“Starlight is shore some Injun,” replied the cowboy, grinning understandingly.
“Now what for an outfit’s that?”
The moving cloud of dust which the Major had forgotten in his keen interest in the conversation was almost upon them. “A band of woolies, a pack burro, one feller walkin’, and another ridin’.”
The cowboy’s eyes were unfriendly, though he made no comment as they waited.
“Howdy!” called the Major genially as, with a nod, the herder would have passed without speaking.
The stranger responded briefly, but stopped.
“Come fur?” inquired the Major sociably.
“Utah.”
“Goin’ fur?”
“Until I find a location. I rather like the looks of this section.”
“Sheep spells ‘trouble’ in this country,” said the cowboy, significantly.
“Think so?” indifferently.
Seeing Teeters was about to say something further, the Major interrupted:
“What might I call your name, sir?”
“Just say ‘Joe,’ and I’ll answer.”
The Major looked a trifle disconcerted, but in his rôle of Master of Ceremonies continued:
“I’ll make you acquainted with Mr. Teeters.”
The two men nodded coldly.
To break the strained silence the Major observed:
“Got a boy helpin’ you, I notice.”
“Girl,” replied the sheepherder briefly.
“Girl? Oh, I see! Them overalls deceived me. Daughter, I presume.”
“Pardner,” laconically.
The Major looked incredulous but said nothing, and while he sought for something further to say in order to prolong the conversation they all turned abruptly at the rattle of rocks.
“The boss,” said Teeters sardonically from the corner of his mouth, and added, “That’s a young dude that’s visitin’.”
Toomey was perfectly equipped for a ride in Central Park. He looked an incongruous and alien figure in the setting in his English riding clothes and boots. The lad who accompanied him was dressed in exaggerated cowboy regalia.
Toomey used a double bit and now brought his foaming horse to a short stop with the curb. He vouchsafed the unimportant “natives” in the road only a brief glance, but addressed himself to Teeters.
“Where have you been?” he demanded in a sharp tone.
“I ain’t been lost,” replied Teeters calmly. “Where would I be 'cept huntin’ stock?”
“Why didn’t you follow me?”
“I think too much of my horse to jam him over rocks when there ain’t no special call for it. I kin ride on a run 'thout fallin’ off, when they’s need to.”
Toomey’s brilliant black eyes flashed. Swallowing the impudence of these western hirelings was one of the hardest things he had to endure in his present life. But even he could see that Teeters thoroughly understood cattle, else he would have long since discharged him.
“I’ve ridden about ten extra miles trying to keep you in sight.”
“If you’d let them sturrups out like I told you and quit tryin’ to set down standin’ up, ridin’ wouldn’t tire you so much.” Teeters looked at the English pigskin saddle in frank disgust.
Toomey ignored the criticism and said arrogantly:
“I want you to follow me from now on.”
An ominous glint came in the cowboy’s eye, but he still grinned.
“I wa'nt broke to foller. Never was handled right when I was a colt. Don’t you wait fer me, feller, you jest sift along in and I’ll come when I git done.”
Judging from the expression on Toomey’s face, it seemed to the Major an opportune time to interrupt.
“Since nobody aims to introduce us—” he began good-naturedly, extending a hand. “My name is Prouty—Stephen Douglas Prouty. You’ve heard of me, like as not.”
“Can’t say I have,” replied Toomey in a tone that made the Major flush as he shook the extended hand without warmth.
To cover his confusion, the Major turned to the sheepherder whose soft brown eyes held an amused look.
“Er—Joe—I’ll make you acquainted with Mr. Jasper Toomey, one of our leadin’ stockmen in these parts.”
The introduction received from Toomey the barest acknowledgment as he directed his gaze to the grazing sheep.
“Where you taking them?” he asked in a curt tone.
“I really couldn’t tell you yet.”
Toomey glanced at him sharply, attracted by the cultivated tone.
“I wouldn’t advise you to locate here; this is my range.”
“Own it?” inquired the herder mildly.
“N-no.”
“Lease it?”
“N-no.”
“No good reason then is there to keep me out?”
“Except,” darkly, “this climate isn’t healthy for sheep.”
“Perhaps,” gently, “I’m the best judge of that.”
“You’ll keep on going, if you follow my advice.” The tone was a threat.
“I hardly ever take advice that’s given unasked.”
“Well—you’d better take this.”
The sheepherder looked at him speculatively, with no trace of resentment in his mild eyes.
“Let me see,” reflectively. “It generally takes an easterner who comes west to show us how to raise stock from three to five years to go broke. I believe I’ll stick around a while; I may be able to pick up something cheap a little later.”
A burst of ringing laughter interrupted this unexpected clash between the strangers. It was clear that the lack of harmony did not extend to their young companions, for the lad and the girl seemed deeply interested in each other as their ponies grazed with heads together. The immediate cause of their laughter was the boy’s declaration that when he came to see the girl he intended to wear petticoats.
When their merriment had subsided, she demanded:
“Don’t you like my overalls?”
