A slender thoroughbred leaped forward with the shots, his rider
crouched low along his neck. Carver had a brief glimpse of hundreds of
saddle horses fanning ahead of the main bulk of the stampede. Then his
view was cut off by the dense fog of black ashes churned aloft.
“Look!” he exclaimed.
In either direction, as far as the eye could reach this murky cloud
was sweeping forward. As it eddied and curled he could catch glimpses
of the swaying gray tops of covered wagons and the glittering flash of
newly painted runabouts. It seemed that a black cyclone belt a hundred
yards in width had sucked up thousands of strange land craft and
churned them across the prairies over an endless front.
Men shouted frenzied encouragement to their horses, their voices
lifting above the rattle of the laboring vehicles. Not infrequently
there sounded a splintering crash as some outfit was piled up in
a wreck or the sudden smash and subsequent groaning screech which
announced that two rival wagons had collided and locked hubs. A shrill
cowboy yelp of exultation rose high above the uproar.
“Now we can break through,” Carver stated, and they urged their horses
into a lope and passed the wagons that lagged behind, darting past
others as opportunity offered.
The girl saw humanity in the raw, the bars of convention lowered by
excitement and each man’s true nature standing forth undisguised. She
was treated to kaleidoscopic flashes of human avarice and sublime
generosity. A heavy wagon came to grief as its owner lashed his horses
over the four-foot bank of a dry wash. The tongue was stabbed into the
earth, buckled and snapped, piling the outfit up in a tangled heap in
the bottom of the dry gulch. A man in a light rig cheered the accident
as he made a safe crossing of the wash at a point some few feet away
where the banks were less precipitate, shrieking a derisive farewell to
the unfortunates as he passed. A chap-clad rider set his horse back on
its haunches and dismounted.
“Crawl him, stranger,” he invited. “Give that pony his head and he’ll
take you where you’re aiming for. I’ll help the woman straighten out
this tangle.”
The man boarded the horse and darted off, leaving the cowboy to care
for his wife and children and the struggling team.
Just beyond the wreck a man had leaped from a wagon to plant his flag
while his wife held the horses. A single man had unloaded from a
runabout with similar intent and as the girl passed them the two were
fighting savagely, endeavoring through the medium of physical combat
to settle the question as to which one had first placed foot upon the
ground. While the wife and family of the one gazed upon the scene from
the wagon, the horse of the other was running away with the runabout
which was lurching perilously across the dips and sways of the prairie.
They passed old Judd Armstrong, his bony horses surging on at an
awkward gallop. The little old lady gripped a staff topped by a white
scrap of cloth with which she intended to flag the first scrap of
ground they crossed where she could see no others out ahead. But always
there was a swarm of scurrying shapes far out in the lead.
Just as Carver pulled out ahead of the last fringe of wheeled
conveyances the girl heard again the shrill exultant cowboy yelp and
saw the man riding just ahead of them. He was a big fellow with a
week-old growth of beard, mounted on a rangy bay horse that wore a
Texas brand. He had given the animal its head and was half-turned in
the saddle, looking back at the sea of lurching, swaying vehicles. His
mouth was extended in a grin and he waved his gun aloft.
“Charge!” he bellowed. “Charge!”
He emptied his gun in the air and waved them on as if he were leading
the line into some desperate affray. He bawled facetious commands to
all within earshot. His noisy clamor reminded the girl of Noll, and she
hated the big Texan from the instant her mind conceived this fancied
resemblance. She herself read the pathos that was written in every
movement of the mad scramble, the hungry rush of the homeless; and
she told herself that the noisy horseman viewed it in the light of a
screaming comedy.
A wave of ground cut off her view toward the east, but as the slight
crest flattened to merge gradually with the surrounding prairie the
objects on the far side reappeared, at first merely the heads and
shoulders of those who traveled a parallel course, then their bodies,
then the mounts that carried them. One form seemed to progress smoothly
but there was a queer crouch to the head and shoulders. As more of
him rose into her level of vision, she saw that he rode an antiquated
bicycle with one huge wheel in front and a tiny one trailing in its
wake. The man was hunched over the handle bars and was pedalling
desperately, a grotesque figure with coattails streaming out behind,
a water bottle slung across his back with the shaft of a small flag
thrust through the strap.
