IV

The cook wagon lumbered down Cabin Creek toward the Salt Fork of the

Arkansas. A dozen hands, riding in couplets, straggled irregularly

behind. The bed wagon followed and the horse wrangler brought up the

rear with the _remuda_ which numbered some two hundred head of horses,

including the string of extra mounts for each round-up hand who rode

with the Half Diamond H wagon.

A rider waited on the far bank of the Salt Fork with his string of

extra horses and the men speculated idly as to whether he represented

Crowfoot or the Coldstream Pool, it being the custom to exchange

“reps” to ride with neighboring wagons. The horseman proved to be Bart

Lassiter, repping for Crowfoot. Carver’s intimation as to Crowfoot’s

methods and their possible connection with the X I L trail herd,

dropped on the occasion of his last visit with Molly Lassiter, had

borne fruit. The Half Diamond H crew had been full-handed but the girl

had induced Bart to ride with their wagon as Crowfoot’s rep instead of

accompanying his half-brothers to the X I L.

Lassiter threw his extra mounts in with the _remuda_ and joined Carver,

who opened up on him without parley.

“I tendered you the key to my little house so that you could use it for

living purposes,” he said, “but without any notion that you’d start up

in business. From all that I can gather you set out to abate the thirst

of the whole Cherokee Nation.”

“Well, the poor devils are fixed up every other way,” Bart explained.

“They draw beef rations, flour rations, blanket issues and so on,

but nobody’s ever been thoughtful enough to provide them with licker

rations, so they’re forced to live a one-sided, unbalanced kind of

existence and I was striving to supply the lack and sort of round out

their lives.”

“An’ you came near to finishing mine,” Carver stated.

“It was only that once,” Bart defended. “I did dispose of several cases

at a right handsome profit and you’ve no notion how much they enjoyed

theirselves the next night. It would have done your heart good to have

heard it. All Caldwell turned out to listen to the expansive sounds

emanating from the Cherokee camp south of town.”

Carver had placed that first illusive impression that Molly Lassiter

was in grave need of something without which her life was not quite

complete. It was no material requirement but a need that was deeper

than that. She despised the ways of the two older half-brothers, who

had been practically strangers to her during her own early life,

showing up at her father’s home but infrequently. Later, after her

own mother’s death, they had returned and made it their home. There

had never been any bond between them and herself, and she had feared

the effect their ways might exercise upon Bart. Freel had spoken the

truth when he asserted that she knew what it was to have the law always

barking at her door. Carver knew now that what she most needed was

peace,--assurance that the same old conditions would not pertain to her

life and Bart’s.

“Why do you put Molly up against that sort of thing?” he demanded.

“She didn’t know,” Bart returned.

“But she’d know if they happened to clamp down on you for it,” Carver

insisted. “And that’s what she’s guarding against. She’s always had

that sort of thing to fight off.”

“She has for a fact,” Bart admitted. “The old man was a hard citizen

himself, way back in his youth. He’d quieted down for a good many years

but after the two boys came back he sort of leaned their way again.

There’s been times when Molly and me was kids, and left all alone in

the house or wherever we happened to be at the time, that folks would

come round inquiring about his whereabouts, and the old man hiding out

in the hills about them. She thought a lot of him, Molly did, and hated

Milt and Noll for leading him off.”

“Then why don’t you shake them?” Carver demanded. “There’s no common

bond between you and them, and Molly would be way better off.”

“I’ve made the break now and again,” Bart explained. “But they always

turn up. Our family line-up is fashioned after that fabled joint snake.

You can disrupt the critter but the pieces crawl back together again

and all stand united.”

“If there’s any more midnight visits made at my cabin,” said Carver;

“there’ll be one middle joint absent from the next family reunion.”

“I take it you’re referring to Noll,” said Bart. “If you’ll only accept

my earnest advice you’ll decoy Noll off to some quiet spot and snap a

cap at him. I promise it won’t upset me a bit.”

On the third day out from the ranch Carver rode with Nate Younger along

a low ridge studded with a straggling stand of black-jack timber. The

old man’s face was stern and set as he viewed the procession filing

for two miles along the open bottoms below them.

A dozen round-up crews made up the picture, for this was a coöperative

move by all the outfits ranging in the Strip, the great final combing

of stock from the unowned lands.

Far up the valley, a mere speck in the distance, the Half Diamond H

wagon led the way while the others trailed at intervals. Two hundred

riders, the personnel probably including the most efficient body of

cowhands in the world, straggled up the bottoms in irregular formation.

The extra horses, if combined into one _cavayado_ would number over

two thousand head. A group of riders hovered near the last wagon, it

having encountered difficulties in making the crossing of the Cimarron,

resuming their way as the quick-sands relinquished their sucking

hold upon the wheels and the floundering horses snaked the lumbering

vehicle out upon the solid shore. A band of twenty Cherokees flanked

the _cavalcade_ and dashed from one outfit to the next, begging food

from each wagon boss in turn. Midway of the procession a detachment

of cavalry rode in double file while the officer in command conferred

with the man in charge of that particular wagon. As Carver watched

they dropped back abreast of the next in line and he knew the message

delivered to each one in turn by the soldiery,--the instructions to

make a thorough sweep and clear every head of stock from the Cherokee

Strip.

The Indians, having gathered contributions sufficient for the moment,

including a steer which was pointed out to them by the owner of the

brand worn by the animal, hazed this moveable meat supply to the crest

of an adjacent knoll and there dropped it with an accompaniment of

rifle shots. Younger waved a hand toward the scene spread out before

him.

