The Lure of the Dim Trails by B. M. Bower (e novels for free TXT) 📕

been rejected as of little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the hands of Park Holloway.

“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you'd tell me just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing a herd.”

“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered, surprised. “What we're going to do when we get there is to receive a shipment of cattle young steer that's coming up from the Panhandle which is a part uh Texas. And we trail 'em up here and turn 'em loose this side the river. After that we'll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other; we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew, twenty-five or thirty men.”

“I didn't know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying some?”

“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds, this spring; some seasons it's more. We get in young stock every year and turn 'em loose on the range till they're ready to ship. It's cheaper than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you'll see some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain't a commencement. Cattle's cheap down South, this year, and seems like everybody's buying. Hank didn't buy as much as some, because he runs quite a bunch uh cows; we'll brand six or seven thousand calves this spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.”

Thurston agreed as politely as he could for the jolting. They had again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his luring dreams, about “the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky,” and he was gritting his teeth now over the idiotic lines.

When they reached the ranch and Mona's mother came to the door and invited them in, he declined almost rudely, for he had a feeling that once out of the saddle he would have difficulty in getting into it again. Besides, Mona was not at home, according to her mother.

So they did not tarry, and Thurston reached the Lazy Eight alive, but with the glamour quite gone from his West. If he had not been the son of his father, he would have taken the first train which pointed its nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western made him swear mild, city-bred oaths.

He choked back his awe of the cook and asked him, quite humbly, what was good to take the soreness from one's muscles; afterward he had crept painfully up the stairs, clasping to his bosom a beer bottle filled with pungent, home-made liniment which the cook had gravely declared “out uh sight for saddle-galls.”

Hank Graves, when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. “The son-of-a-gun! He's the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He's his dad over again, from the ground up.” And loved him the better.