“Oh, Don! Bart! Do look,” Molly implored. She was laughing in sheer
delight yet she was conscious of a swift, hot resentment when the big
Texan raised his voice in a joyous whoop as he sighted the strange
apparition and gave chase. He veered his mount to the left, unbuckling
his rope strap, and as the animal stretched into a full run behind the
speeding cyclist he shook out a few coils of his rope and whirled his
loop aloft. He did not make his throw but contented himself with giving
voice to a wild yelp with every jump of his horse. His victim turned
to cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder and the front wheel
collided with a dog mound and threw him. Even in the act of rising he
thrust his flag into the ground and staked his claim, the big fellow
cheering him as he passed.
Hundreds of riders were scattered out in the lead of the line of
oncoming vehicles that was strung out as far as the girl could see
toward the east and west. Whenever one horseman attained the lead in
his own particular section of the field he flung from the saddle and
planted his flag. Scattered at intervals through it all Molly could
make out moving specks of color--bright reds and purples, brilliant
orange and softer effects of lavender--and she knew these for the gaudy
regalia of the cowboys. These were not dismounting but riding steadily
ahead, each with some particular destination in mind, saving their
horses for the last wild spurt. Little by little the field thinned
out. Some few of the cowmen had dashed suddenly ahead to stake their
claims in some of the better valleys but the majority of them were
still holding on. They swept down into a wide brown valley untouched
by the fire and three times during the crossing of it Molly saw riders
dismount far ahead--too far; and she knew that these were sooners
who had been hiding in the unowned lands and who had now put in an
appearance as the peak of the run came in sight.
The Texan had lost ground in his chase of the cyclist but eventually
Molly heard him off to the right and rear, his big voice raised in a
song which she thought fitted him exactly.
“I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter,
I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun.
I murder some folks quick
And I kill off others slow,
That’s the only way I ever take my fun.
“I’m a devil with my quirt,
A terror with my knife,
A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice,
I wield a wicked spur,
Twirl a nasty ten-foot loop
And curry out my red mane with a cactus.”
When they had covered some ten miles Molly noted that the brilliant
specks were forging steadily forward through the scattered ranks of
their more somberly clad fellows and gradually attaining the very fore
fringe of the run. Another two miles and the bright dots were out in
the lead and it was apparent that many were converging upon the line
which Carver followed toward a distant dip in the landscape. Every
cowhand was up on a horse that had proved its speed and endurance in
many a hard round-up circle. The clatter and crash of vehicles had died
out behind. Carver glanced both ways along the line.
“The boys are drawing in toward the Cabin Creek bottoms,” he called to
Molly. “Best land in the Strip. There’ll be many a friend of mine in
the lot. Here’s hoping they stake near the old home ranch.”
He glanced along the scattered line again as they rode across a low
wave of the prairie and the broad bottoms of Cabin Creek opened out
below them, spared by the fire and carpeted with grass that was only
now turning brown.
“Now!” he said. “Run for it!” and they let their horses out and raced
down the gentle pitch.
Carver kept his eye on the low point of a ridge that thrust its nose
into the edge of the valley three miles below. Just beyond that
shoulder the Curl Fork of Cabin Creek joined in and the buildings
of the Half Diamond H nestled under the hill. Below that point the
bottoms widened out to twice the width of the part they now traversed.
More than thirty riders were strung out across the level floor of the
valley, careening down both sides of the creek.
Some dropped from the saddle and drove their flags, but a dozen or more
on Carver’s side of the creek held straight on. This last spurt was
a contest between seasoned riders and tried horses. Carver urged his
mount and the animal drew on his last reserve of speed. Molly felt the
smooth play of powerful muscle sweeping her on toward the goal as her
own horse, fresher from having carried less weight over the long miles,
ran nose to nose with Carver’s. Bart was twenty feet to their left and
as far in the rear.
As they thundered down upon a tiny spring-creek flowing on the near
side of the shoulder Carver waved a hand.
“Up there!” he shouted to Bart. “Flag it!”
Bart whirled up the course of the spring-creek and the girl wheeled her
horse to follow him while Carver held the straight course for the low
jutting point. As Bart and Molly turned aside, the big Texan dropped
from his horse a hundred yards down the little stream and planted his
flag.
