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THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
[Illustration: "'DESERTED!' JAKE SAID SHORTLY"--Page 282]
THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
BY HAROLD BINDLOSS
Author of "Alton of Somasco," "Winston of the Prairie," "Lorimer of the
Northwest," "Thurston of Orchard Valley," etc.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1910, By
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
_September, 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FRANK GOES WEST 1
II. THE BUSH 14
III. THE RANCH 28
IV. TARGET PRACTICE 39
V. THE MYSTERIOUS SCHOONER 51
VI. AT THE HELM 62
VII. A WARNING 71
VIII. SALMON SPEARING 82
IX. A PLAIN HINT 93
X. A BREEZE OF WIND 106
XI. MR. BARCLAY JOINS THE PARTY 118
XII. THE STRANGER 127
XIII. THE SCHOONER REAPPEARS 137
XIV. A TEST OF ENDURANCE 148
XV. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 157
XVI. FRANK KILLS A DEER 166
XVII. MR. WEBSTER'S GUNS 174
XVIII. RUNNING A CARGO 184
XIX. THE CACHE 195
XX. MR. WEBSTER'S SLASHING 206
XXI. A NIGHT ON THE SANDS 216
XXII. THE ULTIMATUM 228
XXIII. MR. OLIVER OUTWITS HIS WATCHERS 237
XXIV. A FAST RUN 249
XXV. THE UNITED STATES MAIL 259
XXVI. MR. BARCLAY LAYS HIS PLANS 268
XXVII. THE DERELICT 277
XXVIII. A GRIM DISCOVERY 285
XXIX. THE RAID 294
XXX. THE RELIEF OF THE RANCH 305
XXXI. FRANK BECOMES A RANCH OWNER 315
THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
CHAPTER I
FRANK GOES WEST
It was the middle of an afternoon in May. An old side-wheeler was
steaming south toward Puget Sound across the land-locked waters that lie
between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington. A little astern on
one hand Mount Baker lifted its heights of eternal snow. On the other,
and a little ahead, the Olympians rose white and majestic; and between,
vast, dim forests rolled down to the ruffled, blue water. It seemed to
Frank Whitney, sitting on the steamer's upper deck in the lee of her
smokestack, that it was a wild and wonderfully beautiful country he had
reached at last; for since leaving Vancouver, British Columbia, they had
steamed past endless rocks and woods, while island after island faded
into the smoke trail down the seething wake and great white mountains
opened out, changed their shapes, and closed in on one another as the
steamer went by. He had, however, not come there to admire the scenery,
and as he watched the wonderful panorama unroll itself he looked back
upon the troubles that had befallen him since he set out from Boston a
little less than a year ago.
When he left that city he was but sixteen, and was, as he had cause to
realize during the following twelve months, merely an average American
boy, with a certain amount of alertness, self-reliance and common sense;
though he might, perhaps, have had more of these desirable qualities,
had he not been a trifle spoiled by his widowed mother before he went to
Gorton school. He had, quite apart from his lessons, learned a few
useful things there which probably he would never have learned at home,
but he had been suddenly recalled, and his mother had informed him that
it was now impossible for him to enter the profession for which he had
been intended. Frank did not understand all the reasons for this, but he
knew that they were connected with the fall in value of some railroad
stock and the failure of a manufacturing company in which his mother
held shares. She had, as she pointed out, his two younger sisters to
provide for, and he must earn his living at once.
Frank found this much harder than he had expected. The subjects in which
he excelled did not seem to be of the least use to business men, and the
fact that he could play several games moderately well did not seem to
count at all. There were people who were ready to give him a trial, but
they seemed singularly unwilling to pay him enough to live in a way that
he considered fitting; and this somewhat astonished as well as troubled
him. In the end, a relative, who said that a young man with any grit and
snap had better chances in the West, found him a position with a big
milling company in Minneapolis. Frank accepted the position, but soon
found it not much to his liking. The people he met were not like his
Boston friends. They were mostly Germans and Scandinavians, and their
ways were not those to which he had been accustomed. What was worse,
they hustled him in the milling company's offices, and instead of
teaching him the business kept him busy licking stamps, copying letters
and answering telephones, which did not seem to him a fitting occupation
for an intellectual lad.
