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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
The Flying U Strikes brings readers back to the beloved Flying U Ranch, where the "Happy Family" faces new challenges. When land disputes threaten their way of life, the cowboys band together to protect their home and heritage. B.M. Bower's narrative blends humor, camaraderie, and the enduring spirit of the West in this engaging tale of unity and resilience.
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Seitenzahl: 324
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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The Flying U Strikes
The Flying U Strikes
INTRODUCTION
I. — TROUBLE BEGINS
II. — CHIP TAKES THE HINT
III. — A MAN-SIZE JOB
IV. — HORSES FOR SALE
V. — A CLUE IN HAND
VI. — FIRST AID FROM POLLY
VII. — WHY WAIT FOR PROOF?
VIII. — BIG BUTCH
IX. — POLLY BUYS IN
X. — MILT MAKES HIS TALK
XI. — THE FIRST REAL CLUE
XII. — BEEF HAULIN'S OVER
XIII. — SEVENTY BELOW ZERO
XIV. — PRISONER'S LOOSE
XV. — THE FLYING U TO THE RESCUE
XVI. — CHIP STILL WANTS PROOF
XVII. — FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE
XVIII. — THE WIND'S IN THE NORTH
XIX. — "IT'S LIFE AND DEATH, POLLY"
XX. — A FINE SCHEME COOKED UP
XXI. — ONE SPY THE LESS
XXII. — MAKE READY FOR WAR
XXIII. — CHIP RIDES AGAIN
XXIV. — POLLY PLAYS LADY
XXV. — AT BUTCH'S WINDOW
XXVI. — POLLY PUTS IT OVER
XXVII. — A CHINOOK STRIKES CHIP
Landmarks
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Someone was killing Flying U steers, killing them wantonly and then stripping out the hindquarters and leaving the rest for the wolves. When Chip Bennett and Weary Davidson first discovered it, they thought someone was stealing beef. Then Chip found that the hindquarters were being dumped into ravines and left to rot. Obviously, the thief was deliberately insulting the Flying U, trying to stir up trouble, trying to pick a fight.
Hot-headed young Chip Bennett jumped to the conclusion that Butch Lewis and his gang were responsible. He thought that Butch was down on him and was taking out the peeve on J.G. and the Flying U ranch which that square old cattle puncher owned. So Chip quit his job and decided to catch the killer himself.
And that started him into as fast-moving a mess of trouble as the young wildcat had ever seen. For it soon developed that there were bigger plans afoot than the theft of a few quarters of beef—plans that flamed into a range war—plans that involved Polly Taylor of the Hobble-O—plans that led to pitched battle in which Chip took long chances on his own and longer ones trying to keep Polly out of trouble before peace returned to the range.
I. — TROUBLE BEGINS
A RAW March wind such as only the high prairies ever know poured like ice water over the bald benchland that forms a part of the Flying U range. It roughened the hair on the two saddle horses; it tossed their manes and it whipped their tails around their hocks as they loped down to the bluff edge where the rough country began.
Chip Bennett, younger of the two riders, broke a silence of half an hour. "Those horses will be hugging the brush on a day like this," he said, and drew a hand across his smarting eyes.
"That's right," Weary Davidson agreed. "No use combing the benches to-day. Mamma! That wind sure does go through a fellow! What say we swing over to the left here, Chip, and kinda bear off more towards the river? They're in the breaks, that's a cinch. We've had this wind for four days. I look for 'em to be watering along Rabbit Creek where there's lots of shelter."
"That's what I was thinking." Chip hunched his shoulders within his sour-dough coat. "We can make it down off that point over there easiest."
With one accord their rein hands twitched to the left and the horses obeyed that slight pressure against the right side of their necks. Instant relief was felt from that biting wind, now pushing hard against their backs instead of flat against their right sides. The tear lines dried upon their cheeks. They let their horses down to a walk, pulled off their gloves and sat on them while they rolled and lighted cigarettes. Neither spoke again. Neither was conscious of their long silences which held a satisfying companionship not to be broken by idle chatter. They were content and that was enough.
