The Fighting Shepherdess Read online

  While he poured out his soul with only the sheep and the tired collie sleeping on its paws for audience, the gorgeous sunset died and a chill wind came up, scattering the gray ashes of the camp fire and swaying the tepee tent. Suddenly he stopped and shivered a little in spite of his woolen shirt. “Dog-gone!” he said abruptly, aloud, as he put the violin away, “I can’t get that kid out of my thoughts!” Though he could not have told why he did so, or what he might, even remotely, expect to hear, he stood and listened intently before he stooped and disappeared for the night between the flaps of the tent.

  He turned often between the blankets of his hard bed, disturbed by uneasy dreams quite unlike the deep oblivion of his usual sleep.

  “Oh, Mister, where are you?”

  The sheepherder stirred uneasily.

  “Please—please, Mister, won’t you speak?”

  The plaintive pleading cry was tremulous and faint like the voice of a disembodied spirit floating somewhere in the air. This time he sat up with a start.

  “It’s only me—Katie Prentice, from the Roadhouse. Don’t be scart.”

  The wail was closer. There was no mistake. Then the dog barked. The man threw back the blanket and sprang to his feet. It took only a moment to get into his clothes and step out into a night that had turned pitch dark.

  “Where are you?” he called.

  “Oh, Mister!?” The shrill cry held gladness and relief.

  Then she came out of the blackness, the ends of a white nubia and a little shoulder cape snapping in the wind, her breath coming short in a sound that was a mixture of exhaustion and sobs.

  “I was afraid I couldn’t find you till daylight. I heard a bell, but I didn’t know where to go, it’s such a dark night. I ran all the way, nearly, till I played out.”

  “What’s the row?” he asked gently.

  She slipped both arms through one of his and hugged it convulsively, while in a kind of hysteria she begged:

  “Don’t send me back, Mister! I won’t go! I’ll kill myself first. Take me with you—please, please let me go with you!”

  “Tell me what it’s all about.”

  She did not answer, and he urged:

  “Go on. Don’t be afraid. You can tell me anything.”

  She replied in a strained voice:

  “Pete Mullendore, he—”

  A gust of wind blew the shoulder cape back and he saw her bare arm with the sleeve of her dress hanging by a shred.

  “—he did this?”

  “Yes. He—insulted—me—I—can’t—tell—you—what—he—said.”

  “And then?”

  “I scratched him and bit him. I fought him all over the place. He was chokin’ me. I got to a quirt and struck him on the head—with the handle. It was loaded. He dropped like he was dead. I ran to my room and clum out the window—”

  “Your mother—”

  “She—laughed.”

  “God!” He stooped and picked up the little bundle she had dropped at her feet. “Come along, Partner. You are going into the sheep business with 'Mormon Joe.'”

  * * *

  CHAPTER II

  AN HISTORIC OCCASION

  The experienced ear of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty told him that he was getting a hot axle. The hard dry squeak from the rear wheel of the “democrat” had but one meaning—he had forgotten to grease it. This would seem an inexcusable oversight in a man who expected to make forty miles before sunset, but in this instance there was an extenuating circumstance. Immediately after breakfast there had been a certain look in his hostess’s eye which had warned him that if he lingered he would be asked to assist with the churning. Upon observing it he had started for the barn to harness with a celerity that approached a trot.

  Long years of riding the grub-line had developed in the Major a gift for recognizing the exact psychological moment when he had worn out his welcome as company and was about to be treated as one of the family and sicced on the woodpile, that was like a sixth sense. It seldom failed him, but in the rare instances when it had, he had bought his freedom with a couple of boxes of White Badger Salve—unfailing for cuts, burns, scalds and all irritations of the skin—good also, as it proved, for dry axles, since he had neglected to replenish his box of axle grease from that of his host at the last stopping place.

  He leaned from under the edge of the large cotton umbrella which shaded him amply, and squinted at the sun. He judged that it was noon exactly. His intention seemed to be communicated to his horses by telepathy, for they both stopped with a suddenness which made him lurch forward.

