Dennison Grant Part 9

For answer the man addressed as Fred slowly produced an iron stake about eighteen inches long and somewhat less than an inch in diameter.

"What kind of shrubbery do you call that, Tompkins?" he demanded.

"Well, it ain't buffalo gra.s.s, an' it ain't brome gra.s.s, an' I don't figger it's alfalfa," said Tompkins, meditatively.

"No, and it ain't a grub-stake," Fred replied, with some sarcasm. "It's a iron stake, growin' right in a nice little clump of gra.s.s, and I run on to it and bust my cuttin'-bar all to--that is, all to pieces," he completed rather lamely, taking Zen into his glance.

"I think I follow you," she said, with a smile. "Can you fix it here?"

"Nope. Have to go to town for a new one. Two days' lost time, when every hour counts. h.e.l.lo! Here comes someone else."

Another of the teamsters was drawing into camp. "h.e.l.lo, Fred!" he said, upon coming up with his fellow workman, "you in too? I had a bit of bad luck. I run smash on to an iron stake right there in the ground and crumpled my knife like so much soap."

"I did worse," said Fred, with a grin. "I bust my cuttin'-bar."

The two men exchanged a steady glance for half a minute. Then the new-comer gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"So that's the way of it," he said. "That's the kind of war Mr. Landson makes. Well, we can fight back with the same weapons, but that won't cut the hay, will it?"

By this time Y.D. and Transley, with four other teamsters, were observed coming in. Each driver had had the same experience. An iron stake, carefully hidden in a clump of gra.s.s, had been driven down into the ground until it was just high enough to intercept the cutting-bar. The fine, sharp knives were crumpled against it; in some cases the heavy cutting-bar, in which the knives operate, was damaged.

Y.D.'s face was black with fury.

"That's the lowest, mangyest, cowardliest trick I ever had pulled on me," he was saying. "I'm plumb equal to ridin' down to Landson's an'

drivin' one of them stakes through under his short ribs."

"But can you prove that Landson did it?" said Zen, who had an element of caution in her when her father was concerned. She had a vision of a fight, with Landson pleading entire ignorance of the whole cause of offence, and her father probably summoned by the police for unprovoked a.s.sault.

"No, I can't prove that Landson did it, an' I can't prove that the gra.s.s my steers eat turns to hair on their backs," he retorted, "but I reach my own conclusions. Is there any shootin' irons in the place?"

"Now, Dad, that's enough," said the girl, firmly. "There'll be no shooting between you and Landson. If there is to be anything of that kind I'll ride down ahead and warn him of what's coming."

"Darter," said Y.D.--it was only on momentous occasions that he addressed her as daughter--"I brought you over here as a guest, not as manager o' my affairs. I've taken care of those affairs for some considerable years, an' I reckon I still have the qualifications. If you're a-goin' to act up obstrep'rous I'll get Mr. Transley to lend me a man to escort you home."

"At your service, Y.D.," said George Drazk, who was in the crowd which had gathered about the rancher, his daughter, and Transley. "That Pete-horse an' me would jus' see her over the hills a-whoopin'."

"I don't think it would be wise to take any extreme measures, at least, not just yet," said Transley. "It's out of the question to suppose that Landson has picketed the whole valley with those stakes. It is now quite clear why we were left in peace yesterday. He wanted us to get started, and get a few swaths cut, so that he would know where to drive the stakes to catch us the next morning. Some of these machines can be repaired at once, and the others within a day or two. We will just move over a little and start on new fields. There's pretty good moonlight these nights and we'll leave a few men out on guard, and perhaps we can catch the enemy at his little game. Let us get one of Landson's men with the goods on him."

Y.D. was somewhat pacified by this suggestion. "You're a practical devil, Transley," he said, with considerable admiration. "Now, in a case of this kind I jus' get plumb fightin' mad. I want to bore somebody.