“That’s the way I saw the Old West first,” he said. “The picture

is mighty near identical; the wagons rolling along just like that,

only drawn up in more tight formation; the _cavayado_ trailing under

guard, holding all the extra horses of the settlers; maybe a band of

marauding reds clustered off to one side like them that are hacking

up that steer; sometimes a little escort of troopers helping us at

bad crossings where the Kiowas and Comanches was most liable to jump

us while a part of the train was bogged down in the sand. The wagons

was more likely dragged by bulls than horses then, and buffalo was

scattered round the landscape in place of range cows, but on the whole

the picture tallies close enough.” The old man turned his gaze away.

“That’s the way we was first ushered into the Old West, son. Maybe

it’s fitting that we’re being similarly ushered out of the last bit

that’s left for us.”

They rode on in silence and regained the head of the line. The various

wagons made camp at intervals sufficient to permit the _remudas_ of

different outfits to be held on good grass at widely separate points to

prevent the possibility of their mixing. On this occasion the men rode

from one night camp to the next to renew old friendships, fraternizing

with the hands who rode for rival brands. Another crew of similar

magnitude had assembled at another point in the Strip and during this

same hour these men too were mingling from one outfit to the next.

Perhaps among the entire three hundred odd gathered at these two

points there was not one man who fully realized that this meeting was

to be the last of its sort; not one who could even partly vision the

circumstances of the next.

Never again in history were these men to gather as a whole on the open

range. This night was the last. Many would meet in the future; others

would never meet again. Some would be neighbors for a lifetime and

it was slated that the trails of others should cross in far places.

Perhaps it is well that it is not given to man to look far into the

future. This last occasion was not marred by any thought that the

summons for the next gathering would not go forth for more than a

quarter of a century. There were many present who would heed that

plea which would one day be issued for all the old-time peelers and

bronc fighters of the Cherokee lands to assemble for a final rally.

They would not then travel across the open range with chuck wagons and

saddle horse. Some would be carried in luxuriously appointed coaches

that roared along steel rails; others in glittering vehicles that

purred swiftly along fenced and well-kept highways; some would arrive

in strange craft that swept across the skies above thriving western

cities situated on spots now widely known as ideal cow-camp sites.

A few indeed, but very few, would come in buckboards or ride in on

horses, their ropes coiled on ancient saddles; and it would be these

latter ones who would then appear strange and out of place. But no such

glimpse of future actualities troubled the men as they sought friends

who worked with other wagons. There was a general disposition to scoff

at the notion that there would be no more cows ranged on the Strip.

Even if it were opened for entry it would be long before there were

sufficient settlers to take up any great percentage of the range. The

settlement of any country was a slow and tedious process. In any event

there were long years of life in the open--the only sort of existence

which they could endure with satisfaction--stretching forth ahead of

them; so why concern themselves over vague possibilities of the future?

That was the general attitude of them all, excepting old Nate and his

contemporaries, men who, like himself, were being ushered out of their

domain as they had been ushered in a generation past. Their day was

passing and they knew it.

Throughout the following day various wagons turned aside to the right

or left, branching away toward some far spot allotted to them, there

to begin the first actual work. In the late afternoon the Half Diamond

H wagon made its stand on a creek that flowed to the Cimarron from the

low watershed between that stream and the North Fork of the Canadian.

The cook’s summons brought the men tumbling from their bed rolls an

hour before dawn. The night hawk hazed the _remuda_ into a corral

fashioned by a single rope stretched between stakes sledged solidly

into the sod, and after breakfasting the men entered in pairs, each to

rope a circle horse of his own particular string. In the first light of

day Younger led off up a ridge to the main divide flanking the creek

to the left and turned upstream along it. Other reps had joined the

wagon and there were now nearly twenty riders following where he led.

At the head of each draw he detailed one or two men to work it. When

half of the crew had been assigned to cover certain stretches Younger

dropped again to the bottoms, mounted to the opposite divide and moved

downstream in a similar fashion until even with the wagon, working the

last draw himself.

The riders combed the scrub-oak side hills and the gulches, shoving

all stock before them to the bottoms and heading them upstream. The

first riders to finish their details were stationed across the valley

to halt the cows brought in by others. The chuck wagon had lumbered on

up the creek to the point from which the next circle would be thrown.

The night hawk had gone off duty with sunrise but the wrangler held

the _remuda_ in a rope corral. While a part of the men held the herd

the others repaired to this enclosure and caught fresh horses, those

who were to engage in the next gathering swing putting their ropes on

circle mounts, while those detailed to bring up the day herd caught

trained cow horses belonging to their individual strings.

In a breeding-ranch country the herd would have been worked on the

spot, calves roped and ironed with the brand worn by their mothers, and

only the beef steers cut into a day herd, the she-stuff and all stock

younger than two-year-olds being allowed to scatter once more on the

range. But there were no calves to brand, no she-stock on the range,

for of late the cowmen of the Strip had come to follow one set rule in

accord with the transition of the cow business, forming an intermediate

link between the old-time cattle kings of the open range and the modern

feeders of the corn belt. For beef raising, instead of a one-outfit

business from start to finish, had come to be a business of progression

induced by the necessities of later-day conditions. Big breeding

ranches were now mainly confined to the vast wastes of Texas and the

Southwest and to similar stretches in the ranges of the Northwest.

