The Flying U Ranch by B. M. Bower (free biff chip and kipper ebooks .TXT) 📖

>have it so, or the little twitch of shoulders by which he could

so incense a man, that laugh brought a deeper flush to Dunk’s

face, reddened though it was by Big Medicine’s vigorous slapping.

 

“Say, you’ve got nerve,” drawled the Native Son, “to let a

sheriff travel toward you. I can remember when you were more

timid, amigo.” He turned his head until his eyes fell upon Andy.

“Say, Andy!” he called. “Come and take a look at this hombre.

You’ll have to think back a few years,” he assisted laconically.

 

In response, Andy rode up eagerly. Like the Native Son, he leaned

and peered into eyes that stared back defiantly, wavered, and

turned away. Andy also sat back in the saddle then, and snorted.

 

“So this is the Dunk Whittaker that’s been raising merry hell

around here! And talks about sending for the sheriff, huh? I’ve

always heard that a lot uh gall is the best disguise a man can

hide under, but, by gracious, this beats the deuce!” He turned to

the astounded Happy Family with growing excitement in his manner.

 

“Boys, we don’t have to worry much about this gazabo! We’ll just

freeze onto him till the sheriff heaves in sight. Gee! There’ll

sure be something stirring when we tell him who this Dunk person

really is! And you say he was in with the Old Man, once? Oh,

Lord!” He looked with withering contempt at Dunk; and Dunk’s

glance flickered again and dropped, just as his hand dropped to

the pocket of his coat.

 

“No, yuh don’t, by cripes!” Big Medicine’s hand gripped Dunk’s

arm on the instant. With his other he plucked the gun from Dunk’s

pocket, and released him as he would let go of something foul

which he had been compelled to touch.

 

“He’ll be good, or he’ll lose his dinner quick,” drawled the

Native Son, drawing his own silver-mounted six-shooter and

resting it upon the saddle horn so that it pointed straight at

Dunk’s diaphragm. “You take Weary off somewhere and tell him

something about this deal, Andy. I’ll watch this slippery

gentleman.” He smiled slowly and got an answering grin from Andy

Green, who immediately rode a few rods away, with Weary and Pink

close behind.

 

“Say, by golly, what’s Dunk wanted fer?” Slim blurted

inquisitively after a short silence.

 

“Not for riding or driving over a bridge faster than a walk

Slim,” purred the Native Son, shifting his gun a trifle as Dunk

moved uneasily in the saddle. “You know the man. Look at his

face—and use your imagination, if you’ve got any.”

 

CHAPTER XIII. The Happy Family Learn Something

 

“Well, I hope this farce is about over,” Dunk sneered, with as

near an approach to his old, supercilious manner as he could

command, when the three who had ridden apart returned presently.

“Perhaps, Weary, you’ll be good enough to have this fellow put up

his gun, and these—” he hesitated, after a swift glance, to

apply any epithet whatever to the Happy Family. “I have two

witnesses here to swear that you have without any excuse

assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you may consider

yourselves lucky if I do not insist—”

 

“Ah, cut that out,” Andy advised wearily. “I don’t know how it

strikes the rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don’t

overlook the fact that two of us happen to know all about you;

and we know just where to send word, to dig up a lot more

identification. So bluffing ain’t going to help you out, a darned

bit.”

 

“Miguel, you can go with Andy,” Weary said with brisk decision.

“Take Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here—if it’s

straight goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn’t, we can

take Dunk in to-morrow, ourselves.” He turned and fixed a cold,

commanding eye upon the slack-jawed herders. “Come along, you

two, and get these sheep headed outa here.”

 

“Say, we’ll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on

back,” Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. “He

couldn’t get out in a million years; not after I’m through

staking him out to the anvil with a log-chain.” He smiled

maliciously into Dunk’s fear-yellowed countenance, and waved him

a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did without a word of protest

while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.

 

“What’s it all about, Weary?” Irish asked, when the three were

gone. “What is it they’ve got on Dunk? Must be something pretty

fierce, the way he wilted down into the saddle.”

 

“You’ll have to wait and ask the boys.” Weary rode off to hurry

the herders on the far side of the band.

 

So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the

subject and for that they said hard things about Weary, and about

Andy and Miguel as well. They believed that they were entitled to

know the truth, and they called it a smart-aleck trick to keep

the thing so almighty secret.

 

There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and

the dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always

sweep down upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently

it happens that perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer.

The Happy Family had been extremely forbearing, as has been

pointed out before. They had frequently come to the boiling point

of rage and had cooled without committing any real act of

violence. But that day had held a long series of petty

annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from them

as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked

Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook

his head and said he didn’t know. Irish mentally accused Pink of

lying, and his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as

anyone can readily understand.

