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Coupled with that bit of ill-tidings, the brief note from Chip, saying very little about the Old Man, but implying a good deal by its very omissions, would have been enough to send the Happy Family to sleepless beds that night if they had been the kind to endure with silent fortitude their troubles.
“If you fellers would back me up,” brooded Big Medicine down by the corral after supper, “I’d see to it them sheep never gits across the coulee, by cripes! I’d send ‘em so far the other way they’d git plumb turned around and forgit they ever wanted to go south.”
“It’s all Dunk’s devilishness,” Jack Bates declared. “He could take them in the other way, even if the feed ain’t so good along the trail. It’s most all prairie-dog towns—but that’s good enough for sheep.” Jack, in his intense partisanship, spoke as if sheep were not entitled to decent grass at any time or under any circumstances.
“Them herders packin’ guns looks to me like they’re goin’ to make trouble if they kin,” gloomed Happy Jack. “I betche they’ll kill somebody before they’re through. When sheepmen gits mean—”
Pink picked up his rope and started for the large corral, where a few saddle horses had been driven in just before supper and had not yet been turned out.
“You fellows can stand around and chew the rag, if you want to,” he said caustically, “and wait for Weary to make a war-talk. But I’m going to keep cases on them Dots, if I have to stand an all-night guard on ‘em. I don’t blame Weary; he’s looking out for the law-and-order business—and that’s all right. But I’m not in charge of the outfit. I’m going to do as I darn please, and, if they don’t like my style, they can give me my time.”
“Good for you, Little One!” Big Medicine hurried to overtake him so that he might slap him on the shoulder with his favorite, sledge-hammer method of signifying his approval of a man’s sentiments. “Honest to grandma, I was just b’ginnin’ to think this bunch was gitting all streaked up with yeller. ‘Course, we ain’t goin’ to wait for no official orders, by cripes! I’d ruther lock Weary up in the blacksmith shop than let him tell us to go ahead. Go awn and tell him a good, stiff lie, Andy—just to keep him interested while us fellers make a gitaway. He ain’t in on this; we don’t want him in on it.”
“What yuh goin’ to do?” Happy Jack inquired suspiciously. “Yuh can’t go and monkey with them sheep, er them herders. They ain’t on our land. And, if you don’t git killed, old Dunk’ll fix yuh like he fixed the Gordon boys—I know him—to a fare-you-well. It’d tickle him to death to git something on us fellers. I betche that’s what he’s aiming t’do. Git us to fightin’ his outfit so’s’t—”
“Oh, go off and lie down!” Andy implored him contemptuously. “We’re going to hang those herders, and drive the sheep all over a cut-back somewhere, like Jesus done to the hogs, and then we’re going over and murder old Dunk, if he’s at home, and burn the house to hide the guilty deed. And, if the sheriff comes snooping around, asking disagreeable questions, we’ll all swear you done it. So now you know our plans; shut your face and go on to bed. And be sure,” he added witheringly, “you pull the soogans over your head, so you won’t hear the dying shriek of our victims. We’re liable to get kinda excited and torture ‘em a while before we kill ‘em.”
“Aw, gwan!” gulped Happy Jack mechanically. “You make me sick! If yuh think I’m goin’ to swaller all that, you’re away off! You wouldn’t dast do nothing of the kind; and, if yuh did, you’d sure have a sweet time layin’ it onto me!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled the Native Son, with a slow, velvet-eyed glance, “any jury in the country would hang you on your looks, Happy. I knew a man down in the lower part of California, who was arrested, tried and hanged for murder. And all the evidence there was against him was the fact that he was seen within five miles of the place on the same day the murder was committed; and his face. They had an expert physiognomist there, and he swore that the fellow had the face of a murderer; the poor devil looked like a criminal—and, though he had one of the best lawyers on the Coast, it was adios for him.”
“I s’pose you mean I got the face of a criminal!” sputtered Happy Jack. “It ain’t always the purty fellers that wins out—like you ‘n’ Pink. I never seen the purty man yit that was worth the powder it’d take to blow him up! Aw, you fellers make me sick!” He went off, muttering his opinion of them all, and particularly of the Native Son, who smiled while he listened. “You go awn and start something—and you’ll wisht you hadn’t,” they heard him croak from the big gate, and chuckled over his wrath.
As a matter of fact, the Happy Family, as a whole, or as individuals, had no intention of committing any great violence that evening. Pink wanted to see just where this new band of sheep was spending the night, and to find out, if possible, what were the herders’ intentions. Since the boys were all restless under their worry, and, since there is a contagious element in seeking a trouble-zone, none save Happy Jack, who was “sore” at them, and Weary stayed behind in the coulee with old Patsy while the others rode away up the grade and out toward Antelope coulee beyond.
They meant only to reconnoiter, and to warn the herders against attempting to cross Flying U coulee; though they were not exactly sure that they would be perfectly polite, or that they would confine themselves rigidly to the language they were wont to employ at dances. Andy Green, in particular, seemed rather to look forward with pleasure to the meeting. Andy, by the way, had remained heartbrokenly passive during that whole week, because Weary had extracted from him a promise which Andy, mendacious though he had the name of being, felt constrained to keep intact. Though of a truth it irked him much to think of two sheepherders walking abroad unpunished for their outrage upon his person.
Weary, as he had made plain to them all, wanted to avoid trouble if it were possible to do so. And, though they grinned together in secret over his own affair with Dunk—which was not, in their opinion, exactly pacific—they meant to respect his wishes as far as human nature was able to do so. So that the Happy Family, galloping toward the red sunset and the great, gray blot on the prairie, just where the glory of the west tinged the grass blades with red, were not one-half as blood-thirsty as they had proclaimed themselves to be.
While they were yet afar off they could see two men walking slowly in the immediate vicinity of the huddled band. A hundred yards away was a small tent, with a couple of horses picketed near by and feeding placidly. The men turned, gazed long at their approach, and walked to the tent, which they entered somewhat hastily.
“Look at ‘em dodge outa sight, will you!” cried Cal Emmett, and lifted up his voice in the yell which sometimes announced the Happy Family’s arrival in Dry Lake after a long, thirsty absence on roundup. Other voices joined in after that first, shrill “Ow-ow-ow-eee!” of Cal’s; so that presently the whole lot of them were emitting nerve-crimping yells and spurring their horses into a thunder of hoofbeats, as they bore down upon the tent. Between howls they laughed, picturing to themselves four terrified sheepherders cowering within those frail, canvas walls.
“I’m a rambler, and a gambler, and far from my ho-o-me, And if yuh don’t like me, jest leave me alo-o-ne!” chanted Big Medicine most horribly, and finished with a yell that almost scared himself and set his horse to plunging wildly.
“Come out of there, you lop-eared mutton-chewers, and let us pick the wool outa your teeth!” shouted Andy Green, telling himself hastily that this was not breaking his promise to Weary, and yielding to the temptation of coming as close to the guilty persons as he might; for, while these were not the men who had tied him and left him alone on the prairie, they belonged to the same outfit, and there was some comfort in giving them a few disagreeable minutes.
Pink, in the lead, was turning to ride around the tent, still yelling, when someone within the tent fired a rifle—and did not aim as high as he should. The bullet zipped close over the head of Big