The breeding ranches of Texas and New Mexico now gathered their

steers as two-year-olds and sold them to the intermediate beef-brands

operating in the Strip, the short-grass plains of Western Kansas and

the Sandhill country of Nebraska. Here they were ranged on grass till

they had turned four-year-olds, then resold to the feeders of Missouri,

Iowa and Illinois, who corn-fed and fattened and finished them for

market. Except for one breeding ranch confined to a great fenced-in

pasture, there was only beef stuff in the whole expanse of the Strip,

which rendered the round-up a comparatively simple affair. This last

event in particular was simplified by the orders which had just gone

forth from governmental sources, and every head of stock gathered in

each circle was held in the day herd.

The rope corral was dismantled, ropes and stakes loaded on the bed

wagon which promptly headed up country, trailed by the wrangler with

the _remuda_, and Carver led all the hands except those detailed with

the day herd up the bottoms toward the new stand of the cook wagon.

It was but ten o’clock when they dropped from their horses and fell

ravenously upon a hot meal which the cook had already prepared, for

while the cowhand’s day begins an hour before dawn his nooning comes at

ten and his knock-off time is seldom later than five P. M.

The second circle of the day was completed in the late afternoon.

The hands feasted to repletion and lolled about for an hour, buzzing

angrily over a new rumor which had just reached camp. The men spread

their bed rolls on the ground and retired with the setting sun.

Carver dropped instantly asleep but contrary to his usual custom he

waked within an hour and sleep would not come to him as he tossed

restlessly in his blankets. The turmoil of the round-up, the hoarse

bawls emanating from the throats of five hundred steers, the shrill

yelps of riders, the stifling dust of daytime activities; all these

had been superseded by the night sounds of the cow camp in the open.

A cool breeze stole across the range which now seemed mysteriously

hushed. Occasionally some night horse on picket or tied to the stake

ropes shifted uneasily and stamped a restless foot. The night hawk held

the _cavayado_ on good grass somewhere down the bottoms and his voice

drifted faintly to Carver as he sang to while away the lonely hours.

The night guards on duty with the herd were likewise singing to soothe

their charges on the bed ground a few hundred yards above the wagon,

and fragmentary snatches of their melodies floated down to Carver’s

ears as he blinked sleeplessly up at the stars. He remained awake

till the hour came to stand his turn on second guard and he rolled

out, mounted his night horse and rode with several others to relieve

the weary riders who had stood the first shift of the night after a

fourteen-hour day in the saddle.

As Carver circled the bed ground his thoughts were still concerned with

the text of the rumor so recently set afloat. It was said that not only

cows, but men would be ordered from the unowned lands; that every foot

of fence must be removed from the range and brand owners forced to

abandon home ranches. Bart Lassiter joined him.

“Well, what do you think of our latest bit of news?” he asked. “Think

they’ll go through with it?”

“It don’t seem reasonable that they’d put over any such drastic

measure,” Carver said. “They might. It will be hard on the old man if

they do.”

A figure rode toward him in the moonlight and the old man in question

joined him as Lassiter departed. Nate too had been restless and had

found himself unable to sleep. As Carver had reflected that such a move

would inflict an undeserved hardship upon his employer, so Nate was

wondering as to what effect it would have upon his hands, for in common

with all cowmen of his type, Younger was proud of the accomplishments

of his riders.

Every brand owner would stand back of the men who rode for him; every

rider evidenced a similar devotion to the owner’s interests,--a loyalty

to the brand for which he worked. Perhaps in all history there has

never been another calling which has inspired the same allegiance

throughout its entire personnel. A man must be proficient in many lines

to qualify as a cowhand. First of all he must be a horseman capable of

mastering any horse on the range and of training his mounts to perform

the various and intricate duties required of them; a roper of parts,

able to front-foot a calf or to rope and hog-tie a mighty range bull

with equal facility; sufficiently skilled in blacksmithing to shoe

his own horses; for these and many other acquirements, working at

them sixteen hours a day, he was paid a lesser sum than any unskilled

laborer received for ten hours of far less gruelling work. It was the

wild free life, not the pay, which held him to his chosen calling.

The driving spring rains which soaked his bed roll as he slept on wet

ground in the open; the shrivelling heat of summer and the shrieking

blasts of winter blizzards; the congenial companionship of round-up

days and the long lonely vigils at isolated winter line camps; all

these he chose in preference to the softer life and greater pay of

other less strenuous pursuits.

“What will all the boys be doing in another season?” Younger asked.

“Where’ll they all go when there’s no more range work for them to do?”

“Texas maybe,” Carver predicted. “Or New Mexico.”

“Both those countries are coming to be overrun with nesters,” Nate

returned. “The big brands are getting their range cut up right now.

They’ve been forced to reduce the size of their outfits in proportion

to the decrease in their range. There’s more cowhands down there now

than there are jobs to go around.”

“Then maybe the Northwest range country,” Carver suggested.

“The surplus bronc peelers of Texas and New Mexico have been drifting

up there for the last ten years,” Nate stated. “They’re a drug on the

market right now, cowhands are. And they’re irrigating that Northwest

country rapid and cutting up the range. Once they settle the Strip, all

the boys down there will have to go into other lines. That’s sure.”

