come upon his axe, and now stood very straight, with the long haft reaching to his waist.

“Ja,” he said. “Mine house I build.”

“Well,” said the man in the embroidered jacket, “I fancy you’re wasting time. Asked anybody’s leave to cut that lumber, or put it up?”

“Mine friend,” said Muller, smiling, “when it is nod necessary I ask nodings of any man.”

“Then,” said the horseman drily, as he turned to his companions, “I fancy that’s where you’re wrong. Boys, we’ll take him along in case Torrance would like to see him. I guess you’ll have to walk home, Jim.”

A man dismounted and led forward his horse with a wrench upon the bridle that sent it plunging. “Get your foot in the stirrup, Hamburg, and I’ll hoist you up,” he said.

Muller stood motionless, and the horseman in deerskin glancing round in his direction saw his daughter for the first time. He laughed; but there was something in his black eyes that caused the Teuton’s fingers to close a trifle upon the haft of the axe.

“You’ll have to get down, Charlie, as well as Jim,” he said. “Torrance has his notions, or Coyote might have carried Miss Hamburg that far as well. Sorry to hurry you, Hamburg, but I don’t like waiting.”

Muller stepped back a pace, and the axe-head flashed as he moved his hand; while, dazzled by the beam it cast, the half-tamed broncho rose with hoofs in the air. Its owner smote it on the nostrils with his fist, and the pair sidled round each other—the man with his arm drawn back, the beast with laid-back ears—for almost a minute before they came to a standstill.

“Mine friend,” said Muller, “other day I der pleasure have. I mine house have to build.”

“Get up,” said the stockrider. “Ever seen anybody fire off a gun?”

Muller laughed softly, and glanced at the leader. “Der rifle,” he said drily. “I was at Sedan. To-day it is not convenient that I come.”

“Hoist him up!” said the leader, and once more, while the other man moved forward, Muller stepped back; but this time there was an answering flash in his blue eyes as the big axe-head flashed in the sun.

“I guess we’d better hold on,” said another man. “Look there, Mr. Clavering.”

He pointed to the bluff, and the leader’s face darkened as he gazed, for four men with axes were running down the slope, and they were lean and wiry, with very grim faces. They were also apparently small farmers or lumbermen from the bush of Michigan, and Clavering knew such men usually possessed a terrible proficiency with the keen-edged weapon, and stubbornness was native in them. Two others, one of whom he knew, came behind them. The foremost stopped, and stood silent when the man Clavering recognized signed to them, but not before each had posted himself strategically within reach of a horseman’s bridle.

“You might explain, Clavering, what you and your cow-boys are doing here,” he said.

Clavering laughed. “We are going to take your Teutonic friend up to the Range. He is cutting our fuel timber with nobody’s permission.”

“No,” said Grant drily; “he has mine. The bluff is on my run.”

“Did you take out timber rights with your lease?” asked Clavering.

“No, I hadn’t much use for them. None of my neighbours hold any either. But the bluff is big enough, and I’ve no objection to their cutting what billets they want. Still, I can’t have them driving out any other friends of mine.”

Clavering smiled ironically. “You have been picking up some curious acquaintances, Larry; but don’t you think you had better leave this thing to Torrance? The fact is, the cattle-men are not disposed to encourage strangers building houses in their country just now.”

“I had a notion it belonged to this State. It’s not an unusual one,” said Grant.

Clavering shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, it sounds better that way. Have it so. Still, it will scarcely pay you to make yourself unpopular with us, Larry.”

“Well,” said Grant drily, “it seems to me I’m tolerably unpopular already. But that’s not quite the point. Take your boys away.”

Clavering flung his hand up in half-ironical salutation, but as he was about to wheel his horse a young Englishman whose nationality was plainly stamped upon him seized his bridle.

“Not quite so fast!” he said. “It would be more fitting if you got down and expressed your regrets to the fräulein. You haven’t heard Muller’s story yet, Larry.”

“Let go,” said Clavering, raising the switch he held. “Drop my bridle or take care of yourself!”

“Come down,” said Breckenridge.

The switch went up and descended hissing upon part of an averted face; but the lad sprang as it fell, and the next moment the horse rose almost upright with two men clinging to it; one of them, whose sallow cheeks were livid now, swaying in the saddle. Then Grant grasped the bridle that fell from the rider’s hands, and hurled his comrade backwards, while some of the stockriders pushed their horses nearer, and the axe-men closed in about them.

Hoarse cries went up. “Horses back! Pull him off! Give the Britisher a show! Leave them to it!”

It was evident that a blunder would have unpleasant results, for Clavering, with switch raised, had tightened his left hand on the bridle Grant had loosed again, while a wicked smile crept into his eyes, and the lad stood tense and still, with hands clenched in front of him, and a weal on his young face. Grant, however, stepped in between them.

“We’ve had sufficient fooling, Breckenridge,” he said. “Clavering, I’ll give you a minute to get your men away, and if you can’t do it in that time you’ll take the consequences.”

Clavering wheeled his horse. “The odds are with you, Larry,” he said. “You have made a big blunder, but I guess you know your own business best.”

He nodded, including the fräulein, with an easy insolence that yet became him, touched the horse with his heel, and in another moment he and his cow-boys were swinging at a gallop across the prairie. Then, as they dipped behind a rise, those who were left glanced at one another. Breckenridge was very pale, and one of his hands was bleeding where Clavering’s spur had torn it.

“It seems that we have made a beginning,” he said hoarsely. “It’s first blood to them, but this will take a lot of forgetting, and the rest may be different.”

Grant made no answer, but turned and looked at Muller, who stood very straight and square, with a curious brightness in his eyes.

“Are you going on with the contract? There is the girl to consider,” said Grant.

“COME DOWN!”—Page 47.

“Ja,” said the Teuton. “I was in der Vosges, and der girl is also Fräulein Muller.”

“Boys,” said Grant to the men from Michigan, “you have seen what’s in front of you, and you’ll probably have to use more than axes before you’re through. Still, you have the chance of clearing out right now. I only want willing men behind me.”

One of the big axe-men laughed scornfully, and there was a little sardonic grin in the faces of the rest.

“There’s more room for us here than there was in Michigan, and now we’ve got our foot down here we’re not going back again,” he said. “That’s about all there is to it. But when our time comes, the other men aren’t going to find us slacker than the Dutchman.”

Grant nodded gravely. “Well,” he said very simply, “I guess the Lord who made this country will know who’s in the right and help them. They’ll need it. There’s a big fight coming.”

Then they went back to their hewing in the bluff, and the Fräulein Muller went on with her knitting.