When Zen awoke next morning the mowing machines of Transley’s outfit
were already singing their symphony in the meadows; she could hear the
metallic rhythm as it came borne on the early breeze. She lay awake on
her camp cot for a few minutes, stretching her fingers to the canvas
ceiling and feeling that it was good to be alive. And it was. The ripple
of water came from almost underneath the walls of her tent; the smell
of spruce trees and balm-o’-Gilead and new-mown hay was in the air. She
could feel the warmth of the sunshine already pouring upon her white
roof; she could trace the gentle sway of the trees by the leafy patterns
gliding forward and back. A cheeky gopher, exploring about the door
of her tent, ventured in, and, sitting bolt upright, sent his shrill
whistle boldly forth. She watched his fine bravery for a minute, then
clapped her hands together, and laughed as he fled.
“Therein we have the figures of both Transley and Linder,” she mused
to herself. “Upright, Transley; horizontal, Linder. I doubt if the poor
fellow slept last night after the fright I gave him.” Slowly and calmly
she turned the incident over in her mind. She wondered a little if she
had been quite fair with Linder. Her words and conduct were capable of
very broad interpretations. She was not at all in love with Linder; of
that Zen was very sure. She was equally sure that she was not at all in
love with Transley. She admitted that she admired Transley for his calm
assumptions, but they nettled her a little nevertheless. If this should
develop into a love affair--IF it should--she had no intention that it
was to be a pleasant afternoon’s canter. It was to be a race--a race,
mind you--and may the best man win! She had a feeling, amounting almost
to a conviction, that Transley underrated his foreman’s possibilities
in such a contest. She had seen many a dark horse, less promising than
Linder, gallop home with the stakes.
Then Zen smiled her own quiet, self-confident smile, the smile which had
come down to her from Y.D. and from the Wilsons--the only family that
had ever mastered him. The idea of either Transley or Linder thinking he
could gallop home with HER! For the moment she forgot to do Linder the
justice of remembering that nothing was further from his thoughts. She
would show them. She would make a race of it--ALMOST to the wire. In the
home stretch she would make the leap, out and over the fence. She was in
it for the race, not for the finish.
Zen contemplated for some minutes the possibilities of that race; then,
as the imagination threatened to become involved, she sprang from her
cot and thrust a cautious head through the door of her tent. The gang
had long since gone to the fields, and friendly bushes sheltered her
from view from the cook-car. She drew on her boots, shook out her hair,
threw a towel across her shoulders, and, soap in hand, walked boldly the
few steps to the stream rippling over its shiny gravel bed. She stopped
and tested the water with her fingers; then brought it in fresh, cool
handfuls about her face and neck.
“Mornin’, Zen!” said a familiar voice. “‘Scuse me for happenin’ to be
here. I was jus’ waterin’ that Pete-horse after a hard ride.”
“Now look here, Mr. Drazk!” said the girl, whipping her scanty clothing
about her, “if I had a gun that Pete-horse would be scheduled for his
fastest travel in the next twenty seconds, and he’d end it without a
rider, too. I won’t have you spying about!”
“Aw, don’ be cross,” Drazk protested. He was sitting on his horse in
the ford a dozen yards away. “I jus’ happened along. I guess the outside
belongs to all of us. Say, Zen, if I was to get properly interduced,
what’s the chances?”
“Not one in a million, and if that isn’t odds enough I’ll double it.”
“You’re not goin’ to hitch up with Linder, are you?”
“Linder? Who said anything about Linder?”
“Gee, but ain’t she innercent?” Drazk stepped his horse up a few feet to
facilitate conversation. “I alus take an interest in innercent gals away
from home, so I kinda kep’ my angel eye on you las’ night. An’ I see
Linder stalkin’ aroun’ here an’ sighin’ out over the water when he
should ‘ave been in bed. But, of course, he’s been interduced.”
“George Drazk, if you speak to me again I’ll horse-whip you out of the
camp at noon before all the men. Now, beat it!”
“Jus’ as you say, Ma’am,” he returned, with mock courtesy. “But I could
tell a strange story if I would. But you don’t need to be scared. That’s
one thing I never do--I never squeal on a friend.”
She was burning with his insults, and if she had had a gun at hand she
undoubtedly would have made good her threat. But she had none. Drazk
very deliberately turned his horse and rode away toward the meadows.
“Oh, won’t I fix him!” she said, as she continued her toilet in a fury.
She had not the faintest idea what revenge she would take, but she
promised herself that it would leave nothing to be desired. Then,
because she was young and healthy and an optimist, and did not know
what it meant to be afraid, she dismissed the incident from her mind to
consider the more urgent matter of breakfast.
Tompkins, the cook, had not needed Transley’s suggestion to put his
best foot forward when catering to Y.D. and his daughter. Tompkins’ soul
yearned for a cooking berth that could be occupied the year round.
