MORTON STAMFORD: TENDERFOOT
Corporal Faircloth hung up the telephone receiver and strolled to the
door, still bridling at the Inspector's ridicule. For several
minutes he stood looking thoughtfully out on the familiar prairie
scene, where not another spot of human life or habitation was visible
as far as the dark line of hills to the south-east. But an
incongruous telephone line, stretching a zigzag course of rough poles
away into the south-eastern distance, told of isolated ranch-houses
cuddled in far-away valleys.
A dark spot moved into view over a southern rise and crept along the
top. Faircloth instinctively seized a pair of field-glasses from a
case hanging beside the door and focused them on the distant rider,
then, content, dropped them dreamily back. Away off there lay Dead
Dogie Coulee, just now, he knew, full of cattle.
The telephone behind him rang, and he hastened to it, trying to
compose himself for the Inspector's orders. But it was not Inspector
Barker.
"Hello, Faircloth!" called a laughing voice. "How's the Cypress
Hills hermitage?"
"Oh, Stamford!" Faircloth was thinking rapidly. "What's the little
editor got on his mind now? Make it brief: I'm expecting the
Inspector to call up."
"Why has who been murdered by whom?"
Faircloth laughed. "The brevity of it deserves more than I can tell
you. Who told you--anything?"
"The Inspector."
"Then why not get it all from him?"
Stamford chuckled into the telephone at the other end.
"I got the impression that my arrival at the barracks was
inopportune. The extent of the particulars I got was a particular
request to betake myself elsewhere. I betook. I came to a friend."
"And the friend must fail you. You're too hopeful for the West,
Stamford. I'd tell you all I dare--you know that. No, not a bit of
use pleading."
"Then," said Stamford, "permit me to tell you to your face that when
next I see you I'll----"
Faircloth cut him short with a laugh. "No threats to the Police,
little man. I'll tell you what I'll do. On Thursday I'm coming to
town for the Dunmore Junction cattle shipping. By the way, as a
tenderfoot you should see it. Drive along out and hear the latest.
Bye-bye! I'm busy."
* * * * *
Dunmore Junction, bald, bleak and barren, four miles from Medicine
Hat, consisted of nothing more than a railway station, a freight
shed, and a commodious freight yard, marking the connecting point of
the Crow's Nest branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway with the main
line. It could not well be more and remain the principal shipping
station for the vast herds that roamed the prairies for eighty miles
from Medicine Hat. The open spaces about the Junction were necessary
for the herding of the steers awaiting their call to the shipping
stockades. Even the station staff lived in Medicine Hat, the shifts
changing with the arrival and passage of the trains to town.
Thither Morton Stamford, editor of the _Journal_, directed the only
trustworthy horse in town and a good-enough buggy. As a new
experience he could not afford to miss the cattle shipping, though
the following day was publication day.
Morton Stamford was a tenderfoot. What was more deplorable from his
point of view, he looked it. He was small, fair-haired, mild and
inoffensive of manner, and from stiff hat to cloth-topped boots was
stamped as a fresh arrival from "the cent-belt," as Western Canada
termed the petty East where the five-cent piece was not the minimum
of exchange.
Two months ago he had dropped from the train at the town of the funny
name, attracted as much by the name as by the advertisement in _The
Toronto Globe_. When he had succeeded in steeling himself to the
general atmosphere of disdain and suspicion, as well as to the rival
occupancy of his room at the hotel, he discovered sufficient
enthusiasm left to inspect the newspaper he had come to look over.
And, having decided that the introduction of modified Eastern methods
would be profitable, he had come to terms with the disgusted English
proprietor whose stubborn adherence to the best traditions of _The
Times_ and _The Telegraph_ "back home" had, at the end of his
resources, convinced him that Huddersfield or Heaven was his home,
not the riotous, undignified, unappreciative Canadian West.
Already Stamford had seen more of the real life of the West than many
an old-timer citizen of Medicine Hat. Such portions of a spring
round-up as were within range of a buckboard, a bucking contest, and
limited visits to four ranches had almost made him an authority on
Stetsons, chaps, and cowboy slang. He simply doted on cowboys,
without discrimination. He loved the Mounted Police, too, who had
quickly discovered in him a soul above steers and bronchos; and at
his fingertips was a motley assortment of stories of doubtful and
certain unauthenticity that painted the future in rosy colours of
excited hope just round the corner.
He was small of stature, but imagination and a capacity for thrills
are not corporally circumscribed.
When he arrived, Dunmore Junction was no longer lonely. Within two
miles of the station platform was more life than Medicine Hat had
seen since the buffalo drifted drearily to other hunting-grounds
before the civilisation of the rancher and the barbarism of gory
hunters. Out there in the rolling folds of the prairie two thousand
head were looking for the last time on their limitless pastures, kept
under control by a cloud of cowboys, in herds as distinct as possible
according to ownership. Scarcely a steer was visible, but at
intervals a wildly riding cowboy dashed from a coulee in pursuit of
protest against the extended restraint.
