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THE RANGE DWELLERS
by
B. M. BOWER
(B. M. SINCLAIR)
Author of _Chip of the Flying U_, _The Lonesome Trail_, _Her Prairie
Knight_, _The Lure of the Dim Trails_, _The Happy Family_, _The Long
Shadow_, etc.
Illustrated By Charles M. Russell
New York; Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers
1906
[Illustration: "She turned her back on me, and went imperturbably on with
her sketching." (Frontispiece)]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Reward of Folly
II. The White Divide
III. The Quarrel Renewed
IV. Through King's Highway
V. Into the Lion's Mouth
VI. I ask Beryl King to Dance
VII. One Day Too Late
VIII. A Fight and a Race for Life
IX. The Old Life--and the New
X. I Shake Hands with Old Man King
XI. A Cable Snaps
XII. I Begin to Realize
XIII. We Meet Once More
XIV. Frosty Disappears
XV. The Broken Motor-car
XVI. One More Race
XVII. The Final Reckoning
CHAPTER I.
The Reward of Folly.
I'm something like the old maid you read about--the one who always knows
all about babies and just how to bring them up to righteous maturity; I've
got a mighty strong conviction that I know heaps that my dad never thought
of about the proper training for a healthy male human. I don't suppose
I'll ever have a chance to demonstrate my wisdom, but, if I do, there are
a few things that won't happen to my boy.
If I've got a comfortable wad of my own, the boy shall have his fun
without any nagging, so long as he keeps clean and honest. He shall go to
any college he may choose--and right here is where my wisdom will sit up
and get busy. If I'm fool enough to let that kid have more money than is
healthy for him, and if I go to sleep while he's wising up to the art of
making it fade away without leaving anything behind to tell the tale, and
learning a lot of habits that aren't doing him any good, I won't come down
on him with both feet and tell him all the different brands of fool he's
been, and mourn because the Lord in His mercy laid upon me this burden of
an unregenerate son. I shall try and remember that he's the son of his
father, and not expect too much of him. It's long odds I shall find points
of resemblance a-plenty between us--and the more cussedness he develops,
the more I shall see myself in him reflected.
I don't mean to be hard on dad. He was always good to me, in his way. He's
got more things than a son to look after, and as that son is supposed to
have a normal allowance of gray matter and is no physical weakling, he
probably took it for granted that the son could look after himself--which
the mines and railroads and ranches that represent his millions can't.
But it wasn't giving me a square deal. He gave me an allowance and paid
my debts besides, and let me amble through school at my own gait--which
wasn't exactly slow--and afterward let me go. If I do say it, I had lived
a fairly decent sort of life. I belonged to some good clubs--athletic,
mostly--and trained regularly, and was called a fair boxer among the
amateurs. I could tell to a glass--after a lot of practise--just how much
of 'steen different brands I could take without getting foolish, and I
could play poker and win once in awhile. I had a steam-yacht and a motor
of my own, and it was generally stripped to racing trim. And I wasn't
tangled up with any women; actress-worship had never appealed to me. My
tastes all went to the sporting side of life and left women to the fellows
with less nerve and more sentiment.
So I had lived for twenty-five years--just having the best time a fellow
with an unlimited resource can have, if he is healthy.
It was then, on my twenty-fifth birthday, that I walked into dad's private
library with a sonly smile, ready for the good wishes and the check that
I was in the habit of getting--I'd been unlucky, and Lord knows I needed
it!--and what does the dear man do?
Instead of one check, he handed me a sheaf of them, each stamped in divers
places by divers banks. I flipped the ends and looked them over a bit,
because I saw that was what he expected of me; but the truth is, checks
don't interest me much after they've been messed up with red and green
stamps. They're about as enticing as a last year's popular song.
Dad crossed his legs, matched his finger-tips together, and looked at me
over his glasses. Many a man knows that attitude and that look, and so
many a man has been as uncomfortable as I began to be, and has felt as
keen a sense of impending trouble. I began immediately searching my memory
for some especial brand of devilment that I'd been sampling, but there was
nothing doing. I had been losing some at poker lately, and I'd been away
to the bad out at Ingleside; still, I looked him innocently in the eye
and wondered what was coming.
"That last check is worthy of particular attention," he said dryly. "The
others are remarkable only for their size and continuity of numbers; but
that last one should be framed and hung upon the wall at the foot of your
bed, though you would not see it often. I consider it a diploma of your
qualification as Master Jackanapes." (Dad's vocabulary, when he is angry,
contains some rather strengthy words of the old-fashioned type.)
