The Drift Fence

by Zane Grey

  It was noticeable that Holliday had no more to say. But Jim greeted the visitors and asked them to get down and stay for supper.

  Dunn might not have heard, for all the sign he gave.

  “Say, ain’t you buildin’ sort of a long fence?” he queried.

  “Yes. It’s getting pretty long,” replied Jim with a laugh.

  “How long’s it goin’ to be?”

  “Hundred miles, the cowboys say.”

  “They don’t say! … Thet’s purty long. An’ barb-wire, too. What kind of a fence is this heah goin’ to be?”

  “A drift fence to hold cattle, Mr. Dunn,” returned Jim.

  “What’s the idee—a drift fence?”

  “What do you suppose?” counter-queried Jim, just as curtly. Then he gazed up into burning eyes that positively gave him a shock.

  The second rider came up. “Arch, let’s be goin’,” he said.

  “Wal, I suppose a lot. But I’m askin’ questions,” went on Dunn. “This heah fence is old Jim Traft’s idee?”

  “Certainly it is.”

  “Does he own the land?”

  “No.”

  “Is he aimin’ to fence free range?”

  “It will divide the range, that’s sure.”

  “Wal, along heah it won’t make no difference to nobody. But when it gets down in the Diamond it’s goin’ to be a bad deal for cattlemen in the brakes.”

  “So I’ve been told, Mr. Dunn,” rejoined Jim. “I’m just beginning to learn the cattle business, and can’t say one way or the other.”

  “Wal I reckon you won’t go far,” replied the other meaningly, and he rolled a cigarette without ever taking his gleaming eyes off Jim.

  “Arch, I’m sayin’ let’s rustle out of this,” interposed Haverly, reaching over to give Dunn a jerk.

  “I’m going to the end of the Diamond with this drift fence,” averred Jim. “And after it is finished my outfit will see that it stays up.”

  “Your outfit?”

  “Yes, my outfit.”

  “Say, mister, you cain’t have it in your haid thet your Diamond outfit will stick to you.”

  “I’ve got that notion.”

  “Wal, you’re plumb off the trail. Even down in the brakes we heah what Jocelyn thinks of you. An’ Cherry Winters. An’ Uphill Frost.”

  “I’m sorry to admit that some of my men ridicule me,” said Jim, feelingly. “Perhaps it’s deserved, for I sure am a tenderfoot. But all the same the drift fence goes up and stays up, if it takes half a dozen Diamond outfits.”

  Dunn poised his cigarette, arrested by a speech that evidently struck him.

  “Traft, no drift fence will ever stay up in Cibeque County,” he returned, presently, with grim passion.

  “That remains to be seen. Thanks for giving me a hunch. And now, since you’re neither polite nor agreeable, will you please mozey on out of my camp?”

  Dunn’s face showed the darker for a wave of blood. His companion roughly seized him, nearly unseating him from the saddle.

  “Slinger, I shore ain’t waitin’ to be ordered out of no tenderfoot’s camp,” he said, gruffly, dragging at Dunn.

  “You’re a little late,” put in Jim, with sarcasm. “My invitation included you. Now I say to both of you—get out!”

  The instant Jim had delivered this contemptuous order he realized he had done something terrible. Not only Dunn’s aspect, but Jim’s men appeared to freeze. Jim had never seen such a blazing hell in human eyes as he encountered in Dunn’s.

  Haverly reached down, and grasping the bit of Dunn’s horse wheeled it and the rider away. Dunn could be heard cursing his comrade and getting roundly cursed in return. They were watched out of sight into the woods.

  Jim turned to his men. As he did so he observed Curly Prentiss move his right hand, containing a cocked gun, from behind his back. This revealed to Jim more of the nature of this encounter with the two riders from the Cibeque, but it in no wise mitigated his temper.

  “I don’t think much of you men,” he said, with a ring in his voice. “If I told my uncle about this he’d fire every last one of you. You may be the great Diamond outfit, but to me you’re a lot of four-flushers. What the hell do I know about Slinger Dunn and his kind? Some of you might have chipped in and stood by me.”

  “Boss, I reckon we stood by you without you knowin’ it,” declared Curly Prentiss. “You were doin’ the talkin’. An’ if we’d chipped in there would have been gun-play.”