Back of the station, where his livery horse was tied with the care
and insecurity of a tenderfoot, a dozen bronchos dozed, a few tied to
the rail, most merely with reins thrown to the ground. About
Stamford the platform was alive with lounging cowboys in every style
of cowboy dress; and among them the station-master and his staff, a
couple of brakesmen from the shunting-engine crew, and three or four
ranchers--scarcely distinguishable from their own punchers
to-day--were more alertly eyeing the preparations for the coming task.
For two days it would continue. During that time several score of
cowboys would sleep and eat on the prairie, fed from their own
mess-wagons, with here and there a bed-wagon, though in the semi-arid
belt about Medicine Hat there was little danger of rain from June to
September.
It was a Red Deer River shipment. The thin line of ranchers along
the Red Deer, sixty miles to the north of Medicine Hat, had combined,
but most of the herd belonged to "Cockney" Aikens, of the H-Lazy Z
ranch.
Stamford recognised Aikens immediately. Only a blind man would fail
at least to see him.
Cockney Aikens, his nickname derived from an aggressive English
origin he did his best to flaunt, stood well over six feet without
his riding boots, his big frame wrapped in a wealth of muscle no
amount of careless indolence could conceal. Handsome, graceful in
spite of his lazy movements, he seemed to have gone to brawn. Laughs
came easily to his lips, and the noise of them made other sounds
pause to listen. "Cockney" was to him a compliment; if anyone
implied otherwise he was careful--and wise--to conceal it.
"Hello, you little tenderfoot!" he called, as Stamford wound humbly
and unseen through the indifferent wall of Stetson hats, flannel
shirts, and leather or hairy chaps that blocked the end of the
platform. "Where's that girl I advertised for?"
Stamford grinned.
"You're an optimist, Cockney. Just as I get some innocent female
rounded up to clean your boots, grill a coyote steak, and wield a
branding iron between times, she finds out the semi-lunar location of
that unearthly ranch of yours. I warned you that the _Journal_ might
find the missing link, a mother-in-law, or the street address of a
Cypress Hills wolf, but a 'general' for the Red Deer--impossible!"
"About all I see for it," growled Cockney, "is to kidnap one--unless
you open your eyes to the only possible use for a man of your
dimensions and come out to wash my dishes yourself. I'll pay you as
much as you can hope to make from that mangy sheet of yours--a more
honourable living than robbing a struggling rancher of two shillings
for a hopeless ad."
Stamford solemnly produced a large leather purse and extracted a coin
from the cash department.
"Here, you overgrown sponge! I figure that ad cost me a quarter in
setting, make-up, run, and paper--a shilling, if you can understand
no other values. Here's the other quarter. But bear in mind
this--if you take it I'll show you up. I'll camp on your trail, rout
out your past crimes, and publish them to the last drop of blood. I
feel sure you've committed burglary, murder, or arson somewhere in
your dark career; and, besides, you're an arrant bully."
Though Stamford knew as much--or as little--of Cockney Aikens' past
as the rest of Medicine Hat, and the big rancher's merry and
spendthrift ways belied suspicion of irritation at the loss of "two
shillings," the blatant exaggeration of the editor failed somehow to
carry off the banter lightly. Cockney's face went grim, and a
strange silence fell along the platform.
Then Cockney himself smothered it by a physical retort. Reaching
over, he seized Stamford's shoulders and lifted him by the coat at
arm's length until their faces were on a level.
"If I had this much added to my stature," blustered the editor, in
affected fury, vainly striking out his short arms at the face
opposite, "I'd punch you on the nose."
"If you were this size," grinned Aikens, "I mightn't take liberties.
Just the same," he added, with a ring of boyish disappointment in his
voice, "it would be one h--l of a fight. You've got the white
matter, I guess, but I'm just spoiling for a rough-and-tumble. I
haven't had what you might call exercise since--" he flushed through
his tan, "--oh, for a long time."
It so happened that everyone, including Cockney, was thinking of the
"exercise" he had once, largely at the expense of the police, town
and Mounted; and the memory of it to the one most concerned was not
sweet.
A long line of cattle cars rolled quietly down the track before the
corrals, a brakesman on the top keeping up a steady signalling to the
engine. When the first two cars were opposite the gangways from the
two loading stockades, his hand shot out and the train came to a
violent halt. Almost instantly the gates at the bottom of the
gangways opened and two lines of steers from the crowded,
white-fenced pens rushed up the slope to the open doors of the cars.
