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

“Well, I hope this farce is about over,” Dunk sneered, with as near an approach to his old, supercilious manner as he could command, when the three who had ridden apart returned presently. “Perhaps, Weary, you'll be good enough to have this fellow put up his gun, and these—” he hesitated, after a swift glance, to apply any epithet whatever to the Happy Family. “I have two witnesses here to swear that you have without any excuse assaulted and maligned and threatened me, and you may consider yourselves lucky if I do not insist—”

“Ah, cut that out,” Andy advised wearily. “I don't know how it strikes the rest, but it sounds pretty sickening to me. Don't overlook the fact that two of us happen to know all about you; and we know just where to send word, to dig up a lot more identification. So bluffing ain't going to help you out, a darned bit.”

“Miguel, you can go with Andy,” Weary said with brisk decision. “Take Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here—if it's straight goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can take Dunk in to-morrow, ourselves.” He turned and fixed a cold, commanding eye upon the slack-jawed herders. “Come along, you two, and get these sheep headed outa here.”

“Say, we'll just lock him up in the blacksmith shop, and come on back,” Andy amended the order after his own free fashion. “He couldn't get out in a million years; not after I'm through staking him out to the anvil with a log-chain.” He smiled maliciously into Dunk's fear-yellowed countenance, and waved him a signal to ride ahead, which Dunk did without a word of protest while the Happy Family looked on dazedly.

“What's it all about, Weary?” Irish asked, when the three were gone. “What is it they've got on Dunk? Must be something pretty fierce, the way he wilted down into the saddle.”

“You'll have to wait and ask the boys.” Weary rode off to hurry the herders on the far side of the band.

So the Happy Family remained perforce unenlightened upon the subject and for that they said hard things about Weary, and about Andy and Miguel as well. They believed that they were entitled to know the truth, and they called it a smart-aleck trick to keep the thing so almighty secret.

There is in resentment a crisis; when that crisis is reached, and the dam of repression gives way, the full flood does not always sweep down upon those who have provoked the disaster. Frequently it happens that perfectly innocent victims are made to suffer. The Happy Family had been extremely forbearing, as has been pointed out before. They had frequently come to the boiling point of rage and had cooled without committing any real act of violence. But that day had held a long series of petty annoyances; and here was a really important thing kept from them as if they were mere outsiders. When Weary was gone, Irish asked Pink what crime Dunk had committed in the past. And Pink shook his head and said he didn't know. Irish mentally accused Pink of lying, and his temper was none the better for the rebuff, as anyone can readily understand.

When the herders, therefore, rounded up the sheep and started them moving south, the Happy Family speedily rebelled against that shuffling, nibbling, desultory pace that had kept them long, weary hours in the saddle with the other band. But it was Irish who first took measures to accelerate that pace.

He got down his rope and whacked the loop viciously down across the nearest gray back. The sheep jumped, scuttled away a few paces and returned to its nibbling progress. Irish called it names and whacked another.

After a few minutes he grew tired of swinging his loop and seeing it have so fleeting an effect, and pulled his gun. He fired close to the heels of a yearling buck that had more than once stopped to look up at him