He looked her over critically—at her face with the frank gray eyes and the vivid red of health glowing through the tan; at the long flat braid of fair hair, which hung below the cantle of the saddle; at her slender bare feet thrust through the stirrups.
“You’d look pretty in anything,” he responded gallantly.
She detected the evasion and persisted:
“But you think I’d look nicer in dresses, don’t you?”
Embarrassed, he responded hesitatingly:
“You see—down South where I come from the girls all wear white and lace and ribbon sashes and carry parasols and think a lot about their complexions. You’re just—different.”
The herder waved his arm. “Way ’round ’em, Shep,” and the sheep began moving.
“Good-bye,” the girl gathered up the reins reluctantly.
“You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Katie Prentice.”
“Mine’s Hughie Disston,” he added, his black eyes shining with friendliness. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
She answered shyly:
“Maybe.”
Toomey started away at a gallop, calling sharply:
“Come on, Hughie!”
The boy followed with obvious reluctance, sending a smile over his shoulder when he found that the girl was looking after him.
“Hope you make out all right with your town,” said Teeters politely as, ignoring his employer’s instructions, he turned his horse’s head in a direction of his own choosing.
“No doubt about it,” replied the Major, briskly, gathering up the lines and bringing the stub of a whip down with a thwack upon each back impartially. “S'long!” He waved it at the girl and sheepherder. “I trust you’ll find a location to suit you.”
“Pardner,” said Mormon Joe suddenly, when the Major was a blur in a cloud of dust and the horsemen were specks in the distance, “this looks like home to me somehow. There ought to be great sheep feed over there in the foothills and summe
r range in the mountains. What do you think of it?”
“Oh—goody!” the girl cried eagerly. “Isn’t it funny, I was hoping you’d say that.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“Tired of trailing sheep, Katie, or do you think you might have company?”
She flushed in confusion, but admitted honestly:
“Both, maybe.”
* * *
CHAPTER III
PROUTY
Major Prouty hung over the hitching post in front of the post office listening with a beatific smile to the sound of the saw and the hammer that came from the Opera House going up at the corner of Prouty Avenue and Wildwood Street. The Major’s eyes held the brooding tenderness of a patron saint, as he looked the length of the wide street of the town which bore his name.
“Sunnin’ yourself, Major?” inquired Hiram Butefish jocularly as he passed; then paused to add, “I’m lookin’ for a big turn-out at the Boosters Club to-night.”
“I trust so, Hiram.”
Aside from himself, no one person had contributed more to Prouty’s growth than the editor of the Grit.
Mr. Butefish had arrived among the first with the intention of opening a plumbing shop, but since the water supply was furnished by a windmill the demand for his services was not apt to be pressing for some time to come.
Therefore, with true western resourcefulness he bought the handpress of a defunct sheet and turned to journalism instead. Though less lucrative, moulding public opinion and editing a paper that was to be a recognized power in the state seemed to Mr. Butefish a step ahead.
The Middle West had responded nobly to his editorial appeals to come out and help found an Empire. The majority of the optimistic citizens who walked with their heads in the clouds and their eyes on the roseate future were there through his efforts. Appreciative of this fact, the Major’s eyes were kindly as they gazed upon the editor’s retreating back.
His expression was benignity itself as his glance turned lovingly to the Prouty House and the White Hand Laundry—the latter in particular being a milestone on the road of Progress since it heralded the fact that the day was not far distant when a man could wear a boiled shirt without embarrassing comment. Three saloons, the General Merchandise Emporium, and “Doc” Fussel’s drug store completed the list of business enterprises as yet, but others were in contemplation and a bottling works was underway. Oh, yes, Prouty was indelibly on the map.
The Major’s complacent smile changed to a slight frown as a man in a black tall crowned hat stopped to rest his back against the post of the Laundry sign.
It had reached the Major’s ears that Mormon Joe had said that Prouty had no more future than a prairie dog town. He had been in his cups at the time but that did not palliate the offense.
Now, there—there was the kind of a man that helped a town! The Major’s brow cleared as Jasper Toomey swung round the corner by the Prouty House and clattered down the main street sitting high-headed and arrogant in a Brewster cart. Spent money like a prince—he did. A few more people like the Toomeys and the future of the country was assured.
In the meantime Toomey had brought the velvet-mouthed horse to its haunches in front of the laundry where he tossed a bundle into the sheepman’s arms, saying casually;
“Take that inside, my man.”
Without a change of expression, Mormon Joe caught it, rolled it compactly and kicked it over the horse’s back into the street.
“There’s no brass buttons sewed on my coat—take it yourself!” Mormon Joe shrugged a shoulder as he walked off.
Walter Scales of the Emporium dashed into the street and recovered the laundry with an apologetic air as though he were somehow responsible for the act.
“You have to make allowances for the rough characters that swarm into a new country,” he said, as he delivered the bundle himself.
“I’ll break that pauper sheepherder before I quit!” A vein under Toomey’s right eye and another on his temple stood out swollen and purple.
“People like him that send away for their grub and never spend a cent they can help in their home town don’t benefit a country none.” Mr. Scales did not attempt to conceal his pleasure at the foot-long list Toomey handed him. He added urgently, “Wisht you’d try and stay in for the Boosters Club to-night, Mr. Toomey. We’d like your advice.”