 

When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started

them moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against

that shuffling, nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long,

weary hours in the saddle with the other band. But it was Irish

who first took measures to accelerate that pace.

 

He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across

the nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few

paces and returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it

names and whacked another.

 

After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing

it have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close

to the heels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped

to look up at him foolishly and blat, and the buck charged ahead

in a panic at the noise and the spat of the bullet behind him.

 

“Hit him agin in the same place!” yelled Big Medicine, and drew

his own gun. The Happy Family, at that high tension where they

were ready for anything, caught the infection and began shooting

and yelling like crazy men.

 

The effect was not at all what they expected. Instead of adding

impetus to the band, as would have been the case if they had been

driving cattle, the result was exactly the opposite. The sheep

ran—but they ran to a common center. As the shooting went on

they bunched tighter and tighter, until it seemed as though those

in the center must surely be crushed flat. From an ambling,

feeding company of animals, they become a lumpy gray blanket,

with here and there a long, vacuous face showing idiotically upon

the surface.

 

The herders grinned and drew together as against a common

enemy—or as with a new joke to be discussed among themselves.

The dogs wandered helplessly about, yelped half-heartedly at the

woolly mass, then sat down upon their haunches and lolled red

tongues far out over their pointed little teeth, and tilted

knowing heads at the Happy Family.

 

“Look at the darned things!” wailed Pink, riding twice around the

huddle, almost ready to shed tears of pure rage and helplessness.

“Git outa that! Hi! Woopp-ee!” He fired again and again, and gave

the range-old cattle-yell; the yell which had sent many a tired

herd over many a weary mile; the yell before which had fled fat

steers into the stockyards at shipping time, and up the chutes

into the cars; the yell that had hoarsened many a cowpuncher’s

voice and left him with a mere croak to curse his fate with; a

yell to bring results—but it did not start those sheep.

 

The Happy Family, riding furiously round and round, fired every

cartridge they had upon their persons; they said every improper

thing they could remember or invent; they yelled until their eyes

were starting from their sockets; they glued that band of sheep

so tight together that dynamite could scarcely have pried them

apart.

 

And the herders, sitting apart with grimy hands clasped loosely

over hunched-up knees, looked on, and talked together in low

tones, and grinned.

 

Irish glanced that way and caught them grinning; caught them

pointing derisively, with heaving shoulders. He swore a great

oath and made for them, calling aloud that he would knock those

grins so far in that they would presently find themselves smiling

wrong-side-out from the back of their heads.

 

Pink, overhearing him, gave a last swat at the waggling tail of a

burrowing buck, and wheeled to overtake Irish and have a hand in

reversing the grins. Big Medicine saw them start, and came

bellowing up from the far side of the huddle like a bull

challenging to combat from across a meadow. Big Medicine did not

know what it was all about, but he scented battle, and that was

sufficient. Cal Emmett and Weary, equally ignorant of the cause,

started at a lope toward the trouble center.

 

It began to look as if the whole Family was about to fall upon

those herders and rend them asunder with teeth and nails; so much

so that the herders jumped up and ran like scared cottontails

toward the rim of Denson coulee, a hundred yards or so to the

west.

 

“Mamma! I wish we could make the sheep hit that gait and keep

it,” exclaimed Weary, with the first laugh they had heard from

him that day.

 

While he was still laughing, there was a shot from the ridge

toward which they were running; the sharp, vicious crack of a

rifle. The Happy Family heard the whistling hum of the bullet,

singing low over their heads; quite low indeed; altogether too

low to be funny. And they had squandered all their ammunition on

the prairie sod, to hurry a band of sheep that flatly refused to

hurry anywhere except under one another’s odorous, perspiring

bodies.

 

From the edge of the coulee the rifle spoke again. A tiny geyser

of dust, spurting up from the ground ten feet to one side of Cal

Emmett, showed them all where the bullet struck.

 

“Get outa range, everybody!” yelled Weary, and set the example by

tilting his rowels against Glory’s smooth hide, and heading

eastward. “I like to be accommodating, all right, but I draw the

line on standing around for a target while my neighbors practise

shooting.”

 

The Happy Family, having no other recourse, therefore retreated

in haste toward the eastern skyline. Bullets followed them,

overtook them as the shooter raised his sights for the increasing

distance, and whined harmlessly over their heads. All save one.

 

CHAPTER XIV. Happy Jack

 

Big Medicine, Irish and Pink, racing almost abreast, heard a

scream behind them and pulled up their horses with short,

stiff-legged plunges. A brown horse overtook them; a brown horse,

with Happy Jack clinging to the saddle-horn, his