Overhead the sky was blue and the sun shone with a spring brightness. After awhile, when they turned off the sloping point of the bench and picked their way down a rocky gulch, a pleasant warmth surrounded them. Here the cold wind could not search them out. Riding ahead, Chip leaned suddenly from the saddle and plucked a crocus from the bank. Straightening again, he took off his hat and tucked the downy stem beneath the hatband in front, and set the hat atilt on his brown head. With his overcoat unbuttoned, Weary rode slack in the saddle, whistling an aimless little tune under his breath.
Down in the sheltered coulee it was spring. A few fat prairie dogs were already bestirring themselves, hunting grass roots or running from mound to mound to gossip with their neighbors. As the two cowboys approached, a shrewish chittering met them, the village inhabitants all standing up on the mounds with their front paws folded like hands. Abruptly they lost courage however and ducked down into their holes, the flirt of their stubby tails as insolent as a thumbed nose.
Out of that coulee and up over another small bench went the riders, the chill wind hounding them over the high ground only to give up the chase when they dipped down into the next hollow. In spite of their seeming casualness, their questing glances went here and there, scanning each wrinkle and hollow that lay exposed to their gaze. The bunch of horses they were hunting might be almost anywhere in this kind of weather.
Weary suddenly pointed a gloved finger. "Ain't that a dead critter down there by that brush patch? Looks like the wolves have been at work down in here."
"Not one but six carcasses down there," Chip answered him. "We better go take a look. If it's wolves, they sure have been holding high carnival down there." He reined his horse straight down the slope toward the spot, Weary after him.
It was so steep that when they struck a shale patch both horses slid on their rumps for some distance. But they made the bottom without mishap and rode down to the thicket. A deep bowl of a place it was, the center a jungle of wild berry bushes growing in such luxuriance as would indicate a spring close by. On the sunny side of the thicket lay a group of carcasses, evidently some time dead.
The two rode up and stopped, staring about them. "Mamma!" gasped Weary. "Looks like here's where the wolves have held an old-timer's reunion. Six beef critters pulled down all in one bunch! Now what d'you know about that?"
"Not half as much as I'm going to know before I'm through," Chip retorted. He stepped off his horse and walked over to the first carcass. With his hands on his hips he stared down at the unlovely heap for a minute, then walked on to the next and the next. He turned back and looked at Weary, standing just behind him.
"Shot in the head. The whole damn bunch," Weary answered the look. "You saw that, didn't yuh?"
"I'd tell a man I saw it. Take hold, here. Let's see the brand—if they left one."
They caught hold of the mauled and shriveled hide where the hind quarters should have been and flipped it over. The brand was the Flying U, and as they went from one to the other, they verified the brand on each. Six Flying U beeves, still showing the bullet holes in their heads where they had been shot down. And while the fore quarters had been half devoured by wolves, the hind quarters had been skinned out of the hides and carried off.
"Beef rustlers," said Weary, as they returned to their horses. "I sure would like to know who pulled that stunt. Looks to me like they either want to advertise the fact they're after the Flying U or else they don't give a darn. Never even took the trouble to cut out the brands, you notice." He looked at young Bennett. "That mean anything to you, Chip?"
"It certainly does. After that trouble last summer with Big Butch's outfit, it means they're making war medicine again. I was wondering what made 'em so damn peaceable; after losing four men in that fight we had, it looked to me like they'd take another whack at the Flying U, just to break even." Young Bennett frowned down at the nearest heap of bones and hide. He did not add what loomed blackest in his thoughts: that he himself, with a personal quarrel to settle with one of Big Butch's men, had really brought the Flying U into the trouble with Butch Lewis' outfit.