  “Curly’s right, boss,” added Lonestar Holliday. “I don’t know if Dunn seen Curly slip his gun out. But I reckon he did, as he was shore civil for him. This Slinger Dunn has a bad rep. He’s killed several men an’ shot up more’n you could count.”

  “Boss, I’ll chip in a word,” said Hack Jocelyn. “It shore was nervy of you to fire Dunn out of our camp. If you hadn’t been a tenderfoot you’d never have done it. You want to look out for Slinger Dunn.”

  “Aw, I’m not afraid of him, even if he is a gunslinger,” declared Jim, passionately. “How do I know it wasn’t another trick, hatched by some of you? You may think you’re having fun at my expense. Perhaps you are. But there ought to be a limit. You’re such awful liars I can’t believe one word you say.”

  “Boss, are you callin’ us liars?” inquired Curly, in a queer tone.

  “I reckon I am. Damn liars! You’re more. You’re a flock of swell-headed, cross-grained, cantankerous cowboys. Now put that in your cigarettes and smoke it!”

  At least for once Jim silenced them. He had no idea of the magnitude of his offense and he did not care. He had been frightened, and if anger had not come to his rescue he would have betrayed it. That would be the finish. He had vowed he would never let any of this famed Diamond outfit see him scared. At that juncture Jeff called them to supper, but Jim stalked off into the woods and walked under the dark pines. He recovered from his fit of temper, but not from the sense of disaster that had slowly accumulated. This task he had undertaken seemed well nigh impossible. At length, gloomy and troubled, he stalked back to camp and to bed.

  Next day the stretching of wire fence went on, and now with a remarkable celerity, compared with that done in the open country. The stands of wire were nailed upon trees, and seldom had a post-hole to be dug. Perhaps this had a cheering effect upon the members of the Diamond, but Jim regarded their attempts at approaching him, their sudden solicitude, their amazing amiability, with suspicion. He was right, too, for that night, when he opened his bed-roll he found the blankets soaked. Some one had poured a bucketful of cold spring water into one end of the roll. Jim pondered over this mean trick. Oh, he would get even, but what ought he do on the moment? He could strip a blanket off every one of his men and by so doing catch the guilty party. But he decided against that course of procedure. Instead he built a roaring fire, so hot that he almost roasted the boys alive before they could awake and move back in the woods. Such profanity! Jim had heard a little on the docks at St. Louis, but it could not hold a candle to this. He took half the night to dry his blankets, knowing, of course, that a huge fire would keep his men awake. Then he went to bed, and in the darkness before dawn he crawled out to yell words he had heard them often use:

  “THE DAY’S BUSTED! ROLL OUT!”

  That day and another passed. The camp was moved ten miles down in the woods, into a wide pleasant draw where a creek ran, and wild turkeys gave Jim a thrill. The wagon had to go into Flagerstown for more wire, and the driver returned with a note from Traft, asking Jim why he had not been in to the ranch to report. Jim never answered it, nor did he ride in. Another weekend went by, including Sunday, when Jim was left in peace.

  He was nearing the end of his rope now. As the days passed and the drift fence lengthened, these incomprehensible cowboys of the Diamond outfit were driving Jim to distraction. They meant to break him. They were going to. No tenderfoot out of Missouri could ever run the Diamond! So Jim had overheard.

  They were bewildering in the infinite variety of th
eir attacks, and he was almost helpless because he knew so little of the West, and horses, and of the nature of cowboys. To him they seemed inhuman—cool, still-faced or smiling devils, hiding their sincerity, if they had any, possessed of a fiendish desire to nag him, worry him, inconvenience him, make him acknowledge defeat.

  On Monday the wire-wagon went on ahead, along a line Jim had blazed on Sunday, and dropped its load, then went back to town for another, necessitating now a trip of three days.

  Jim, driving the men hard that week, reached the end of the blazed line before the wagon returned. There was a wide deep ravine that had to be crossed. The country was growing rougher.

  “Boss,” said Bud, that morning, “there’s a lot of bales of wire been rolled down in the draw.”

  The rest of the outfit whooped, but Jim could not tell whether it was from resentment or satisfaction.

  “Who rolled them?” he roared.