He bore it, nevertheless, because he had to, until one day there came a
climax, when a clerk who had bullied him all along assigned to him a
particularly disagreeable task which was really outside his duties. In
return, in a fit of very foolish anger, Frank screwed the clerk's new
hat down tight in a copying-press, and it happened that the secretary
came upon the scene during the trouble that followed. The secretary had
an unpleasant temper, and when he walked out of the general office Frank
sat down at his desk boiling with indignation and almost stupefied.
There was, however, not the least doubt that he was fired.
He spent a very dismal evening afterward, for one thing, at least, was
clear--he could not go home to Boston and become a burden on his mother.
But the flour trade was bad in Minneapolis just then, and business in
St. Paul did not seem much better, so eventually he found employment in
the offices of a milling company in Winnipeg. He suffered from the
extreme cold during the winter there. The cold of Massachusetts, as he
discovered, is very different from the iron frost which shuts down on
the Canadian prairie and never slackens its grip for months together.
The clothing he had brought from Boston was not warm enough, and his
small earnings would only provide him with shelter in the cheapest
quarters. Still, he held on until trade grew slack in the early spring
and he was turned adrift again. This time he felt that he had had enough
of business. He had heard and read of men who burrowed for treasure in
the snow-clad ranges, broke wild horses, and cleared the forests, out in
the farthest West. There was a romance in that life surpassing anything
that seemed likely to be got out of the addition of flour invoices or
the licking of stamps, and he wrote a letter to an old friend of his
dead father, who lived on a ranch near Puget Sound. It was some time
before he got an answer telling him rather tersely to come along.
Frank started the day after he received it, and was now, he supposed,
within a short distance of his journey's end. He had never seen his
father's friend, and knew nothing of what he would be required to do at
the ranch, though he fancied that all that was necessary could readily
be learned by an intelligent lad. In this, however, he was wrong.
Suddenly the steamer's whistle hurled a great blast out across the
waters, and, looking around, Frank saw, not far ahead, a long point
strewn with rocks and streaked with wisps of pines. There was, however,
no sign of life on it, and he turned to a deck-hand who strode by.
"Can that be Bannington's?" he asked.
"Yes," the man informed him. "I guess that's just what it is."
"But there's nobody about," objected Frank.
The deck-hand grinned.
"Did you expect it was like Seattle or Port Townsend? There's a store to
the place, and they've got a post-office back among the rocks. We lay
off and whistle, and if there's no sign of a shore boat she goes on
again."
He went forward with a jump as a man came out of the pilot house with a
pair of glasses in his hand.
"Run up slow," he ordered. "There's nothing coming yet."
The big side-wheels beat more slowly and the whistle called again, but
there was still only the ruffled blue water with white flecks on it and
the rapidly rising pines. Frank watched them anxiously, for he had only
about two dollars in his pocket, and it seemed quite possible that he
might be carried on to Seattle, in which case he had not the faintest
notion as to how he was to get back. It was quite certain that he could
not pay any more steamboat fares.
A minute or two later the man with the glasses raised his hand as a sail
crept out around the point, and the big wheels stopped. The strip of
canvas grew into a gaff mainsail and a jib; the hull beneath it emerged
at intervals from the little tumbling seas; and it became apparent to
Frank for the first time that it was blowing rather hard. The sail
seemed to be dripping and he could see the spray flying about the
shapeless figure at the helm. Then the steamboat officer motioned to
him.
"Are you getting off here?" he asked.
Frank answered rather dubiously that this was his intention.
"Then you'd better get down on to the wheel-case bracings with your
grip. I don't know how they're going to take you off, but I guess
they'll shoot her up head to wind and you'll have to jump."
Frank got out on the guard-framing on the after side of the wheel and
watched the boat drive by, swung up on a little sea some distance away.
