The Fighting Shepherdess

by Lockhart, Caroline

  “I want to see you happy,” he replied slowly. “I haven’t any other wish, and, right or wrong, I’ll do anything you say, but I’m as shore as we’re settin’ here that you’ll never find it with me. I thought—I hoped that Disston feller—”

  She interrupted sharply:

  “Don’t, Bowers, don’t!”

  Understanding grew in his troubled eyes as he looked at her quivering chin and mouth.

  “So that was it!” he reflected.

  Thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the engine attached to the mixed train that stood on the side-track which paralleled the shipping corrals at Prouty, to sink again in the heavy atmosphere presaging a storm. The clouds were leaden and sagged with the weight of snow about to fall.

  Teeters’s cattle bawled in the three front cars and the remaining “double deckers” were being loaded with Kate Prentice’s sheep. She had followed her early judgment in cutting down the number of her sheep for a hard winter and, in consequence, the engine had steam up to haul the longest stock train that had ever pulled out of Prouty.

  Bowers and his helpers were crowding the sheep up the runway into the last car when Kate rode up. She looked with pride at the mass of broad woolly backs as she sat with her arms folded on the saddle horn and thought to herself that if there were any better range sheep going into Omaha she would like to see them. She had made no mistake when she had graded up her herds with Rambouillets.

  Bowers saw her and left the chute.

  “Teeters is sick,” he announced, coming up.

  Kate’s face grew troubled. She and Teeters had shipped together ever since they had had anything to ship, for it had been mutually advantageous in many ways; but particularly to herself, since he looked after her interests and saved her the necessity of making the trip to the market herself.

  “Somethin’ he’s et,” Bowers vouchsafed. “The doctor says it’s pantomime pizenin’, or some sech name—anyhow, he’s plenty sick.”

  “Where is he?”

  Bowers nodded across the flat where they had been holding the sheep while waiting for their cars.

  Kate swung her horse about and galloped for the tent where Teeters lay groaning in his blankets on the ground.

  Teeters was ill indeed—a glance told her that—and there was not the remotest chance that he would be able to leave with the train.

  “I guess I’ll be all right by the time they’re ready to pull out,” he groaned.

  Kate made her decision quickly.

  “I’ll go myself. You’re too sick. You get to the hotel and go to bed.”

  Teeters protested through a paroxysm of pain:

  “You can’t do that, Miss Kate. It’s a tedious dirty trip in the caboose.”

  “I can’t help it. I’ve too much at stake to take a chance. There’s a big storm coming and I’ve got to get these sheep through in good shape. Don’t worry about me and take care of yourself.”

  The engine whistled a preliminary warning as Kate dropped the tent flap and swung back on her horse. Calling to Bowers to have the train held until she returned, she galloped to the Prouty House and ran up the stairs to her room, where she thrust her few articles in the flour sack that she tied on the back of her saddle when it was necessary to remain over night in town.

  The last frightened sheep had been urged up the chute and the door was closed when she threw her belongings on the platform of the caboose and informed Bowers that she was going along. He too protested, but her mind was made up.

  “We’re going to run into a storm, and if we’re sidetracked I want to be along. It’s not pleasant, but it has to be done.”

  It was useless to argue when Kate used that tone, so Bowers had to content himself with thinking that he would make her as comfortable as circumstances would allow.

  Kate stood in the doorway with her flour sack in her hand looking at Prouty as the brakes relaxed and the wheels began to grind. It was not exactly the way in which she had pictured her first trip into the world, but, with a cynical smile, it was as near the realization as her dreams ever were.

  Kate had not ridden more than a hundred miles on a train in her life, and her knowledge of cities was still gathered from books and magazines. As she had become more self-centered and absorbed in her work, her interest in the “outside” gradually had died. She told herself indifferently that there was time enough to gratify her curiosity.

  She sighed as she watched the town fade and then a snowflake, featherlike and moist, swirled under the projecting roof and melted on her cheek, to recall her to herself. She swung out over the step and looked to the east where the clouds hung sagging with their weight. Yes, it was well that she had come.

  Behind the plate-glass window of the Security State Bank its president stood with his hands thrust deep in his trousers’ pockets watching the long train as, with much belching of smoke, it climbed the slight grade. There were moments when Mr. Wentz cursed the Fate that had promoted him from his washing machine, and this was one of them.

  Neifkins, hunched in a leather chair in the banker’s office, had an obstinate look on his sunburned face.

  “I’d give about half I’m worth if that was your stock goin’ out,” said Wentz, as he reseated himself at his desk.

  Neifkins grunted.

  “I heard you the first time you said that.” The stubborn look on his face increased. “When I’m ready to ship, I’ll ship. I know what I’m about—ME.”

