Читать книгу The Land of Strong Men (Western Novel) - Western Novel - Страница 9

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Alice Page was but an episode in the life of the Mackays, but her influence was far-reaching, at least with Angus and Jean. She stimulated in the former a taste for reading, dormant and unsuspected. She made him see that he was wasting his evenings, and she got him books of history and travel and voyages, with a sprinkling of the classics of English fiction. Angus, who had been unaware that such books existed, took to them like a young eagle to the air, for they opened the door to the romances of the world.

Though nobody save Alice Page suspected it, the grim-faced boy was full of the romance of youth. At heart he was an adventurer, of the stuff of which the old conquistadores were made.

Jean needed no encouragement to study. Outwardly, Angus was hard and practical. Outwardly, Jean was thoughtful and at times dreamy. Inwardly the reverse was true. Jean was more practical than he, less inclined to secret dreams. She intended to fit herself to teach, and her studies were a means to that end. But most of Angus' reading, apart from technical works, was the end itself. He was not conscious that it was developing him, broadening his outlook, replacing to some extent more intimate contact with the outer world of men and affairs.

Thus time passed and another year slid around. Alice Page was gone, teaching in a girls' residential small college on the coast. The ranch was beginning to respond to the hard work. Stock on the range was increasing in numbers and value. More settlers were coming in, and land which had been a drug on the market was beginning to find purchasers.

Angus had grown into a young man, tall and lean, quite unstiffened by his hard work. Turkey was a youth, slimmer of build and smaller of bone than his brother, but wiry and hard and catlike in quickness. Jean had grown from a slip of a girl into a slender, brown-eyed maid. She was through with the local school, and though she never hinted at it, Angus knew quite well that she desired to attend the college where Alice Page taught. It was characteristic of him that he said nothing until he could speak definitely. But one night he told her she had better get ready to go. Jean was startled.

"How on earth did you know I was thinking of that?"

"It didn't need the second sight of old Murdoch McGillivray," her brother returned. "You had better get such things as you want."

"But—can you afford it?" she asked doubtfully.

"Yes. You write to Alice to-night."

So in the early fall Jean went away, and her brothers missed her very much; Turkey, because he had now to mend his own clothes and take a turn at the cooking, and Angus because he had confided in her more than in anybody else.

When the fall grew late and the snow near, Rennie rode the range for stock, which was usually split up into small bands, scattered here and there in valleys and pockets along the base of the hills. Each bunch had its own territory, from which it seldom strayed unless feed got short. Therefore any given lot could usually be found by combing a few square miles. Before the heavy snows these bunches were rounded up and driven to the ranch to winter there. But this time Rennie could find no trace at all of one bunch.

"It's them three-year-old steers," he said, "that used in between Cat Creek and the mountain. They sure ain't on the range."

"They must have drifted off. Maybe the feed got short."

"The feed's good yet—never saw it better this time of the year."

"Likely they've gone up one of the big draws off the pass," Angus suggested.

"Well, I wish you'd tell me which. I've rode every draw for ten miles each way, and durn' if I can find a hoof."

This was serious. It was up to them to find those steers before the snow came. Angus had no mind to see them come staggering in in mid-winter, mere racks of bones; and apart from that he had counted on the proceeds of their sale to pay Jean's expenses and some of the interest on Braden's mortgage. Accordingly, he turned himself loose on the range with Dave and Turkey. They spent the better part of a week in the saddle and rode half a dozen ponies to a show-down, but of the missing stock they found never a trace.

"I'll bet somebody's rustled them," Turkey decided.

"Bosh!" said Angus.

"If you're such a darn' wise gazabo, why don't you find 'em?" Turkey retorted. "What do you think, Dave?"

"Don't know," said Rennie. "Blamed if it don't look like it."

"Rustled—nothing!" Angus exclaimed contemptuously. "There aren't any rustlers here."

"There never was no rustlers no place till folks began to miss stock," Rennie pointed out mildly.

"But who would rustle them?"

"Well, of course that's the thing to find out."

It was a puzzle. Every steer wore the MK, and mistakes of ownership were out of the question. From calfhood they had summered on that range, coming in fat and frisky to winter by the generous stacks. There was no good reason why they should have left it. Not only had the entire range been combed carefully, but none of the other cattle owners had seen them.

"If they been rustled," Rennie decided, "it's good bettin' it's Injuns. Some of the young Siwashes is plenty cultus."

"What could they do with them? They couldn't range them with their own stock."

