The Flying U Ranch by B. M. Bower (ebook reader online free txt) 📕

body swaying far

over to one side. Even as he went hurtling past them his hold

grew slack and he slumped, head foremost, to the ground. The

brown horse gave a startled leap away from him and went on with

empty stirrups flapping.

 

They sprang down and lifted him to a less awkward position, and

Big Medicine pillowed the sweat-dampened, carroty head in the

hollow of his arm. Those who had been in the lead looked back

startled when the brown horse tore past them with that empty

saddle; saw what had happened, wheeled and galloped back. They

dismounted and stood silently grouped about poor, ungainly Happy

Jack, lying there limp and motionless in Big Medicine’s arms. Not

one of them remembered then that there was a man with a rifle not

more than two hundred yards away; or, if they did, they quite

forgot that the rifle might be dangerous to themselves. They were

thinking of Happy Jack.

 

Happy Jack, butt of all their jokes and jibes; Happy the croaker,

the lugubrious forecaster of trouble; Happy Jack, the ugliest,

the stupidest, the softest-hearted man of them all. He had

“betched” there would be someone killed, over these Dot sheep; he

had predicted trouble of every conceivable kind; and they had

laughed at him, swore at him, lied to him, “joshed” him

unmercifully, and kept him in a state of chronic indignation,

never dreaming that the memory of it would choke them and strike

them dumb with that horrible, dull weight in their chests with

which men suffer when a woman would find the relief of weeping.

 

“Where’s he hurt?” asked Weary, in the repressed tone which only

tragedy can bring into a man’s voice, and knelt beside Big

Medicine.

 

“I dunno—through the lungs, I guess; my sleeve’s gitting soppy

right under his shoulder.” Big Medicine did not bellow; his voice

was as quiet as Weary’s.

 

Weary looked up briefly at the circle of staring faces. “Pink,

you pile onto Glory and go wire for a doctor. Try Havre first;

you may get one up on the nine o’ clock train. If you can’t, get

one down on the ‘leven-twenty, from Great Falls. Or there’s

Benton—anyway, git one. If you could catch MacPherson, do it.

Try him first, and never mind a Havre doctor unless you can’t get

MacPherson. I’d rather wait a couple of hours longer, for him.

I’ll have a rig—no, you better get a team from Jim. They’ll be

fresh, and you can put ‘em through. If you kill ‘em,” he added

grimly, “we can pay for ‘em.” He had his jack-knife out, and was

already slashing carefully the shirt of Happy Jack, that he might

inspect the wound.

 

Pink gave a last, wistful look at Happy Jack’s face, which seemed

unfamiliar with all the color and all the expression wiped out of

it like that, and turned away. “Come and help me change saddles,

Cal,” he said shortly. “Weary’s stirrups are too darned long.”

Even with the delay, he was mounted on Glory and galloping toward

Flying U coulee before Weary was through uncovering the wound;

and that does not mean that Weary was slow.

 

The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty

feet beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or

gave any other sign of realization that they were still the

target; they were staring, with that frowning painfully intent

look men have at such moments, at a purplish hole not much bigger

than if punched by a lead pencil, just under the point of Happy

Jack’s shoulder blade; and at the blood oozing sluggishly from it

in a tiny stream across the girlishly white flesh and dripping

upon Big Medicine’s arm.

 

“Hadn’t we better get a rig to take him home with?” Irish

suggested.

 

Weary, exploring farther, had just disclosed a ragged wound under

the arm where the bullet had passed out; he made no immediate

reply.

 

“Well, he ain’t got it stuck inside of ‘im, anyway,” Big Medicine

commented relievedly. “Don’t look to me like it’s so awful

bad—went through kinda anglin’, and maybe missed his lungs. I’ve

saw men shot up before—”

 

“Aw—I betche you’d—think it was bad—if you had it—” murmured

Happy Jack peevishly, lifting his eyelids heavily for a resentful

glance when they moved him a little. But even as Big Medicine

grinned joyfully down at him he went off again into mental

darkness, and the grin faded into solicitude.

 

“You’d kick, by golly, if you was goin’ to be hung,” Slim

bantered tritely and belatedly, and gulped remorsefully when he

saw that he was “joshing” an unconscious man.

 

“We better get him home. Irish, you—” Weary looked up and

discovered that Irish and jack Bates were already headed for home

and a conveyance. He gave a sigh of approval and turned his

attention toward wiping the sweat and grime from Happy’s face

with his handkerchief.

 

“Somebody else is goin’ to git hit, by golly, if we stay here,”

Slim blurted suddenly, when another bullet dug up the dirt in

that vicinity.

 

“That gol-darned fool’ll keep on till he kills somebody. I wisht

I had m’ thirty-thirty here—I’d make him wisht his mother was a

man, by golly!”

 

Big Medicine looked toward the coulee rim. “I ain’t got a shell

left,” he growled regretfully. “I wisht we’d thought to tell the

boys to bring them rifles. Say, Slim, you crawl onto your hoss

and go git ‘em. It won’t take more’n a minute. There’ll likely be

some shells in the magazines.”

 

“Go on, Slim,” urged Weary grimly. “We’ve got to do something.

They can’t do a thing like this—“he glanced down at Happy Jack-

—“and get away with it.”

 

“I got half a box uh shells for my thirty-thirty, I’ll bring

that.” Slim turned to go, stopped short and stared at the coulee

rim. “By golly, they’re comm’ over here!” he exclaimed.

