The B.M. Bower MEGAPACK ®. B.M. Bower
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out. He’s got it in for the whole outfit, from the Old Man and the Little Doctor down to Slim. If any of us boys got into trouble, the Old Man would spend his last cent to clear us; and Dunk knows that just as well as he knows the way from the house to the stable. He’d see to it that it would just about take the Old Man’s last cent, too. And he’s using these Dot sheep like you’d use a red flag on a bull, to make us so crazy mad we’ll kill off somebody.
“That’s why,” he said to them all when he saw that they had ridden up close that they might hear what he was saying, “I’ve been hollering so loud for the meek-and-mild stunt. When I slapped him on the jaw, and he stood there and took it, I saw his game. He had a witness to swear I hit him and he didn’t hit back. And when I saw them Dots in our field again, I knew, just as well as if Dunk had told me, that he was kinda hoping we’d kill a herder or two so he could cinch us good and plenty. I don’t say,” he qualified with a rueful grin, “that Dunk went into the sheep business just to get r-re-venge, as they say in shows. But if he can make money running sheep—and he can, all right, because there’s more money in them right now than there is in cattle—and at the same time get a good whack at the Flying U, he’s the lad that will sure make a running jump at the chance.” He spat upon the burnt end of his cigarette stub from force of the habit that fear of range fires had built, and cast it petulantly from him; as if he would like to have been able to throw Dunk and his sheep problem as easily out of his path.
“So I wish you boys would hang onto yourselves when you hear a sheep blatting under your window,” he summed up his unburdening whimsically. “As Bud said this morning, you can’t hang a man for telling a sheepherder you’ll take off his shoes. And they can’t send us over the road for moving that band of sheep onto new range today. Last night you all were kinda disorderly, maybe, but you didn’t hurt anybody, or destroy any property. You see what I mean. Our only show is to stop with our toes on the right side of the dead line.”
“If Andy, here, would jest git his think-wheels greased and going good,” Big Medicine suggested loudly, “he ought to frame up something that would put them Dots on the run permanent. I d’no, by cripes, why it is a feller can always think uh lies and joshes by the dozens, and put ’em over O. K. when there ain’t nothing to be made out of it except hard feelin’s; and then when a deal like this here sheep deal comes up, he’s got about as many idees, by cripes, as that there line-back calf over there. Honest to grandma, Andy makes me feel kinda faint. Only time he did have a chanc’t, he let them—” It occurred to Big Medicine at that point that perhaps his remarks might be construed by the object of them as being offensively personal. He turned his head and grinned good-naturedly in Andy’s direction, and refrained from finishing what he was going to say. “I sure do like them wind-flowers scattered all over the ground,” he observed with such deliberate and ostentatious irrelevance that the Happy Family laughed, even to Andy Green, who had at first been inclined toward anger.
“Everything,” declared Andy in the tone of a paid instructor, “has its proper time and place, boys; I’ve told you that before. For instance, I wouldn’t try to kill a skunk by talking it to death; and I wouldn’t be hopeful of putting the run on this Dunk person by telling him ghost stories. As to ideas—I’m plumb full of them. But they’re all about grub, just right at present.”
That started Slim and Happy Jack to complaining because no one had had sense enough to go back after some lunch before taking that long trail south; the longer because it was a slow one, with sheep to set the pace. And by the time they had presented their arguments against the Happy Family’s having enough brains to last them overnight, and the Happy Family had indignantly pointed out just where the mental deficiency was most noticeable, they were upon that last, broad stretch of “bench” land beyond which lay Flying U coulee and Patsy and dinner; a belated dinner, to be sure, but for that the more welcome.
And when they reached the point where they could look away to the very rim of the coulee, they saw sheep—sheep to the skyline, feeding scattered and at ease, making the prairie look, in the distance, as if it were covered with a thin growth of gray sage-brush. Four herders moved slowly upon the outskirts, and the dogs were little, scurrying, black dots which stopped occasionally to wait thankfully until the master-minds again urged them to endeavor.
The Happy Family drew up and stared in silence.
“Do I see sheep?” Pink inquired plaintively at last. “Tell me, somebody.”
“It’s that bunch you fellows tackled last night,” said Weary miserably. “I ought to have had sense enough to leave somebody on the ranch to look out for this.”
“They’ve got their nerve,” stated Irish, “after the deal they got last night. I’d have bet good money that you couldn’t drag them herders across Flying U coulee with a log chain.”
“Say, by golly, do we have to drive this here bunch anywheres before we git anything to eat?” Slim wanted to know distressfully.
Weary considered briefly. “No, I guess we’ll pass ’em up for the present. An hour or so won’t make much difference in the long run, and our horses are about all in, right now—”
“So’m I, by cripes!” Big Medicine attested, grinning mirthlessly. “This here sheep business is plumb wearin’ on a man. ’Specially,” he added with a fretful note, “when you’ve got to handle ’em gentle. The things I’d like to do to them Dots is all ruled outa the game, seems like. Honest to grandma, a little gore would look better to me right now than a Dutch picnic before the foam’s all blowed off the refreshments. Lemme kill off jest one herder, Weary?” he pleaded. “The one that took a shot at me las’ night. Purty, please!”
“If you killed one,” Weary told him glumly, “you might as well make a clean sweep and take in the whole bunch.”
“Well, I won’t charge nothin’ extra fer that, either,” Bud assured him generously. “I’m willin’ to throw in the other three—and the dawgs, too, by cripes!” He goggled the Happy Family quizzically. “Nobody can’t say there’s anything small about me. Why, down in the Coconino country they used to set half a dozen greasers diggin’ graves, by cripes, soon as I started in to argy with a man. It was a safe bet they’d need three or four, anyways, if old Bud cut loose oncet. Sheepherders? Why, they jest natcherly couldn’t keep enough on hand, securely, to run their sheep. They used to order sheepherders like they did woolsacks, by cripes! You could always tell when I was in the country, by the number uh extra herders them sheep outfits always kep’ in reserve. Honest to grandma, I’ve knowed two or three outfits to club together and ship in a carload at a time, when they heard I was headed their way. And so when it comes to killin’ off four, why that ain’t skurcely enough to make it worth m’while to dirty up m’gun!”
“Aw, I betche yuh never killed a man in your life!” Happy Jack grumbled in his characteristic tone of disparagement; but such was his respect for Big Medicine’s prowess that he took care not to speak loud enough to be overheard by that modest gentleman, who continued with certain fearsome details of alleged murderous exploits of his own, down in Coconino County, Arizona.
But as they passed the detested animals, thankful that the trail permitted them to ride by at a distance sufficient to blur the most unsavory details, even Big Medicine gave over his deliberate boastings and relapsed into silence.
He had begun his fantastic vauntings from an instinctive impulse to leaven with humor a situation which, at the moment, could not be bettered. Just as they had, when came the news of the Old Man’s dire plight, sought to push the tragedy of it into the background and cling to their creed of optimism, they had avoided openly facing the sheep complication squarely with mutual admissions of all it might mean to the Flying U.
Until Weary had unburdened his heart of worry on the ride home that day, they had not said much about it, beyond a general vilification of the sheep industry as a whole, of Dunk as the chief of the encroaching Dots, and of the herders personally.
But there were times when they could not well avoid thinking rather deeply upon the subject, even if they did refuse to put their forebodings into speech. They were not children; neither were