COWLAND TOPSY-TURVY
To Bud Larkin enough had already happened to make him as philosophical as
Socrates. Epictetus remarks that our chief happiness should consist in
knowing that we are entirely indifferent to calamity; that disgrace is
nothing if our consciences are right and that death, far from being a
calamity is, in fact, a release.
But the world only boasts of a few great minds capable of believing these
theories, and Larkin's was not one of them. He was distinctly and
completely depressed at the prospect ahead of him.
It was about ten o'clock at night and he sat in the chair beside his
table, upon which a candle was burning, running over the pages of an
ancient magazine.
The knowledge of what the cowmen had decided to do with him had been
brought by a committee of three of the men just before the supper hour and
since that time Larkin had been fuming and growling with rage.
There seems to be something particularly shameful in a whipping that makes
it the most dreaded of punishments. It was particularly so at the time in
which this story is laid, for echoes of '65 were still to be heard
reverberating from one end of the land to the other. In the West whippings
were of rare occurrence, if not unknown, except in penitentiaries, where
they had entirely too great a vogue.
Larkin's place of captivity was now changed. Some enterprising cowboy, at
Bissell's orders, had fashioned iron bars and these were fixed vertically
across the one window. The long-unused lock of the door had been fitted
with a key and other bars fastened across the doorway horizontally so that
should Larkin force the lock he would still meet opposition.
Since Juliet's unpleasant episode with her father Bud had seen her just
once--immediately afterward. Then, frankly and sincerely, she had told him
what had happened and why, and Larkin, touched to the heart, had pleaded
with her for the greatest happiness of his life.
The realization of their need for each other was the natural outcome of
the position of each, and the fact that, whatever happened, Juliet found
herself forced to espouse Bud's cause.
In that interview with her father she had come squarely to the parting of
the ways, and had chosen the road that meant life and happiness to her.
The law that human intellects will seek their own intellectual level,
providing the person is sound in principle, had worked out in her case,
and, once she had made her decision, she clung to it with all the
steadfastness of a strong and passionate nature.
It was Bissell's discovery of a new and intimate relation between his
daughter and the sheepman that had resulted in the latter's close
confinement, and from the time that this occurred the two had seen nothing
of each other except an occasional glimpse at a distance when Bud was
taken out for a little exercise.
To-night, therefore, as Larkin sat contemplating the scene to be enacted
at dawn, his sense of shame increased a hundredfold, for he knew that, as
long as she lived, Julie could not forget the occurrence.
It should not be thought that all this while he had not formulated plans
of escape. Many had come to him, but had been quickly dismissed as
impracticable. Day and night one of the Bar T cowboys watched him. And
even though he had been able to effect escape from his room, he knew that
without a horse he was utterly helpless on the broad, level stretches of
prairie. And to take a horse from the Bar T corral would lay him open to
that greatest of all range crimes--horse-stealing.
To-night his guards had been doubled. One paced up and down outside his
window and the other sat in the dining-room on which his door opened.
Now, at ten o'clock the entire Bar T outfit was asleep. Since placing the
bunk-house at the disposal of the cowmen from other ranches, the punchers
slept on the ground--rolled in their blankets as they always did when
overtaken by night on the open range.
At ten-thirty Bud put out his candle, undressed, and went to bed. But he
could not sleep. His mind reverted to Hard-winter Sims and the sheep camp
by the Badwater. He wondered whether the men from Montana had arrived
there yet, and, most intensely of all, he wondered whether Ah Sin had got
safely through with his message.
He calculated that the Chinaman must have arrived three days before unless
unexpectedly delayed, and he chafed at the apparent lack of effort made on
his behalf. The only explanation that offered itself was--that Sims,
taking advantage of the events happening at the Bar T, had seized the
opportunity to hurry the gathering sheep north across the range. If such
was the case, Larkin resigned himself to his fate, since he had given Sims
full power to do as he thought best.
At about midnight he was dimly conscious of a scuffling sound outside his
window, and, getting softly out of bed, went to the opening. In a few
minutes the head of a man rose gradually above the window-sill close to
the house, and a moment later he was looking into the face of Hard-winter
Sims.
