Читать книгу The Drift Fence - Zane Grey - Страница 8

Table of Contents

A WEEK elapsed before the Diamond outfit came in from the range.

Jim made the most of that reprieve. He was up at dawn and did not go to bed till late. He went at Ring Locke like a youngster who could not swim in a swift current and was going to hold on or die. But Locke seemed only kind and aloof. He answered some questions; he never vouchsafed any range lore. Jim was sharp enough to find out, however, that Locke had a keen eye for him, and this gave him some grain of comfort.

Apparently his uncle never saw him unless he bumped right into him. Jim refused to take all or any of the wonderful horses that were his to own and ride. He rode or tried to ride all the mustangs and bronchos about the ranch. At first he kept account of the times he got thrown, but he gave this up. He certainly did know, however, that he had many bruises and sprains and bumps. Moreover, he grew so saddle-sore that it was agony for him to struggle up on a horse.

During this wait he learned every nook and cranny of the ranch, and there were a thousand acres and more, including the timber. He could not avoid coming into occasional contact with other of his uncle’s cowboy outfits. And these instances were painful to Jim.

He found also, on numerous trips into town, where it was impossible to keep from meeting people, that he was an object of very great interest to everybody, especially the girls and young women. Jim, remembering his uncle’s wishes, and being far from a hater of the opposite sex, at the outset made himself most agreeable. Presently he confined himself merely to politeness. The interest he had observed did not extend as far as personal propinquity.

One morning he had returned from a disastrous determination to stick on the back of a mustang, and had again taken up a dirty job at the barn, when a farmhand approached him with a message: “Boss says the Diamond outfit is in waitin’ fer you.”

Jim let them wait awhile, until he got himself thoroughly dirty and tired and cross. Then he limped round to the bunkhouses. His uncle did not appear to be among the bunch of cowboys at the last house. No doubt he had beat a hasty retreat.

“I’ll bet the old devil is snickering,” muttered Jim.

He approached the young men, and before he got even close he saw they constituted a remarkable group. They had a singular similarity, and yet upon near scrutiny they were not at all alike.

“How do, boys!” he said, bluntly, as he halted before them. “So you’re the Diamond outfit I’m to boss? ... Well, I’m not a damn bit gladder to meet you than you are to meet me.”

Most of them greeted him with a word or nod. Jim found that he had not exactly spoken the truth, for he certainly sustained thrills when he looked these cowboys over. There did not appear to be one as old as he was, nor, for that matter, as big, though several were as tall. Lithe-bodied, long of limb and bow-legged, with small round hips and wide shoulders, lean and sharp of face, bronzed and sunburnt, with expressionless eyes like gimlets they certainly belonged to a striking and unique class.

“Who was your last foreman?” asked Jim.

After quite a long silence one of them replied, “Jud Blue.”

“Is he here with you now?”

“Reckon no one has noticed him.”

“Where is he?”

“Wal, if he’s where he ought to be he’s in hell,” came the laconic reply.

“How so?” flashed Jim.

“Jud was shot last month down on the Diamond.”

“Shot! ... Was it an accident?”

“Shore was, for him. But whoever did it was lookin’ pretty straight.”

Jim did not betray the shock this intelligence gave him, but he certainly made note of another circumstance his uncle had not imparted.

“Which one of you has been longest with my uncle?” he questioned.

“Hump Stevens, heah, was in the first Diamond outfit. Six years ago, wasn’t it, Hump?”

“Round aboot thet,” drawled a tall tawny cowboy who was stoop-shouldered.

“Stevens, then, ought to be foreman of this outfit,” returned Jim. “And after him every one of you according to your service. Well, let’s understand each other right here. I certainly am not stuck on the job and think I’m the last fellow on earth to tackle it. But my uncle has put it on me. He wants to leave his property to me. And I won’t have it unless I can deserve it. And that means make good at ranching from the ground up.”

Blank, still faces baffled Jim. It was impossible to tell whether or not these cowboys were in the least impressed. They certainly thought he was a liar.

“You can lay off till Monday morning,” added Jim, curtly. And before he started to limp away he gathered that his first order to them had been received with a pleasant surprise.

Perhaps the ensuing hour was the most profoundly thoughtful of any since he had decided to embark upon this adventure. What an unknown quantity the Diamond outfit! He had needed only one look at these devil-may-care boys to realize it. Cowboys were not wholly strangers to him. These, however, were the dyed-in-the-wool range product. They were potential chain lightning and firebrand. He was conscious of admiration, dread, and an acute desire to make friends with them. After meeting them he realized he could not expect any material help from Ring Locke or his uncle. The matter was personal.