  Wentz did not look impressed by the boast.

  Neifkins added in a surly tone:

  “I don’t need no petticoat to show me how to handle sheep.”

  Wentz answered with a shrug:

  “Looks to me like you might follow a worse lead. She’s contracted for all the hay in sight and shoved the price on what’s left up to sixteen dollars in the stack. What you goin’ to do if you have to feed?”

  “I won’t have to feed; I’ll take my chance on that. It’s goin’ to be an open winter,” confidently.

  “It’s startin’ in like it,” Wentz replied dryly, as he glanced through the window where the falling snowflakes all but obscured the opposite side of the street. Then, emphatically: “I tell you, Neifkins, you Old Timers take too big risks.”

  “I suppose,” the sheepman sneered, “you’d recommend my gettin’ loaded up with a few hundred tons of hay I won’t need.”

  “I’d recommend anything that would make you safe.” Wentz lowered his voice, which vibrated with earnestness as he leaned forward in his chair: “Do you know what it means if a storm catches you and you have a big loss? It means that only a miracle will keep this bank from goin’ on the rocks. We’re hangin’ on by our eyelashes now, waiting for the payment of your first big note to give us a chance to get our breath. I have the ague every time I see a hard-boiled hat comin’ down the street, thinkin’ it’s a bank examiner. You know as well as I do that you’ve borrowed to the amount of your stock, and way beyond the ten per cent limit of the capital stock which we as a national bank are allowed to loan an individual—that it’s a serious offense if we’re found out.”

  “If I don’t,” Neifkins replied insolently, “it ain’t because you haven’t told me often enough.”

  “But you don’t seem to realize the position we’re in. If you did, you’d play safe and ship. It’s true enough that you might make more by holding on, but it’s just as true that a big storm could wipe you out.” His voice sank still lower and trembled as he confessed: “It’s the honest God’s truth that any two dozen of our largest depositors could close our doors to-day. I beg of you, Neifkins, to ship as soon as you can get cars.”

  Neifkins squared his thick shoulders in the chair.

  “Look here—I don’t allow no man to tell me how to run my business! When that note comes due I’ll be ready to meet it, so there’s no need of you gettin’ cold feet as reg'lar as a cloud comes up.” He arose. “This storm ain’t goin’ to last. May be a lot of snow will fall, but it won’t lay.”

  Nei
fkins’ sanguine predictions were not fulfilled, for the next day the sagging wires broke and Neifkins floundered through snow to his knees on his way down town. It lay three feet deep on the level and was still falling as though it could not stop. Every road and trail was obliterated. All the surrounding country was a white trackless waste and Prouty with its roofs groaning under their weight looked like a diamond-dusted picture on a Christmas card.

  There was less resonance in Neifkins’ jubilant tone when he stamped into the bank and declared that it was a record-breaker of a snow fall.

  Wentz asked sullenly, as he paced the floor: “How about the sheep, if this keeps up?”

  “I got herders that know what to do—that’s what I pay ’em for.”

  “Knowing what to do won’t help much, with the snow too deep for the sheep to paw, and a two-days’ drive from hay, even if you could get through.” There was the maximum of exasperation in the president’s voice.

  Neifkins replied stubbornly: “I’ve pulled through fifty storms like this and never had no big loss yet.”

  “But you’ve never had so much at stake. You’ve got us to consider—”

  “Don’t you fret!” Neifkins interrupted impatiently. “You’ve worried until you’re all worked up over somethin’ that hasn’t happened and ain’t goin’ to.”

  With this assurance, which left no comfort in its wake, Neifkins went out where the first icy blast of the predicted blizzard lifted his hat and whisked it down the street.

  The wind completed what the heavy snow had failed to do. Telephone and telegraph poles lay prone for a quarter of a mile at a stretch. It piled in drifts the snow already fallen and brought more. The blizzard enveloped Prouty until it required something more than normal courage to venture out of doors. It was the courage of desperation which ultimately sent Neifkins out in an attempt to get hay to his sheep. There was small resemblance between the optimist who had assured Wentz so confidently that everything would be all right and the perspiring and all but exhausted Neifkins who wallowed in snow to his arm-pits in an effort to break trail for the four-horse team whose driver was displaying increasing reluctance to go on with the load of baled hay stalled some mile and a half from town.

  “We might as well quit,” the driver called with a kind of desperate decision in his tone as he made to lay down the reins. “I can’t afford to pull the life out of my horses like I got to do to make even a third of the way to-day.”

  Dismayed by his threat to go back, Neifkins begged:

  “Don’t quit me like this. I got six thousand sheep that’ll starve if we don’t git this hay through.”