A dozen riders were almost abreast of Carver as he rounded the point
and flung from his saddle in the ranch yard of the Half Diamond H. He
had staked the old home ranch.
He turned to watch the rest flash past and recognized a big paint horse
as a circle mount of Bradshaw’s string. The group that had clung so
persistently instead of staking farther up the valley was composed of
old friends to a man. He picked them one by one as they fanned out
through the widening bottoms and staked them from the creek to the
valley slope for two solid miles below the Half Diamond H.
“Box T riders or former Half Diamond hands,” he said. “Every man. I
needn’t have put on such a strenuous last spurt if I’d only looked back
to see who made up the bunch that was crowding me so hard on the final
lap. I see old Joe Hinman’s hand in this.”
He turned at a sound behind him. A man stood calmly by a lathered
horse some thirty yards back among the sod outbuildings.
“You’ll have to get off,” the stranger announced. “This is my ground. I
staked it first.”
Carver stared for a brief space, unable to grasp the fact that another
had rounded the point ahead of him. He certainly had not arrived since
Carver reached the spot so he must have been there first. Then Carver’s
comprehension cleared and he led his horse back toward the other.
“Looks like you had beat me here for a fact,” he said.
“By three minutes,” the stranger stated.
Carver glanced at the man’s horse. The animal’s shoulders and flanks
were lathered white, as if from a long hard run, but its breathing was
smooth and regular and its sides were steady. He glanced at his own
mount with its heaving flanks; listened to the animal’s heavy labored
breathing.
“Beat you by three minutes,” the stranger reasserted.
Carver touched the lathered horse with one forefinger, carried the
member to his mouth, then spat the soapsuds out.
“Yes, you beat me by three days,” he said. “Which is just a shade too
broad a margin. Now you step up into the middle of that pony, and start
working up a real sweat on him while you’re getting away from here.”
The sooner faced him defiantly, a black scowl on his countenance, but
he read the same purpose in Carver’s eyes that Freel had discovered
in them on the day the marshal had offered to make Molly Lassiter
respectable.
“I’ll sell out for five hundred,” he offered.
“In less than that many seconds you’ll be headed for some place where
money can’t follow you,” Carver returned evenly. “You climb that horse
and amble.”
The sooner swung to the saddle and rode off toward the eastern slope
of the valley. It would have availed him little to head down country,
for already the bottoms were filled with riders. Those left behind in
the last mad dash for the Half Diamond H were now pouring through in
hundreds. The side hills that flanked the western edge of the valley
were being staked and other riders streamed along their crests.
When Carver looked again he saw that the sooner had planted his flag
a half-mile up the little spring-creek that trickled past the doors
of the ranch house and on down to the parent stream, a mate for the
one that flowed on the far side of the ridge where he had sent Bart
Lassiter. The sooner’s present holding would be just across the ridge
from Bart. But Carver was not concerned over the future actions of
the man. If he succeeded in holding a piece of ground which should
have gone to some legitimate stampeder it was no affair of his, Carver
reflected, and dismissed it from his mind. For thirty minutes the home
seekers continued to pour through in gradually diminishing numbers.
Most of the wheeled conveyances had dropped out, their owners either
having won their goal at some point farther back or given up the race,
but a few buckboards rattled past in the wake of the last straggling
horseman.
Then Carver turned to the work in hand. Those in his immediate vicinity
who had made the run for the purpose of realizing a quick turn on their
relinquishments were the ones he sought. The cowhands were the logical
parties to interview.
Bradshaw was sprawled comfortably on the ground on the next quarter
section below.
“Old Joe is responsible for this,” Carver said, as he rode down toward
his friend. “He sorted out the Box T boys that were going to make a
filing just to sell it, and such of the old Half Diamond H boys as he
could locate. This way it helps us all. They find me a ready buyer and
I find them ready sellers, roosting on the very ground I want. Then,
too, Joe was thinking of old Nate. Younger lived here for twenty years.
With me on the Half Diamond H he can come down and find at least a part
of it the same.”
Bradshaw grinned as Carver neared him.
“What’s your offer?” he demanded. “Speak in big figures now or I’ll
stay here and farm this piece myself. Joe tipped us off to swarm in and
settle in a flock just below Nate’s old home ranch. Well, what do you
bid?”