 

Big Medicine glanced up, took off his hat, crumpled it for a

pillow and eased Happy Jack down upon it. He got up stiffly,

wiped his fingers mechanically upon his trouser legs, broke his

gun open just to make sure that it was indeed empty, put it back

and picked up a handful of rocks.

 

“Let ‘em come,” he said viciously. “I c’n kill every damn’ one

with m’ bare hands!”

 

CHAPTER XV. Oleson

 

“Say, ain’t that Andy and Mig following along behind?” Cal asked

after a minute of watching the approach. “Sure, it is. Now

what—”

 

“They’re drivin’ ‘em, by cripes!” Big Medicine, under the stress

of the moment, returned to his usual bellowing tone. “Who’s that

tall, lanky feller in the lead? I don’t call to mind ever seem

him before. Them four herders I’d know a mile off.”

 

“That?” Weary shaded his eyes with his hatbrim, against the

slant rays of the westering sun. “That’s Oleson, Dunk’s partner.”

 

“His mother’d be a-weepin’,” Big Medicine observed bodefully, “if

she knowed what was due to happen to her son right away quick.

Must be him that done the shootin’.”

 

They came on steadily, the four herders and Oleson walking

reluctantly ahead, with Andy Green and the Native Son riding

relentlessly in the rear, their guns held unwaveringly in a line

with the backs of their captives. Andy was carrying a rifle,

evidently taken from one of the men—Oleson, they judged for the

guilty one. Half the distance was covered when Andy was seen to

turn his head and speak briefly with the Native Son, after which

he lunged past the captives and galloped up to the waiting group.

His quick eye sought first the face of Happy Jack in anxious

questioning; then, miserably, he searched the faces of his

friends.

 

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed mechanically, dismounted and bent over

the figure on the ground. For a long minute he knelt there; he

laid his ear close to Happy Jack’s mouth, took off his glove and

laid his hand over Happy’s heart; reached up, twitched off his

neckerchief, shook out the creases and spread it reverently over

Happy Jack’s face. He stood up then and spoke slowly, his eyes

fixed upon the stumbling approach of the captives.

 

“Pink told us Happy had been shot, so we rode around and come up

behind ‘em. It was a cinch. And—say, boys, we’ve got the Dots in

a pocket. They’ve got to eat outa our hands, now. So don’t think

about—our own feelings, or about—” he stopped abruptly and let

a downward glance finish the sentence. “We’ve got to keep our own

hands clean, and—now don’t let your fingers get the itch, Bud!”

This, because of certain manifestations of a murderous intent on

the part of Big Medicine.

 

“Oh, it’s all right to talk, if yuh feel like talking,” Big

Medicine retorted savagely. “I don’t.” He made a catlike spring

at the foremost man, who happened to be Oleson, and got a

merciless grip with his fingers on his throat, snarling like a

predatory animal over its kill. From behind, Andy, with Weary to

help, pulled him off.

 

“I didn’t mean to—to kill anybody,” gasped Oleson, pasty white.

“I heard a lot of shooting, and so I ran up the hill—and the

herders came running toward me, and I thought I was defending my

property and men. I had a right to defend—”

 

“Defend hell!” Big Medicine writhed in the restraining grasp of

those who held him. “Look at that there! As good hearted a boy as

ever turned a cow! Never harmed a soul in ‘is life. Is all your

dirty, stinkin’ sheep, an’ all your lousy herders, worth that

boy’s life? Yuh shot ‘im down like a dog—lemme go, boys.” His

voice was husky. “Lemme tromp the life outa him.”

 

“I thought you were killing my men, or I never—I never meant

to—to kill—” Oleson, shaking till he could scarcely stand,

broke down and wept; wept pitiably, hysterically, as men of a

certain fiber will weep when black tragedy confronts them all

unawares. He cowered miserably before the Happy Family, his face

hidden behind his two hands.

 

“Boys, I want to say a word or two. Come over here.” Andy’s

voice, quiet as ever, contrasted strangely with the man’s

sobbing. He led them back a few paces—Weary, Cal, Big Medicine

and Slim, and spoke hurriedly. The Native Son eyed them sidelong

from his horse, but he was careful to keep Oleson covered with

his gun—and the herders too, although they were unarmed. Once or

twice he glanced at that long, ungainly figure in the grass with

the handkerchief of Andy Green hiding the face except where a

corner, fluttering in the faint breeze which came creeping out of

the west, lifted now and then and gave a glimpse of sunbrowned

throat and a quiet chin and mouth.

 

“Quit that blubbering, Oleson, and listen here.” Andys voice

broke relentlessly upon the other’s woe. “All these boys want to

hang yuh without any red tape; far as I’m concerned, I’m dead

willing. But we’re going to give yuh a chance. Your partner, as

we told yuh coming over, we’ve got the dead immortal cinch on,

right now. And—well you can see what you’re up against. But

we’ll give yuh a chance. Have you got any family?”

 

Oleson, trying to pull himself together, shook his head.

 

“Well, then, you can get rid of them sheep, can’t yuh? Sell ‘em,

ship ‘em outa here—we don’t give a darn what yuh do, only so yuh

get ‘em off the range.”

 

“Y-yes, I’ll do that.” Oleson’s consent was reluctant, but it was

fairly prompt. “I’ll get rid of the sheep,” he said, as if he was

minded to clinch the promise. “I’ll do it at once.”

 

“That’s