  The driver hesitated. Reluctantly he picked up the lines:

  “I’ll give it another go, but I’m sure it’s no use. The horses have pulled every pound that’s in ’em, and now this wheeler’s discouraged and startin’ to balk. Besides, if anybody asks you, the road is gettin’ no better fast.”

  The latter prediction in particular was correct, and their progress during the next hour could be measured in feet. The sweat trickled down the horses’ necks and legs, their thick winter coats lay slick to their sides, and their breath came labored from their heaving chests. Two and sometimes three out of the four were down at a time.

  The fight was too unequal; to pit their pygmean strength longer against the drifts and the fury of the elements was useless. Even Neifkins finally was convinced of that, and was about to admit as much when, without warning, wagon, driver and horses went over a cut-bank, where the animals lay on their backs, a kicking tangled mass.

  It was the end. For a second Neifkins stood staring, overwhelmed with the realization that he was worse off by a good many thousand dollars than when he had come into the country—that he was wiped out—broke—and that the thin ice upon which the Security State Bank had been skating would now let it through.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE SHEEP QUEEN

  The long mixed train crawling into the stockyards at Omaha, with its ice-encased wheels, its fringe of icicles pendant from the eaves, and snow from the wind-swept plains of western Nebraska piled on the roofs, looked like an Arctic Special.

  Kate stood on the rear platform of the swaying caboose looking with wearied unkindled eyes at the myriad lights of the first city she had ever seen. Those eyes were dark-circled with fatigue, her face streaked with soft coal soot, while the wrinkled riding skirt in which she had slept was soiled and torn. Her fleece-lined canvas coat was buttoned to the throat, and she leaned negligently against the rail, watching from under the broad brim of her Stetson the twinkling lights increase.

  It had been Kate’s intention when she left Prouty to catch a fast passenger train and meet her sheep at a feeding station a few miles outside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plans and she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks, and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, and insufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as she ever had found herself.

  There was no eagerness in the sheep woman’s face, only the impersonal curiosity of a spectator at a display in which he had no part. She accepted as a matter of course the fact that she would be here, as she was at home, an outsider, an alien.

  Kate saw nothing interesting or unusual in what she had done—it was all in the day’s work. She was merely one of innumerable stock raisers bringing the results of months and years of patient effort to the great stock market of the west. As she looked listlessly at the dark silhouette of tanks and towers, skyscrapers and gable roofs, at countless threads of smoke going straight up in the still air from the great hive of industry and life, she wondered at her apathy, at the fact that there was no anticipation in her mind.

  Her face darkened. Had Prouty, along with other things, robbed her of the capacity for enjoyment? Had it crushed out of her the last remnant of the spirit of youth? Was she old, already hopelessly old at heart?

  Her feeling toward the town gradually had crystallized into a cold animus, silent and unwavering, but now, as she suddenly whirled about and looked into the red winter sunset where, back there, beyond the Beyond, Prouty lay, a wave of hatred surged over her, to make her tingle to the finger tips.

  Usually Prouty was personified in her mind as a hulking coward, bullying the weak, fawning upon the strong, with no guiding principle in life save self-interest, but to-night, as she visualized it across the intervening miles, snow-bound, wind-swept, desolate, it was in the guise of a shivering pauper, miserable in his present, fearful of his future.

  Her grip tightened on the rail of the swaying caboose and all the envenomed bitterness of her nature was in her choking voice as she said between her teeth:

  “Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You’ve robbed me of the happiness that belonged to my youth. You’ve destroyed my faith in human kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you have turned to gall. When my Day comes I’ll strike you without mercy—I’ll beat you to the earth if it’s in my power!”

  It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into the yards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheels finally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high step to the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train of cattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in the darkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from that direction.

  “Low bridge!” Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.

  In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian bumped into Kate.

  “I beg your pardon!” The voice was pleasant—deep.

  Kate murmured a commonplace.

  At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only a second’s glimpse that each had of the other’s face
, but it was long enough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they had exchanged was the look one man gives to another—level, fearless—for there never was anything of coquetry in Kate’s gaze, and the impression she had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with a sadness in which there was no bitterness.

  The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidently he could see nothing in the darkness—he could hear only the retreating footsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of his bewilderment he cried:

  “By God! That woman looks like me!”

  Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but when they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate’s side and made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers’s wagon. He looked at it long and hard.

  Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work of unloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after those that had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious of the attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.

  There had been “sheep queens” in the stockyards before—raucous-voiced, domineering, sexless, inflated to absurdity by their success—but none with Kate’s personal attractiveness and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside the pens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her wide gestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air of authority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had come out of the far west for a long time.