The Range Dwellers

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER XI.

  A Cable Snaps.

  Our lazy land smiling and dreaming to itself had disappeared; in itsstead, the wind howled down the river from the west and lashed the waterinto what would have looked respectable waves to one who had not been onthe ocean and seen the real thing. The new grass lay flat upon theprairies, and chunks of dirt rattled down from the roof of Pochette'sprimitive abiding-place. It is true the sun shone, but I really wouldn'thave been at all surprised if the wind had blown it out, 'most any time.

  Pochette himself looked worried when we trooped in to breakfast. (By theway, old King never showed up till we were through; then he limped in andsat down to the table without a glance our way.) While we were smoking,over by the fireplace, Pochette came sidling up to us. He was a littleskimpy man with crooked legs, a real French cut of beard, and anapologetic manner. I think he rather prided himself upon his familiaritywith the English language--especially that part which is censored soseverely by editors that only a half-dozen words are permitted to appearin cold type, and sometimes even they must hide their faces behind suchflimsy veils as this: d----n. So if I never quote Mr. Pochette verbatim,you'll know why.

  "I theenk you will not wish for cross on the reever, no?" he beganingratiatingly. "The weend she blow lak ---- ---- ----, and my boat, shezat small, she ---- ----."

  I caught King looking at us from under his eyebrows, so I was airilyindifferent to wind or water. "Sure, we want to cross," I said. "Just assoon as we finish our smoke, Pochette."

  "But, mon Dieu!" (Ever hear tell of a Frenchman that didn't begin hissentences that way? In this case, however, Pochette really said justthat.) "The weend, she blow lak ----"

  "'A hurricane; bimeby by she blaw some more,'" I quoted bravely. "It'sall right, Pochette; let her howl. We're going to cross, just the same.It isn't likely you'll have to make the trip for any body else to-day."I didn't mean to, but I looked over toward King, and caught the glint ofhis unfriendly eyes upon me. Also, the corners of his mouth hunched upfor a second in what looked like a sneer. But the Lord knows I wasn'tcasting any aspersions on _his_ nerve.

  He must have taken it that way, though; for he went out when we did andhooked up, and when we drove down to where the little old scow they calleda ferry was bobbing like a decoy-duck in the water, he was just behind uswith his team. Pochette looked at him, and at us, and at the river; andhis meager little face with its pointed beard looked like a perturbedgnome--if you ever saw one.

  "The leetle boat, she not stand for ze beeg load. The weend, she--"

  "Aw, what yuh running a ferry for?" Frosty cut in impatiently. "There's agood, strong current on, to-day; she'll go across on a high run."

  Pochette shook his head still more dubiously, till I got down andbolstered up his courage with a small piece of gold. They're all alike;their courage ebbs and flows on a golden tide, if you'll let me indulge ina bit of unnecessary hyperbole. He worked the scow around end on to thebank, so that we could drive on. The team wasn't a bit stuck on going, butFrosty knows how to handle horses, and they steadied when he went to theirheads and talked to them.

  We were so busy with our own affairs that we didn't notice what was goingon behind us till we heard Pochette declaiming bad profanity in a highsoprano. Then I turned, and he was trying to stand off old King. But Kingwasn't that sort; he yelled to us to move up and make room, and then tookdown his whip and started up. Pochette pirouetted out of the way, andstood holding to the low plank railing while he went on saying thingsthat, properly pronounced, must have been very blasphemous.

  King paid about as much attention to him as he would to a good-sizedprairie-dog chittering beside its burrow. I reckon he knew Pochette prettywell. He got his rig in place and climbed down and went to his horses'heads.

  "Now, shove off, dammit," he ordered, just as if no one had been nearbursting a blood-vessel within ten feet of him.

  Pochette gulped, worked the point of his beard up and down like a villainin a second-rate melodrama, and shoved off. The current and the windcaught us in their grip, and we swashed out from shore and got under way.