He hated to admit it, even to himself, but it was true. He had been looking for his brother, up in this country along the Missouri, and had run into mystery and trouble in his search. Brother Wane was dead—murdered, he believed, in spite of assurances that Wane's death was an accident. And one day he had seen one of Butch Lewis' men riding Wane's horse and saddle, the EB brand botchily changed. Well, he had gone after Cash Farley and got the horse away from him, but in the long run the Flying U had paid high for that reckless adventure. Paid with a hundred head of saddle horses stolen out of the pasture in Flying U coulee; paid with a bullet in Jim Whitmore's leg, beside. And now, good old "J.G." was paying again, with good beef slaughtered on the range, his brand left insolently as a challenge and a defiance to the outfit.
It was plain enough to Chip Bennett. Last summer the trouble had culminated in a hair-raising afternoon when he had been hunted from rock to rock by Cash Farley and his cronies with rifles. Well, his own rifle had taken up the argument pretty decisively. Fighting for his life, he had held them off until the Flying U boys had come to the rescue—Weary, here, was one of the first to arrive. He knew just what these carcasses meant. Big Butch Lewis was taking up the fight where it had been dropped last summer.
Then Weary dissented from that conclusion. "Big Butch might be makin' war medicine, like you say, but not this way. It's somebody else rustling beef off us."
"I'll bet it's Butch, building up another scrap with this outfit," Chip said glumly. "Come on. I'll bet we'll find more."
They mounted and rode up out of the little basin and over into the next gully. Sure enough, here were several more, all showing the Flying U brand. In another deep coulee they counted twelve carcasses, and with a stubborn thoroughness young Bennett insisted upon examining each one. Flying U. Not one Hobble-O, though plenty of Shep Taylor's stock ranged in here, as did the Lazy Ladder and a few nester brands. Whoever had butchered these cattle certainly picked his brand with care.
All that afternoon they rode through the sequestered places where Flying U cattle had wintered for sake of the shelter. Hundreds of them were grazing there now, looking fat and strong after the long months of cold. Once Weary remarked that the calf crop ought to be a banner one that spring, but Chip only nodded agreement. Banner calf crops could not alter the fact that his own personal enemies were taking their grudge out on the Flying U and that there didn't seem to be anything much that he could do about it.
They found the bunch of horses they were after and hazed them up on the bench and headed them toward the ranch, then continued their scrutiny of the coulees and gulches that webbed the strip lying between the level benches and the Badlands along the river. Again and again they came upon the mutilated remains of Flying U stock, and judging from what was left, they guessed them all to be young beef steers just under shipping age.
"Good beef," commented Weary, "but damned expensive eating, just the same. J.G's going to be shy a couple of carloads of beef next fall. And believe me, that sure runs into money!"
"I know it," growled Chip. "You don't have to rub it in." In a little memorandum book he was keeping a methodical tally and the mounting figures stunned him into silence. Just as sure as the sun was shining, the Flying U was being baited into a fight. No use talking about it—words wouldn't change the facts, no more than they could ease his heartsick feeling of responsibility in the matter. No, there wasn't much to be said about it. Jim Whitmore was being stolen blind. It had been going on all winter, almost under their noses. It was still going on. Some of these last butcherings they had found looked fresh. A couple of days old at the most.
"Whoever it is, they're sure doing a land-office business in beef," Weary remarked, as he lifted himself into the saddle after inspecting the last and freshest one. "I can't think it's the Butch Lewis bunch, though. They're supposed to be in the horse business. I never heard of them peddling beef."
On his horse, Chip concentrated upon the little book open in his hand, adding a column of figures twice; once from the bottom up, then, with an incredulous oath, starting at the top and going on down.
Weary watched him over the cigarette he was making. "How many, Chip?" he queried, glancing down at the match and turning it head down, to draw it along the fork of his saddle. "I started to keep count in my head—but hell, I give it up ten mile back."