Wherefore he carefully kept out of their way for a day and a half. On Saturday afternoon he went to town, and he had not been there long before he heard that the Diamond outfit was painting some very vivid red. Jim laughed. After a while, however, it grew monotonous. And when he happened to encounter Miss Blodgett in one of the stores and have her subtly refer to his cowboys he became irritated. Must the whole town take up the situation which his uncle had precipitated? A second look into Miss Blodgett’s hazel eyes confirmed the suspicion. She was the nicest of the girls he had met so far, a tall, rangy girl who looked like she could ride a horse. She had freckles and brown curls and was rather pretty.

“I met Curly Prentiss in the post-office,” she announced, after he had greeted her.

“Who’s he?” asked Jim, though he had an inkling.

“Don’t you know Curly yet?” she rejoined, merrily. “Well, he’s one of your Diamonds.”

“Oh, I see! Fact is I don’t know any of them. Was there anything particular about your meeting him today?”

“Not so very—for Curly. He used to ride for us. Finest cowboy in the world. But when he drinks—well, his tongue wags.”

“Reckon it wagged about me on this occasion?”

“It sure did.... Mr. Jim, have you anyone to write home to your mother and sister?”

Jim eyed her with misgivings. These Western girls were as deep as the cowboys. Jim conceived an idea, however, that Miss Blodgett was friendly, or she would never have made that remark.

“You mean about the disposition of my remains?” rejoined Jim, dryly. “Thanks, but I’m going to see that will not be necessary. I’ve fallen in love with my new job. In fact, I like the West—and everybody out here. Good afternoon, Miss Blodgett.”

And Jim went on, muttering to himself: “Dog-gone it! They’re all after my scalp, even the girls. I hope I’m not going to get sore.”

Presently he went into a pool-room to buy a smoke. The place was fairly well crowded, and at the very first table he saw a cowboy he recognized as one of his Diamond outfit. He was in the act of making a shot. But he straightened up. His fine tanned young face was flushed and there were other indications that he had been drinking.

“Boss, I ain’t doin’ nothin’,” he said, slowly.

“Who said you were?” returned Jim, realizing that he must have looked sharply at the boy.

“You’re lookin’ for Curly?”

“Yes,” answered Jim, suddenly inspired.

“Sheriff Bray just collared Curly. Honest, boss, Curly was behavin’ himself strick proper. But Bray has got it in for us Diamond fellars. An’ Curly”—here the cowboy came round the table to be closer to Jim—“Curly was pretty drunk an’ noisy. It was a chance for Bray, who’d never had nerve enough any other time. This sheriff is a four-flusher, boss. He’s never had one of us in jail yet.”

“Which way did they go?” asked Jim.

“Down the street. The jail’s across the tracks.”

Jim hurried out and in the direction advised, not certain of his position in the matter. Still, he did not take kindly to the idea of one of his cowboys going to jail. Moreover, he had met Sheriff Bray and had not been greatly impressed in that individual’s favor. Jim, while crossing the tracks, espied Bray dragging a reluctant and protesting cowboy along the station platform, followed by a small crowd. Running ahead, Jim intercepted them. This cowboy he also recognized, a tall handsome fellow with curly yellow hair, just now very red in the face, but not so drunk as Jim had been led to suppose.

“Hold on, Sheriff!” called Jim, as he confronted them. “You’ve got one of my boys. What’s the charge?”

“Hullo!” gruffly returned Bray.

He was a burly man, thick-featured, with a bluish cast of countenance, and he wore his sheriff’s badge and gun rather prominently. “Oh, it’s young Mr. Traft. I didn’t know you.... Wal, this boy was gettin’ a little too obstreperous to suit me. So I’m runnin’ him in.”

“Obstreperous! What do you mean by that?” demanded Jim, arriving at his decision.

“Wal, thet’s what I call it.”

“Curly, what’d you do?” inquired Jim, of the red-faced, blue-eyed boy.

“Boss, I was singin’,” asserted Curly. “This heah one-hoss occifer sings in—choir an’ he thinks he’s—only singer.”

“Wal, you can sing in jail,” declared the sheriff, with a gleam in his eye.

“Bray, I reckon you’d better not run Curly in,” said Jim, coolly. “Let’s walk along across and get away from this crowd. I’ll take Curly around the block.”

“Say, for a tenderfoot you’re startin’ right in to play a high hand,” sneered Bray. All the same he had his doubts, which Jim was quick to observe.

“Correct, Bray,” rejoined Jim, as he took Curly’s arm. Between them they walked him away from the curious onlookers, and round a corner to the entrance of the jail. Here Curly’s face was a study. Manifestly before Jim’s arrival he had surrendered to the majesty of the law, but this amazing champion in the shape of his boss had galvanized him.

