The Free Range
Page 20
CHAPTER XX
SOMEBODY NEW TURNS UP
Utterly exhausted with his day's riding and the stress of his otherlabors, Bud Larkin, driving his captive, arrived at the sheep camp shortlybefore sundown. Faint with hunger--for he had not eaten since morning--heturned Stelton over to the eager sheepmen who rode out to meet him.
Things had gone well that day with the drive, for the animals, underpressure, had made fifteen miles. The cattle, at first hard to manage, hadfinally been induced to lead and flank the march, but neither they nor thesheep had grazed much.
When Larkin arrived they had just reached a stream and had been separatedfrom the sheep that both might drink untainted water. Sims had set hisnight watchers, and these were beginning to circle the herd. The sheepwere bedding down on a near-by rise of ground.
Larkin, having eaten, cooled and bathed himself in the stream and returnedto the camp for rest. Shortly thereafter a single horseman, laden with abulky apparatus, was seen approaching from a distance. Immediately menmounted and rode out to meet him, and returned with him to camp when hehad proved himself harmless and expressed a desire to remain all night inthe camp.
It was Ed Skidmore, the photographer, who had just completed a profitableday at Red Tarken's ranch, the M Square.
Larkin, who was lying on the ground, heard the excitement as the newcomerrode into camp, and got up to inspect him. Skidmore had dismounted, andhad his back turned when Bud approached, but suddenly turned so that thetwo came face to face.
As their eyes met, both started back as though some terrible thing hadcome between them.
"Bud! My Heavens!" cried Skidmore, turning pale under his tan.
"Lester!" was all that Larkin said as he stared with starting eyes andsagging jaw at the man before him. Then, as one in a dream, he put out hishand, and the other, with a cry of joy, seized and wrung it violently.
For a moment the two stood thus looking amazedly at each other, while thesheepmen, suddenly stricken into silence, gazed curiously at the episode.Then, one by one, they turned and walked away, leaving the two together.
It was Bud who found his voice first.
"What under heaven are you doing out here, Lester?" he asked at last.
"Earning a living making pictures," returned the other with a short laugh."It must be quite a shock to you to see me actually working."
"I can't deny it," said Bud as he smiled a bit. "But when did you comeout?"
"Six months after you did."
"But why on earth didn't you let me know? I would have given you a job onthe ranch."
"That's just why I didn't let you know. I didn't want a job on the ranch.I wanted to do something for myself. I concluded I had been dependent onother people about long enough. I'm not mushy, or converted, or anythinglike that, Bud, but I figured that when the governor died and left mewithout a cent I had deserved everything I got and was a disgrace to thefamily and myself."
"Same with me, Lester," acknowledged Bud. "If you had only told me how youfelt about things we could have struck out here together."
"And you with all the money? I guess not," and Lester spoke bitterly.
"I'd have divided with you in a minute, if you had talked to me the wayyou're doing now. We always used to divide things when we were kids, youknow."
"That's square of you, Bud, but I really don't want the money now. I'mmaking a good go of my pictures; I don't owe anybody, and I haven't anenemy that I know of. What have you done with your money?"
Larkin turned around and motioned toward the thousands of sheep dottedover the hills.
"There's all my available cash. Of course there was some in securities Icouldn't realize on by the terms of father's will, and if I go to the wallI can always get enough to live on out of that. But my idea is to get aliving out of _this_, and just now I am in the very devil of a fix."
"How?"
Bud narrated briefly the stormy events that had led up to this finalstroke by which he hoped to defeat the cowmen and save his own fortune;and as he did so he observed his brother closely.
Lester Larkin was three years younger than Bud, was smaller, and had grownup with a weak and vacillating character. The youngest child in thewealthy Larkin family, he had been spoiled and indulged until when ayouth in his teens he had become the despair of them all.
Even now, despite the tanned look of health he had acquired, it couldstill be seen that he was by no means the strong, virile young man thatBud had become. His face was rather delicate than rugged in outline; hisbrown hair was inclined to curl, and his blue eyes were large andbeautiful.
The sensitive mouth was still wilful, though character was beginning toshow there. He was, in fact, a grand mistake in upbringing. With all theinstincts of a lover of beauty he had been raised by a couple of dullparents to a rule-of-thumb existence that started in a business officelate one morning and ended in a cafe early the next.
It was the kind of life to which the poor laborer looks up with consumingenvy, and which makes him what he thinks is a socialist. Given a couple ofsharp pencils and some blocks of paper, along with sympathy andencouragement, Lester Larkin might have become a writer or an artist of nomean ability.
But the elder Larkin, believing that what had made one generation wouldmake another, had started young Lester on a high stool in his office witha larger percentage of dire results than he had ever imagined could accrueto the employment of one individual. With the high stool went a low wageand a lot of wholesome admonitions--and this, after a boyhood and earlyyouth spent in the very lap of luxury.
Thus, when the father died, the boy, at nineteen, knew more ways to spenda dollar than his father had at thirty-nine, and less ways to earn it thanhis father at nine. So much for Lester.
"Well, if I can help you in any way, Bud, let me know," he said when hisbrother had finished his story of the range war that was now reaching itsclimax. "I rather imagine I would like a jolly good fight for a change."
"I don't want you to get hurt, kid," replied Bud, smiling at the other'senthusiasm, "but I have an idea that I can use you somehow. Just stickaround for a day or two and I'll show you how to 'walk' sheep so youreyes'll pop out."
"It's purely a matter of business with me," rejoined Lester. "Pictures ofseventy men at five dollars apiece, selling only one to each, will bethree hundred and fifty dollars. I think I'll stick."
"Suppose I get 'em all in one group so you can't take individuals, thenwhat will you do?"
"I'll make more money still," retorted the other promptly. "I'll sellseventy copies of the same picture at five apiece and only have to do onedeveloping. What are you tryin' to do, kid me?"
Bud laughed and gave up the attempt to confuse the boy.
During the next two days Bud saw more sheep-walking than he had seen sincegoing into the business, and Lester amused himself profitably by takingpictures of the embarrassed plainsmen, many of whom would not believe itpossible that an exact image of them could be reproduced in the twinklingof an eye, but who were willing to pay the price if the feat wereaccomplished.
When he had filled all his private orders, the picturesqueness of the lifeand outfit with which he traveled so appealed to Lester that he madenearly a hundred plates depicting the daily events of the drive and thecamp. And these hundred plates, three-quarters of which were excellent,form by far the best collection of actual Western scenes of that time andare still preserved in the old Larkin ranch house in Montana.
At the end of the two days the Gray Bull River was still twenty miles awayand would require an equal amount of time to be reached and crossed.During this period Bud Larkin knew nothing whatever of the fate of JimmieWelsh and his companions, believing that they still held the repentantcowmen captive, and that the punchers in pursuit were still searching thebad lands for them--an almost endless task.
He was in a state of high good humor that his plans had carried out sowell, and looked forward with almost feverish impatience to the glorioushour when the last of his bawling merinos
should stand dripping, but safe,on the other side of the Gray Bull. The nearer approach to the streambrought a greater nervous tension and scouts at a five-mile radius rodeback and forth all day searching for any signs of spying cowpunchers.
The thought that he might effect the passage without hindrance or loss wasstretching the improbable in Bud's mind, and he devoted much time everyday to an inspection of his supplies and accouterments.