A FOOL'S ERRAND
When Whitey arrived at the Star Circle Ranch, at about ten o'clock in
the morning, he was still a very tired boy. The Star Circle was a much
larger ranch than the T Up and Down, with a much smaller manager, for
Walt Lampson, who was also part owner of the place, was not much taller
than Whitey, and he was serious-looking, too--didn't look at all like
Cal Brayton.
After Whitey had delivered his letter to Walt Lampson and had eaten some
breakfast, which the cook had rustled for him, he began to tell Walt of
his adventures in coming from the T Up and Down, and he was surprised
when Walt roared with laughter. This attracted some of the cowpunchers,
and they roared, too. Whitey had to repeat the part about Felix going
home. It seemed strange to Whitey that Cal Brayton who looked so merry
should be so solemn, and Walt Lampson who looked so solemn should be so
merry.
After sleeping for about twelve hours at a stretch for three nights
Whitey might be said to be a trifle rested and able to look around and
take an interest in his surroundings. And he began to discover things
about the character of the men on the Star Circle Ranch. They were given
to loud laughter, but he noticed that most of this laughter was at the
misfortunes of others. And they were always playing jokes on one another
and cutting up tricks; but beneath this playfulness there seemed to be a
sort of fierceness--something like the ferocity that lurks beneath the
play of a tiger.
He had plenty of time for these reflections and feelings, as Walt
Lampson did not seem to be in a hurry about attending to Mr. Sherwood's
business, and Whitey caught Walt and the men looking at him in a
peculiar way, when they thought he was not noticing them. On the third
day after his arrival--an unpleasant, lowering day, for that time of the
year, with a cold wind--Walt spoke thus to Whitey:
"I'm havin' some stock cut out, t'day, t' send to your dad. How'd ye
like t' go out on th' range an' take a look at it?"
"Is that the business Bill sent me on?" asked Whitey.
"Partly," Walt answered. "What d'ye say? You might as well do that as
loaf around here."
"I'll go," said Whitey.
"All right. You c'n go with Hank Dawes. He's startin' pretty soon, an'
he'll get you a hoss."
It was some relief to Whitey to be galloping over the prairie, though
Hank Dawes was not the man he would have chosen as a companion. Hank's
cruelty to his horse turned Whitey against him. Whitey had seen many
animals treated unfeelingly, but he never could understand how a man
could enjoy torturing one, as Hank seemed to. Finally, after an outburst
on Hank's part that included quirting and spurring and swearing, Whitey
could hold in no longer.
"If you'd treat your horse better he'd behave better," he said angrily.
"You ought to know that."
For a moment Hank looked blankly at Whitey, then burst out laughing. He
could not understand any one's having consideration for a horse, and
the boy's anger struck him as being funny. Whitey turned from him in
disgust, baffled by such a lack of understanding and feeling.
The writer knows many men in the West, and, having been born and raised
there, naturally thinks Westerners the finest men in the world. But for
him to deny that there are good and bad among them would be idle. As
idle to deny that some of them were cruel to their horses. Among these
the Indians and Mexicans bear the worst reputations with those who are
supposed to know. But, for the sake of truth, the author wishes to say
that he found the Indians uniformly kind to their horses. And as for the
Mexicans, not only were they always kind and considerate to their
mounts, but they were among the greatest horsemen in the world.
Whitey and Hank rode for a time in a silence broken only by Hank's
occasional profane mutterings at his patient horse, then Whitey descried
two objects moving toward him from the west. At first he mistook them
for two horsemen, then discovered that one horse was being led, then
that the rider was Injun, and the led horse was Monty. With a whoop of
astonishment and joy Whitey galloped toward them.
"Hello, Injun, what's all this?" yelled Whitey when within speaking
distance, so glad that he was almost ready to embrace his friend.
Injun, as usual, showed no surprise, but there was a gleam of welcome in
his eye. "Monty, him stolen," he said. "Me find him."
Whitey wormed Injun's story from him, in jerky sentences, while Hank
Dawes rode up and looked on, and listened indifferently. It seemed that
two days before, at the Bar O Ranch Monty had "turned up missing."
Injun, who knew Monty's hoofprints as one friend would know the color of
another's eyes, had taken it upon himself to follow them. They had led
him a long chase, ending at a night camp, many miles west of the spot
where he and Whitey met.