Controlling the shock this apparition gave him, Larkin placed his finger
on his lips and whispered in a tone so low it was scarcely more than a
breath:
"Did you get the fellow outside?"
Sims nodded.
"There's another one in the dining-room just outside my door. He ought to
be relieved at one o'clock, but he'll have to go out and wake up his
relief. He'll go out the kitchen door, and when he does nab him, but don't
let him yell. Now pass me a gun."
Without a sound, Sims inserted a long .45 between the clumsy bars, and
followed it with a cartridge belt.
"How'll we get yuh out?" he whispered.
"After fixing the man inside come out again and loosen these bars; the
door is barred, too."
"Where are the cowmen?" asked Sims.
"All in the bunk-house, and the punchers are sleeping out near the
corral."
"Yes, I seen 'em. Now you go back to bed an' wait till I hiss through the
window. Then we'll have yuh out o' here in a jiffy."
The herder's form vanished in the darkness, and Larkin, his heart beating
high with hope and excitement, returned to his bed. Before lying down,
however, he dressed himself completely and strapped on the cartridge belt
and gun.
The minutes passed like hours. Listening with every nerve fiber on the
alert, Bud found the night peopled with a multitude of sounds that on an
ordinary occasion would have passed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of
hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting under
the night coolness seemed to him almost like a pistol shot.
When at last it appeared that Sims must have failed and that dawn would
surely begin to break, he heard a heavy sound in the dining-room and sat
bolt upright. It was merely the cow-puncher there preparing to go out and
waken his successor. Although the man made as little noise as possible, it
seemed to Bud that his footsteps must wake everybody in the house.
The man went out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys,
closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was out
of the prisoner's ken.
After a while, however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at
the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his
stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were
prying at the bars of the window with instruments muffled in cloth.
"Did you get him?" asked Bud.
"Shore! He won't wake up for a week, that feller," answered Sims
placidly.
For a quarter of an hour the two worked at the clumsy bars, assisted by
Bud from the inside. At the end of that time two of them came loose at the
lower ends and were bent upward. Then the combined efforts of the three
men were centered on the third bar, which gave way in a few minutes.
Handing his boots out first, Larkin crawled headforemost out of the window
and put his arms around the shoulders of his rescuers, resting most of
his weight upon their bent backs. Then they walked slowly away from the
house and Bud's feet and legs came out noiselessly. Still in the shadow of
the walls they set him down and he drew on his boots.
It was not until then that Sims's assistant made himself known.
"Hello, boss," he said and took off his broad hat so that Larkin could see
his face.
"Jimmie Welsh, by George!" whispered Bud joyfully, wringing his hand. "Did
you bring many of the boys down with you?"
"Fifty," replied the other.
"Bully for you! I don't know what would become of me if it weren't for you
and Hard-winter."
As they talked they were moving off toward the little river that wound
past the Bar T house.
"Got a horse for me?" asked Bud.
"Yes," said Sims, "over here in the bottoms where the rest of the boys
are."
"What do you plan to do now?"
Sims told him and Bud grinned delightedly at the same time that his face
hardened with the triumph of a revenge about to be accomplished.
"Let's get at it," he said.
"Wait here and I'll get the rest of the bunch."
Hard-winter left them, and in a few minutes returned with a dozen brawny
sheepmen, mostly recruited from Larkin's own ranch in Montana. When
greetings had been exchanged they moved off quietly toward the
ranch-house.
The corral of the Bar T was about fifty yards back of the cook's shanty
and as you faced it had a barn on the right-hand side, where the family
saddle horses were kept in winter, as well as the small amount of hay that
Bissell put up every year.
To the left of the corral the space was open, and here the Bar T punchers
had made their camp since leaving their former quarters. The bunk-house on
the other hand stood perhaps fifty feet forward of the barn. It was toward
this building that the expedition under Sims took its way.
Silently the rough door swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, with
a revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remained
outside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursing
that grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver butt
coming in contact with a human skull. After that there was practically no
noise whatever.
The men outside watched anxiously, fearful that the single outcry had
raised an alarm. But there was no sound from either the house or the
cowboys' camp. Presently Welsh stuck his head out of the door.
"How is she? Safe?" he asked.