Work in the railway camps had always left him high and dry at the
freeze-up--dry, particularly, and a few nights in Calgary or Edmonton
saw the end of his season’s earnings. Then came a precarious existence
for Tompkins until the scrapers were back on the dump the following
spring. A steady job, cooking on a ranch like the Y.D.; if Tompkins had
written the Apocalypse that would have been his picture of heaven. So he
had left nothing undone, even to despatching a courier over night to a
railway station thirty miles away for fresh fruit and other delicacies.
Another of the gang had been impressed into a trip up the river to a
squatter who was suspected of keeping one or two milch cows and sundry
hens.
“This way, Ma’am,” Tompkins was waving as Zen emerged from the grove.
“Another of our usual mornings. Hope you slep’ well, Ma’am.” He stood
deferentially aside while she ascended the three steps that led into the
covered wagon.
Zen gave a little shriek of delight, and Tompkins felt that all his
efforts had been well repaid. One end of the table--it was with a
sore heart Tompkins had realized that he could not cut down the big
table--one end of the table was set with a clean linen cloth and granite
dishware scoured until it shone. Beside Zen’s plate were grape fruit and
sliced oranges and real cream.
“However did you manage it?” she gasped.
“Nothing’s too good for Y.D.’s daughter,” was the only explanation
Tompkins would offer, but, as Zen afterwards said, the smile on his face
was as good as another breakfast. After the fruit came porridge,
and more cream; then fresh boiled eggs with toast; then fresh ripe
strawberries with more cream.
“Mr.--Mr.--”
“Tompkins, Ma’am; Cyrus Tompkins,” he supplied.
“Well, Mr. Tompkins, you’re a wonder, and when there’s a new cook to be
engaged for the Y.D. I shall think of you.”
“Indeed I wish you would, Ma’am,” he said, earnestly. “This road
work’s all right, and nobody ever cooked for a better boss than Mr.
Transley--savin’ it would be your father, Ma’am--but I’m a man of
family, an’ it’s pretty hard--”
“Family, did you say, Mr. Tompkins? How many of a family have you?”
“Well, it’s seven years since I heard from them--I haven’t corresponded
very reg’lar of late, but they WAS six--”
The story of Tompkins’ family was cut short by the arrival of a team and
mowing machine.
“What’s up, Fred?” called Tompkins through a window of his dining car to
the driver. “Breakfust is just over, an’ dinner ain’t begun.”
For answer the man addressed as Fred slowly produced an iron stake about
eighteen inches long and somewhat less than an inch in diameter.
“What kind of shrubbery do you call that, Tompkins?” he demanded.
“Well, it ain’t buffalo grass, an’ it ain’t brome grass, an’ I don’t
figger it’s alfalfa,” said Tompkins, meditatively.
“No, and it ain’t a grub-stake,” Fred replied, with some sarcasm. “It’s
a iron stake, growin’ right in a nice little clump of grass, and I run
on to it and bust my cuttin’-bar all to--that is, all to pieces,” he
completed rather lamely, taking Zen into his glance.
“I think I follow you,” she said, with a smile. “Can you fix it here?”
“Nope. Have to go to town for a new one. Two days’ lost time, when every
hour counts. Hello! Here comes someone else.”
Another of the teamsters was drawing into camp. “Hello, Fred!” he said,
upon coming up with his fellow workman, “you in too? I had a bit of
bad luck. I run smash on to an iron stake right there in the ground and
crumpled my knife like so much soap.”
“I did worse,” said Fred, with a grin. “I bust my cuttin’-bar.”
The two men exchanged a steady glance for half a minute. Then the
new-comer gave vent to a long, low whistle.
“So that’s the way of it,” he said. “That’s the kind of war Mr. Landson
makes. Well, we can fight back with the same weapons, but that won’t cut
the hay, will it?”
By this time Y.D. and Transley, with four other teamsters, were observed
coming in. Each driver had had the same experience. An iron stake,
carefully hidden in a clump of grass, had been driven down into the
ground until it was just high enough to intercept the cutting-bar. The
fine, sharp knives were crumpled against it; in some cases the heavy
cutting-bar, in which the knives operate, was damaged.
Y.D.’s face was black with fury.
“That’s the lowest, mangyest, cowardliest trick I ever had pulled on
me,” he was saying. “I’m plumb equal to ridin’ down to Landson’s an’
drivin’ one of them stakes through under his short ribs.”
“But can you prove that Landson did it?” said Zen, who had an element
of caution in her when her father was concerned. She had a vision of
a fight, with Landson pleading entire ignorance of the whole cause of
offence, and her father probably summoned by the police for unprovoked
assault.
“No, I can’t prove that Landson did it, an’ I can’t prove that the grass
my steers eat turns to hair on their backs,” he retorted, “but I reach
my own conclusions. Is there any shootin’ irons in the place?”