“Two hundred and fifty,” Carver stated.
“Too much--but I’ll take it,” said Bradshaw. “Give me a commission and
I’ll buy the others out for you anywheres from fifty to a hundred.”
“Two hundred and fifty is my flat price to every man,” said Carver.
“That’s a good fair figure for both sides. They’ll have to take my
notes for it, dated eighteen months ahead at six per cent. They can
either wait and live off the interest meantime or discount them at the
bank--provided they can locate a banker who’s optimistic enough to make
an investment in my paper.”
“I’ll ride along with you to see the others,” Bradshaw volunteered.
“You all can go and make your filings in the next few days,” Carver
said. “Then I’ll furnish each of you with scrip to lay on your quarter.
You can deed it over to me when you get your patent.”
Two hours later Carver rode across the low ridge in search of Molly
Lassiter.
“Ever see a prettier nook than this?” he asked, as he dismounted. “I
told Bart I had just the place picked out for you and him.”
A few trees, somewhat gnarled and stunted--but every such growth is
noteworthy in a treeless country, and the black-jack belt did not
extend so far north as this--sprouted in a little dent in the base of
the ridge, a level floor of rich ground spread out before them. The
little creek, fed by side-hill springs, purred merrily along the foot
of the slope.
“It’s wonderful here,” she agreed. “I’d love it if only Bart would stay
here and prove up instead of selling out.”
“Maybe we can exert a little pressure and make Bart come to his milk,”
said Carver. “This is too good a place to sell out offhand. Wait till I
scour a few layers of ashes off my face and we’ll ride up to the ridge
so you can see my layout.”
His face was still black from the ride across the burned areas and he
repaired to the little creek and splashed face and hands in the clear
cold water. The big Texan had come part way up the creek to converse
with Bart and his voice carried to Carver as he made boastful comments
upon his own farsightedness.
“I don’t know this country but I staked as good a piece as there is
in the whole twelve thousand miles. That’s me! Know how? I’ll follow
the leather-legs, I decides; the peelers that has rode this stretch.
They’ll know where the best ground is. I’ll trail along and be there,
for there ain’t no man can outride me when I’m up on this bay horse.”
His voice followed them as Carver and Molly rode up the gentle slope of
the ridge and the girl hoped she would not have this man as a neighbor
for long. His bluster made her feel that Noll was near at hand. There
had been a clean break in their relations since Carver’s recent turn in
inexpensive beef, and Noll had asserted that Bart was no relative of
his. If only he could convince others of that, she reflected, she would
be far better satisfied.
“See,” Carver said, pointing as they topped the ridge. “I’ve bargained
for eleven quarters besides my own. That gives me eighteen hundred
acres in one block. I’ll leave that first piece in front of the house
in grass, just like it is now. Then when old Nate comes down to visit
round with me it will seem almost like the same old place he’s lived in
for the past twenty years or more.”
“I’m glad, Don,” she said. “But how can you be sure they’ll deed the
land over to you after they get their patents. There’s no possible way
to pin a man down to turn over his homestead to another.”
“Not a way in the world,” he conceded. “They could keep their place
or sell it, once the patent’s issued, and I couldn’t lift a hand. I’d
counted on losing maybe a quarter or two that very way. But not now;
not with those Box T and Half Diamond H boys on the other end of it.
Wouldn’t one of ’em throw me if he was offered ten times the price.”
She hoped that he had gauged them rightly but her experience had taught
her to doubt this class of drifting, homeless men. She had met a number
of such during the last few years of drifting with Bart, mainly the
associates of the two elder half-brothers, and she had come to believe
that trustworthiness was an infrequent trait among their kind.
Bart mounted the ridge and joined them.
“What’s offered for my farm?” he greeted.
“I’m not buying on the far side of the ridge,” said Carver. “Only down
below.”
“Then I’ll present it to you,” Bart returned cheerfully. “By the way,
you’re owing me three hundred or thereabouts on our little flier in
steers. If you could let me have a piece of it I’ll trickle into
Caldwell in the morning. I’ve got pressing business there in town.”