"Eighty-three," young Bennett told him without looking up. "It doesn't seem possible—"
"Eighty-three? That's damn near three carloads of beef the sons uh Satan have got away with. Yuh realize that? And half of it plumb wasted and fed to the wolves!" Weary blew smoke from his nostrils with the snort he gave. "Say, J.G.'ll go straight in the air when he hears about this... Well, we might as well be getting back."
He reined toward the steep slope of the gully, Chip following behind. The horses climbed nosing out their footing as they heaved themselves over the worst places in rabbit hops. On the long hogback ridge that sloped gently up to a thicket-crowned swale just under the bench top, Weary looked back down into the gully.
"Mamma! That's a lot of meat, Chip," he observed in a shocked tone. "J.G's a lot poorer than he thought he was."
"It'll be paid for," Chip said shortly, though he could have had no clear idea of just how it would be paid. Uneasily he was adding the little column of figures again, as his horse walked steadily up the slope. He was hoping that he had made a mistake, but there it was. Eighty-three which they had found and inspected; how many more there might be hidden away in this broken country he had not the courage to guess. They hadn't found them all; he knew that.
He had put away the book again and was fumbling for the button to close his flapping overcoat, when the heavy canvas gave a vicious twitch in his fingers. It wasn't the wind. He glanced down at his coat, gasped with astonishment and spurred ahead into the shelter of a brush patch. And as he did so, the faint pow-w of a rifle shot came to his ears, the sound dimmed by distance and almost whipped away entirely by the gusty howl of the wind.
II. — CHIP TAKES THE HINT
WEARY turned with a twinkle in his eyes at the sudden haste Chip displayed. "What's the matter? Got a snake bite?" he inquired mildly, knowing full well that the hardiest snake would scarcely be abroad in March.
"No. A flea," Chip came back at him instantly, while he pulled up to search the gully with his eyes.
Big Butch without a doubt, he was thinking; Big Butch or one of his men, trying to get even for Cash Farley. Not even a wisp of smoke across the gulch gave a clue to his whereabouts, and to go back and search for him was worse than useless. He might be anywhere amongst the rocks and brush on the farther wall, and to reach him except with a bullet was practically impossible. No use saying anything to Weary about it, either. Might stir him up to want to go hunting the shooter—and while they were getting into the gully and across to the other side, they would be easy targets. Chip had enough experience with that sort of thing to feel no desire whatever to make the attempt.
It was plain Weary had not heard the shot. "No more carcass hunting to-day," he declared, misinterpreting Chip's pause. "You couldn't get me down into another coulee on a bet. I've got enough on my mind with them eighty-three we already counted. Come on. We'll pick up them horses and hit for home. That's work enough for to-day, if you ask me."
"I'd like to get one crack at whoever's doing it," Chip said, reining reluctantly alongside. "I'll sure do it too."
"Not here and now you won't. Gosh, that wind's a corker, ain't it? I feel like my bones are packed in ice. For the lordsake, Chip, come on!"
They overtook the horses just as they were swinging off toward another coulee to get out of the wind, and hazed them along at a hard gallop across the bench and down a gravelly ridge. Heads bowed to the bitter wind, they rode doggedly, eyes red and smarting. On this bare slope the gale gouged loose patches of gravel and flung it in clouds high into the air. Small pebbles flew like hailstones, pelting horses and riders alike. The short grass, its curly blades showing green at the roots, whipped flat to the ground.
Hating to face the cruel blast, the loose horses spread out where they could and tried to dodge back to more sheltered places they knew; but two shrill-voiced demons seemed always just where escape was most easily blocked, and outguessed them, outran them, turned them back into the teeth of the wind. Manes and tails whipping, ears laid back, they tore down the hill, blinding their captors in the dust their unshod hoofs flung up for the whooping gale to seize and sweep along; a wild and picturesque flight which a Russell would have loved to paint.