  I can't say that trip looked good to me, from the first rod out. Ofcourse, the river couldn't rear up and get real savage, like the ocean,but there were choppy little waves that were plenty nasty enough, once yougot to bucking them with a blum-nosed old scow fastened to a cable thatswayed and sagged in the wind that came howling down on us. And with tworigs on, we filled her from bow to stern; all but about four feet aroundthe edges.

  Frosty looked across to the farther shore, then at the sagging cable, andthen at me. I gathered that he had his doubts, too, but he wouldn't sayanything. Nobody did, for that matter. Even Pochette wasn't doing anythingbut chew his whiskers and watch the cable.

  Then she broke, with a snap like a rifle, and a jolt that came nearthrowing us off our feet. Pochette gave a yell and relapsed into Frenchthat I'd hate to translate; it would shock even his own countrymen. Theferry ducked and bobbed, now there was nothing to hold its nose steady tothe current, and went careering down river with all hands aboard andlooking for trouble.

  We didn't do anything, though; there wasn't anything to do but stay rightwhere we were and take chances. If she stayed right side up we wouldprobably land eventually. If she flopped over--which she seemed trying todo, we'd get a cold bath and lose our teams, if no worse.

  Soon as I thought of that, I began unhooking the traces of the horsenearest. The poor brutes ought at least to have a chance to swim for it.Frosty caught on, and went to work, too, and in half a minute we had themfree of the wagon and stripped of everything but their bridles. They wouldhave as good a show as we, and maybe better.

  I looked back to see what King was doing. He was having troubles of hisown, trying to keep one of his cayuses on all its feet at once. It wasscared, poor devil, and it took all his strength on the bit to keep itfrom rearing and maybe upsetting the whole bunch. Pochette wasn't doinganything but lament, so I went back and unhooked King's horses for him,and took off the harness and threw it in the back of his wagon so theywouldn't tangle their feet in it when it came to a show-down.

  I don't think he was what you could call grateful; he never looked my wayat all, but went on cussing the horse he was holding, for acting up justwhen he should keep his wits. I went back to Frosty, and we stood elbowstouching, waiting for whatever was coming.

  For what seemed a long while, nothing came but wind and water. ButI don't mind saying that there was plenty of that, and if either one hadbeen suddenly barred out of the game we wouldn't any of us have called theumpire harsh names. We drifted, slippety-slosh, and the wind ripped holesin the atmosphere and made our eyes water with the bare force of it whenwe faced the west. And none of us had anything to say, except Pochette; hesaid a lot, I remember, but never mind what. I don't suppose he wasmentally responsible at the time.

  Then, a long, narrow, yellow tongue of sand-bar seemed to reach right outinto the river and lap us up. We landed with a worse jolt than when webroke away from the cable, and the gray-blue river went humping pastwithout us. Frosty and I looked at each other and grinned; after all, wewere coming out of the deal better than we had expected, for we were stillright side up and on the side of the river toward home. We were a mile orso down river from the trail, but once we were on the bank with our rig,that was nothing.

  We had landed head on, with the nose of the scow plowed high and dry.Being at the front, we went at getting our team off, and our wagon. Therewas a four or five-foot jump to make, and the horses didn't know how aboutit, at first. But with one of us pulling, and the other slashing them overthe rump, they made it, one at a time. The sand was soft and actedsomething like quicksand, too, and we hustled them to shore and tied themto some bushes. The bank was steep there, and we didn't know how we weregoing to make the climb, but we left that to worry over afterward; westill had our rig to get ashore, and it began to look like quite acontract.

  We went back, with our boot tracks going deep, and then fill
ing up andsettling back almost level six steps behind us. Frosty looked back at themand scowled.

  "For sand that isn't quicksand," he said, "this layout will stand about aslittle monkeying with as any sand I ever met up with. Time we make a fewtrips over it, she's going to be pudding without the raisins. And that'sa picnic, with our rig on the main deck, as you might say."

  We went back and sat swinging our legs off the free board end of the ferryboat, and rolled us a smoke apiece and considered the next move. King wassomewhere back between our rig and his, cussing Pochette to afare-you-well for having such a rotten layout and making white men paygood money for the privilege of risking their lives and property upon it.