The herd was worked and reworked almost daily as cows wearing brands

that ranged in different parts of the Strip were culled out and

turned over to some wagon crew whose ultimate destination lay in that

direction. All along a two-hundred-mile front more than a score of

wagons were operating in unison. Owners ranging south of the Strip sent

parties up to trail-herd back any of their stock that had wandered to

these parts. These men brought with them little bunches of Half Diamond

H cows and others that had drifted from the Strip to southern ranges.

Some came from beyond the Canadian and at least one little assortment

had been combed from the distant Washita. Younger, in common with other

large owners of his neighborhood, maintained drift fences and line

camps to prevent the drifting of his stock from the home range. Even

with these precautions there was a certain annual leakage, but the

percentage of Half Diamond H cows gathered south of the Cimarron was

small.

Day after day as the round-up progressed the men threshed out the fate

of the unowned lands. It constituted the sole topic of discussion

whenever two riders met on the circle or paused to converse as they

stood their turn on night guard. It filled that brief period of general

indolence in which they indulged each evening before taking to their

beds with the setting sun. Carver, perhaps to a greater extent than

any of them, had anticipated certain transitions. He had correctly

interpreted the presence of those white-topped wagons camped along the

line and knew what they portended, yet even now he found it impossible

to give credence to such drastic changes as were predicted by old Nate

and others of his kind. He sought for an analogous example and found it

in the settling process which Kansas had been undergoing for a period

of forty years; yet throughout the whole western half of that State

ranches of five to fifty thousand acres were the rule. In view of this

circumstance he could not quite conceive of the vast expanse of the

unowned lands being cut up into quarter sections in the space of a few

short years. It would all take time. He advanced this idea to Younger

on a day some three weeks out from the ranch.

“All this talk about men being ordered out of the Strip,” he said. “How

are they going about that? I’ve seen the squatter outfits rolling up to

the line and making camp. But we’ve had similar demonstrations before

now; that year the boomers fired the grass for one; and nothing came of

it. They were ordered out. Even if they let ’em in it will take years

to settle up the Strip.”

Younger nodded abstractly. Since that event had cost him a thousand

head of cows it was but natural that the incident was still fresh in

his mind. A few years past a swarm of squatters had invaded the unowned

lands in the face of all regulations. When the cowmen had sought to

expel them after they had refused to obey the government’s order to

move out, the boomers had scattered and fired the parched fall grass

and stock had died by thousands throughout the burned areas. The

negro cavalry had been sent in to enforce the regulations and were

thereafter stationed at Caldwell, patrolling the line and turning back

all insistent settlers who would enter. Now the Negro troopers had been

withdrawn and a second invasion seemed imminent.

“I know, son; but this time things will be reserved,” Nate prophesied.

“Then they ruled the squatters out and stood by us. This time they’ve

ruled us out instead.”

“They’ll open it for entry,” Carver agreed. “It’s come to that and it’s

likely we can’t postpone it. But this notion that the whole of the

Cherokee country will be settled up solid in a few years’ time seems

overdrawn.”

“A few months’ time, boy,” the old man corrected. “More likely a few

weeks will do the trick.”

Carver’s thoughts reverted to a similar prediction made by Hinman,

“It’ll be one hair-raising, mad stampede,” old Joe had said. But Carver

still dissented.

“It’ll take nearly fifty thousand families to file on every quarter

section in the Strip,” he said. “They’ll come eventually. I know that.

But where will that many come from in a few weeks’ time?”

“Son, they’ll come from every odd corner of the country,” Younger

stated. “They’ll swarm in and settle down in clouds like blackbirds in

a cane field. She’ll be the damnedest, wildest scramble a man will ever

live to witness. I’m telling you.”

V

The stockyards had been the scene of feverish activity for weeks. The

loading pens were crowded to capacity and throughout every hour of

the day and night there sounded the bawls of thirsty cattle and the

shrill yelps of cowhands as they urged unwilling steers through the

loading chutes. Long trainloads of cows rolled out of Caldwell in swift

succession and loading was resumed as soon as empty cattle cars could

be obtained. An antiquated switch engine wheezed noisily as it shunted

cars along the switches and spotted them at the chutes. Day by day the

congestion increased. The quarantine belt swarmed with stock, as some

two hundred thousand head had been gathered from the Cherokee lands for

shipment. In addition to these the regular run of summer business from

the south continued as the trail herds from Texas and New Mexico came

plodding up to add to the congestion.

Money flowed back into Caldwell in steady streams as trainloads of

cattle were converted into cash on the Kansas City and Chicago markets.

Many owners, having been deprived of their range by the stringent

orders, found themselves unable to reinvest in cows the funds received

from recent shipments. In their restlessness many of these turned

to the green tables for relaxation and there were stud games where

hundreds and often thousands were wagered on the turn of every card.

All the cowhands of the Strip were banked up in the quarantine belt,

holding the cows of their employers on grass until such time as they

could be cleared and shipped. In their leisure hours they swarmed the

streets of Caldwell. Added to these were the trail-herd crews from the

whole Southwest, among them many Mexican peelers with their tremendous

hats, silver-mounted saddles and three-inch silver rowels.

Four troops of cavalry were camped along the line and troopers mingled

with the crowds. Caldwell, the last of the old-time cow towns, had

now entered upon her last wild fling. It was now definitely known

that in three months’ time the Cherokee Strip would be thrown open

for settlement and the homeless from all corners of the country were

already beginning to assemble. For weeks on end there was not a room

available in town and men spread their campbeds in vacant lots.