The brushy bottomland of Flying U creek received them at last. A hundred yards from the new pasture fence below the camp Chip spurred ahead to open the gate. The half-broken horses shied, snorted in pretended panic and streamed through the opening, and Weary swung off to drag the wire-and-pole gate into place again and fasten it with the chain loop.
"What'll we do, Chip—tell J.G. right away about them butchered steers, or wait maybe till morning?" he wanted to know, as he galloped up alongside again.
"Why wait? It's got to be told."
"Yeah, it's got to be told. But I thought we might maybe give the Old Man one more night's sleep before he knows it." He leaned and spat wide of his horse. "Just as you say, though."
Chip rode ten rods at a walk, his hands clamped over the saddle horn, his slim young body swaying slightly in perfect rhythm with his horse's steps, like a dancer catching the beat of the music that is in his blood. He drew his teeth gently across wind-chapped underlip while he came to a decision and suddenly he looked at Weary.
"It's something more than slaughtered beef," he said, and caught the edge of his coat between thumb and finger, turning it out for Weary to see. "That's why I jumped my horse behind the brush. Pretty good shooting, when you take distance and wind into consideration. Whoever did it, he was so far off you didn't hear the shot. I did, because I was listening for it."
"Mamma!" gasped Weary, leaning to squint at the round hole with its brownish rim. "Took you all this while to jar loose a word about it, hunh? You sure are a mouthy guy!"
"What was the use? We couldn't get at him. He was over across the gully, cached somewhere in the rocks. Been watching us, most likely. The funny part is that he waited till we were both almost out of sight before he made up his mind to take a shot at us."
"That ain't funny," Weary corrected him soberly. "That's luck."
"That's enlightening, you mean. Shows who it is he really wanted to get."
"You?"
"Who else? He let you get by into the brush. For that matter, he let us both get out of the gully and up on the ridge where we couldn't very well take after him—which shows he didn't want a gun battle on his hands. All he wanted was to pot me while he had the chance."
"I wish," said Weary complainingly, "you'd of said something about it at the time, Chip. I'd 'a' gone back after the dirty son-of-a-gun."
"And that," Chip retorted, "is exactly why I didn't say anything about it."
"No," Weary made sarcastic comment, "I suppose you'd let him beef yuh like he did them steers, before you'd condescend to mention the fact. You sure are a self-sufficient cuss, but some of these days you'll bump into the fact that you can't buck this game all by your lonesome."
"Yes?"
"Yes! Daw-gone you, yes! Sometimes, Chip, you make me so damn mad—"
"Because why? I haven't done a thing, so far."
"Mamma!" sighed Weary. "Ain't I just been telling yuh? It's you trying to play a lone hand that started all this ruckus in the first place. If you'd passed the word to us boys, that day at Cow Island, instead of foggin' off after Cash Farley by yourself, you wouldn't be getting buttonholes cut in your coat like this, maybe."
"I don't see how you figure that. I got the horse I went after, didn't I? If I'd waited to holler for help—"
"You'd of showed your brains," Weary finished the sentence, according to his own ideas. "We'd likely have tangled with Cash right then and there, and chances are he'd of been laid away. That would of settled it. Instead of that, you let him go and frame up ways of getting even. Now the Flying U's out two, three carloads of beef, to say nothing of that bunch of horses they got away with last summer."
"Rub it in, why don't you?" Chip inquired acrimoniously. "You've changed your tune, seems to me. I thought it wasn't the Butch Lewis gang doing all this?"
"Well, it ain't." Weary's face relaxed into a brief grin. "I'm just carrying out your argument, is all—running you into a corner with it. It's this idea you've got of bowin' your neck and going head on after a thing. I'm showin' you how you pan out when you try and take things into your own hands. If this is Big Butch's work, which it ain't by a long shot, and if you're chump enough to try and settle with him alone, which you couldn't do, why, I'm tellin' yuh right now, Chip, that Big Butch'd just make one bite of you."
"Oh, go to hell!" snorted Chip, and pulled the big collar of his sour-dough coat higher around his ears as he spurred his horse into a faster pace.