I guess it's the only kind o' procedure that comes easy to my hand. I guess you're right, but I hate to let anybody have the laugh on me."

Y.D. looked down the valley, shading his eyes with his hand. "That son-of-a-gun has got a dozen or more stacks down there. I don't wish n.o.body any hard luck, but if some tenderfoot was to drop a cigar--"

"In that case I suppose you'd pray for a west wind, Dad," Zen suggested, "but the winds in these valleys, even with your prayers to direct them, are none too reliable."

"Everybody to work on fixing up these machines," Transley ordered.

"Linder, make a list of what repairs are needed and Drazk will ride to town with it at once. Some of them may have to come out from the city by express. Drazk can get the orders in and a team will follow to bring out the repairs."

In a moment Transley's men were busy with wrenches and hammers, replacing knives and appraising damages. Even in his anger Y.D. took approving note of the promptness of Transley's decisions and the zest with which his men carried them into effect.

"A he-man, that fellow, Zen," he confided to his daughter, "If he'd blowed into this country thirty years ago, like I did, he'd own it by this time plumb to the sky-line."

When the list of repairs was completed Linder handed it to Drazk.

"Beat it to town on that Pete-horse of yours, George," he said. "Burn the gra.s.s on the road."

"I bet I'll be ten miles on the road back when I meet my shadow goin',"

said Drazk, making a spectacular leap into his saddle. "Bye, Y.D!; bye, Zen!" he shouted while he whirled his horse's head eastward and waved his hand to where they stood. In spite of her annoyance at him she had to smile and return his salute.

"Mr. Drazk is irrepressible," she remarked to Transley.

"And irresponsible," the contractor returned. "I sometimes wonder why I keep him. In fact, I don't really keep him; he just stays. Every spring he hunts me up and fastens on. Still, I get a lot of good service out of him. Praise 'that Pete-horse,' and George would ride his head off for you. He has a weakness for wanting to marry every woman he sees, but his infatuations seem harmless enough."

"I know something of his weakness," Zen replied. "I have already been honored with a proposal."

Transley looked in her face. It was slightly flushed, whether with the summer sun or with her confession, but it was a wonderfully good face to look in.

"Zen," he said, in a low voice that Y.D. and the others might not hear, "how would you take a serious proposal, made seriously by one who loves you, and who knows that you are, and always will be, a queen among women?"

"If you had been a cow puncher instead of a contractor," she told him, "I'm sure you would long ago have ended your life in some dash over a cutbank."

Meanwhile Drazk pursued his way to town. The trail, after crossing the ford, turned abruptly to the right from that which led across country to the North Y.D. For a mile or more it skirted the stream in a park-like drive through groves of spruce and cottonwood. Suns.h.i.+ne and the babble of water everywhere filled the air. Suns.h.i.+ne, too, filled George Drazk's heart. The importance of his mission was pleasantly heavy upon him. He pictured the impression he would make in town, galloping in with his horse wet over the back, and rus.h.i.+ng to the implement agency with all the importance of a courier from Y.D. He would let two of the boys take Pete to the stable, and then, seated on a mower seat in the shade, he would tell the story. It would lose nothing in the telling. He would even add how Zen had thrown a kiss at him in parting. Perhaps he would have Zen kiss him on the cheek before the whole camp. He turned that possibility over in his mind, weighing nicely the credulity of his imaginary audience.... At any rate, whether he decided to put that in the story or not, it was very pleasant to think about.

Presently the trail turned abruptly up a gully leading into the hills.

A huge cutbank, jutting into the river, barred the way in front, and its precipitous side, a hundred feet or more in height, kept continually crumbling and falling into the stream. These cutbanks are a terror to inexperienced riders. The valleys are swallowed up in the tawny sameness of the ranges; the vision catches only the higher levels, and one may gallop to the verge of a precipice before becoming aware of its existence. It was to this that Zen had referred in speaking of Transley's precipitateness.