“Now, Dad, that’s enough,” said the girl, firmly. “There’ll be no
shooting between you and Landson. If there is to be anything of that
kind I’ll ride down ahead and warn him of what’s coming.”
“Darter,” said Y.D.--it was only on momentous occasions that he
addressed her as daughter--“I brought you over here as a guest, not
as manager o’ my affairs. I’ve taken care of those affairs for some
considerable years, an’ I reckon I still have the qualifications. If
you’re a-goin’ to act up obstrep’rous I’ll get Mr. Transley to lend me a
man to escort you home.”
“At your service, Y.D.,” said George Drazk, who was in the crowd which
had gathered about the rancher, his daughter, and Transley. “That
Pete-horse an’ me would jus’ see her over the hills a-whoopin’.”
“I don’t think it would be wise to take any extreme measures, at least,
not just yet,” said Transley. “It’s out of the question to suppose that
Landson has picketed the whole valley with those stakes. It is now quite
clear why we were left in peace yesterday. He wanted us to get started,
and get a few swaths cut, so that he would know where to drive the
stakes to catch us the next morning. Some of these machines can be
repaired at once, and the others within a day or two. We will just move
over a little and start on new fields. There’s pretty good moonlight
these nights and we’ll leave a few men out on guard, and perhaps we can
catch the enemy at his little game. Let us get one of Landson’s men with
the goods on him.”
Y.D. was somewhat pacified by this suggestion. “You’re a practical
devil, Transley,” he said, with considerable admiration. “Now, in a case
of this kind I jus’ get plumb fightin’ mad. I want to bore somebody.
I guess it’s the only kind o’ procedure that comes easy to my hand. I
guess you’re right, but I hate to let anybody have the laugh on me.”
Y.D. looked down the valley, shading his eyes with his hand. “That
son-of-a-gun has got a dozen or more stacks down there. I don’t wish
nobody any hard luck, but if some tenderfoot was to drop a cigar--”
“In that case I suppose you’d pray for a west wind, Dad,” Zen suggested,
“but the winds in these valleys, even with your prayers to direct them,
are none too reliable.”
“Everybody to work on fixing up these machines,” Transley ordered.
“Linder, make a list of what repairs are needed and Drazk will ride to
town with it at once. Some of them may have to come out from the city by
express. Drazk can get the orders in and a team will follow to bring out
the repairs.”
In a moment Transley’s men were busy with wrenches and hammers,
replacing knives and appraising damages. Even in his anger Y.D. took
approving note of the promptness of Transley’s decisions and the zest
with which his men carried them into effect.
“A he-man, that fellow, Zen,” he confided to his daughter, “If he’d
blowed into this country thirty years ago, like I did, he’d own it by
this time plumb to the sky-line.”
When the list of repairs was completed Linder handed it to Drazk.
“Beat it to town on that Pete-horse of yours, George,” he said. “Burn
the grass on the road.”
“I bet I’ll be ten miles on the road back when I meet my shadow goin’,”
said Drazk, making a spectacular leap into his saddle. “Bye, Y.D!; bye,
Zen!” he shouted while he whirled his horse’s head eastward and waved
his hand to where they stood. In spite of her annoyance at him she had
to smile and return his salute.
“Mr. Drazk is irrepressible,” she remarked to Transley.
“And irresponsible,” the contractor returned. “I sometimes wonder why I
keep him. In fact, I don’t really keep him; he just stays. Every spring
he hunts me up and fastens on. Still, I get a lot of good service out
of him. Praise ‘that Pete-horse,’ and George would ride his head off for
you. He has a weakness for wanting to marry every woman he sees, but his
infatuations seem harmless enough.”
“I know something of his weakness,” Zen replied. “I have already been
honored with a proposal.”
Transley looked in her face. It was slightly flushed, whether with the
summer sun or with her confession, but it was a wonderfully good face to
look in.
“Zen,” he said, in a low voice that Y.D. and the others might not hear,
“how would you take a serious proposal, made seriously by one who loves
you, and who knows that you are, and always will be, a queen among
women?”
“If you had been a cow puncher instead of a contractor,” she told him,
“I’m sure you would long ago have ended your life in some dash over a
cutbank.”
Meanwhile Drazk pursued his way to town. The trail, after crossing the
ford, turned abruptly to the right from that which led across country to
the North Y.D. For a mile or more it skirted the stream in a park-like
drive through groves of spruce and cottonwood. Sunshine and the babble
of water everywhere filled the air. Sunshine, too, filled George Drazk’s
heart. The importance of his mission was pleasantly heavy upon him. He
pictured the impression he would make in town, galloping in with his
horse wet over the back, and rushing to the implement agency with all
the importance of a courier from Y.D. He would let two of the boys take
Pete to the stable, and then, seated on a mower seat in the shade, he
would tell the story. It would lose nothing in the telling. He would
even add how Zen had thrown a kiss at him in parting. Perhaps he would
have Zen kiss him on the cheek before the whole camp. He turned that
possibility over in his mind, weighing nicely the credulity of his
imaginary audience.... At any rate, whether he decided to put that in
the story or not, it was very pleasant to think about.
