_The Shadow Lies Long_.
What time he was compelled to be in the house, in the few remaining
days before round-up, he avoided Flora or was punctiliously polite.
Only once did he address her directly by name, and then he called her
Miss Bridger with a stiff formality that made Mama Joy dimple with
spiteful satisfaction. Flora replied by calling him Mr. Boyle, and
would not look at him.
Then it was all in the past, and Billy was out on the range learning
afresh how sickeningly awry one's plans may go. As mile after mile
of smiling grass-land was covered by the sweep of the Double-Crank
circles, the disaster pressed more painfully upon him. When the wagons
had left the range the fall before, Billy had estimated roughly that
eight or nine thousand head of Double-Crank stock wandered at will in
the open. But with the gathering and the calf-branding he knew that
the number had shrunk woefully. Of the calves he had left with their
mothers in the fall, scarce one remained; of the cows themselves he
could find not half, and the calf-branding was becoming a grim joke
among the men.
"Eat hearty," they would sometimes banter one another. "We got to
buckle down and _work_ this afternoon. They's three calves milling
around out there waiting to be branded!"
"Aw, come off! There ain't but two," another would bellow.
If it were not quite as bad as that, it was in all conscience bad
enough, and when they swung up to the reservation line and found there
a fence in the making, and saw the Indian cowboys at work throwing out
all but reservation stock, Billy mentally threw up his hands and left
the outfit in Jim Bleeker's charge while he rode home to consult Dill.
For Billy Boyle, knowing well his range-lore, could see nothing before
the Double-Crank but black failure.
"It begins to look, Dilly," he began, "as though I've stuck yuh on
this game. Yuh staked the wrong player; yuh should uh backed the man
that stacked the deck on me. There's hell to pay on the range, Dilly.
Last winter sure put a crimp in the range-stuff--_that's_ what I come
to tell yuh. I knew it would cut into the bunch. I could tell by the
way things was going close around here--but I didn't look for it to
be as bad as it is. And they're fencing in the reservation this
spring--that cuts off a big chunk uh mighty good grazing and winter
shelter along all them creeks. And I see there's quite a bunch uh
grangers come in, since I was along east uh here. They've got cattle
turned on the range, and there's half a dozen shacks scattered--"
"Mr. Brown is selling off tracts of land with water-rights--under that
big ditch, you understand. He's working a sort of colonization scheme,
as near as I can find out. He is also fencing more land to the north
and west--toward Hardup, in fact. I believe they already have most of
the posts set. We'll soon be surrounded, William. And while we're upon
the subject of our calamities, I might state that we shall not be able
to do any irrigating this season. Mr. Brown is running his ditch half
full and has been for some little time. He kindly leaves enough for
our stock to drink, however!"
"Charitable old cuss--that same Brown! I was figuring on the hay to
kinda ease through next winter. Do yuh know, Dilly, the range is just
going t' be a death-trap, with all them damn fences for the stock to
drift into. Another winter half as bad as the last one was will sure
put the finishing touches to the Double-Crank--unless we get busy and
_do_ something." Billy, his face worn and his eyes holding that tired
look which comes of nights sleepless and of looking long upon trouble,
turned and began to pull absently at a splintered place in the
gatepost. He had stopped Dill at the corral to have a talk with him,
because to him the house was as desolate as if a dear one lay dead
inside. Flora was at home--trust his eyes to see her face appear
briefly at the window when he rode up!--but he could not yet quite
endure to face her and her cold greeting.
Dill, looking to Billy longer and lanker and mere melancholy than
ever, caressed his chin meditatively and regarded Billy in his
wistful, half-deprecating way. With the bitter knowledge that his
castle, and with it Dill's fortune, was toppling, Billy could hardly
bear to meet that look. And he had planned such great things, and had
meant to make Dilly a millionaire!
"What would you advise, William, under the present unfavorable
conditions?" asked Dill hesitatingly.
"Oh, I dunno. I've laid awake nights tryin' to pick a winning card. If
it was me, and me alone, I'd pull stakes and hunt another range--and
I'd go gunning after the first damn' man that stuck up a post to hang
barb-wire on. But after me making such a rotten-poor job uh running
the Double-Crank, I don't feel called on to lay down the law to
anybody!"
"If you will permit me to pass judgment, William, I will say that you
have shown an ability for managing men and affairs which I consider
remarkable; _quite_ remarkable. You, perhaps, do not go deep enough in
searching for the cause of our misfortunes. It is not bad management
or the hard winter, or Mr. Brown, even--and I blame myself bitterly
for failing to read aright the 'handwriting on the wall,' to quote
scripture, which I seldom do. If you have ever read history, William,
you must know--even if you have _not_ read history you should know
from observation--how irresistible is the march of progress; how
utterly futile it is for individuals to attempt to defy it. I should
have known that the shadow of a great change has fallen on the
West--the West of the wide, open ranges and the cattle and the cowboy
who tends them. I should have seen it, but I did not. I was culpably
careless.
"Brown saw it, and that, William, is why he sold the Double-Crank to
me. _He_ saw that the range was doomed, and instead of being swallowed
with the open range he very wisely changed his business; he became
allied with Progress, and he was in the front rank. While we are
being 'broken' on the wheel of evolutionary change, he will make his
millions--"
"Damn him!" gritted Billy savagely, under his breath.
"He is to be admired, William. Such a man is bound in the very nature
of things to succeed. It is the range and--and you, William, and those
like you, that must go. It is hard--no doubt it is _extremely_
hard, but it is as irresistible as--as death itself. Civilization is
compelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize the
soil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in the
life of humans, also.