Eating places were crowded to capacity and new restaurants were being

opened up in frame shacks or even in tents wherever vacant sites

were available. As always, where business is rushing and money freely

flowing, there were symptoms of a boom. It was openly predicted that

the settling of the country to the southward would throw Caldwell

into the enviable position of the one logical metropolis of the whole

Southwest.

Cowmen cursed the troopers, seeing in them the visible symbol of that

authority which had excluded them from their rightful domain. The

unowned lands were thoroughly patrolled and detachments of cavalry

were camped at strategic points throughout the Strip. It was this

latter circumstance which had upset Carver’s calculations. He had

planned with Bart Lassiter to hold a bunch of six hundred of Younger’s

three-year-old steers on the forbidden range for a period of one year,

receiving a substantial proportion of the increased price which they

would bring as four-year-olds. Both Carver and Nate Younger had seen

the futility of the attempt. Others had entertained similar ideas but

had abandoned them as events moved swiftly past the farthest bounds of

their previous comprehensions and rendered their hopes untenable.

Carver, once assured that his plans for the immediate future must be

relinquished, cast about for some substitute occupation which might

prove equally remunerative. He rode away from Younger after their

mutual decision, spinning his lone coin into the air and catching it as

his horse jogged slowly across the range.

“It appears as if it’s going to be real difficult to provide you with

all the company I’d counted on,” he said. “Time is skipping right along

and here you are--occupying my pocket all by yourself without even one

mate to jingle up against. Only last week I had it all mapped out to

gather in several thousand of your sort to keep you company. But that

plan’s flown out the window and here I am without one idea to work on.”

He turned along the south line fence of the Half Diamond H leases.

“Little lonely dollar, you must mount up to a million,” he asserted.

“But we’ve got to insert our wedge somewheres right soon and start to

mounting.”

His eye traveled along the fence line to where it disappeared in the

distance, and suddenly he turned and rode back to where the outfit was

camped and sought out the boss.

“About those fences being ordered down,” he said. “What arrangements

have you made?”

“Not any,” Nate admitted. “What with gathering eight thousand head of

steers and shipping ’em I haven’t taken time off to worry over fences.

We’ll have the last steer headed north in a few days now. Then I’ll see

about scrapping fences--or let the squatters tear ’em down when they

come in to roost.”

“It won’t leave you short-handed now if Bart Lassiter and I lay off,”

Carver suggested. “You lend me a team and wagon from the home place and

we’ll snatch out those fences for what material there is in them.”

“The fence is yours,” Younger agreed. “Provided the other half-owners

of any stretches are agreeable. Go get it.”

Lassiter assented instantly when Carver stated the proposition.

“I always did feel suffocated in a fence country,” he announced. “I was

always so much opposed to seeing every fence go up that I figure it

will be a real entertaining pastime to help tear ’em down.”

This spirit of optimism lasted during the two days required to hunt up

other part owners of certain stretches and get their endorsement of

the plan, his enthusiasm lasting through the first few days of actual

work. They were out before sunrise and knocked off after dark, pulling

posts, coiling wire and freighting the materials to the Half Diamond

H home ranch. His interest lagged but he did not openly rebel until

after two thirds of the fence had been salvaged. Carver roused him one

morning for breakfast and Bart blinked sleepily at the smoky lantern

that lighted the sod hut in which they had stayed overnight.

“We’ve got enough wire piled up to enclose the State of Texas,” he

stated. “There’s thirty miles of three-wire fence we’ve collected if

there’s a foot. That’s twenty-nine miles more than both of us will ever

need. Let’s leave the rest of her set.”

“But we contracted to scrap the whole of it,” Carver dissented.

“Another week will see us through.”

“A week!” Lassiter moaned. “I just can’t face it, honest. I’ve

reformed. I hope I hang if I ever extract another staple.”

“A week’s not such a long stretch,” Carver urged.

“Donald, I’ll break down and cry if you lead me up to just one other

measly fence post,” Lassiter announced. “You take my half and let me

off. I’ve got to amble over to Crowfoot’s and draw my spring wages.

Then, too, I’d ought to collect Molly and get her settled somewhere in

Caldwell. She’s all alone over on Turkey Creek.”

“I’ll pay you thirty dollars for what time you’ve put in--sometime when

I’ve got it--and take over your wire and finish the job myself,” Carver

at last conceded. “You can locate Molly in my little plant in Caldwell;

only mark me now! There’ll be no more balancing of Cherokee rations

conducted on the premises. I’ll remonstrate with you at some length if

I catch you at it again.”

Carver worked on alone and at the end of another ten days he viewed

with satisfaction the numerous coils of fence wire and the great stack

of posts neatly corded behind the deserted buildings of the Half

Diamond H.

“At present that assortment is only wood and iron,” he said. “But it’s

a real imposing pile nevertheless, and I can likely convert it into

dollars when the squatters come romping in.”

When he rode into Caldwell he was amazed at the swift transitions. The

incoming transients had trebled the population in the last two months.

Being unprepared for this sweeping change he was all the more prepared

to lend a willing ear to the prediction that Caldwell was to become

the metropolis of the whole Southwest. There was a conversational boom

in progress and Carver, looking upon the crowded, teeming streets,

the numerous tent houses everywhere in evidence and the new frame

shacks in the process of construction through the town, divined the

possibility of actual boom days just ahead. He rode out to his little

frame cabin to visit with Molly Lassiter whom he had seen but three

times in as many months. He found neither Bart nor Molly at home but

the door was unlocked and he entered.