“I’ve invested that money for you,” Carver said. “I’ve reserved scrip
to cover your hundred and sixty acres. I’ll turn it over to you when
you make your filing. They’ll issue a patent and then you and Molly
will have some place to come back to whenever you get weary of moving
round. You’ll be owing me a little extra on the cost of the scrip but
you can pay it off whenever it comes handy in the future.”
Bart sighed gustily.
“I always did lean towards owning a farm that I didn’t have to live
on,” he stated, “and you’ve showed me the way. You always did treat me
all right, Don, and I thank you. As long as I already owe you money
I’d as leave owe you more. I’ll remember it better that way. Lend me
twenty. I suspect the boys will be looking at their hole cards somewhat
in your bunk house this evening and I’m always curious to see which
one of the fifty-two cards each man has got in the hole.”
Carver laughed and handed him the money.
“We’ll turn the house over to Molly to-night,” he said. “I’ve got a
tent cached in the bunk house that you can pitch over there on your
place to-morrow.”
The girl rested her hand on Carver’s arm as Bart left them.
“That was a wonderful thing to do for Bart,” she said. “Oh, Don! Don’t
you suppose he’ll stay there and keep it?”
“Sure, Honey,” Carver assured her. “You can’t clamp down on a range
colt too sudden and put him on the picket. We’ll keep an eye on him and
gradually decrease his range. Don’t you fret about Bart.”
He was peering off across the country and she followed the direction of
his gaze. A wagon had just crawled into view on the ridge on the far
side of Bart’s filing and near the upper edge of it. The last rays of
the setting sun caught the tattered canvas top. Even at a distance of
three quarters of a mile both Carver and the girl recognized the outfit
as old Judd Armstrong’s, the horses moving slowly, their heads drooping
dejectedly.
“You wait here, Molly,” Carver said. “I’ll ride over and help them
pick a good place to camp. Then we’ll stir up a bite for the boys to
eat.”
He intercepted the outfit as it pulled into the bottoms. The little old
lady still clasped the staff of her flag.
“Staked your piece yet, Uncle?” Carver greeted.
“Not yet,” said old Judd. “We’ll likely locate one to-morrow. These
horses is about played out and we’ll have to make camp here, I reckon.”
The woman nodded serene agreement. Ever since she could remember they
had been making camp.
“Maybe they can make one more drag of it over this next rise,” Carver
said. “It’s not much of a pull. There’s a nice little creek over across
and a ripping good piece of ground that hasn’t been staked. They all
run clear on acrost it and never noticed. It’s the next piece up the
creek from mine.”
He uncoiled his rope and made it fast to the wagon tongue, took a short
snub on his saddle horn and pulled in ahead of Judd’s weary team. The
horse buckled sturdily to his task and they made the crossing.
“You make camp right here on this creek,” Carver instructed. “This is
your claim. I’ll see you to-morrow, Aunty.”
“Thank you, son,” she said. “You’ve done us a big favor. This is better
ground than any we’ve crossed through. I was beginning to be just a
mite worried for fear we mightn’t find a piece. It was real nice of you
to tell us.”
Carver turned his horse up towards where the sooner reclined on the
creek bank.
“I instructed you to high-tail it out of the country,” he announced.
“So you put forth from here sudden.”
“Do you imagine you’re in charge of this whole territory?” the man
demanded.
“I was once,” said Carver. “Foreman of the old Half Diamond H. In lack
of any better authority I’ve elected myself temporary head of the
district so I can choose my own neighbors. I don’t pick you.”
He handed the man a ten-dollar bill.
“I’m sorry to see your efforts wasted but maybe you can drown your
grief in that,” he said. “There’s not a chance in the world for you to
make your claim stick--and I’ll see that you come to a bad end if you
try to file. You can use your own judgment about when you flit from
these parts.”
He turned back toward Molly but the girl had gone down her own side of
the ridge as a second wagon rolled into the bottoms and halted on the
upper end of the Texan’s filing. The outfit of the ample soul and her
solemn spouse had been wrecked in the early stages of the run and the
repairs had required too great a time to permit of their overtaking the
other stampeders. As Molly joined them she heard the voice of the Texan
lifted in his war song as he returned from a boastful visit with some
near-by homesteader.