  “How’n’ll do I know?” retorted Bud.

  “Another funny trick!” ejaculated Jim. And he walked on along the line to the ravine. There far down at the bottom he espied a dozen or more bales lying scattered about.

  “Go down and pack them up,” ordered Jim to his men, who had followed him.

  “Wha—at?”

  “Up thet hill on foot?”

  One and all they sat down in the shade, to begin rolling cigarettes. When Jim swore at them they smiled in the slow, cool way that always infuriated him.

  “All right,” he fumed, “I’ll pack them up myself.”

  He strode down the slope, which he found steeper and longer than it had appeared at first glance. Like a toy he handled a bale of wire. Jim was powerful. He could throw a sack of grain or a barrel up into a wagon. However, by the time he had packed that bale up the hill he knew what a heavy load was. He had bitten off more than he could chew. But with those intent eyes on him so watchfully, he could not quit. He went down again, and this time was careful to zigzag up the steep slope. It took him two hours of the most trying toil to finish the job. Then, hot as fire, and wringing wet with sweat, he panted at the silent cowboys.

  “Now—if you’re rested—we’ll go on—with the fence.”

  “Boss, we was just waitin’ to see how soon you’d think of gettin’ a pack-hoss fer thet job,” observed Hump Stephens, amiably.

  For Jim to realize how again, for the thousandth time, he had showed how utterly unfit he was to be foreman of the Diamond, did not improve his mood. He worked off the mood at length, as he invariably succeeded in doing, just as if he did not know another would soon be imposed upon him.

  It was Curly Prentiss who discovered horse tracks along the line, and he showed them to Jim, no doubt in the interest of himself and companions.

  “Fresh tracks, an’ unshod horses at thet,” he said. “Reckon we can lay it to some of the Cibeque outfit.”

  “I’m sorry I accused you fellows,” he replied, regretfully. No matter what he did or said now, it was wrong.

  Friday, at the lunch hour, Bud Chalfack approached Jim.

  “Boss, I’m talkin’ fer the outfit,” he announced. “We figger thet we’re aboot up on this week’s work, an’ we want this afternoon an’ tomorrow off.”

  “What for?” queried Jim, in surprise.

  “We want to ride in today. There’s a fair on in Flag, an’ tomorrow’s rodeo day. Most of us are entered.”

  “But we can’t stop our fence-building to go to rodeos,” protested Jim.

  “Shore we can. We-all cain’t see any hurry aboot the fence. An’ when the Fourth comes we’ll be ’way down too far to ride in. So we want to have a chanct at this rodeo.”

  Jim actually could not decide whether this was insubordination or the legitimate claim of a cowboy. He felt helpless. If he refused they would go, anyhow. If he gave his consent it might well be that they had him “buffaloed,” as Curly had been overheard to say.

  “Very well, you go on your own hook,” he said to Bud.

  They rode off, a gay and superb group of young riders, who made his heart swell with pride and yet saddened it with the thought that he never could be received by them. He would have been delighted. He had never seen a rodeo. But they did not want him; they were ashamed of their tenderfoot foreman.

  After they had gone, Jim strode off toward the woods. He was astounded to hear Jeff Davis call.

  “Boss, you oughtn’t go out alone. But if you must go, take a rifle.”

  Jim did not answer, though he was grateful to Jeff. The cook, then, had perpetrated a hoax on the Diamond. He was not dumb. And it was a sure bet that neither was he slightly deaf, as he had claimed. Here would be one on the cowboys, presently. Jim assured himself that he would not betray Jeff. He did not, however, take the latter’s advice, but went on into the forest alone and unarmed.

  He was beginning to feel a strange solace or help or something in the deep solitude of the woodland. It was early summer now. The ferns and wild flowers were springing up along the brown aisles. His step made not the slightest noise. He saw squirrels and birds, and once, gray vanishing forms that might have been deer. Huge cliffs festooned with moss and vines, from which dripped water, arrested him in his walk. There was a pleasant low sough of wind in the tree tops. If anything could have spurred his flagging spirits, the sweetness and loneliness of this forest would have done so. But he guessed he was about beaten. And that confession, gaining audible admission into his consciousness, could not be dislodged.