“Bray, there ain’t none of Diamond outfit ever been—in jail. It’s disgrash,” he asserted, belligerently.

“I’ll vouch for him, Sheriff,” added Jim.

“Prentiss, you come along,” ordered Bray, roughly.

By this time Jim’s blood had grown a little hot. He had recalled what his uncle had said about Bray and thought he might just as well face the issue. He jerked Curly free from the sheriff, and interposed himself between them.

“If you had any charge against Curly I wouldn’t interfere. But you haven’t. Why, he isn’t half drunk.”

“I’ll arrest you both for resistin’ an officer,” threatened Bray, his hand going to his hip.

Jim saw the action, followed it with his eye.

“So you’d throw your gun on us,” he said, with derision.

“Boss, let go an’ stand aside. This heah ain’t funny no more,” spoke up Curly. The change in him, the ring in his voice, made Jim jump, but he did not release the cowboy.

“No, Curly, I’m responsible here,” he replied.

Bray had subtly altered, which fact Jim grasped to have to do with Curly’s sudden menace.

“Wal, Traft, I’ll let him go in your care,” he growled. “But I’m givin’ you a hunch. Prentiss said somethin’. This Diamond outfit ain’t funny no more.”

“Thanks, Bray. I consider that a compliment to me. Come on, Curly.”

Jim walked the cowboy down the block and up a side street until they got out of the center of the town. Neither he nor Curly broke silence during this walk. Finally Jim halted on a corner.

“Curly, will you go back to the ranch? I’d go with you, but I’ve errands to do.”

“Boss, are you orderin’ me?” queried the cowboy.

“No, I’m asking you.”

“Then I ain’t a-goin’.”

“Very well, then. I’ll have to make it an order. Will you go now?”

“I reckon. The Diamond ain’t disobeyin’ orders. But what’d you want to go do this heah trick for?”

“Trick? I’ve only kept you out of jail.”

“Shore. An’ the outfit will be sore at me.”

“Curly, I don’t understand you,” protested Jim.

“They ain’t a-goin’ to stand for me bein’ friends with a tenderfoot boss.”

Jim began to get a glimmering. The tall cowboy seemed pained over this little service. He looked most disapprovingly at Jim.

“Curly, you needn’t let that embarrass you.”

Apparently Curly could not help being embarrassed. He wheeled and strode away. Half across the street he turned. “Boss, I forgot. I’m in an orful fix,” he said, and strode back. “My gurl’s in town. I haven’t laid eyes on her for two months. Shore it won’t be safe to let it go longer.”

“Curly, are you asking me to explain to your girl or to allow you to come back to town?” queried Jim.

“Reckon I was just tellin’ you.”

“Well, I dare say you are in a fix. What do you want of me?” rejoined Jim, who divined that the cowboy did not like to ask a favor.

“It’d never do for you to see Nancy. I lost one gurl that way.”

“Curly, I’ll help you out. Promise you’ll not take another drink today. Then walk out to the ranch and walk back tonight. That’ll sober you. And you can see your girl.”

Curly swore. He bent a strange blue gaze upon Jim.

“I reckon there ain’t no help for it,” he muttered, as if declaring an inevitable fact to himself. Then he strode away.

Jim scarcely knew how to take this last declaration and he went back uptown, pondering over it. These cowboys were certainly going to be problems. They were like children. But he had had a most pleasing reaction from his first encounter with one of the Diamond outfit.

Jim returned to his errands, which took him up and down the main thoroughfare of Flagerstown, and therefore past the saloons and pool-halls. It struck him that the town was growing rather lively as evening approached. All the hitching-rails were crowded with saddle-horses, many of which took Jim’s appreciative eye.

Jim was entering the hotel, where he expected to meet his uncle and ride home with him, when he was detained by another member of the Diamond, who barred his way obviously if not rudely. Two other cowboys drew back.

“Excuse me, Mister Traft. I’m Hack Jocelyn, an’ I’m wantin’ a word with you.”

He was cool, insolent, and something else Jim could not name.

“Aren’t you one of my cowboys?” asked Jim.

“I’ve been ridin’ with the Diamond, if thet’s what you mean. But I ain’t shore I’m stayin’ with the outfit.”

Jim had been told by no less an authority than Ring Locke that horses and men could not separate the Diamond outfit.

“You’re not, eh? Well, you want to be pretty sure, or you won’t be riding for it. What do you want?”

Jocelyn appeared to be gauging Jim.

“I was in Babbitt’s an’ they told me they’d sent out a wagon-load of barbed wire to the ranch. Fer the Diamond outfit! An’ I calls him a liar.”

“Then you’ll have to apologize. It was for the Diamond. And there’s a carload more ordered.”