"If I do, I'll sure have you along for company," Weary retorted. "You certainly are about as bullheaded a cuss as I ever met up with."
To that statement Chip deigned no reply, and with ill feeling between them for the first time in months, they rode in silence to the creek, splashed through a paper-thin glaze of new ice and loped up to the corral. In silence they unsaddled, stabled their horses and went crunching through freezing mud on the path to the cabins. Where the trail forked near the bunk house, Chip swung off toward Jim Whitmore's cabin, conscious of Weary's surprised glance as he went on.
An uneasy feeling that Weary was right, that nothing would be gained by telling J.G. now of his loss, slowed Chip down to a laggard pace which halted beside the little square window beside the door. Glancing in, he saw J.G. lying on his bunk asleep, his lips gently puffing in and out with the subdued snores he emitted. The lamplight shone on the bald patch coming on his head...
Seconds ago the bunk house door had slammed behind Weary. Chip looked that way, looked in again at the window. When a cowboy is in doubt, he usually rolls a cigarette,—or did in the days before the tailor-mades. Chip took his time doing it, his thoughts dwelling miserably upon the trouble and loss he had caused Jim Whitmore in the months since he had come riding north, looking for his brother Wane. Discord and enmity seemed to have followed him like a cloud of hungry mosquitoes.
There was the trouble at Cow Island, when he had been all but hung on a trumped-up charge of stealing his own horses. Dave Burch and Tom Shaner, glorying in their authority as leaders of the Vigilantes, would never forgive the Flying U for making them back down.
And there was the Butch Lewis outfit (or maybe his name was Butch McGoon; Hec Grimes at Cow Island had called him that). His trouble with Cash Farley, one of Butch's men, was the direct cause of all this beef stealing now. Chip would have sworn to that. All through the summer he had piled up trouble for good old J.G., and now he had to go in and tell him of this last outrage. His cigarette was smoked down to the stub before he could bring himself to the ordeal; a bitter thing to face—but it wouldn't be better for the waiting.
III. — A MAN-SIZE JOB
HIS cigarette was smoked down to the stub when he heard a prodigious yawn inside. He pinched out the fire in his cigarette, ground the stub carefully under his heel and opened the door.
He was not long in the cabin. When he came out, his eyes held a bleak look they had not worn before. Opposite the window he halted again for a glance inside—and flinched at what he saw; J.G. sitting on the edge of his bunk, absently crowding fresh tobacco into his pipe, while he stared unseeingly at the wall before him, looking somehow years older than he had ten minutes ago, when he lay peacefully asleep after a hard day in the saddle.
One look and a sharp indrawn breath, and Chip turned away and walked with squared shoulders to the bunk house. Instant silence fell upon the place when he opened the door. The Happy Family, evidently deep in discussion a moment before, sat in awkward self-consciousness as he came in and pushed the door shut with a twist of his shoulder. Eyes followed him to the stove, watched him while he stood there with his back turned upon them, warming his hands. For all the sign he gave, the room might have been empty—which was the cold aloof way he had when life struck at him too harshly. And for the moment no one seemed willing to batter against that wall of silence with which he held them off.
Then Weary, combing his thick dark hair before the small mirror that made him crouch down to see himself in it, he was so tall, turned with the comb poised just over his right ear.
"Well, what'd he say, Chip?" he asked, with a complete disregard of any past disagreement. "Jar loose a little information, can't yuh? What's J.G. think about it?"
"I didn't ask him what he thought."
Cal Emmett, sure to blunder into touchy subjects, gave a constrained laugh. "Hear you've been annexin' some extra buttonholes, Chip."
Chip half turned toward him. "Yes? News travels fast in this country." His tone was tart.
"Meaning I'm too damn gabby," sighed Weary. "Sure, I told the boys about that. Keep 'em off the sky line, maybe, till we can glom the jasper that done it. Take a look at that hole, boys."