Half of her hull seemed to be under water, though the fore part of it
was hove up streaming into the air. She rolled wildly with her big
mainsail squared right out and the jib, which hung slack, dripping
water. Then she came round and headed for the steamer, lying down all
slanted to one side, while the water sluiced along her lee deck, and
Frank made out a boy crouching under the sail with a rope in his hand.
It seemed to him that the boat must inevitably ram the steamer and smash
in her bows. Then a hail reached him.
"Hello, pilot house! Shove her astern soon as we're clear of you!"
Somebody shouted an answer, and the steamer swung out, lifting a row of
wet plates out of the water and burying them again with a gurgling
splash. A glance around showed Frank a deck-hand standing behind him
with a long, spiked pole and a crowd of passengers leaning over the
rails of the deck above. How he was to get into the boat he did not
know, for the thing was beginning to look difficult. Then there was
another shout from the figure at her helm:
"That you, Whitney?"
Frank waved his hand in answer, hastily grabbing up the small bag which
contained his few possessions. The wheel-casing sank again into a ridge
of frothing brine which swirled about his feet, and he felt that it
would be a good deal wiser to climb back to the deck above and go on to
Seattle. This, however, was out of the question, even if there had not
been so many passengers looking on, and it was comforting to remember
that he could swim a little. The next moment the deck-hand touched his
arm.
"I'll sling your grip aboard her as she shoots," he said. "Then jump,
and stick to anything you get your hands on."
The boat was now only seven or eight yards away, nearer the steamer's
stern, but as Frank gazed at her she suddenly swayed upright with a
frantic thrashing of canvas, and shot forward head to wind beneath the
vessel's side. The next moment his bag went hurtling through the air,
and he heard the deck-hand shout something in his ear. Then he set his
lips and jumped.
He struck something hard with his knees, and was conscious of a sudden
chill as the brine washed over one leg, but he had his hands clenched
tight on a strip of wet wood, and somebody seized him by the shoulder.
Making a determined effort he dragged himself up on the narrow side
deck, and fell in a heap into the bottom of the boat. When he scrambled
to his feet again the big side-wheel was splashing amidst a welter of
churned-up foam as the steamer pushed away from them, and, in the boat,
the boy he had already noticed was tugging desperately at a rope.
"Get hold and heave!" he cried.
Frank did as the boy directed. Then the helmsman waved his hand.
"Not too flat! Belay at that! Get down here aft, both of you!"
Frank staggered aft a pace or two, and sitting down breathless and
dripping gazed about him. The boat looked a good deal bigger than she
had appeared from the steamer, and, as a matter of fact, she was a
half-decked sloop of about twenty-four feet in length. Just then she was
slanted well down on one side, with the water foaming along her
depressed deck and showers of spray beating into her over her weather
bow, while the jib above her bowsprit every now and then plunged into
the short, white-topped seas. There seemed to be some water inside her,
for it washed up above the floorings at every heave. In a few moments
Frank had recovered his breath sufficiently to look around at his
companions. One was a boy of about his own age who smiled at him. He had
a bronzed skin and a kindly expression, and looked lean and wiry.
"You're Frank Whitney?" asked the boy.
Frank acknowledged that this was his name, and the other proceeded to
introduce himself and his companion.
"I'm Harry Oliver, and, as you're going to stay with us, we've got to
hit it off together."
Then he turned and indicated the ruddy-faced, red-haired man who held
the helm.
"This is Jake, one of the smartest choppers and trailers on the Pacific
Slope. There aren't many of the boys who could have picked you off that
steamboat in a breeze of wind as he did."
"Oh, pshaw!" said the helmsman with a grin.
Neither of them had said anything striking in the way of welcome, but
Frank felt quickly at ease with them. As a rule, the new acquaintances
he had made in business farther east seemed to expect him to recognize
their superiority, or, at least, to understand that it was a privilege
to be admitted into their society. His present companions, however,
somehow made it plain that as long as he was willing to be commonly
civil there was no reason why they should not get on well together, for
which he was thankful, though he felt that any attempt to put on airs
with them would probably lead to trouble.
"How far is it to your father's ranch?" he asked presently.
"Twelve miles," responded Harry. "With a head wind like this one, it
means from eighteen to twenty-four miles' sailing. It depends, for one
thing, on Jake's steering."