Drazk followed the gully up into the hills, letting his horse drop back to a walk in the hard going along the dry bed of a stream which flowed only in the spring freshets. Pete had to pick his way over boulders and across stretches of sand and boggy patches of black mud formed by little springs leaking out under clumps of willows. Here and there the white ribs of a steer's skeleton peered through the brush; once or twice an overpowering stench gave notice of a carca.s.s not wholly decomposed.

It was not a pleasant environment, but in an hour Drazk was out again on the brow of the brown hills, where the suns.h.i.+ne flooded about and a fresh breeze beat up against his face. After all his winding about in the gully he was not more than a mile from the cutbank.

"I reckon I could get a great view from that cutbank of what Landson is doin'," he suddenly remarked to himself. He took off his hat and scratched his tousled head in reflection. "Linder said to beat it," he ruminated, "but I can't get back to-night anyway, an' it might be worth while to do a little scoutin'. Here goes!"

He struck a smart gallop to the southward, and brought his horse up, spectacularly, a yard from the edge of the precipice. The view which his position commanded was superb. Up the valley lay the white tents of Transley's outfit, almost hidden in green foliage; the ford across the river was distinctly visible, and stretching south from it lay, like a great curving snake, the trail which wound across the valley and lost itself in the foothills far to the south; across the western horizon hung the purple curtain of the mountains, soft and vague in their noonday mists, but touched with settings of ivory where the snow fields beat back the blazing suns.h.i.+ne; far down the valley was the gleam of Landson's whitewashed buildings, and nearer at hand the greenish-brown of the upland meadows which his haymakers had already cleared of their crop of prairie wool. This was now arising in enormous stacks; it must have been three miles to where they lay, but Drazk's keen eyes could distinguish ten completed stacks and two others in course of building.

He could even see the sweeps hauling the new hay, after only a few hours of sun-drying, and sliding it up the inclined platforms which dumped it into the form of stacks. The foothill rancher makes hay by horse power, and almost without the aid of a pitch-fork. Even as Drazk watched he saw a load skidded up; saw its apparent momentary poise in air; saw the well-trained horses stop and turn and start back to the meadow with their sweep. And up the valley Transley's outfit was at a standstill.

Drazk employed his limited but expressive vocabulary. It was against all human nature to look on such a scene unmoved. He recalled Y.D.'s half-spoken wish about a random cigar. Then suddenly George Drazk's mouth dropped open and his eyes rounded with a great idea.

Of course, it was against all the rules of the range--it was outlaw business--but what about driving iron stakes in a hay meadow? Drazk's philosophy was that the end justifies the means. And if the end would win the approval of Y.D.--and of Y.D.'s daughter--then any means was justified. Had not Linder said, "Burn the gra.s.s on the road?" Drazk knew well enough that Linder's remark was a figure of speech, but his eccentric mind found no trouble in converting it into literal instructions.

Drazk sniffed the air and looked at the sun. A soft breeze was moving slowly up the valley; the sun was just past noon. There was every reason to expect that as the lowland prairies grew hot with the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne a breeze would come down out of the mountains to occupy the area of great atmospheric expansion. Drazk knew nothing about the theory of the thing; all that concerned him was the fact that by mid-afternoon the wind would probably change to the west.

Two miles down the valley he found a gully which gave access to the water's edge. He descended, located a ford, and crossed. There were cattle-trails through the cottonwoods; he might have followed them, but he feared the telltale shoe-prints. He elected the more difficult route down the stream itself. The South Y.D. ran mostly on a wide gravel bottom; it was possible to pick out a course which kept Pete in water seldom higher than his knees. An hour of this, and Drazk, peering through the trees, could see the nearest of Landson's stacks not half a mile away. The Landson gang were working farther down the valley, and the stack itself covered approach from the river.

Drazk slipped from the saddle, and stole quietly into the open. The breeze was now coming down the valley.

CHAPTER VI