"Yes, bring 'em out," answered Bud, and the next minute a strange
procession issued from the bunk-house.
The cowmen, gagged, and with their hands bound behind them, walked single
file, accompanied by one of the sheepmen. Without a word the line turned
in the direction of the river bottoms, where the rest of the band and the
horses were waiting.
To do this it was necessary to pass behind the cook-house. Bud leaned over
and spoke to Sims.
"Can't we get Bissell in this party? He's the fellow that has made all the
trouble."
"Sure, Jimmy and I will go in and get him. I had forgotten all about
him."
But they were saved the trouble, for just as they were opposite the
cook-house, Larkin saw a burly form outlined for an instant in the doorway
of the cowboys' dining-room. With three bounds he was upon this form and
arrived just in time to seize a hand that was vainly tugging at a
revolver strapped on beneath his night clothes.
Had fortune not tangled Bissell's equipment that night Bud Larkin would
have been a dead man. Snatching off his hat, he smashed it over the cattle
king's mouth, and an instant later Bissell, writhing and struggling, but
silent, was being half-carried out to join his friends.
Matters now proceeded with speed and smoothness. The prisoners were
hurried to where the remainder of the band awaited them. Then, still bound
and gagged, they were mounted on spare horses.
Only thirty of Welsh's raiders had come on this trip, the rest remaining
to help with the sheep, but their horses had been brought so that there
might be ample provision for everybody.
With a feeling of being once more at home, Larkin climbed into a deep
saddle, and a wave of triumph surged over him. He was again free, and at
the head of a band of brave men. He had the ascendency at last over his
misfortune, and he intended to keep it. Then when everything was finished
he could come back and he would find Juliet--
The remembrance of her brought him to a pause. Must he go away without as
much as a word from her, the one for whom he cared more than all the rest
of the world? Quietly he dismounted.
"Let Jimmie go on with the prisoners and the rest of the boys," he said to
Sims. "You wait here with me. I must leave one message."
A minute later the cavalcade stole away, following the winding river bank
for a mile before setting foot on the plain.
Then, with Sims crouching, armed, behind the nearest protection, Bud
Larkin walked softly to the house. He knew which was her window and went
straight there, finding it open as he had expected. Listening carefully he
heard no sound from within. Then he breathed the one word, "Julie," and
immediately there came a rustling of the bed as she rose.
Knowing that she had been awake and was coming to him, he turned away his
eyes until he felt her strong little hand on his shoulder. Then he looked
up to find her in an overwrap with her luxuriant hair falling down over
her shoulders, her eyes big and luminously dusky.
"Darling," she said, "I have heard everything, and I am so glad."
"Then you could have given the alarm at any time?"
"Yes."
"God bless your faithful little heart!" he said fervently, and, reaching
up, drew down her face to his and kissed her.
It was their second kiss and they both thrilled from head to foot with
this tantalization of the hunger of their love. All the longing of their
enforced separation seemed to burst the dam that had held it, and, for a
time, they forgot all things but the living, moving tide of their own
love.
At last the girl disengaged herself from his eager hands, with hot cheeks
and bright, flame-lit eyes. Her breath came fast, and it was a moment
before she could compose herself.
"Where are you going now, Bud?" she asked.
"Back to the sheep."
"Can I do anything to help you?"
"I can only think of one thing, and that is to marry me."
"Everything in time, sir!" she reproved him. "Get your muttons out of the
way and then you can have me."
Larkin groaned. Then he said:
"If anything comes for me or anybody wants me, I want you to do as I would
do if I were here. Things are coming to a climax now and I must know all
that goes on. Watch Stelton especially. He is crooked somewhere, and I'm
going to get him if it takes me the rest of my life."
Suddenly there was a loud knock from outside the girl's bedroom door, and
they both listened, hardly daring to breathe.
"Julie, let me in!" cried Mrs. Bissell's querulous voice. "Where's your
father?"
"Run, dear boy, for your life!" breathed the girl.
Larkin kissed her swiftly and hurried back to the underbrush, where Sims
was awaiting him in an access of temper.
"Great Michaeljohn, boss!" he growled as they rode along the bank, "ain't
yuh got no consideration fer me? From the way yuh go on a person'd think
yuh were in love with the girl."