“Hell you say!” ejaculated Jocelyn, in amaze and gathering anger. “An’ what’s it fer?”

“None of your business, Jocelyn,” retorted Jim. “If you’d asked me civilly I’d have told you.”

“But barbed wire is most used fer fences!” exclaimed the cowboy. His two comrades edged closer until they were beside him, watchful, hiding their feelings, if they had any. “An’ nobody in Gawd’s world would reckon the Diamond’d have anythin’ to do with thet!”

“The Diamond is in for some new experience, Jocelyn. And you may as well know fence-building is one of them.”

“Haw! Haw! It shore is. A tenderfoot dude foreman! Then barbed-wire fence! My Gawd! what’s the range comin’ to?”

Jocelyn had turned to his companions, to whom, in fact, his exclamation had been directed. Jim shot out a hand and spun him around like a top.

“Did you call me a tenderfoot dude foreman?” he queried, and despite his temper he was quick-witted enough to ascertain that Jocelyn was not armed. Otherwise he would wisely have restrained himself altogether.

“Wal, Mister Traft, I reckon I did,” he drawled. He expressed the usual cowboy nonchalance, but there was also a vindictive quality in his words, if not their content.

Jim knocked him flat. He had not calculated consequences. In accepting his uncle’s job he had burned his bridges behind him. But when Jim saw Jocelyn lying there, then slowly rising, his hand to his face, which was black as a thundercloud, he awoke to another sensation. He would not, however, have recalled the blow.

“Jocelyn, you’re fired,” he said, as coolly as the cowboy had spoken. “But if you come out to the ranch and apologize to me I’ll take you on again.”

“You better be packin’ a gun,” declared Jocelyn, darkly.

“Aw, shut up, if you can’t talk sense,” returned Jim, in disgust. “You insulted me. And if you’re not man enough to own up to it you can bet there’s no place on the Diamond for you.”

Jocelyn’s two friends laid hold of him and drew him away.

Whereupon Jim turned to enter the hotel, where among several persons who had been spectators of the little byplay were his uncle and Ring Locke.

“Hello! Say, I’m sorry you happened to see that,” said Jim, regretfully. “But, Uncle, he just made me boil.”

“Come inside,” rejoined Traft, and when the three of them were out of earshot of bystanders he turned to Locke. “Ring, he called Hack’s bluff. An’ mebbe he didn’t poke that puncher’s snoot! I damn near choked myself to keep from yellin’.”

“Uncle!” exclaimed Jim, as surprised at this speech as at Traft’s glee.

“Son, the only fault I can locate in you so far is you talk too quick an’ too much. It’ll get you in serious trouble.”

“But I nearly burst at that,” expostulated Jim.

Ring Locke shook his lean hawklike head forebodingly.

“Wal, it’s six fer me an’ half a dozen fer the other,” he said. “It’s bad an’ good. More good, I’d say. If the new foreman of the Diamond had stood fer that—wal, he couldn’t have had a chance. Mebbe the boys put Hack up to it. If so he’ll be as nice as pie an’ come back to square himself. If not—” Here Locke shook his head gravely.

“Ring, I’ll bet you four bits he’ll be out here tomorrow,” said Traft.

“But suppose he doesn’t come?”

“Can’t we fill his place?” asked Jim, anxiously.

“Nope. We can’t fill the place of any of thet outfit,” rejoined Locke. “But I was thinkin’ of what it’d mean... . Young man, this same Hack Jocelyn has shot fellars fer less.”

“It’s true, son,” corroborated Traft, somberly. “That’s the worst of it. This gang of yours has made way with nine men since they rode for me. Six years! Shore some of them were damn good riddance.”

“More’n nine, boss,” corrected Locke. “Lonestar Holliday got drove out of Texas fer a shootin’.”

“What!” gasped Jim. “Those fine clean boys murderers?”

“Jim, you’re out West now,” said his uncle, testily. “When two men get into an argument or quarrel an’ draw—it ain’t murder if one is killed. We couldn’t run the range without cowboys an’ they’re shore a tough crowd of young roosters.... Ring, fetch round the buckboard an’ we’ll go home.”

On the way out Traft dilated on the serious and uncertain side of range life. Jim realized that his education on the West had but just begun. He had not been ignorant of facts, but they seemed vastly significant and perturbing at close hand. During the ride out and at supper he maintained silence. Later, when he had recovered from the effect of this first clash, he could not feel that he would have desired to have met it in any other way. But neither his uncle nor Ring Locke could understand his feelings. Jim himself found them rather complicated. He had been furious, then frightened, then cold. And now, instead of wanting to go home to Missouri, he surrendered still more to Arizona.