The Flying U Ranch by B. M. Bower (best books to read TXT) 📕

“Come and eat your breakfast first, boys, anyway.” Weary had his hand upon the door-knob. “A few minutes more won't make any difference, one way or the other.” He went out and over to the mess-house to see if Patsy had the coffee ready; for this was a good three-quarters of an hour earlier than the Flying U outfit usually bestirred themselves on these days of preparation for roundup and waiting for good grass.

“I'll be darned if I'd be as calm as he is,” Cal Emmett muttered while the door was being closed. “Good thing the Old Man ain't here, now. He'd go straight up in the air. He wouldn't wait for no breakfast.”

“I betche there'll be a killin' yet, before we're through with them sheep,” gloomed Happy Jack. “When sheepherders starts in once to be ornery, there ain't no way uh stoppin' 'em except by killin' 'em off. And that'll mean the pen for a lot of us fellers—”

“Well, by golly, it won't be me,” Slim declared loudly. “Yuh wouldn't ketch me goin' t' jail for no doggone sheepherder. They oughta be a bounty on 'en by rights.”

“Seems queer they'd be right back here this morning, after being hazed out yesterday afternoon,” said Andy Green thoughtfully. “Looks like they're plumb anxious to build a lot of trouble for themselves.”

Patsy, thumping energetically the bottom of a tin pan, sent them trooping to the mess-house. There it was evident that the breakfast had been unduly hurried; there were no biscuits in sight, for one thing, though Patsy was lumbering about the stove frying hot-cakes. They were in too great a hurry to wait for them, however. They swallowed their coffee hurriedly, bolted a few mouthfuls of meat and fried eggs, and let it go at that.

Weary looked at then with a faint smile. “I'm going to give a few of you fellows a chance to herd sheep to-day,” he announced, cooling his coffee so that it would not actually scald his palate. “That's why I wanted you to get some grub into you. Some of you fellows will have to take the trail up on the hill, and meet us outside the fence, so when we chase 'em through you can make a good job of it this time. I wonder—”

“You don't need to call out the troops for that job; one man is enough to put the fear uh the Lord into then herders,” Andy remarked slightingly. “Once they're on the move—”

“All right, my boy; we'll let you be the man,” Weary told him promptly. “I was going to have a bunch of you take a packadero outfit down toward Boiler Bottom and comb the breaks along there for horses—and I sure do hate to spend the whole day chasing sheepherders around over the country. So we'll haze 'em through the fence again, and, seeing you feel that way about it, I'll let you go around and keep 'em going. And, if you locate their camp, kinda impress it on the tender, if you can round him up, that the Flying U ain't pasturing sheep this spring. No matter what kinda talk he puts up, you put the run on 'em till you see 'em across One-Man coulee. Better have Patsy put you up a lunch—unless you're fond of mutton.”

Andy twisted his mouth disgustedly. “Say, I'm going to quit handing out any valuable advice to you, Weary,” he expostulated.

“Haw-haw-haw-w-w!” laughed Big Medicine, and slapped Andy on the shoulder so that his face almost came in contact with his plate. “Yuh will try to work some innercent man into sheepherdin', will yuh? Haw-haw-haw-w! You'll come in tonight blattin'—if yuh don't stay out on the range tryin' t' eat grass, by cripes! Andy had a little lamb that follered him around—”

“Better let Bud take that herdin' job, Weary,” Andy suggested. “It won't hurt him—he's blattin' already.”

“If you think you're liable to need somebody along,” Weary began, soft-heartedly relenting, “why, I guess—”

“If I can't handle two crazy sheepherders without any help, by gracious, I'll get me a job holdin' yarn in an old ladies' hone,” Andy cut in hastily, and got up from the table. “Being a truthful man, I can't say I'm stuck on the job; but I'm game for it. And I'll promise you there won't be no more sheep of that brand lickin' our doorsteps. What darned outfit is it, anyway? I never bumped into any Dot sheep before, to my knowledge.”

“It's a new one on me,” Weary testified, heading the procession down to the stable. “If they belonged anywhere in this part of the country, though, they wouldn't be acting the way they are. They'd be wise to the fact that it ain't healthy.”

Even while he spoke his eyes were fixed with cold intensity upon a fringe of gray across the coulee below the little pasture. To the nostrils of the outraged Happy Family was borne that indescribable aroma which betrays the presence of sheep; that aroma which sheepmen love and which cattlemen hate, and which a favorable wind will carry a long way.

They slapped saddles on their horses in record time that morning, and raced down the coulee ironically shouting commiserating sentences to the unfortunate Andy, who rode slowly up to the mess-house for the lunch which Patsy had waiting for him in a flour sack, and afterward climbed the grade and loped along outside the line fence to a point opposite the sheep and the shouting horsemen, who forced them back by weight of numbers.

This morning the herders were not quite so passive. The bug-killer still scowled, but he spoke without the preliminary sulky silence of the day before,

“We're goin' across the coulee,” he growled. “Them's orders. We range south uh here.”

“No, you don't,” Weary dissented calmly. “Not by a long shot, you don't. You're going back where you come from—if you ask me. And you're going quick!”