The two rooms of the bare little shack had been transformed. Two worn

Navajo rugs were spread on the pine-board floor and soft curtain

materials were draped across the windows.

“She’s made it all homelike,” Carver said. “Just with a touch here and

there. What couldn’t she do with things to work with and a real house

to operate on? We’ll give her one some day if only she’ll agree.” He

drew forth the lucky dollar and consulted it. “Let’s you and me hatch

out a new idea,” he invited. “We can’t be loafing on the job.”

While the idea was hatching he sat peering abstractedly through the

doorway, rousing from his reverie only when he found his gaze riveted

on the girl as she turned into the pathway leading to the house. Molly

halted suddenly when within a few feet of the door, as she saw him

sitting just inside it.

“I hadn’t expected you this soon,” she said.

“Bart told me the fence job would keep you another month at least. Did

you decide not to finish it?”

“It’s salvaged to the last strand of wire,” he returned. “I speeded up

some so as to have it over with.”

“I’m sorry Bart quit,” she said. “You see he won’t stick at anything.”

“Don’t know as I blame him,” said Carver. “The last few days I’ve

developed a downright aversion to the sight of fence wire myself. Glad

to see me?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be out of here and established in a room of

my own so that you can have your house by to-morrow, Don. I’ve been

waiting for the present occupants to vacate.”

“You stay right on here,” he insisted. “I won’t be needing it.”

“Thanks, Don, but I can’t do that,” she said. “I have to stop floating

and find some nook of my own. I can’t follow Bart around any longer.

For three years now we’ve drifted from one spot to the next; sometimes

in line camps; more frequently in some rooming house in any town where

we happened to be, always knowing that wherever it was it wouldn’t be

home for long. I didn’t mind at first, for I was trying to keep Bart

away from Milt and Noll; but they always turn up again and he follows

them off. I’d love even a sod house if only I could call it my own

and know I wouldn’t have to move out on an hour’s notice. I’m sick of

gypsying. I want to feel settled--feel that I’m attached!”

He reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“I know, Honey,” he said. “So do I. That’s exactly my own frame of

mind. The best way all round is for you and me to get attached and

settle. Won’t you?”

She felt that he had failed to grasp the fact of what a sense of

permanency would mean to her after the nomadic existence she had

followed for the past few years.

“Listen, Molly,” he said, divining something of her thoughts. “It’s not

the way a man says a thing but the way he means it that really counts.

And I was meaning that a lot.”

“But you don’t even know to-day what you’re going to do to-morrow,” she

said. “It would be only exchanging one state of gypsying for another.

Don’t you see that?”

He did, at least, see that the moment was not right and he settled back

into his chair and twisted a cigarette.

“You always lean to the dark side of things,” he accused. “Most

complaints I’ve heard about family strife was occasioned because

menfolks generally were so occupied with business that they didn’t

spend much time at home. Now with me not having any special business it

would leave me free to put in most of my time around the house. There’s

that advantage.”

“Yes,” she laughed. “There’s that. Sometimes, Don, I almost wish you

really were a settled sort of a soul; but that time will never be.”

Carver crooned softly:

“Oh, I’m a rolling rambler,”

Said the speeding tumbleweed.

“The prairies are my race track,

The wild wind is my steed.

“I never cease my roaming;

I’m always hard to catch,

But the pumpkin stays forever

In the same old garden patch.

“But I’d rather be a wild, wild weed

Than a sluggish yellow squash:”

“And I’d so much rather be a pumpkin than the wildest of all wild

weeds,” she said. “There’s only that little difference between the two

of us.”

“Tell me,” he urged, “what sort of a quiet home life do you pine for

most? Does your preference run to a cottage in town or stray off

towards a dwelling in the country?”

“The country,” she returned. “Somewhere on a farm where I could watch

things grow.”

“That’s my choice too,” he confessed. “Whatever business I settle on

will have to be at the source of things. Like you said, I want to watch

things grow--calves or crops, it don’t much matter which. I’ll start

casting about for a farm right off.”

After leaving her he mingled with the swarming crowds on the main

street. The conversational boom was in full swing and he heard it

discussed on all sides. There were but few who dissented from the

general prediction that an era of great prosperity lay ahead for

Caldwell. Carver put in three active hours, then sought out Nate

Younger to draw his back wages for the spring work, a sum totalling a

trifle less than two hundred dollars.

He found Younger in his room at the hotel in conference with Joe

Hinman. The two old cowmen had pooled resources and formed the Plains

Land and Cattle Company, Younger having purchased grasslands adjoining

Hinman’s holdings. They planned to make the new concern a beef ranch

straight through instead of a breeding ranch as now operated by Hinman.

“We’ll be the biggest outfit in this end of the State,” Hinman was

predicting, as Carver thrust his head through the door. “Come in, son,

and set on the bed. The Plains Land and Cattle Company is going to be

the biggest of the lot.”

“I’m counting some on organizing a similar concern myself,” said

Carver. “Maybe a trifle smaller than yours just at first; and in

order to make the start I’ve got to borrow somewhat. I’m owning a

nine-hundred-dollar equity in that bunch of calves we made the deal for

last spring. How about your lending me eight hundred against it?”

“But that would leave you owing me thirteen hundred on the bunch,”

Hinman objected. “And right now those calves wouldn’t fetch that price

on the market.”