He came over to Chip, looked straight into his moody hazel eyes with his own sunny blue ones, and twitched the sheepskin-lined canvas coat open. "See that? If Chip had been setting three inches forward, that bullet would of bored plumb through his lungs and heart sideways. That's—"
"His what?" Cal Emmett chortled, to hide the shock he felt.
"Oh, he's got a heart, all right. You ask that family of silver-maned horses of hisn." Weary gave the coat an affectionate yank and let Chip go. "Mamma! A little better shooting, and I'd 'a' had to pack him all the way home against that wind. You can't," he plaintively explained, "drive a bunch of horses worth a damn when you're packin' a corpse on a led horse behind yuh."
From the corner of his eye he saw Chip grin at that oblique acknowledgment of gratitude, and a tension left Weary's mouth. "The great and burning question now is, who do we know that's as good a rifle shot as that? Three hundred yards, if it was an inch, and a high wind to allow for."
"Aw," Happy Jack croaked unbelievingly, "there ain't nobody that good a shot. I betcha he was aimin' at somep'm in the gully and shot over."
"Shep Taylor's a wiz with a rifle," Ted Culver offered. "Been sellin' beef all winter too. Yuh mind, Cal, we met him and Snuffle haulin' two four-horse loads out to the fort. That was about a month ago, when we was comin' out from Dry Lake."
Weary gave a quick shake of the head. "Wouldn't be Shep. Way I figure, it's some of them nesters that moved in last fall down along them creek bottoms. Shep Taylor's an ornery cuss to work for, but he's straight. I'd bank on that."
"Just the same, I wouldn't put it past the Hobble-O," Ted persisted. "By gosh, if I'd of known what was goin' on, I'd sure as hell clumb up and took a look in them wagons. I'll gamble there was more hind quarters than there was front."
At the washbasin Chip lathered hands and face with a cake of yellow soap and listened to the argument that ensued. Some of the others seemed to think the Hobble-O was guilty, though Weary stoutly defended the ginger-whiskered, irascible old Shep Taylor. Not once, Chip noticed, did anyone mention Butch Lewis as a possible suspect, nor any of his outfit. Their studied attempt to throw the blame elsewhere made his lip curl. They couldn't pull that sort of thing on him, he told himself. They must be crazy if they thought all this chewing the rag would make him change his mind about it.
At the time he failed to appreciate their motive as a friendly attempt to ease his feeling of responsibility. At supper he ate in silence, his eyes turned toward his plate. For one thing he had no wish to see J.G's face, with its deeper lines of worry, nor did he want to meet his boss's grave, questioning glance. What had passed between them there in the cabin stood out in Chip's consciousness as if all must see the words written in the air. Food choked him. Hungry as he had been, he was the first to push back his plate and straddle backward over the bench at the long table, and he knew that glances followed him when he left the mess house.
In his bunk, with his face turned to the wall and his blankets pulled up over his ears so that only his brown scalp lock was visible, he lay thinking miserably of many things best forgotten. It seemed to him that a curse lay on his life, though why that was so he could not understand. For himself he did not greatly care—or so he said to himself that night. He could take all the hard knocks Fate wanted to hand out to him and take them on his feet. But why must he carry trouble with him to the place that had come to be the only home he knew anywhere in the world? Why must good old J.G. suffer because he had taken in a hoodoo?
Youth touches the heights of exaltation and plumbs the depths of despair. Long after the bunk house was dark and silent, save for the snoring of weary young men asleep, Chip Bennett lay motionless under his blankets, every nerve athrob with thoughts too bitter for the boy he was, after all was said. Toward morning he slept, but he did not waken to any brighter mood, and he lay in bed until after the others had gone to breakfast.