"Thirty, sure," broke in the helmsman, "if you had the tiller."
"How's that?" asked Frank.
"Know anything about sailing?"
Frank confessed his ignorance, and Jake nodded to Harry.
"Show him," he said. "He has got to learn and you can teach the fellow
who'll allow he doesn't know anything. The kind we've no use for is the
one that knows too much."
Harry laid a wet finger on the hove-up weather deck.
"Now," he began, "a boat or a ship under sail can go straight to the
place she's bound for as long as she has the wind anywhere from right
behind her to a little forward on her side. In fact, as she'll lie up
within a few points of the wind, there's only a small segment of the
circle you can't sail her straight into."
He traced a circle on the deck and then placed his finger over about a
quarter of the circumference of it.
"She won't go there."
"But supposing you want to?"
"Then, if the wind's ahead, you have to beat." He drew two lines across
the circle at right angles to each other and laid his finger at the end
of one. "Say we're here at north and the cove we're going to lies about
south. Well, you get your sheets in flat--same as we have them now--and
you sail up this way, at this angle to the wind." He ran a slanting line
across the circle until it touched the rim. "That brings you here; then
you come round, and go off at the same angle on the opposite tack, which
brings you right up to the cove. You can do it in two long tacks,
or--and it's the same thing--in a lot of little ones, each at the same
angle to the wind; but how many degrees there are in that angle and when
you get there depends on how your sails are cut and how smart you are at
steering her."
Frank understood the gist of it, but there were one or two difficulties,
and he was not ashamed to ask a question:
"What makes her go slantways against the wind? Why doesn't it blow her
back, or sideways?"
"It does," Jake broke in dryly, "if you don't sail her right, or it
blows hard enough."
"What makes a kite go up slantways against, or on, the wind, which is
the same thing in sailing?" continued Harry. "Because with the wind and
the string both pulling her, that's the line of least resistance." He
paused, and added deprecatingly, "I was at school at Tacoma and as I'd a
notion I might take up surveying, they pounded some facts into me that
made this kind of thing easier to get hold of. A boat goes ahead on the
wind because, considering the shape of her, it's the easiest way; and
this is what stops her going off sideways to lee." He kicked a high
narrow box which ran along the middle of the boat. "It holds the
centerboard--a big plate that's down deep in the water now. Before the
wind could shove her off sideways--and it does a little--it would have
to press that flat plate sideways through the water."
Frank made a sign of comprehension.
"That's about the size of it," said Jake. "Now I guess it would be more
useful if you got some of the water out of her."
Harry, who explained that there was something wrong with the pump,
pulled up one of the flooring boards and invited Frank to dip a bucket
into the cavity and hand it up to him when it was full. Frank endeavored
to do so, but found it difficult, for the water which surged to and fro
as the sloop plunged left the bottom of the hole almost dry one moment
and the next came splashing back so rapidly that before he could get a
fair scoop with the bucket it had generally gone again. Besides, the
motion every now and then flung him off his knees; but he toiled on with
his head down for nearly half an hour, when a horrible nausea mastered
him and he staggered to the foam-swept lee coaming. For the next ten
minutes he felt desperately unhappy, and when he turned around again
there was a grin on the faces of his companions.
"She'll do," said Harry. "You want to look to weather and get the wind
on your face. That's the best way to keep a hold on your dinner."
Frank suddenly remembered that he had had no dinner. He had had only a
dollar or two left in his possession, and after considering the
steamboat tariff he had decided to dispense with the meal. In spite of
this fact and the unpleasant sensations he felt, he was conscious of a
certain satisfaction with his new surroundings. The seasickness would
pass, and grappling with the winds of heaven and the charging seas
seemed a finer thing than adding up the price of flour or sticking
stamps on letters. Here man's skill, nerve and quickness were pitted
against the variable elements, and Frank had a suspicion--which, as it
happened, was quite justified--that if Jake made a blunder the next
white-topped comber would come foaming across the bows of the craft. It
was only his cool judgment and ready hand on the tiller that swung her
safely over them.