The lounging cowboys sprang to life. Throwing themselves in excited
abandon on their bronchos behind the station, they tore across the
tracks and disappeared in the folds of the prairie, shouting,
cracking their quirts, laughing taunts at each other, to reappear a
few minutes later, little less noisy, behind a small herd of
galloping cattle headed for the emptying outer stockades.
It was a scene of blazing life and colour, clamorous, swift,
kaleidoscopic. Stamford's eyes blazed. The East seemed such a dull
spot in his past. He thought with a cynical smile of how unfitted he
was, by nature and acquirement, for a life so deliciously thrilling.
Cockney struck his hands together explosively.
"There's good old beef for good old England, my boy!"
"If you don't mind, Cockney," Stamford grimaced, "would you give me
warning when you have those thunder-claps in mind? You jar me out of
focus, mentally and optically.... I wish we had some of that 'good
old beef' down at my hotel. I often wonder where the West gets the
beef it eats."
"Get a herd of your own, man. I didn't know as much about ranching
when I started as you do. There's a million miles of grazing land
out about the Red Deer yet."
Stamford made a wry smile. He drew out the large purse and counted
three dollar bills and sixty cents in silver.
"Would that start me?" he asked. "Guess I'd have to steal the herd."
"Lots have done that before you," said Cockney, staring over the
prairie.
A loose-limbed cowboy, whose chaps seemed to be about to slip over
his hips, had drifted over from the stockades as they talked.
"Yes," he exclaimed, slapping Cockney on the back, "good old beef for
England, and good old gold for you!"
The jeer in the tone might have passed, Stamford felt sure, but the
slap on the back was another matter. He understood Englishmen rather
well, Aikens in particular, and he knew that even the King would
require a winning smile to gild such familiarity.
Aikens stiffened.
"Once or twice, Dakota," he warned quietly. "I've _looked_ what I
thought of this particular form of playfulness; now I've _told_ you.
The natural progression is the laying on of hands--and that'll come
next." He turned his back.
Dakota Fraley, foreman of the H-Lazy Z and part owner, tried to laugh
it away, but he did not move.
Stamford was apparently absorbed in the procession of steers up the
gangways.
"Aren't they a bit thin, Cockney? A month or two more on the ranges
would have rounded them out a bit, eh?"
"There are thousands more out there getting the extra month or two,"
returned Cockney, with an expansive gesture.
Dakota laughed.
"Somebody musta told him," he said to Stamford. "He don't see the
herds twice a year."
"Why should I?" demanded Aikens lightly. "You know all about them.
Why do you think I gave you a share in the H-Lazy Z?"
Stamford was unnecessarily embarrassed at the scene. He knew about
both men what was generally known. Cockney Aikens was a
good-natured, irresponsible fellow, completely ignorant of ranching
and as little concerned to learn, quick of temper as of smile, with
an unfortunate passion for gambling and a reckless thirst that was
sullying his reputation. Dakota Fraley was a cowboy, by instincts
and training, with the untypical addition of a reputation as a "bad
actor." Though there was nothing more definitely disreputable known
about him than unconcealed disregard for law and order, a few
instances of cynical brutality made even ranchers sometimes forget
what a profitable enterprise he had made of the H-Lazy Z.
The association of the two men was inexplicable, except for the fact
that Aikens, arriving four years earlier from none knew where, with
no qualifications for a rancher but the money to start a herd, was
just the sort of tenderfoot to swallow Dakota holus-bolus as part of
the operation--and then to sit back with the conviction that he had
done his share.
A few, including the Mounted Police, knew something of Dakota's past,
but in a country where a man's present is all that matters, the story
that might have been told died from lack of interest. In a general
way it was common knowledge that Dakota had drifted over from the
States, a born cow-puncher, broncho-buster, and prairie-man; and at
his heels had come a motley assortment of kindred spirits whom Dakota
had rounded up as his outfit at the H-Lazy Z. No one could say that
the results in cold cash had not justified him.
Dakota stood flipping his quirt against his chaps, a slight frown on
his forehead but a forced smirk on his lips.
"It _is_ early," he explained to Stamford, "but the prices is good
now--good enough to pay to ship. They'll come down, shore thing--and
it saves in outfit, thinning out the herds."
"If that gang of toughs we keep about the H-Lazy Z aren't enough to
handle twice our herds," observed Cockney, "then I know nothing about
ranching."
"You've shore said it right that time, boss," jeered Dakota. "You
don't."
"We've the biggest outfit on the Red Deer."
Dakota faced him squarely with angry eyes.
"Say, who's running that end of the H-Lazy Z?"
Cockney's head turned slowly, and Dakota decided to modify tone and
language.
"Ain't I getting result? That's all that counts, ain't it?"
All Stamford's experience warned him that they would be at each
other's throats in a moment, but his Western life had been too
limited to allow for the greater licence where emotions crowd so
close to the surface.
He was relieved when both men turned toward the dusty black trail
down the grade to Medicine Hat, from which came the soft pad of a
cantering horse.