“I’m a wild, wild rider
And an awful mean fighter----”
The song ceased abruptly as he spied the wagon on his claim and headed
his mount for the spot. He leaned from his saddle and inspected the
ample lady who still smiled through the grotesque mask of black ashes
that had settled on her face, then let his eyes rove over the children
in the depths of the wagon.
“This your claim?” the solemn man inquired. “We just want to wash up a
bit and camp here for the night.”
Molly waited for the abrupt refusal. The Texan gazed helplessly from
one to another of the group.
“Mean to say you didn’t get a piece of your own with all this stretch
to choose from?” he demanded.
The man shook his head.
“Have this one,” the Texan invited. “I’ve been wondering what the hell
I’d do with it.”
The woman still smiled but a tear squeezed through and trickled down,
leaving a trail in the grime of ashes on her face. She leaned over the
infant in her arms to hide the evidence of weakness, speaking a word
to the child. The Texan shifted uneasily in the saddle and Molly saw
him in a new guise; not as a big ruffian but as an overgrown, kindly
boy, helpless to extricate himself from this trying situation. A happy
thought struck him.
“I’d cry too if I thought I had to live here,” he said. “I’d trade this
whole damn country for a square rod in Texas,” and he headed his horse
back down the creek.
Hours later Molly Lassiter reclined on Carver’s camp bed which he had
spread for her on the floor of the Half Diamond H ranch house.
The Cherokee Run was over. At noon there had been a vast tract
of virgin territory, twelve thousand square miles of untenanted
lands,--and within four hours of that first bugle call it had been
settled, staked to the last square inch. The wildest stampede that the
world had ever seen was a matter of history.
A variety of sounds floated through the open window. The long,
many-roomed bunk house in rear of the frame building was crowded to
overflowing. All the cowhands for miles around had followed the old
custom of dropping in at the nearest ranch when caught out on the range
at night, certain of finding a welcome and a feed. They had feasted
unreservedly upon Carver’s food cache which he had planted at the ranch
weeks before.
Molly heard two voices raised in the chant of the tumbleweeds as two
belated riders approached. Always these men sang when they rode at
night, having acquired the habit on many a weary circuit of the herd,
singing to quiet their charges on the bed ground.
The big Texan’s voice carried to her from the bunk house.
“Now when I play poker with strangers I first state the rules,” he
announced. “The way stud poker is dealt is to hand out the top card
first and the next one next, and so on down to the bottom card which
comes off last and is not to be removed prior to its turn.”
“It’s nice to have some one who actually knows how the rules run,”
another voice answered. “If any little squabble crops up we won’t have
to debate the question but just ask you and find out for sure.”
“I’ll settle all arguments,” the Texan volunteered. “You’ll note that
I’ve stuck my knife here in the table and I’ll certainly remonstrate
with the first party that introduces any irregularities.”
The two newcomers rode into the yard, unsaddled and turned their horses
into the corral. One of them answered the questions regarding his claim
as he appeared in the door of the bunk house.
“I quit it,” he announced. “A wagon came dragging along an hour ago
with a wild woman aboard. Leastways she was talking wild--and frequent.
They’d locked hubs and piled up on the start. I presented them my
place. I hadn’t no use for it. All my life it’s been all I could do to
scratch a living off the face of the whole outdoors, so there wasn’t a
chance for me to scrape a income off one little quarter section anyway.”
“I had the piece next to his,” the second cowboy stated. “But the other
set of locked hubs came dangling along. The woman ahead would screech
back that the tangle was all her fault from keeping too close, and
wouldn’t the other party be sure to stake the next piece to theirs so’s
they could neighbor back and forth. Just to quiet her down I handed
mine to the parties she was so hell-bent to neighbor with. I was afraid
she’d have a headache in the morning if she kept at it; and besides I
couldn’t lay out there and listen to that gabble.”
Molly burrowed her face deep in the pillow. During the day she had seen
much that was gold beneath that rusty exterior of the tumbleweeds and
much that was dross beneath the golden surface of many of the pumpkins.
These men who rallied to Carver, drifters all, were a different breed
of drifters than those she had met as friends of her two half-brothers.
And now the tumbleweeds had been cast out of their domain.
“Hand me them cards,” said the big Texan. “Now we’ll have an honest
deal. I’d trust myself further than any other man I ever met.”