“Set the date for maturity of the loan far enough ahead so they’ll grow

into it,” Carver suggested. “Before it comes due they’ll have advanced

way beyond that figure. Then if I don’t pay up you can close me out at

a profit.”

“Now ain’t that a fact!” Hinman exclaimed admiringly. “There was a

time, Buddy, when I marvelled at your ability to shed a season’s wages

overnight. It does look now as if you might also learn me a few tricks

on the reverse side of things. You’ve got a business mind.”

He produced a check book and a stub of pencil.

“How long do you want this loan to run?” Carver asked.

“According to your own figures the longer it runs the more I stand to

make,” said Hinman. “So I don’t know as it makes much difference. It

does appear as if you’d let me in on a pretty good thing--so set the

date yourself.”

“One year from to-day,” Carver decided.

“What do you aim to do with all this money?” Hinman inquired. “Setting

out to break the bank in the Gilded Eagle?”

“I’ve purchased a building,” Carver proclaimed.

“You’ve which?” said Hinman. “What building?”

“Pirie’s place; down in the next block,” Carver informed. “It’s got a

grocery business on the ground floor and the grocer’s wife rents room

upstairs.”

He extended a contract and Hinman perused it, observing that Carver had

agreed to purchase at three thousand dollars, paying six hundred down

and a like amount each year.

“I’d rented my little shack,” Carver explained. “Only to find that

there wasn’t a room for rent in town; not one! It was either buy a

place of my own or set up.”

“It’ll save you considerable room rent,” Hinman agreed, “you being in

town easy three nights out of the year. But what’s the final object?”

“Each season those calves will be worth more and I can borrow enough

additional against them to meet the payments,” Carver pointed out.

“Meantime the grocer pays me thirty dollars rent money every month,

which gives me a steady income to live off till such time as I can turn

the building at a profit and buy a tract of land to run those calves

on.”

“I didn’t know your ambitions run toward owning land,” said Hinman.

“But now since I’ve come into so much surplus fence wire,” Carver

explained, “it looks like the only economical thing to do is to acquire

a piece of land to set inside it.”

“Son, you’ve mapped out a self-operating business,” Nate Younger

congratulated. “All you have to do now is to stand back and watch it

ripen. Meantime why don’t you read up on Belgian hares?”

He handed over the sum due for back wages and Carver studied the two

checks reflectively.

“This surplus now,” he said. “I was figuring to put into horses.

They’ll almost give you horses nowadays just to come and drive them

off. If you don’t mind my throwing a few head up on your range, I’ll

buy up a little bunch and pay you fifty cents a head for pasture fees,

agreeing to get ’em off your grass November first.”

“We’d better let him put ’em on, Joe,” Nate agreed. “It’s that much

more security for that loan.”

Even under favorable circumstances the horse market was poor and now

with all those recently combed from the Strip as a surplus, horses

could be purchased at one’s own price. For a week Carver rode early and

late. The average run of Indian ponies were selling for less than five

dollars a head but it was not this class of horse flesh which Carver

sought. He selected young mares and geldings, ranging from eleven to

twelve hundred pounds in weight, which would serve for light work

stock, and eventually he drove fifty head well toward the northern

extremity of Hinman’s range. They had cost him an average of ten

dollars apiece and he had paid cash for half of them, issuing verbal

promises to pay for the rest. He rode back into Caldwell with something

over a hundred dollars in his pocket.

The equipment of all the deserted ranches in the unowned lands was

banked up in Caldwell. From the Coldstream Pool Carver purchased ten

sets of harness at fifteen dollars a set and three heavy wagons at

forty dollars each, paying his last hundred down and his personal note

for the balance.

Hinman witnessed this last transaction.

“Considering the size of your original stake you’ve stretched it to

cover considerable territory in the last few months,” he said.

“It’s only my surplus I’m spreading out so thin,” Carver explained. “My

capital is still intact.” He exhibited his silver dollar. “My one rule

of life is never to impair my principal.”

“Fine,” Hinman encouraged. “That’s conservative business. I was

satisfied you’d play it slow and safe.”

“Now if you’ll do me just one more little kindness I’ll be grateful;”

Carver said. “You and Nate engage Freel in conversation up on the

corner where he’s standing and inside of five minutes I’ll saunter up

and direct the course of the interview.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Hinman said. “We’ll detain him.”

Carver joined them before the appointed space of time had elapsed.

“Freel, I’ve been feeling real contrite about resisting arrest a few

weeks back,” Carver said. “I’ve decided to surrender and stand trial.”

The deputy marshal glanced apprehensively at the two old cowmen.

“Oh--that,” he said. “Why, I’ve let that matter drop. That’s all

closed.”

“And it was real accommodating of you to close it,” Carver returned,

“but I can’t stand by and see you get in trouble on my account. Orders

are orders, and you had yours. That’s the reason I wrote this letter

to Art Webb.” He tendered an unsealed letter to the deputy. Webb was

Freel’s chief, the head United States marshal of the district. “Webb is

a good friend of mine and I’m demanding that he inform me just why he

sent an order down here to you to pick me up. That will put you in the

clear for not rearresting me since that night I escaped.”

Carver turned to his two friends.

“You’ve both known Webb for years,” he said. “Did you write him like I

asked you?”

“It clear slipped my mind,” Hinman apologized. “I’ll get it off this

evening.”

“Mine goes on the same mail,” Nate concurred. “We’ll sift this thing

right to the bottom layer and clear Freel of any possible blame.”