I looked at the check and began to see light. I _had_ been a bit rollicky
that time. It wasn't drawn for very much, that check; I've lost more on
one jack-pot, many a time, and thought nothing of it. And, though the
events leading up to it were a bit rapid and undignified, perhaps, I
couldn't see anything to get excited over, as I could see dad plainly was.
"For a young man twenty-five years old and with brains
enough--supposedly--to keep out of the feeble-minded class, it strikes me
you indulge in some damned poor pastimes," went on dad disagreeably.
"Cracking champagne-bottles in front of the Cliff House--on a Sunday at
that--may be diverting to the bystanders, but it can hardly be called
dignified, and I fail to see how it is going to fit a man for any useful
business."
Business? Lord! dad never had mentioned a useful business to me before.
I felt my eyelids fly up; this was springing birthday surprises with a
vengeance.
"Driving an automobile on forbidden roads, being arrested and fined--on
Sunday, at that--"
"Now, look here, dad," I cut in, getting a bit hot under the collar
myself, "by all the laws of nature, there must have been a time when _you_
were twenty-five years old and cut a little swath of your own. And, seeing
you're as big as your offspring--six-foot-one, and you can't deny it--and
fairly husky for a man of your age, I'll bet all you dare that said swath
was not of the narrow-gage variety. I've never heard of your teaching a
class in any Sunday-school, and if you never drove your machine beyond
the dead-line and cracked champagne-bottles on the wheels in front of the
Cliff House, it's because automobiles weren't invented and Cliff House
wasn't built. Begging your pardon, dad--I'll bet you were a pretty
rollicky young blade, yourself."
Now dad is very old-fashioned in some of his notions; one of them is that
a parent may hand out a roast that will frizzle the foliage for blocks
around, and, guilty or innocent, the son must take it, as he'd take
cod-liver oil--it's-nasty-but-good-for-what-ails-you. He snapped his mouth
shut, and, being his son and having that habit myself, I recognized the
symptoms and judged that things would presently grow interesting.
I was betting on a full-house. The atmosphere grew tense. I heard a lot of
things in the next five minutes that no one but my dad could say without
me trying mighty hard to make him swallow them. And I just sat there and
looked at him and took it.
I couldn't agree with him that I'd committed a grievous crime. It wasn't
much of a lark, as larks go: just an incident at the close of a rather
full afternoon. Coming around up the beach front Ingleside House a few
days before, in the _Yellow Peril_--my machine--we got to badgering each
other about doing things not orthodox. At last Barney MacTague dared me to
drive the _Yellow Peril_ past the dead-line--down by the Pavilion--and on
up the hill to Sutro Baths. Naturally, I couldn't take a dare like that,
and went him one better; I told him I'd not only drive to the very top of
the hill, but I'd stop at the Gift House and crack a bottle of champagne
on each wheel of the _Yellow Peril,_ in honor of the occasion; that would
make a bottle apiece, for there were four of us along.
It was done, to the delight of the usual Sunday crowd of brides, grooms,
tourists, and kids. A mounted policeman interviewed us, to the further
delight of the crowd, and invited us to call upon a certain judge whom
none of us knew. We did so, and dad was good enough to pay the fine,
which, as I said before, was not much. I've had less fun for more money,
often.
Dad didn't say anything at the time, so I was not looking for the roast
I was getting. It appeared, from his view-point, that I was about as
useless, imbecile, and utterly no-account a son as a man ever had, and if
there was anything good in me it was not visible except under a strong
magnifying-glass.
He said, among other things too painful to mention, that he was getting
old--dad is about fifty-six--and that if I didn't buck up and amount to
something soon, he didn't know what was to become of the business.
Then he delivered the knockout blow that he'd been working up to. He was
going to see what there was in me, he said. He would pay my bills, and, as
a birthday gift, he would present me with a through ticket to Osage, in
Montana--where he owned a ranch called the Bay State--and a stock-saddle,
spurs, chaps, and a hundred dollars. After that I must work out my own
salvation--or the other thing. If I wanted more money inside a year or
two, I would have to work for it just as if I were an orphan without a dad
who writes checks on demand. He said that there was always something to
do on the Bay State Ranch--which is one of dad's places. I could do as I
pleased, he said, but he'd advise me to buckle down and learn something
about cattle. It was plain I never would amount to anything in an office.
He laid a yard or two of ticket on the table at my elbow, and on top of
that a check for one hundred dollars, payable to one Ellis Carleton.
I took up the check and read every word on it twice--not because I needed
to; I was playing for time to think. Then I twisted it up in a taper,
held it to the blaze in the fireplace, and lighted a cigarette with it.