Toomey refused curtly.
“Get that order out at once,” he said peremptorily, as he drove off.
* * *
No invitation cordial or otherwise was extended to Mormon Joe, so it was upon his own initiative that he stumbled into the room where the Boosters Club was in session that evening. Unmistakably drunk, Joe sat down noisily beside Clarence Teeters who was the only one who made room for him.
The purpose of the meeting was to consider ways and means to build a ditch that should bring water from the mountains in sufficient quantity not only to supply the town but to irrigate the agricultural land surrounding it.
Mr. Abram Pantin, a man of affairs from Keokuk, Iowa, in the vicinity with a view to locating, had been called upon for a few remarks and was just closing with the safe and conservative statement that an ample water supply was an asset to any community.
He was followed by the chairman, Mr. Butefish, who pleaded eloquently for the construction of the ditch by local capital, and having aroused the meeting to a high pitch of enthusiasm ended with a peroration that brought forth a loud demonstration of approbation.
“Gentlemen,” declared Mr. Butefish, “back there in the mountains is a noble stream waitin’ to irrigate a thirsty land. For the trifling sum of twenty thousand dollars we can turn this hull country into a garden spot! The time is comin’ when we’ll see nothin’ but alfalfa field in purple bloom as fur as the eye can reach! We’re as rich in natural resources as any section on God’s green earth. We’re lousy with ’em, gentlemen, and all we gotta do is to put our shoulders to the wheel and scratch!”
Mr. Butefish sat down and dried the inside of his collar with his handkerchief midst tumultuous applause.
The evening had been a veritable love-feast without a jarring note and everybody glowed with a feeling of neighborliness and confidence in a future that was to bring them affluence.
“Mr. Chairman, may I have a word?”
There was a general turning of heads as Mormon Joe, thick of tongue, lurched over the back of the seat in front.
“Kindly make it brief,” replied Mr. Butefish reluctantly. “We still have important business to transact.”
“I only want to say that this country hasn’t any more natural resources than a tin roof and when Prouty got any bigger than a saloon and a blacksmith shop it overreached itself.” There was a tightening of lips as the members exchanged looks, but Mormon Joe went on, “One third of the work that you dry farmers put in trying to make ranches out of arid land,” he addressed a row of tousled gentlemen on the front seat, “would bring you independence in a state where climatic conditions are favorable to raising crops.
“As for your ditch, there never was an irrigation project yet that did not cost double and treble the original estimate. If you try to put it through without outside help, you’ll all go broke. In other words,” he jeered, “you haven’t one damned asset but your climate, and you’re wasting your time and energy until you figure out a way to realize on that.”
Shabby, undersized, distinctly drunk, Mormon Joe made an unheroic figure as he stood swaying on his feet looking mockingly into the frowning faces of the Boosters Club, and yet, somehow, his words cast a momentary depression over the room.
He stood an instant, then staggered out, indifferent to the fact that he had committed the supreme offense in a western town—he had “knocked”—and that henceforth and forever he was a marked man—a detriment to the community—to be discredited, shunned, and, if possible, driven out.
The invitation composed and printed by Mr. Butefish after much mental travail, requesting the pleasure of the Toomeys’ compan
y at a reception and dance in the Prouty House to celebrate the third year of the town’s prosperity and progress was one of the results of this meeting of the Boosters Club.
Toomey’s thin lips curled superciliously as he glanced at it and tossed it across the breakfast table:
“Here, Hughie, why don’t you take this in?”
“You’ll go, won’t you?” the lad asked eagerly after reading it.
“We never mingle socially with the natives.” As Mrs. Toomey shook her head her smile and tone expressed ineffable exclusiveness. Seeing that the boy’s face fell in disappointment she urged, “But you go, Hughie.”
“If I knew some one to ask—”
“There’s Maggie Taylor,” Mrs. Toomey suggested.
“And Mormon Joe’s Kate,” Toomey added, laughing.
“Who’s she?” the boy asked curiously.
“Do you remember the day when you were here before that we met those people driving a band of sheep—a man and a barefooted girl in overalls?”
Hughie’s eyes sparkled:
“They stopped here, then?”
Toomey scowled.
“Yes, confound ’em! I’ve had more than one 'run in’ with ’em since over range and water. But,” he urged, “don’t let that hinder you. They live with their sheep back there in the foothills like a couple of white savages, and she’s some greener than alfalfa. Go and ask her. You’ll get some fun out of it. I dare you! I’ll bet you a saddle blanket against anything you like that you haven’t got the sand to take her.”
“Done!” Hughie Disston’s eyes were dancing. “If my nerve fails me when I see her, you are in a new Navajo.”
It was a great lark to Disston, now a tall boy of nineteen, handsome, attractive, with the soft drawl of his southern speech and the easy manners of those who have associated much with women-folk. He was in high spirits as, one morning early, he and Teeters turned off from the main road and took the faint trail which led up Bitter Creek.
They rode until they saw two tepees showing white through the willows.
The Fighting Shepherdess Page 3