“Freel will be on my side himself if it comes to a showdown,” Carver

asserted. “He’ll be the first to testify that I’d been away from home

for a solid month prior to the time that charge was lodged. Some one’s

tried to deal me from the bottom, and between the four of us we’ll

discover who it is.”

Freel laughed and slapped Carver on the shoulder.

“Matter of fact, that inquiry was for another party, wanting to know

if he’d turned up in these parts,” he said. “I went and got the names

mixed. The joke’s on me--likewise the drinks, and I’ll buy right now.”

He slowly tore up the letter to Webb.

“And here I’ve been worried almost sick,” Carver said. “It’s a big

relief to have it all cleared up. I still owe you fifty on that little

bet. Here’s an agreement to pay in ninety days, just as an evidence of

good faith.”

He handed Freel a folded paper and the marshal frowned as he read it.

“You’ll notice I stated why I owed it,” Carver amplified. “You’ve

always played square with the boys--and there’s maybe a half dozen

that’s willing to step forth and declare how you’ve always met them

halfway the same as you did with me.”

During the next hour Carver accosted a dozen intimate acquaintances and

told each in turn, quite confidentially, that there was a rumor afloat

to the effect that Freel was about to resign as deputy marshal and

that Mattison was making application for the post.

“By this time to-morrow every man in Caldwell will have commented on

this matter to Mattison and Freel,” Carver said to Hinman. “Not because

they take any special interest in it but just to make conversation.

But the principals, being only human and therefore self-centered, will

decide that the whole town is breathless over their affairs. Mattison

will feel his ambition mounting and Freel will suspect that there’s

been a fire kindled under him. Now if only you and Nate will put in

your pull with Webb to give Mattison the appointment, it looks as if

things would come out right.”

He rented an extra saddlehorse and invited Molly to join him in an

afternoon ride. They jogged out past the stockyards where cowhands

prodded unwilling steers through the loading chutes, on beyond the

sound of the wheezing switch engine and the rattle and smash of cars,

then angled westward through the quarantine belt where riders guarded

thousands of head of cows. In the gathering dusk they rode out on the

point of a lofty knoll which afforded a view throughout a great expanse

of country.

“Have a last look at all this, Molly girl,” Carver said, extending an

arm to the south. “There’s yesterday.”

The green summer range stretched away to the far horizon with never a

plow furrow to break it. Two trail herds had been bedded for the night

at widely separate points. A third, whose trail boss had evidently made

a hard day’s drive to reach the quarantine belt in hope of an earlier

clearance and shipping date than that accorded to his slower fellows,

passed below the two on the knoll and plodded northward. Two men rode

the points, the right and left forward extremities of the herd, guiding

the foremost animals on the chosen course. One man skirted either

flank and two others rode the “drags” in the rear of the herd to press

forward any stragglers as the weary cattle drifted slowly toward the

chuck wagon which was stationed a mile or more ahead and where the rest

of the trail-herd crew had already gathered.

“That’s yesterday, girl,” Carver repeated. “Remember all this as you

see it now; the green range and the trail herds coming up from the

south. Have a last look at it--for here comes to-morrow,” and he

pointed off to the northward.

Miles away across the quarantine belt a slender ragged line extended

either way beyond the range of their vision. A thousand ribbons of

white smoke writhed aloft and glowed in pallid outline against the

darkening sky. For two hundred miles along the line, wherever water was

available, there was one continuous camp of squatters, and still the

land seekers increased at the rate of two thousand families a week,

all the landless of a mighty nation gathering here to participate in

what would go down in history as the Cherokee Run, the most frenzied

stampede of the century.

Both watchers felt a sudden tightening of the throat as they gazed upon

the scene, their feelings much the same but occasioned by different

viewpoints. Carver’s sympathy was with the riders who handled the cows

on the near side of that continuous camp, men who, like himself, had

loved the old open range, the range that was passing for all time. The

girl’s heart went out to those homeless hosts outside the line, for she

herself was homeless and could understand the longing which had brought

them to this spot to join in a mad and desperate rush on the chance

that they might be among the fortunate locaters who should be first

to drive their stakes on any scrap of ground which would constitute

a home. Perhaps they too were tired of gypsying, she reflected, and

yearned for some one spot which they might call their own.

He pointed to the tiny scattering specks that were riders moving from

point to point, then on beyond them to that stolid line.

“Yonder come the pumpkins to crowd out the tumbleweeds,” he said.

The soft summer night shut down and transformed the pale smoke columns

into a tortuous trail of twinkling fires which extended for two hundred

miles along the line.

“We’d best be going now,” the girl said at last. “There’s a

fifteen-mile ride ahead. I’m glad you brought me here to see all this.

It means one thing to you, Don, and exactly the opposite to me. But

it’s something we won’t forget.”

“No,” he said. “We’ll not forget.”

They rode on in silence, the girl occupied with her thoughts of the

homeless legions who would soon have homes, Carver content with the

mere fact of her nearness. When he decided that this thoughtfulness had

claimed her for too long a time he recounted his transactions of the

past few days.

“About those responsibilities I promised you I’d acquire,” he said,

“I’m taking them on rapid. In addition to both residence and business

property here in town, I’m owning a considerable number of horses and a

hundred head of calves, not to mention harness, wagons and a few score

miles of good barbed wire. I’m accumulating responsibilities so fast

that there’s times I can’t be real sure whether they’re mine or some

one’s else.”