Presently the trail turned abruptly up a gully leading into the hills.
A huge cutbank, jutting into the river, barred the way in front, and
its precipitous side, a hundred feet or more in height, kept continually
crumbling and falling into the stream. These cutbanks are a terror to
inexperienced riders. The valleys are swallowed up in the tawny sameness
of the ranges; the vision catches only the higher levels, and one
may gallop to the verge of a precipice before becoming aware of
its existence. It was to this that Zen had referred in speaking of
Transley’s precipitateness.
Drazk followed the gully up into the hills, letting his horse drop back
to a walk in the hard going along the dry bed of a stream which flowed
only in the spring freshets. Pete had to pick his way over boulders and
across stretches of sand and boggy patches of black mud formed by little
springs leaking out under clumps of willows. Here and there the white
ribs of a steer’s skeleton peered through the brush; once or twice an
overpowering stench gave notice of a carcass not wholly decomposed.
It was not a pleasant environment, but in an hour Drazk was out again
on the brow of the brown hills, where the sunshine flooded about and a
fresh breeze beat up against his face. After all his winding about in
the gully he was not more than a mile from the cutbank.
“I reckon I could get a great view from that cutbank of what Landson
is doin’,” he suddenly remarked to himself. He took off his hat and
scratched his tousled head in reflection. “Linder said to beat it,” he
ruminated, “but I can’t get back to-night anyway, an’ it might be worth
while to do a little scoutin’. Here goes!”
He struck a smart gallop to the southward, and brought his horse up,
spectacularly, a yard from the edge of the precipice. The view which
his position commanded was superb. Up the valley lay the white tents of
Transley’s outfit, almost hidden in green foliage; the ford across the
river was distinctly visible, and stretching south from it lay, like a
great curving snake, the trail which wound across the valley and lost
itself in the foothills far to the south; across the western horizon
hung the purple curtain of the mountains, soft and vague in their
noonday mists, but touched with settings of ivory where the snow fields
beat back the blazing sunshine; far down the valley was the gleam of
Landson’s whitewashed buildings, and nearer at hand the greenish-brown
of the upland meadows which his haymakers had already cleared of their
crop of prairie wool. This was now arising in enormous stacks; it must
have been three miles to where they lay, but Drazk’s keen eyes could
distinguish ten completed stacks and two others in course of building.
He could even see the sweeps hauling the new hay, after only a few hours
of sun-drying, and sliding it up the inclined platforms which dumped it
into the form of stacks. The foothill rancher makes hay by horse power,
and almost without the aid of a pitch-fork. Even as Drazk watched he
saw a load skidded up; saw its apparent momentary poise in air; saw
the well-trained horses stop and turn and start back to the meadow with
their sweep. And up the valley Transley’s outfit was at a standstill.
Drazk employed his limited but expressive vocabulary. It was against
all human nature to look on such a scene unmoved. He recalled Y.D.’s
half-spoken wish about a random cigar. Then suddenly George Drazk’s
mouth dropped open and his eyes rounded with a great idea.
Of course, it was against all the rules of the range--it was outlaw
business--but what about driving iron stakes in a hay meadow? Drazk’s
philosophy was that the end justifies the means. And if the end would
win the approval of Y.D.--and of Y.D.’s daughter--then any means was
justified. Had not Linder said, “Burn the grass on the road?” Drazk
knew well enough that Linder’s remark was a figure of speech, but
his eccentric mind found no trouble in converting it into literal
instructions.
Drazk sniffed the air and looked at the sun. A soft breeze was moving
slowly up the valley; the sun was just past noon. There was every reason
to expect that as the lowland prairies grew hot with the afternoon
sunshine a breeze would come down out of the mountains to occupy the
area of great atmospheric expansion. Drazk knew nothing about the theory
of the thing; all that concerned him was the fact that by mid-afternoon
the wind would probably change to the west.
Two miles down the valley he found a gully which gave access to the
water’s edge. He descended, located a ford, and crossed. There were
cattle-trails through the cottonwoods; he might have followed them, but
he feared the telltale shoe-prints. He elected the more difficult route
down the stream itself. The South Y.D. ran mostly on a wide gravel
bottom; it was possible to pick out a course which kept Pete in water
seldom higher than his knees. An hour of this, and Drazk, peering
through the trees, could see the nearest of Landson’s stacks not half
a mile away. The Landson gang were working farther down the valley, and
the stack itself covered approach from the river.
Drazk slipped from the saddle, and stole quietly into the open. The
breeze was now coming down the valley.