ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT"
Frank Johnson rose from the breakfast table, shaved a splinter off the
edge of the water bench for a toothpick and sharpened it carefully
while he looked at Brit.
"You goin' after them posts, or shall I?" he inquired glumly, which, by
the way, was his normal tone. "Jim and Sorry oughta git the post holes
all dug to-day. One erf us better take a look through that young stock
in the lower field, too, and see if there's any more sign uh blackleg.
Which you ruther do?"
Brit tilted his chair backward so that he could reach the coffeepot on
the stove hearth. "I'll haul down the posts," he decided carelessly.
"They're easy loaded, and I guess my back's as good as yourn."
"All you got to do is skid 'em down off'n the bank onto the wagon,"
Frank said. "I wisht you'd go on up where we cut them last ones and
git my sweater, Brit. I musta left it hanging on a bush right close to
where I was workin'."
Brit's grunt signified assent, and Frank went out. Jim and Sorry, the
two unpicturesque cowboys of whom Lorraine had complained to the cat,
had already departed with pick and shovel to their unromantic task of
digging post holes. Each carried a most unattractive lunch tied in a
flour sack behind the cantle of his saddle. Lorraine had done her
conscientious best, but with lumpy, sourdough bread, cold bacon and
currant jelly of that kind which is packed in wooden kegs, one can't do
much with a cold lunch. Lorraine wondered how much worse it would look
after it had been tied on the saddle for half a day; wondered too what
those two silent ones got out of life--what they looked forward to,
what was their final goal. For that matter she frequently wondered
what there was in life for any of them, shut into that deadly monotony
of sagebrush and rocks interspersed with little, grassy meadows where
the cattle fed listlessly.
Even the sinister undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could
not whip her emotions into feeling that she was doing anything more
than live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped
ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch
of cattle, but it had been nothing more than a hot, thirsty, dull ride,
with a wind that blew her hat off in spite of pins and tied veil, and
with a companion who spoke only when he was spoken to and then as
briefly as possible.
Her father would not talk again as he had talked that night. She had
tried to make him tell her more about the Sawtooth and had gotten
nothing out of him. The man from Whisper, whom Brit had spoken of as
Al, had not returned. Nor had the promised saddle horse materialised.
The boys were too busy to run in any horses, her father had told her
shortly when she reminded him of his promise. When the fence was done,
maybe he could rustle her another horse--and then he had added that he
didn't see what ailed Yellowjacket, for all the riding she was likely
to do.
"Straight hard work and minding your own business," her father had
said, and it seemed to Lorraine after three or four days of it that he
had summed up the life of a cattleman's daughter in a masterly manner
which ought to be recorded among Famous Sayings like "War is hell" and
"Don't give up the ship."
On this particular morning Lorraine's spirits were at their lowest ebb.
If it were not for the new stepfather, she would return to the Casa
Grande, she told herself disgustedly. And if it were not for the
belief among all her acquaintances that she was queening it over the
cattle-king's vast domain, she would return and find work again in
motion pictures. But she could not bring herself to the point of
facing the curiosity and the petty gossip of the studios. She would be
expected to explain satisfactorily why she had left the real West for
the mimic West of Hollywood. She did not acknowledge to herself that
she also could not face the admission of failure to carry out what she
had begun.
She had told her dad that she wanted to fight with him, even though
"fighting" in this case meant washing the coarse clothing of her father
and Frank, scrubbing the rough, warped boards of the cabin floor, and
frying ranch-cured bacon for every meal, and in making butter to sell,
and counting the eggs every night and being careful to use only the
cracked ones for cooking.
She hated every detail of this crude housekeeping, from the chipped
enamel dishpan to the broom that was all one-sided, and the pillow
slips which were nothing more nor less than sugar sacks. She hated it
even more than she had hated the Casa Grande and her mother's frowsy
mentality. But because she could see that she made life a little more
comfortable for her dad, because she felt that he needed her, she would
stay and assure herself over and over that she was staying merely
because she was too proud to go back to the old life and own the West a
failure.
She was sweeping the doorstep with the one-sided broom when Brit drove
out through the gate and up the trail which she knew led eventually to
Sugar Spring. The horses, sleek in their new hair and skittish with
the change from hay to new grass, danced over the rough ground so that
the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would
later do duty as a brake on the long grade down from timber line on the
side of Spirit Canyon, rattled and banged over the rocks with the
clatter that could be heard for half a mile. Lorraine looked after her
father enviously. If she were a boy she would be riding on that sack
of hay tied to the "hounds" for a seat. But, being a girl, it had
never occurred to Brit that she might like to go--might even be useful
to him on the trip.
