BOB HARMON
Mile after mile the horses trotted along the trail that stretched
interminably across the bench with its monotony of dry buffalo grass.
Conversation lagged, and resumed. The mountains loomed ever nearer,
until the trail slanted sharply upward in the ascent of Tiger Ridge,
the long high spur that is the northernmost reach of the Bear Paws.
An hour's brisk travel along the wind-blown crest of the ridge, and
they were in the mountains proper, the horses floundering and
plunging through sodden drifts or trotting briskly over the
wind-swept stretches. The sun set as they crossed the Snake Creek
divide. They were beyond the stage trail, now, and the going was
much heavier.
The last seven miles took an hour and a half to accomplish, and
darkness had set in when the horses turned wearily into a long barbed
wire lane that led to a dark clump of lodgepole pine on a little
plateau of the People's Creek valley. Lights glowed dully from among
the pines, and Two Dot pulled up with a loud "Whoa!" before a low
ranch house of logs. The door of the bunk house beyond the main
house opened, and a ranch hand hurried to take the horses, as Two Dot
jumped lightly to the ground and led the way into the house.
"Well, for land sakes!" greeted "Ma" Townsend when introductions were
over. "An' you expect to run the Round Seven, an' you jest a boy?"
Connie laughed. "That's what I came down here for, and it's up to me
to make good."
"Well, good luck to you. But, I wouldn't want to send a boy of mine
over among them--" she halted abruptly at a glance from her husband,
and continued, lamely, "among them bad lands an' snow drifts. But
set down to the table. Supper's all ready, an' I expect you're ready
for it. Bob Harmon jest come from the bunk house, but I told him to
go back there till after you'd et. There'll be plenty of time to
talk to Bob, after, an' I told him you wouldn't be pullin' out for
the Round Seven to-night, nohow. Plenty of time in the mornin', an'
with them half-broke broncs he's got, you'll travel better by
daylight. An' you won't have to unroll your bed, because we're
always ready fer a stopper or two. It's quite a ways between ranches
an' folks can't always get to where they're goin' agin' night comes."
Supper over, Mrs. Townsend busied herself in the kitchen and Connie
and Two Dot drew up to the stove. There was a noisy stamping of feet
upon the little porch, the door opened, and a pudgy, round-faced man
of perhaps thirty, stepped into the room, jerking the Stetson from
his head as he closed the door behind him.
"This here's Bob Harmon," introduced Two Dot. "Bob, let me make you
acquainted with yer new boss."
The man stared for a second in astonishment, and stepping forward, he
extended a soft, damp palm. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Morgan," he
greeted, with a broad smile. "I got yer telegram all right, but I
suppose Two Dot, here, told you how we figgered it wasn't no use
puttin' two teams over the trail. I suppose it's all right!"
The boy noted that the speaker was eyeing him keenly. He nodded.
"Of course it's all right. And, there's another little matter that
we might as well get right while we're about it. Up where I come
from we don't call people 'Mister.' Connie Morgan is my name, and
you can use either one, or both--but, not 'Mister Morgan,' please."
Harmon grinned. "I might of know'd that, too. Wilson told me when
he come back fer his stuff an' his family, that he'd sold out to an
Alasky party--come near goin' up there myself, me an' another feller,
time of the big rush--but, seemed like Wilson said this party's name
is Bill somethin'."
"Waseche Bill," supplied Connie. "He's my partner."
"That was the name, an' accordin' to Wilson's tell this here Bill
whirls a big loop up where he lives. He did mention somethin' about
a pardner, too--but I kind of wasn't lookin' fer no--that is, I mean
not no man quite as young as what you look to be. Not that you ain't
old enough, at that," he hastened to add, "'cause I've saw kids 'fore
now that made good cow hands 'fore their voice changed. But,
somehow, from what he told me about this here Bill party I kind of
looked fer him an' his pardner to be sort of old fellers."
"Well, not so old but what we're still able to get around," grinned
Connie, and Two Dot joined in the laugh that followed.
"Shall I hook up the team?" asked Harmon, "or, was you figurin' on
beddin' down here?"
"We'll stay here to-night and pull out in the morning," answered the
boy, and a few minutes later Harmon withdrew to the bunk house.
"You look sleepy," suggested Two Dot, after an hour of desultory
conversation. "I guess you're like me, I never could git a night's
sleep on one of them sleepin' cars."
"I haven't slept much for the last two or three nights," agreed the
boy. "I can't sleep on the train, either, and the last night out the
boat rocked and pitched so in a storm that I could hardly stick in my
berth. I guess I will turn in."
Two Dot showed him to his room, and a few minutes later as the boy
snuggled between warm blankets, he wondered whether he had only
imagined it, or had a swift gleam of satisfaction followed the look
of surprise in Bob Harmon's eyes at the moment of their introduction?
Connie did not know. He did know, however, that there was something
decidedly wrong with the Round Seven, and that it was up to him to
straighten things out. Also, he fully realized that in all
probability it was going to be a tough job, and he remembered the
words of Big Dan McKeever, of the Mounted:
"The reputation of bein' a fool don't hurt a man none, in fact, it's
the biggest asset he's got--provided he ain't one." With a smile,
the boy turned over, and in two minutes was sound asleep.
The drive to the Round Seven ranch next morning was uneventful
enough. The trail held insofar as possible to the wind-swept ridges
which the half broken team of strawberry roans covered for the most
part at a run, that was only checked by the deep drifts through which
they plunged in crossing the snow-choked coulees to gain another
wind-swept ridge. As they topped the divide that gave onto the South
Slope, Connie gazed out over a broad plain cut and scarred by deep
gulches and coulees whose perpendicular sides showed black and ugly
in contrast to the great patches of drifted snow. Far to the
southward a range of mountains showed, their summits rearing white
and clean-cut against the grey of the clouded sky.
"The bad lands," vouchsafed Harmon, indicating the plain, "an' them
is the Judith Mountains over acrost the Mizoo."
"Why do they call 'em bad lands?" asked the boy.
"'Cause that's what they be. Nothin' but rock, an' mud cracks, an'
pizen springs, an' rattlesnakes, an' outlaws."
"Don't the cattle go in there?"
"Naw, nothin' but horses. They ain't only about six or seven
waterholes that's fit to drink out of, an' most of them runs dry
along to'ard the heel of the summer. Horses can pick up a livin' on
the scatterin' of bunch grass, an' they kin travel a long ways to
water. They ain't enough feed to run cattle in there, an' if they
was they wouldn't be enough water. The cow stock uses along the
aidge of the mountains, an' on the flats between the Bear Paws an'
the Little Rockies, an' west over onto Big an' Little Sandy."
At the foot of the long descent from the divide the trail swerved
abruptly to the westward and wound in and out among the foothills,
crossing the heads of innumerable coulees until at last it swung into
the broader valley of Eagle Creek, which it crossed and recrossed as
it threaded its way through groves of cottonwoods and willows.
Emerging suddenly from a thicket of cottonwood, Harmon swung the team
up a steep bank, and Connie found himself in the dooryard of the
Round Seven. "Here we be!" exclaimed Harmon, as he pulled the team
to a stand, and filling his lungs, sent forth a yell that rang far
down the valley: "Y-e-e-o-ow! Come an' git 'em, or I'll turn 'em
loose!"