Then he rose and dressed quickly and busied himself about his bunk. When he went at last to his breakfast, his warbag was packed, his blankets rolled in his bed tarp. The last stragglers joshed him a little and went their way, telling each other that Chip was a damn fool to fight his head over something he couldn't help. And they saddled and went off to comb the range for more saddle horses to throw in the pasture and shape up for spring round-up, planning as they rode how they would handle the beef butchers if they could have their way, and wondering what action J.G. meant to take. They speculated somewhat upon the fact that so far he had not said a word about it, even to Shorty. It was damned queer. They wondered if maybe Chip had lost his nerve after all and didn't tell the Old Man about it.
The trouble was that Chip had not lost his nerve. Jim Whitmore would have felt better if he had. He waited in his cabin, smoking and walking, restless as a caged grizzly, from window to window, pausing at each to look out into the windy, sun-drenched morning. Standing at one window, he saw Chip saddle the blue roan he liked best in his string, and ride away to the upper pasture. Moving uneasily to the opposite window, he watched until Chip came riding back to the corral leading Mike, his own private saddle horse. The others, Jeff the pack horse, Silvia and her two colts, Rummy the irrepressible two-year-old and little Silver the yearling, trotted eagerly behind and around him. They seemed to know that they were going to travel new trails. Their tossing silver manes, the way they lifted rumps at one another in sheer exuberance, told eloquently of their elation.
Jim Whitmore grunted an oath and clamped his teeth down on his pipestem. He turned away from the window—and turned back again, muttering something about a damned young fool. He watched until, saddle changed to Mike's back and the empty packsaddle cinched gauntly on Jeff, Chip stepped limberly astride Mike and trotted up to the bunk house. He waited, smoking furiously in savagely spasmodic puffs, until Chip led his horses up to his door, dropped reins and came in.
J.G. glared at him through a blue cloud. "Bound you'll act the damn fool, ay? Can't take advice from nobody, I s'pose?"
"Not in this case, I can't." Chip looked at him, a swift glance that looked away again. "There's times when a man's got to pick his own trail."
"Man!" J.G. snorted. "Better wait till you're old enough to vote! Wait till you're dry behind the ears—"
"I'm old enough to tackle any job I know is mine, J.G." Chip spoke gruffly, perhaps to hide how shaken he was. "You wouldn't have much use for a fellow that wouldn't."
Jim Whitmore yanked his pipe from his mouth, glared at it, cursed it for having burned itself out. He turned away to the blanketed table, turned back with his hand outstretched. "Well, here's your pay. Don't go actin' the fool any more'n you have to." He thrust his pipe into his pocket, took it out again, looked at it and thrust it cold between his teeth. "Well, so long. Take care of yourself—and if you—don't be any bigger fool than the good Lord made yuh."
"I'll try not to. Uh—good-by."
He picked up Mike's reins as if he were in a great hurry to be gone, swung into the saddle and trotted away down along the pasture fence and so out into the old Whoop-up Trail that wound its devious way southward to the river and across to the hills beyond.
IV. — HORSES FOR SALE
BARR LANG stood in the doorway of his hotel dining room and eyed the little group of horses clustered about his hitch rail. Across the road at the blacksmith shop, Dave Burch, captain of the Vigilantes (also expert blacksmith between hangings) smoothed his grizzled beard and stared at Chip from under shaggy brows. No doubt he was thinking of the time he came near hanging that young fellow across the way, thinking those same horses had been stolen. Chip thought of it and hated himself for the crimply chill that went up his spine into the roots of his hair, when he saw Burch's cold gaze upon him. For that he walked a little straighter to the door of Lang's store, crowded in between hotel and saloon on the long platform.
Barr Lang came toward him with his fat-throated chuckle. "Well! Looks like you're pullin' your freight! Ain't quittin' the Flying U, are you?"
"Kinda looks that way, don't it?" Then Chip repented of his churlishness. "Yes, I'm heading south again, Mr. Lang. How about a little grub?"
"Sure, sure! Jim'll fix ya up, all right. So you're headin' back down the trail, ay? Colorado, I s'pose?"