"No, but they could drive them south if they was careful about it, and mix 'em up with the stock of them St. Onge Injuns, and nobody'd be apt to notice. I've sent word to a feller down there to ride through and take a look."

In due course Rennie heard from the "feller." The steers were not on the St. Onge reserve. Thus Angus was up against a blank wall. Nobody would deal openly in stock plainly branded. Garland knew as much as anybody of transactions in stock, but he had heard nothing which might give a clew to the missing steers.

With the passage of time Garland and Angus were on terms again, though naturally there was little cordiality. But apparently Garland retained no active ill-feeling. The occurrences of that night were known to nobody but the three participants. As for Garland himself having had anything to do with the steers, it seemed out of the question. He had never been mixed up in any shady transactions, and apart from that, handling stolen stock would be too risky for him. There were only a few white men who were not above all suspicion; and these there was no reason at all to suspect. But for that matter there was no more reason to suspect any Indian. Rennie, however, had a species of logic all his own.

"No reason!" he grunted. "Why, you say yourself there ain't no reason to suspect a white man. Then it's got to be an Injun, ain't it? Sure! On gen'ral principles it's a cinch."

But Angus did not hold with this view. Though he had no special affection for Indians—as few people who know them have—in his opinion they were no worse than other people in the matter of honesty. The older men he would trust with anything. Some of them, especially the chief, a venerable and foxy old buck named Paul Sam, had been friends of his father.

"I'll have a talk with old Paul Sam the first time I see him," he told Rennie. "He's as straight as they make them."

"Well, I guess he's the best of the bunch," Rennie admitted.

A day or two afterward Angus met Paul Sam on the range, looking for ponies. Though the Indian was old, he sat his paint pony as easily as a young man. In his youth he must have been as straight and clean-cut as a lance, and even the more than three score and ten snows which had silvered his hair had bent his shoulders but little. He was accompanied by his granddaughter, Mary, a girl of Jean's age, who, being his last surviving relative, was as the apple of his eye. He had sent her to mission school and denied her nothing. As he owned many horses and a large band of cattle, Mary had luxuries unknown to most Indian girls. She was unusually good-looking and a good deal spoiled, though Paul Sam, being of the old school, cherished certain primitive ideas concerning women.

He listened in silence to Angus' statement regarding the missing stock, surveying him with a shrewd old eye.

"You think Injun kapswalla them moos-moos?" he asked with directness.

"I didn't say anybody stole them. I'm just trying to find out what's become of them."

Paul Sam grunted. "All time white man lose moos-moos, lose kuitan, him tumtum Injun steal um," he said. "All time blame Injun. Plenty cultus Injun; plenty cultus white man, too."

"That's true," Angus admitted.

"You nanitch good for them moos-moos? Him all got brand?"

"Yes."

The old man reflected. "Spose man kapswalla um no sell um here," he announced. "Drive um off—si-a-a-ah—then sell um."

This was precisely Rennie's reasoning.

"Where?" Angus queried. But on this point Paul Sam had no theory. Nobody could tell, but some day it might be cleared up.

"Well, if you hear anything of my steers, let me know," continued Angus.

Paul Sam nodded. "Your father my tillikum," he said. "Him dam' good skookum man. S'pose me hear, me tell you."

But the young eyes of Mary had sighted ponies to the left. She announced this to her grandfather in soft, clucking gutturals.

"Goo'-by," said Paul Sam.

"Good-by," said Angus. "Good-by, Mary."

The girl nodded, with a flash of white teeth and a glance which dwelt for an instant admiringly on Angus' long, lean body. Then she shook up her fast pony and sailed away through the timber of the benchland to round up the bunch of half-wild cayuses, while her grandfather followed at a pace better suited to his years.

But the fall went and the snow came, and Angus got no news. It was a heavy loss just then, which he could not afford. Somehow it must be made up, and the only way he saw to do it was to cut cordwood. The price was low and the haul was long, but it was a case, for he had to have the money.

So all that winter he and Gus cut and split, while Rennie hauled and Turkey looked after the house and the feeding. And so all through the cold weather they made cordwood. It did not make up for the loss of the steers, but it helped, and he was able to send money to Jean.

The long winter passed. The days lengthened and the sun mounted higher, so that it was warm on the south side of house and barn and stack. The snow went in a glorious, booming Chinook wind that draped the ranges with soft, scudding clouds, and set every gulch roaring with waters. The ground thawed, and earth-smells struck the nostrils again. Up against the washed blue of the sky flocks of geese bore their way northward. One morning they heard the liquid notes of a meadow-lark. Then came robins and bluebirds, and a new season opened with a rush.