  "We'll have to unload and take the wagon to pieces and pack everythingashore--I guess that's our only show," said Frosty. We had just given upmy idea of working the scow up along the bar to the bank. We couldn'tbudge her off the sand, and Pochette warned us that if we did the windwould immediately commence doing things to us again.

  Frosty's idea seemed the only possible way, so we threw away ourcigarettes and got ready for business; the dismembering and carryingashore of that road-wagon promised to be no light task. Frosty yelled toPochette to come and get busy, and went to work on the rig. It looked tome like a case where we were all in the same fix, and personal spiteshouldn't count for anything, but King was leaning against the wheel ofhis buggy, cramming tobacco into his stubby pipe--the same one apparentlythat I had rescued from the pickle barrel--and, seeing the wind scatterhalf of it broadcast, as though he didn't care a rap whether he got solidearth beneath his feet once more, or went floating down the river.I wanted to propose a truce for such time as it would take to get us allsafe on terra firma, but on second thoughts I refrained. We could get offwithout his help, and he was the sort of man who would cheerfully havegone to his last long sleep at the bottom of that boiling river ratherthan accept the assistance of an enemy.

  The next couple of hours was a season of aching back, and sloppy feet, andgrunting, and swearing that I don't much care about remembering in detail.The wind blew till the tears ran down our cheeks. The sand stuck andclogged every move we made till I used to dream of it afterward. If youthink it was just a simple little job, taking that rig to pieces andpacking it to dry land on our backs, just give another guess. And if youthink we were any of us in a mood to look at it as a joke, you're milesoff the track.

  Pochette helped us like a little man--he had to, or we'd have done him upright there. Old King sat on the ferry-rail and smoked, and watched usbreak our backs sardonically--I did think I had that last word in thewrong place; but I think not. We did break our backs sardonically, and hewatched us in the same fashion; so the word stands as she is.

  When the last load was safe on the bank, I went back to the boat. Itseemed a low-down way to leave a man, and now he knew I wasn't fishing forhelp, I didn't mind speaking to the old reprobate. So I went up and facedhim, still sitting on the ferry-rail, and still smoking.

  "Mr. King," I said politely as I could, "we're all right now, and, if youlike, we'll help you off. It won't take long if we all get to work."

  He took two long puffs, and pressed the tobacco down in his pipe. "You goto hell," he advised me for the second time. "When I want any help fromyou or your tribe, I'll let yuh know."

  It took me just one second to backslide from my politeness. "Go to thedevil, then!" I snapped. "I hope you have to stay on the damn' bar aweek." Then I went plucking back through the sand that almost pulled theshoes off my feet every step, kicking myself for many kinds of a fool.Lord, but I was mad!

  Pochette went back to the boat and old King, after nearly getting kickedinto the river for hinting that we ought to pay for the damage and troublewe had caused him. Frosty and I weren't in any frame of mind for such ahold-up, and it didn't take him long to find it out.

  The bank there was so steep that we had to pack my trunk and what othertruck had been brought out from Osage, up to the top by hand. That wasanother temper-sweetening job. Then we put the wagon together, hitched onthe horses, and they managed to get to the top with it, by a scratch. Itall took time--and, as for patience, we'd been out of that commodity forso long we hardly knew it by name.

  The last straw fell on us just as we were loading up. I happened to lookdown upon the ferry; and what do you suppose that old devil was doing? Hehad torn up the back part of the plank floor of the ferry, and had laid italong the sand for a bridge. He had made an incline from boat nose to thebar, and had rough-locked his wagon and driven it down. Just as we looked,he had come to the end of his bridge, and he and Pochette were taking upthe planks behind and extending the platform out in front.

  Well! maybe you think Frosty and I stood there congratulating the old fox.Frosty wanted me to kick him, I remember; and he said a lot of things thatsounded inspired to me, they hit my feelings off so straight. If we hadhad the sense to do what old King was doing, we'd have been ten orfifteen miles nearer home than we were.

  But, anyway, we were up the bank ahead of him, and we loaded in the lastpackage and drove away from the painful scene at a lope. And you canimagine how we didn't love old King any better, after that experience.