Injun had tied his pony some distance from the camp. This that he might
not whinney a greeting to Monty. Then Injun had crept up on the
camper-thief, and waited patiently until "him snore heap." Then Injun
had quietly extracted Monty from that camp, and silently faded away
into the night. He was now on his way to the Bar O.
"Didn't you see who the thief was?" asked Whitey.
"Him fire out. Me 'fraid make light," said Injun, unknowingly giving a
hint of the time he must have visited at the camp.
Monty was showing his joy at meeting Whitey, who was patting the pony's
neck.
"This isn't my saddle!" Whitey cried suddenly.
"Him Bill Jordan's saddle," said Injun, grinning. It seemed to appeal to
Injun's peculiar sense of humor that the clever Mr. Jordan should have
had his saddle stolen.
"Did Bill suspect any one?" inquired Whitey.
"Guess heap, can't tell," Injun replied. "Henry Dorgan, him leave
Monday," Injun added darkly, plainly willing to connect the man he
disliked with the theft.
Whitey hardly thought that Dorgan would risk a return to the ranch for
Monty, though he always had admired the pony. If Dorgan had stolen
Monty, it was pleasant to think that he was now wending his way across
the plains on foot.
Another idea occurred to Whitey. "Why don't you stay with me, Injun?" he
demanded. "Then we can ride back to the Bar O together."
Injun grinned his agreement to the idea, not saying that he had thought
of it first. So Whitey transferred his person to Monty, and, leading the
Star Circle horse, he and Injun and Hank Dawes continued on their way.
And Mr. Dawes was allowed to ride ahead while Whitey told Injun what had
befallen him since leaving the Bar O Ranch, and of his present errand.
Injun cast a knowing eye at the sky. "No cut out cows t'day," he said.
"Heap storm comin'."
"What's the difference?" Whitey asked. "Maybe we can ride night herd.
It'll be great fun."
Riding night herd was not Injun's idea of fun, but he was so glad to be
with Whitey again that he made no objection. He seldom made objections,
anyway. It occurred to neither of the boys that after Injun's long
pursuit of the horse-thief, it would be a hardship for him to ride all
that day and possibly that night. And, of course, Injun wasn't hungry.
He had not been fool enough to start out on a long chase without
providing himself with food.
So the boys rode on. Even had they known into what they were riding it
is unlikely that they would have turned back. Had Walt Lampson known of
the coming peril he would not have been at the Star Circle, laughingly
telling his men of sending Whitey on a wild-goose chase, that would end
with his spending a night in the saddle, facing a blinding storm.
Lampson and all the men he could summon would have been heavily armed,
dashing at full speed toward the threatened herd.
Buck Milton, the range boss, made a better impression on Whitey than any
other man he had seen at the Star Circle. He was tall, blond, sinewy. He
was thoughtful and serious, and not ill-natured. He looked like a man
who could take a joke which he might not understand any too well, and
put up a fight in which he would prove a deadly factor. In short, he
was a character you would look at twice, and Whitey was surprised to
find him in the Star Circle outfit.
Hank Dawes handed Buck a letter, which Whitey took to be instructions
from Walt Lampson, and Buck read it, talked to Hank a moment, and when
Buck rode over to where Whitey waited with Injun, he was smiling.
"There won't be no cuttin' out t'day," he said. "Too late, for one
thing, and for another it's goin' t' storm. You boys like t' stay with
th' herd t'night? Be kinda rough."
"Why, yes. We'd like it immensely. It'll be a sort of adventure," Whitey
replied.
"Well, some folks might call it that," said Buck. "You might stick along
with me." And he and the boys rode off together.
You must know of the old, old enmity that existed between the cowmen and
the sheepmen of those early days of the Western ranges. In the
neighborhood in which Whitey found himself, this enmity was particularly
bitter, for more and more had the sheep been encroaching on the plains
that the cattlemen regarded as their own. And the reason for this
enmity: once the white-coated flocks had passed over the land it was
dead as a feeding-ground for cattle.
So little wonder that the cattlemen thought of the sheep as pests or
vermin, and considered their owners as deadly foes, and in turn were
regarded as foes by the sheepmen. The cattlemen were in possession of
most of the ranges, and possession was nine points of the law in a
country in which there was little law, except that of the gun.