The Quirt Read online

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  THE QUIRT

  =By B.M. Bower=

  GOOD INDIAN

  LONESOME LAND

  THE UPHILL CLIMB

  THE GRINGOS

  THE RANCH AT THE WOLVERINE

  THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND

  JEAN OF THE LAZY A

  THE PHANTOM HERD

  THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX

  STARR, OF THE DESERT

  THE LOOKOUT MAN

  CABIN FEVER

  SKYRIDER

  THE THUNDER BIRD

  RIM O' THE WORLD

  THE QUIRT

  Al's gun spoke, and Warfield sagged at the knees and theshoulders, and slumped to the ground. FRONTISPIECE. _See page 294._]

  THE QUIRT

  BYB.M. BOWER

  WITH FRONTISPIECE BYANTON OTTO FISCHER

  BOSTONLITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY1920

  _Copyright, 1920,_

  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

  * * * *

  _All rights reserved_

  Published May, 1920Reprinted, May, 1920Reprinted, July, 1920Reprinted, October, 1920

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I. LITTLE FISH 1

  II. THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE 12

  III. REALITY IS WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING 22

  IV. "SHE'S A GOOD GIRL WHEN SHE AIN'T CRAZY" 38

  V. A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT" 54

  VI. LONE ADVISES SILENCE 68

  VII. THE MAN AT WHISPER 85

  VIII. "IT TAKES NERVE JUST TO HANG ON" 100

  IX. THE EVIL EYE OF THE SAWTOOTH 115

  X. ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT" 126

  XI. SWAN TALKS WITH HIS THOUGHTS 144

  XII. THE QUIRT PARRIES THE FIRST BLOW 158

  XIII. LONE TAKES HIS STAND 168

  XIV. "FRANK'S DEAD" 178

  XV. SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE 192

  XVI. THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND 200

  XVII. YACK DON'T LIE 216

  XVIII. "I THINK AL WOODRUFF'S GOT HER" 233

  XIX. SWAN CALLS FOR HELP 245

  XX. KIDNAPPED 255

  XXI. "OH, I COULD KILL YOU!" 264

  XXII. "YACK, I LICK YOU GOOD IF YOU BARK" 277

  XXIII. "I COULDA LOVED THIS LITTLE GIRL" 284

  XXIV. ANOTHER STORY BEGINS 296

  THE QUIRT

  CHAPTER ONE

  LITTLE FISH

  Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none toogracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rockystretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channelin the center where what water there was hurried along to the poolsbelow. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in aplatter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed thepools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle, asthe double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.

  A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-downherd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so,though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the SawtoothCattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands andwhose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep themgoing; older too than many a modest ranch that had flourished awhile andhad finished as line-camps of the Sawtooth when the Sawtooth boughtranch and brand for a lump sum that looked big to the rancher, whoimmediately departed to make himself a new home elsewhere: older thanothers which had somehow gone to pieces when the rancher died or went tothe penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief.There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern againstoutlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands.

  The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions. Hunterand Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and for a mileand a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hired two men,cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fed theircattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously through thesummer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay their grocerybill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buy whatclothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fell ill.Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey to rheumatismthat sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionally indulged himselfin a gallon or so of bad whisky and suffered afterwards from a badlyderanged digestion.

  Their house was a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier to getthan lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result ofcircumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from the mountain-sidelogs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to cut the long onesany shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a little closer totheir wilderness--as, go where you will, the outside world has a way ofdoing--he had built a lean-to shed against the cabin from what lumberthere was left after building a cowshed against the log barn.

  In the early days, Brit had had a wife and two children, but the wifecould not endure the loneliness of the ranch nor the inconvenience ofliving in a two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying overrattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell outand live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, andbecause he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shankedspurs ajingle on his heels and a snakeskin band around his hat, andbecause a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a storyin a book.

  Adventure, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognized and appreciatedonly at a distance. Mrs. Hunter lost the perspective of romance andadventure, and shed tears because there was sufficient mineral in thewater to yellow her week's washing, and for various other causes whichshe had never foreseen and to which she refused to resign herself.

  Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatumto Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take thechildren and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except thepost-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where afellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.Brit could not imagine himself actually _living_, day after day, in atown. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in arestaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days whenhe had meant to finish his business in one, because there was anawfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there wasgoing to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintancewith her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,and be reasonably certain of a favorable answer.

  Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friendand neighbor, who had taken all the land the government would allow oneman to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him. Theyhad planned to run cattle together, had their brand already recorded,and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young cows.Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when the irateMrs. Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardize his right to the land.

  Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would bea cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and naggingcomplaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved upand came down to live with him, and
the partnership began to wear intopermanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and wrangledtogether like brothers.

  For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then shewrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royalwas old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for themas she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honor andprotect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if hedid not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.

  Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnlywhile they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing theunearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel thatthey could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of thequestion. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncherfancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnieand enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar banknote. With the two dollars and ahalf which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to a mail-orderhouse for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwards because the coatwas not "wind and water proof" as advertised in the catalogue.

  More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a notice thathe was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. He felthurt, because, as he pointed out to Frank, he was perfectly willing tosupport Minnie and the kids if they came back where he could have achance. He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and received no reply.Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself from him, andthat she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.

  To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard fromthe children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough towrite. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have anymoney to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed,as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children weregrowing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattlingyoungsters whom Minnie was forever worrying over and who seemed to havebeen always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of hiswagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sagewhile he and their distracted mother searched for them. For a longwhile--how many years Brit could not remember--they had been living inLos Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The girl,Lorraine--Minnie had wanted fancy names for the kids, and Britapologized whenever he spoke of them, which was seldom--Lorraine hadwritten that "Mamma has an apartment house." That had soundedprosperous, even at the beginning. And as the years passed and theiraddress remained the same, Brit became fixed in the belief that the CasaGrande was all that its name implied, and perhaps more. Minnie must begetting rich. She had a picture of the place on the stationery whichLorraine used when she wrote him. There were two palm trees in front,with bay windows behind them, and pillars. Brit used to study thesemagnificences and thank God that Minnie was doing so well. He nevercould have given her a home like that. Brit sometimes added that he hadnever been cut out for a married man, anyway.

  Old-timers forgot that Brit had ever been married, and late comers neverheard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit were oldbachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town only whenthey needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinnedscornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all therange gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talkedpolitics nor told which candidates received their two votes. They keptthe same two men season after season,--leathery old range hands witheyes that saw whatever came within their field of vision, and with thegift of silence, which is rare.

  If you know anything at all about cattlemen, you will know that theQuirt was a poor man's ranch, when I tell you that Hunter and Johnsonmilked three cows and made butter, fed a few pigs on the skim milk andthe alfalfa stalks which the saddle horses and the cows disdained toeat, kept a flock of chickens, and sold what butter, eggs and pork theydid not need for themselves. Cattlemen seldom do that. More often theybuy milk in small tin cans, butter in "squares," and do without eggs.

  Four of a kind were the men of the TJ up-and-down, and even BillWarfield--president and general manager of the Sawtooth Cattle Company,and of the Federal Reclamation Company and several other companies,State senator and general benefactor of the Sawtooth country--even thegreat Bill Warfield lifted his hat to the owners of the Quirt when hemet them, and spoke of them as "the finest specimens of our old,fast-vanishing type of range men." Senator Warfield himself representedthe modern type of range man and was proud of his progressiveness. Nevera scheme for the country's development was hatched but you would findSenator Warfield closely allied with it, his voice the deciding one whenpolicies and progress were being discussed.

  As to the Sawtooth, forty thousand acres comprised their holdings underpatents, deeds and long-time leases from the government. Another twentythousand acres they had access to through the grace of the owners, andthere was forest-reserve grazing besides, which the Sawtooth could haveif it chose to pay the nominal rental sum. The Quirt ranch was almostsurrounded by Sawtooth land of one sort or another, though there wasscant grazing in the early spring on the sagebrush wilderness to thesouth. This needed Quirt Creek for accessible water, and Quirt Creek,save where it ran through cut-bank hills, was fenced within the sectionand a half of the TJ up-and-down.

  So there they were, small fish making shift to live precariously withother small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fishnow and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other smallfish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would leavethe pool for the safe shallows beyond.

  This is a tale of the little fishes.