Raising himself a little he glanced ahead. The steamer and her smoke
trail had vanished some time ago, and the white Olympians had faded,
too. Evening was drawing on. The sky was now a dismal, dingy gray, and
the leaden-blue water was streaked with flecks and curls of foam. It
seemed to him that the sea was steadily getting higher, and there was
not the least doubt that the sloop was slanting more sharply and
throwing the spray all over her.
"It looks bad up yonder, doesn't it?" he queried in anxious tones.
"I allow we might have more wind by and by," Jake answered laconically.
"Seems to me she has about all the sail she can stand up to on her now."
He had scarcely finished speaking when a comber curled over at its top
rose up close ahead, and the boat went into it to the mast. Part of it
poured over the forward head ledge into the open well, and the rest
sluiced foaming down the slanted deck to lee, through which she lurched
clear, with the water splashing and gurgling inside her.
"We'll heave another reef down right away," said Jake. "Get forward,
Harry, and claw that headsail off her."
The boy seized a wet sail that lay in the well, and as he crawled
forward with it the sloop rose almost upright, with her mainsail banging
and thrashing furiously. When he loosed a rope the jib ran partly down
its stay, and then jammed, filling out and emptying with sudden shocks
that shook the stout spar beneath it and the reeling mast. Harry,
however, crawled out on the bowsprit with his feet braced against a
wire--a lean, dripping figure that dipped in the tumbling seas--and
Frank, seeing that he was struggling vainly with the sail, scrambled
forward to help him, sick as he was. Water flowed about his knees on the
plunging deck, flying ropes whipped him, and the spray was hurled into
his face, but he could think of no reason why the Western boy should do
more than he could. He crouched down, hauling savagely on a rope at
which Harry pointed, and by and by the sail fell upon both of them. They
dragged it in, made it fast, and set a smaller one in place of it,
after which they floundered aft to where Jake was struggling with the
mainsail.
He had hauled down what Frank afterward learned was the leach of it, and
was now standing with his toes on the coaming and his chest upon the
boom, pulling down the hard, drenched canvas and tying the little bits
of rope that hung in a row from it around the boom.
"Hustle!" he shouted. "Get those reef-points in!"
Frank took his place with his companion, and tried not to look at the
frothing water close beneath him as he leaned out on the jerking boom.
For the most part, the big spar lay fairly quiet, but now and then the
canvas above it shook itself with a bang. It cost him a strenuous effort
to drag each handful of it down in turn, and he discovered afterward
that he had broken two of his nails. He lost his breath, the
perspiration started from every pore in his skin, and he was sick and
dizzy, but he managed to hold on. At last it was finished, and soon
afterward Jake, driving the sloop on her course again, turned to Harry.
"She'll make nothing of it against this breeze," he said. "We'll up-helm
and look for shelter under Tourmalin."
Harry, bracing himself against the strain, let a rope run through the
clattering blocks, the bow swung around, and the motion became a little
easier.
"We'll be snug beneath the pines in an hour," said Jake, nodding
reassuringly.
Frank found the time quite long enough. He was wet and dizzy, and the
way the big frothing ridges came tumbling up out of the growing darkness
was rather terrifying. They heaved themselves up above the boat, and
every time that one foamed about her she slanted alarmingly over to
leeward. At last, when it had grown quite dark, a shadowy blur that grew
into a wisp of tall pines rose up ahead, and a minute or two later
there was an almost bewildering change from the rolling and plunging as
the sloop ran into smooth water. Her sails dropped, the anchor chain
rattled out, and by and by they were all sitting in the little cabin,
which was scarcely three feet high, and Jake was cramming bark and
kerosene rags into the stove.
Half an hour later Frank forced himself to eat a little canned beef and
drink some coffee, and then Harry told him he could lie down on what
seemed to be a moderately dry sail. He had scarcely done so when he fell
asleep. Jake, who had been watching him, turned the lantern so that the
light fell on his face.
"He was mighty sick," he observed, a kindly smile lighting up his rugged
features, "but he stayed with it through the reefin'. Your father should
make something of him. I guess he'll do."