Dad kept his finger-tips together and watched me without any expression
whatsoever in his face. I took three deliberate puffs, picked up the
ticket, and glanced along down its dirty green length. Dad never moved a
muscle, and I remember the clock got to ticking louder than I'd ever heard
it in my life before. I may as well be perfectly honest! That ticket did
not appeal to me a little bit. I think he expected to see that go up in
smoke, also. But, though I'm pretty much of a fool at times, I believe
there are lucid intervals when I recognize certain objects--such as
justice. I knew that, in the main, dad was right. I _had_ been leading
a rather reckless existence, and I was getting pretty old for such kid
foolishness. He had measured out the dose, and I meant to swallow it
without whining--but it was exceeding bitter to the palate!
"I see the ticket is dated twenty-four hours ahead," I said as calmly as
I knew how, "which gives me time to have Rankin pack a few duds. I hope
the outfit you furnish includes a red silk handkerchief and a Colt's .44
revolver, and a key to the proper method of slaying acquaintances in the
West. I hate to start in with all white chips."
"You probably mean a Colt's .45," said dad, with a more convincing
calmness than I could show. "It shall be provided. As to the key, you will
no doubt find that on the ground when you arrive."
"Very well," I replied, getting up and stretching my arms up as high as
I could reach--which was beastly manners, of course, but a safe vent for
my feelings, which cried out for something or somebody to punch. "You've
called the turn, and I'll go. It may be many moons ere we two meet
again--and when we do, the crime of cracking my own champagne--for I paid
for it, you know--on my own automobile wheels may not seem the heinous
thing it looks now. See you later, dad."
I walked out with my head high in the air and my spirits rather low, if
the truth must be told. Dad was generally kind and wise and generous, but
he certainly did break out in unexpected places sometimes. Going to the
Bay State Ranch, just at that time, was not a cheerful prospect. San
Francisco and Seattle were just starting a series of ballgames that
promised to be rather swift, and I'd got a lot up on the result. I hated
to go just then. And Montana has the reputation of being rather beastly in
early March--I knew that much.
I caught a car down to the Olympic, hunted up Barney MacTague, and played
poker with him till two o'clock that night, and never once mentioned the
trip I was contemplating. Then I went home, routed up my man, and told him
what to pack, and went to bed for a few hours; if there was anything
pleasant in my surroundings that I failed to think of as I lay there, it
must be very trivial indeed. I even went so far as to regret leaving Ethel
Mapleton, whom I cared nothing for.
And above all and beneath all, hanging in the background of my mind and
dodging forward insistently in spite of myself, was a deep resentment--a
soreness against dad for the way he had served me. Granted I was wild and
a useless cumberer of civilization; I was only what my environments had
made me. Dad had let me run, and he had never kicked on the price of my
folly, or tried to pull me up at the start. He had given his time to his
mines and his cattle-ranches and railroads, and had left his only son to
go to the devil if he chose and at his own pace. Then, because the son had
come near making a thorough job of it, he had done--_this_. I felt hardly
used and at odds with life, during those last few hours in the little old
burgh.
All the next day I went the pace as usual with the gang, and at seven,
after an early dinner, caught a down-town car and set off alone to the
ferry. I had not seen dad since I left him in the library, and I did not
particularly wish to see him, either. Possibly I had some unfilial notion
of making him ashamed and sorry. It is even possible that I half-expected
him to come and apologize, and offer to let things go on in the old way.
In that event I was prepared to be chesty. I would look at him coldly and
say: "You have seen fit to buy me a ticket to Osage, Montana. So be it; to
Osage, Montana, am I bound." Oh, I had it all fixed!
Dad came into the ferry waiting-room just as the passengers were pouring
off the boat, and sat down beside me as if nothing had happened. He did
not look sad, or contrite, or ashamed--not, at least, enough to notice.
He glanced at his watch, and then handed me a letter.
"There," he began briskly, "that is to Perry Potter, the Bay State
foreman. I have wired him that you are on the way."
The gate went up at that moment, and he stood up and held out his hand.
"Sorry I can't go over with you," he said. "I've an important meeting to
attend. Take care of yourself, Ellie boy."
I gripped his hand warmly, though I had intended to give him a dead-fish
sort of shake. After all, he was my dad, and there were just us two. I
picked up my suit-case and started for the gate. I looked back once, and
saw dad standing there gazing after me--and he did not look particularly
brisk. Perhaps, after all, dad cared more than he let on. It's a way the
Carletons have, I have heard.