A stodgy little broncho was loping easily along, a woman seated
astride its broad back. At such a distance Stamford's only
impression was of a perfect equestrienne, mingled with some surprise
that a woman should appear in such a scene. Then he became aware of
her perfect physique, an overflowing vitality, and an intense
pleasure in the very act of riding. It attracted him strangely, for
modesty of stature had all his life imposed an undue modesty of
manner in his relationship with the other sex. The uncouth shouts of
the cowboys, the rumbling trample of the cattle up the gangways and
in the sand-strewn cars, the threatened explosion of the past minute,
sank into the background of his mind as he watched.
The longer the silence in his little group, the more the approaching
woman looked to him like a studio arrangement that must utterly fail,
in the incongruity of its essential parts, to melt into a natural
picture. It was impossible to fit her into that background of
untilled hills, dead grass, barren waste, though there could never be
awkwardness where she was concerned.
Cockney Aikens raised his head with a jerk and stared, frowning in a
puzzled way.
Dakota merely glanced at the supple rider and transferred his eyes to
Cockney's lace.
"Here's your Yankee, Mr. Aikens," he grinned, and lounged across the
tracks to the loading pens, laughing as he went.
The look on Cockney's face warned Stamford to silence, but he trotted
to the end of the platform and offered his hand to assist the woman
to alight. With a quick flick of her body she stood beside him,
rewarding him with a gentle smile as she rearranged her skirts.
"Thank you. Matana will stand by herself."
Her eyes had scarcely paused on Stamford before passing on to the big
rancher. Aikens had not moved. With lowered head he was staring at
her. She stooped in some confusion and brushed her skirt to smoother
lines about her limbs. Then her head went up, and with a nervous
laugh she moved swiftly along the platform.
"Mary, what are you doing here?"
"I got tired waiting out there, Jim," she pouted. "It's so lonesome."
Her voice was appealing, yet charged with a nervous independence.
Cockney's reply was to stare down on her for a few moments, and turn
his back without another word and follow Dakota to the loading cars.
Never had Stamford longed so intensely for the physique to squeeze an
apology from a bully's throat, but the greater desire to hide from
the hurt wife what he was thinking made him turn to her with a smile.
"These must be trying days to the shippers--ah--Mrs. Aikens, isn't
it? I suppose you've had breakfast? I have, I believe, a bit of
chewing gum in my pocket."
"I stopped in town for breakfast," she replied dully, her eyes on the
big man climbing lazily to the roof of one of the cars before the
gangways. "When I need more I'll go out to our mess-wagon. It'll be
out there somewhere with the cattle."
"They've just commenced loading," Stamford went on eagerly. "This is
my first experience. You see, I'm the sample tenderfoot in this
district. I believe," he added, with a whimsical smile, "I've been
that ever since I came."
Her eyes were on him now, and Stamford saw a gleaming smile, behind
which lay an ever-gnawing worry.
"You seem to enjoy the distinction so well as to be jealous already
of your successor," she said.
"It has its advantages, especially to an editor. It gives me access
to the sources of news----"
"Thrusts them at you, in fact," she smiled.
"I trust my news sense culls out the wheat."
"I read the _Journal_," she told him slyly.
"That's the first encouragement I've had since my arrival. Might I
give such commendation a fitting place on the front page?"
"Since your arrival," she returned lightly, "the _Journal_ has surely
added a new zest to local existence."
He extracted an enormous notebook from a capacious pocket.
"I must make a note of that," he said. "My friends will probably be
seeking an epitaph for me shortly. You see, this week I start to
collect two months' bills. If I survive that I've announced my
intention of learning to ride--rather _starting_ to learn. If an
indulgent Providence still leaves me on earth, there remains the fare
at the Provincial Hotel to seal my fate. Any one of the three, I'm
told, is enough to make a man wonder what his friends may select for
his tombstone."
Her laugh tinkled spontaneously, so that Cockney rolled over on his
elbow to look at her, and a couple of cowboys peeped shyly round the
end of the cars and ducked to cover when they realised they were seen.
"A course in ranch-life is what you need, Mr. Stamford. It's only a
case of nerves. At the H-Lazy Z, for instance, we have air that
can't be beaten, food that will certainly sustain--even salads now
and then--and there are a million square miles of soft grass to fall
on. Let the collecting out to someone who totes a gun."
"The suggestion is so good," he replied solemnly, "that I take it as
an invitation. When the worst threatens, I'll remember the H-Lazy
Z--and its--ah--charming mistress."
"Right-o!" she laughed.
"That's your husband speaking," he said. "I suppose living with even
an Englishman is contagious."
Her face suddenly went wistful.
"Yes," she agreed absent-mindedly.
Stamford thought he had never before heard so much in a single
innocent word.