"I am explaining at length, William, so that you will quite understand
why I do not think it wise to follow your suggestion. As I say, it is
not Brown, or the fences, or anything of that sort--taken in a large
sense--which is forcing us to the wall. It is the press of natural
progress, the pushing farther and farther of civilization. We might
move to a more unsettled portion of the country and delay for a time
the ultimate crushing. We could not avoid it entirely; we might, at
best, merely postpone it.
"My idea is to gather everything and sell for as high a price as
possible. Then--perhaps it would be well to follow Mr. Brown's
example, and turn this place into a farm; or sell it, also, and try
something else. What do you think, William?"
But Billy, his very soul sickening under the crushing truth of what
Dill in his prim grammatical way was saying, did not answer at all. He
was picking blindly, mechanically at the splinter, his face shaded by
his worn, gray hat; and he was thinking irrelevantly how a condemned
man must feel when they come to him in his cell and in formal words
read aloud his death-warrant. One sentence was beating monotonously
in his brain: "It is the range--and you, William, and those like
you--that must go." It was not a mere loss of dollars or of cattle or
even of hopes; it was the rending, the tearing from him of a life
he loved; it was the taking of the range--land--the wide, beautiful,
weather-worn land--big and grand in its freedom of all that was
narrow and sordid, and it was cutting and scarring it, harnessing it
to the petty uses of a class he despised with all the frank egotism
of a man who loves his own outlook; giving it over to the "nester"
and the "rube" and burying the sweet-smelling grasses with plows. It
was--he could not, even in the eloquence of his utter despair, find
words for all it meant to him.
"I should, of course, leave the details to you, so far as getting the
most out of the stock is concerned. I have been thinking of this for
some little time, and your report of range conditions merely confirms
my own judgment. If you think we would better sell at once--"
"I'd let 'em go till fall," said Billy lifelessly, snapping the
splinter back into place and reaching absently for his tobacco and
papers. "They're bound to pick up a lot--and what's left is mostly
big, husky steers that'll make prime beef. With decent prices yuh
ought to pull clear uh what yuh owe Brown, and have a little left. I
didn't make anything like a count; they was so thin I handled 'em as
light as I could and get the calves branded--what few there was. But I
feel tolerable safe in saying you can round up six--well, between six
and seven thousand head. At a fair price yuh ought to pull clear."
"Well, after dinner--"
"I can't stay for dinner, Dilly. I--there's--I've got to ride over
here a piece--I'll catch up a fresh hoss and start right off. I--" He
went rather hurriedly after his rope, as hurriedly caught the horse
that was handiest and rode away at a lope. But he did not go so very
far. He just galloped over the open range to a place where, look where
he might, he could not see a fence or sign of habitation (and it
wrung the heart of him that he must ride into a coulée to find such
a place), got down from his horse and lay a long, long while in the
grass with his hat pulled over his face.
* * * * *
For the first time in years the Fourth of July saw Billy in camp and
in his old clothes. He had not hurried the round-up--on the contrary
he had been guilty of dragging it out unnecessarily by all sorts of
delays and leisurely methods--simply because he hated to return to the
ranch and be near Flora. The Pilgrim he meant to settle with, but he
felt that he could wait; he hadn't much enthusiasm even for a fight,
these days.
But, after all, he could not consistently keep the wagons forever on
the range, so he camped them just outside the pasture fence; which
was far enough from the house to give him some chance of not being
tormented every day by the sight of her, and yet was close enough
for all practical purposes. And here it was that Dill came with fresh
news.
"Beef is falling again, William," he announced when he had Billy quite
to himself. "Judging from present indications, it will go quite as low
as last fall--even lower, perhaps. If it does, I fail to see how we
can ship with any but disastrous financial results."
"Well, what yuh going to do, then?" Billy spoke more irritably than
would have been possible a year ago. "Yuh can't winter again and come
out with anything but another big loss. Yuh haven't even got hay to
feed what few calves there is. And, as I told yuh, the way the fences
are strung from hell to breakfast, the stock's bound to die off like
poisoned flies every storm that comes."
"I have kept that in mind, William. I saw that I should be quite
unable to make a payment this fall, so I went to Mr. Brown to make
what arrangements I could. To be brief, William, Brown has offered to
buy back this place and the stock, on much the same terms he offered
me. I believe he wants to put this section of land under irrigation
from his ditch and exploit it with the rest; the cattle he can
turn into his immense fields until they can be shipped at a profit.
However, that is not our affair and need not concern us.
"He will take the stock as they run, at twenty-one dollars a head.
If, as you estimate, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of
six thousand, that will dear me of all indebtedness and leave a few
thousands with which to start again--at something more abreast of the
times, I hope. I am rather inclined to take the offer. What do you
think of it, William?"
"I guess yuh can't do any better. Twenty-one dollars a head as they
run--and everything else thrown in, uh course?"
"That is the way I bought it, yes," said Dill.
"Well, we ought to scare up six thousand, if we count close. I know
old Brown fine; he'll hold yuh right down t' what yuh turn over, and
he'll tally so close he'll want to dock yuh if a critter's shy one
horn--damn him. That's why I was wishing you'd bought that way,
instead uh lumping the price and taking chances. Only, uh course, I
knew just about what was on the range."
"Then I will accept the offer. I have been merely considering it until
I saw you. And perhaps it will be as well to go about it immediately."
"It's plenty early," objected Billy. "I was going to break some more
hosses for the saddle-bunch--but I reckon I'll leave 'em now for Brown
to bust. And for _God_-sake, Dilly, once yuh get wound up here, go
on back where yuh come from. If the range is going--and they's no use
saying it ain't--this ain't going to be no place for any white man."
Which was merely Billy's prejudice speaking.