  The afternoon passed, and he returned to camp, there to eat supper in silence, without appearing to remember that the cook had spoken to him. He slept well, but in the morning the old bitterness and hopelessness assailed him again. An impulse to ride to town seized him, and straightway he acted upon it. He did not quite acknowledge to himself that this was a signal of defeat, but it would probably come out when he faced his uncle.

  He reached home about noon, to ascertain that his uncle was at the fair. Jim rode out there, and walked his horse. What a vacillating jackass he was! It would hurt Uncle Jim to find him a quitter. Ought he not to try again? Weary and distressed, he entered the fairground; and espying a gayly decorated booth advertising lunch, he dismounted and approached the counter. He gave an order to a girl behind. When he was about through he happened to look up, to see a pair of gold-brown eyes upon him.

  And they wrenched out of him the query, “What would you do if you were about licked?”

  It was when the girl had finally said, “I’d get up an’ fight some more!” that Jim really looked at her with seeing eyes. If her spirited reply had stirred him, what more did the toss of her pretty dark head, with its glints of gold. She was a little girl, very young, and she wore a dainty blue dress. Still, there were contours under it that betrayed womanhood. She had a small, oval, almost dusky face. Her hands were small and brown, yet they struck him as strong and capable. She was Western, of course, but she was a little lady of quality. He kept talking, scarcely with any idea of what he was saying. And that suddenly betrayed to him a swift and remarkable interest in her. After that he knew what he was saying to her, and every word added to a realization of charm. By the time he had found out she did not have a best fellow he seemed far on a strange new adventure; and when he rode away toward the stands, with her shy half-promise of a dance that night, he changed his mind about his mission to Flagerstown. “I’d get up an’ fight some more!” She had looked it, too. What a sweet and fiery little girl! Evidently she had taken it for granted that he had been knocked down. Well, he had been. But he had gotten up. And he would act precisely and indomitably upon her advice. Fight! He would whip each and every one of that Diamond outfit.

  He gave his horse to a boy at the stalls, and went round to the stand, where he soon found his uncle, and was welcomed in a way that made him ashamed. It pleased his uncle that he had come to town in his work clothes.

  The rodeo was on. And Jim sat enthralled. “The Diamond bunch will walk away with everythin’,” his uncle had averred, but even th
at startling prophecy had not prepared Jim.

  He sat there gripping his seat, yelling when the crowd yelled. And he saw Curly Prentiss ride wild bronchos that threw all the other riders; he saw Hack Jocelyn break the record for roping two-year-olds; he saw Bud Chalfack climb all over a horse, racing at breakneck speed; he saw Jackson Way ride two beautiful horses, standing with one foot on the back of each, and beat his opponents two full lengths; and lastly he saw Lonestar Holliday win the money for the perilous feat of bulldogging steers.

  Out of sixteen events the Diamond outfit took nine first prizes. Jim scarcely could contain himself. That was his band of cowboys. He might have hated them before today, but now he loved them. He gathered vaguely that something tremendous had happened to him.

  He rode out to the ranch-house in a trance, divided between pride for his cowboys and the momentous dance near at hand. He shaved and washed and changed his clothes, aware of an undue regard for his appearance. His uncle had guests, to whom Jim was presented as the boss of the Diamond. Jim acquitted himself creditably, and kept his miserable secret, strangely growing less miserable.

  Then he was off to the dance, eager, with palpitating heart, amused at himself, amazed and glad. He now had opportunity to show some of these Flagerstown girls that if he was a tenderfoot he could interest and perhaps win a prettier girl than any of them. But he had not prepared himself for a vision in white—his girl of the booth—stunningly transformed by a gown, a brown-armed, brown-faced beauty with haunting dark eyes. She saw Jim at once. She bowed. And whatever had not already happened to his heart surely happened then.

  Jim did not approach anyone; he saw only her. And he was in a torment waiting for her to give him the opportunity he longed for. If she did not he must go to her, and introducing himself ask for the dance. But she divined his predicament. How the dark eyes met his across the hall, through the whirling throng! Soon she sought a seat with her young partner, and obviously dismissed him. Jim made haste to reach her, to bend over her.

  “My dance!” he whispered.

  She rose, her face like pearl, her eyes downcast, and gave herself to his embrace.