"I suppose if I told dad I could drive that team as well as he can,
he'd just look at me and think I was crazy," she thought resentfully
and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had
approached too closely. "If I'd asked him to let me go along he'd have
made some excuse--oh, I'm beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman's
place is in the house--preferably the kitchen. And here I've thought
all my life that cowgirls did nothing but ride around and warn people
about stage holdups and everything! I'd just like to know how a girl
would ever have a chance to know what was going on in the country,
unless she heard the men talking while she poured their coffee. Only
this bunch don't talk at all. They just gobble and go."
She went in then and shut the door with a slam. Up on the ridge Al
Woodruff lowered his small binocular and eased away from the spot where
he had been crouching behind a bush. Every one on the Quirt ranch was
accounted for. As well as if he had sat at their breakfast table Al
knew where each man's work would take him that day. As for the girl,
she was safe at the ranch for the day, probably. If she did take a
ride later on, it would probably be up the ridge between the Quirt and
Thurman's ranch, and sit for an hour or so just looking. That ride was
beginning to be a habit of hers, Al observed, so that he considered her
accounted for also.
He made his way along the side hill to where his horse was tied to a
bush, mounted and rode away with his mind pretty much at ease. Much
more at ease than it would have been had he read what was in Lorraine's
mind when she slammed that door.
Up above Sugar Spring was timber. By applying to the nearest Forest
Supervisor a certain amount could be had for ranch improvements upon
paying a small sum for the "stumpage." The Quirt had permission to cut
posts for their new fence which Al Woodruff had reported to his boss.
As he drove up the trail, which was in places barely passable for a
wagon, Brit was thinking of that fence. The Sawtooth would object to
it, he knew, since it cut off one of their stock trails and sent them
around through rougher country. Just what form their objection would
take, Brit did not know. Deep in his intrepid soul he hoped that the
Sawtooth would at last show its hand openly. He had liked Fred
Thurman, and what Lorraine had told him went much deeper than she knew.
He wanted to bring them into the open where he could fight with some
show of winning.
"I'll git Bill Warfield yet--and git him right," was the gist of his
musings. "He's bound to show his head, give him time enough. Him and
his killers can't always keep under cover. Let 'em come at me about
that fence! It's on my land--the Quirt's got a right to fence every
foot of land that belong to 'em."
All the way over the ridge and across the flat and up the steep, narrow
road along the edge of Spirit Canyon, Brit dwelt upon the probable
moves of the Sawtooth. They would wait, he thought, until the fence
was completed and they had made a trail around through the lava rocks.
They would not risk any move at present; they would wait and tacitly
accept the fence, or pretend to accept it, as a natural inconvenience.
But Brit did not deceive himself that they would remain passive. That
it had been "hands off the Quirt" he did not know, but attributed the
Quirt's immunity to careful habits and the fact that they had never
come to the point where their interests actually clashed with the
Sawtooth.
It never occurred to him therefore that he was slated for an accident
that day if the details could be conveniently arranged.
It was a long trail to Sugar Spring, and from there up Spirit Canyon
the climb was so tedious and steep that Brit took a full hour for the
trip, resting the team often because they were soft from the new grass
diet and sweated easily. They lost none of their spirit, however, and
when the road was steepest nagged at each other with head-shakings and
bared teeth, and ducked against each other in pretended fright at every
unusual rock or bush.
At the top he was forced to drive a full half mile beyond the piled
posts to a flat large enough to turn around. All this took time,
especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten
miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to
"take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of
opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them down
the trail again.
At the post pile he unhitched the team for safety's sake and tied them
to trees, where he fed them a little grain in nose bags. He was
absorbed now in his work and thought no more about the Sawtooth. He
fastened the log chain to the rear wheels to brake the wagon on the
long grade down the canyon, loaded the wagon with posts, bound them
fast with a lighter chain he had brought for the purpose, ate his own
lunch and decided that, since he had made fair time and would arrive
home too early to do the chores and too late to start any other job, he
would cruise farther up the mountain side and see what was the prospect
of getting out logs enough for an addition to the cabin.
Now that Raine was going to live with him, two rooms were not enough.
Brit wanted to make her as happy as he could, in his limited fashion.
He had for some days been planning a "settin' room and bedroom" for
her. She would be having beaux after awhile when she got acquainted,
he supposed. He could not deny her the privilege; she was young and
she was, in Brit's opinion, the best looking girl he had ever seen, not
even excepting Minnie, her mother. But he hoped she wouldn't go off
and get married the first thing she did,--and one good way to prevent
that, he reasoned, was to make her comfortable with him. He had
noticed how pleased she was that their cabin was of logs. She had even
remarked that she could not understand how a rancher would ever want to
build a board shack if there was any timber to be had. Well, timber
was to be had, and she should have her log house, though the hauling
was not going to be any sunshine, in Brit's opinion. With his axe he
walked through the timber, craning upward for straight tree trunks and
lightly blazing the ones he would want, the occasional axe strokes
sounding distinctly in the quiet air.
Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade,
following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her
journey,--for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She
had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team
had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so
that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.
She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees,
and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out
from under the load of posts and climbed the slope farther on. She was
on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when
he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke
of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.
She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her back and kicked
viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail
without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into
a juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very
permanently placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of
him, thanked her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to
reassure Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been
done him. Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of
his own and that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into
the trail, preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that
too uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I
may explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping
eyelids. Those who know horses will understand.
By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoled him into making a somewhat
circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance
above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to
the wagon.
"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some
astonishment.
Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline
and Yellowjacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another
mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can
ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."
"He won't lead," Brit objected. "Yeller's all right if you make up
your mind to a few failin's. You go ahead and ride him home. You sure
can't drive this team."
"I can!" Lorraine contended. "I've driven four horses--I guess I can
drive two, all right."
"Well, you ain't going to," Brit stated with a flat finality that
abruptly ended the argument.
Lorraine had never before been really angry with her father. She
struck Yellowjacket with her quirt and sent him sidling past the wagon
and the tricky Caroline, too stubborn to answer her dad when he called
after her that she had better ride behind the load. She went on,
making Yellowjacket trot when he did not want to trot down hill.
Behind her she heard the chuck-chuck of the loaded wagon. Far ahead
she heard some one whistling a high, sweet melody which had the queer,
minor strains of some old folk song. For just a few bars she heard it,
and then it was stilled, and the road dipping steeply before her seemed
very lonely, its emptiness cooling her brief anger to a depression that
had held her too often in its grip since that terrible night of the
storm. For the first time she looked back at her father lurching along
on the load and at the team looking so funny with the collars pushed up
on their necks with the weight of the load behind.
With a quick impulse of penitence she waved her hand to Brit, who waved
back at her. Then she went on, feeling a bit less alone in the world.
After all, he was her dad, and his life had been hard. If he failed to
understand her and her mental hunger for real companionship, perhaps
she also failed to understand him.
They had left the timber line now and had come to the lip of the canyon
itself. Lorraine looked down its steep, rock-roughened sides and
thought how her old director would have raved over its possibilities in
the way of "stunts." Yellowjacket, she noticed, kept circumspectly to
the centre of the trail and eyed the canyon with frank disfavour.
She did not know at just what moment she became aware of trouble behind
her. It may have been Yellowjacket, turning his head sidewise and
abruptly quickening his pace that warned her. It may have been the
difference in the sound of the wagon and the impact of the horses'
hoofs on the rock trail. She turned and saw that something had gone
wrong. They were coming down upon her at a sharp trot, stepping high,
the wagon tongue thrust up between their heads as they tried to hold
back the load.
Brit yelled to her then to get out of the way, and his voice was harsh
and insistent. Lorraine looked at the steep bank to the right, knew
instinctively that Yellowjacket would never have time to climb it
before the team was upon them, and urged him to a lope. She glanced
back again, saw that the team was not running away, that they were
trying to hold the wagon, and that it was gaining momentum in spite of
them.
"Jump, dad!" she called and got no answer. Brit was sitting braced
with his feet far apart, holding and guiding the team. "He won't
jump--he wouldn't jump--any more than I would," she chattered to
herself, sick with fear for him, while she lashed her own horse to keep
out of their way.
The next she knew, the team was running, their eyeballs staring, their
front feet flung high as they lunged panic-stricken down the trail.
The load was rocking along behind them. Brit was still braced and
clinging to the reins.
Panic seized Yellowjacket. He, too, went lunging down that trail, his
head thrown from side to side that he might watch the thing that
menaced him, heedless of the fact that danger might lie ahead of him
also. Lorraine knew that he was running senselessly, that he might
leave the trail at any bend and go rolling into the canyon.
A sense of unreality seized her. It could not be deadly earnest, she
thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully
in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director,
and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and
counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little
farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead
would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had
"put it over."
She looked over her shoulder and saw them still coming. It was real.
It was terribly real, the way that team was fleeing down the grade.
She had never seen anything like that before, never seen horses so
frantically trying to run from the swaying load behind them. Always,
she had been accustomed to moderation in the pace and a slowed camera
to speed up the action on the screen. Yellowjacket, too--she had never
ridden at that terrific speed down hill. Twice she lost a stirrup and
grabbed the saddle horn to save herself from going over his head.
They neared a sharp turn, and it took all her strength to pull her
horse to the inside and save him from plunging off down the canyon's
side. The nose of the hill hid for a moment her dad, and in that
moment she heard a crash and knew what had happened. But she could not
stop; Yellowjacket had his ears laid back flat on his senseless head,
and the bit clamped tight in his teeth.
She heard the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon.
There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the
sharp staccato of pounding hoofs.