  “It’s time to eat, anyhow,” he said aloud as he recovered his balance with the aid of the dashboard, disentangled his feet from the long skirts of his linen duster and sprang over the wheel with the alacrity of a man who took a keen interest in food.

  Unhooking the traces, he led the team to one side of the road, slipped off the bridles and replaced them with nose bags containing each horse’s allotment of oats—extracted from the bin of his most recent host. Then he searched in the bottom of the wagon until he found a monkey-wrench which he applied to the nut and twirled dextrously. Canting the wheel, he moistened his finger tip and touched the exposed axle.

  “Red hot!”

  He left it to cool and reached under the seat for a pasteboard shoe-box and bore it to the side of the road, where he saw a convenient rock. Both the eagerness of hunger and curiosity was depicted on his face as he untied the twine which secured it. He was wondering if she had put in any cheese. The Major especially liked cheese and had not failed to mention the fact when his hostess had let drop the information that a whole one had come in with the last freight wagon from town. He removed the cover and his smile of anticipation gave place to a look of astonishment and incredulity. It was difficult to believe his eyes! Not only was there no cheese, but that chicken wing and back which had been left on the platter last night, and which he had been as sure of as though he had put them in himself, were not in the box. He felt under the paper as though hoping against hope that the box contained a false bottom where the chicken might be concealed. There was no deception. He saw all there was.

  “Sinkers!” His voice expressed infinite disappointment and disgust. He prodded one of the cold soda biscuits with his finger, took it out and set the box on the ground beside him. He was hungry, therefore, insulted as he felt, he had to eat, but he looked over his shoulder in the direction from which he had come, and said aloud, “Them Scissor-bills’ll know it when I stop there again!” The declaration was in the nature of a threat. While he munched the dry biscuit, which contained but a trace of butter between the two halves, he gazed off at the vista of nothing in particular that stretched out before him.

  On his left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same; only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or “bench” upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood flat where patches of alkali gleamed dazzling white under the noon-day sun. The flat was quarter-circled by a waterless creek upon whose banks grew a few misshapen and splintered cottonwoods.

  The countless millions of nearly invisible gnats that breed in alkali bogs sighted the Major and promptly rose in swarms to settle upon his ears and in the edges of his hair. He fanned them away automatically and without audible comment. Perhaps they served as a counter-irritant; at any rate, the sting of the indignity put upon him by what he termed a “hobo lunch” was finally forgotten in more agreeable thoughts.

  In the distance there was an interesting cloud of dust. Was it cattle, loose horses, or some one coming that way? The Major’s eyesight was not all it had been and he could not make out. Since they were coming from the opposite direction he was sure to have his curiosity gratified. His roving eyes came back to the greasewood flat and rested there speculatively. Suddenly his jaw dropped and a crumb rolled out. He looked as though an a
pparition had risen before his bulging eyes. Involuntarily he sprang to his feet and cried, “My Gawd—what a great place to start a town!”

  The idea came with such startling force that it seemed to the Major as if something broke in his brain. Other ideas followed. They came tumbling over each other in their struggle to get out all at once. A panorama of pictures passed so swiftly before his eyes that it made him dizzy. His eyes gleamed, the color rose in his weather-beaten cheeks, the hand with which he pointed to the greasewood flat below trembled as he exclaimed in an excitement that made his breath come short:

  “The main street’ll run up the creek and about there I’ll put the Op'ry House. The hotel’ll stand on the corner and we’ll git a Carnegie Libery for the other end of town. The High School can be over yonder and we’ll keep the saloons to one side of the street. There’ll be a park where folks can set, and if I ain’t got pull enough to git a fifty thousand dollar Federal Buildin’—”

  Then came the inspiration which made the Major stagger back:

  “I’ll git the post office, and name it Prouty!”

  He felt so tremulous that he had to sit down.

  It seemed incredible that he had not thought of this before, for deep within him was a longing to have his name figure in the pages of the history of the big new state. Tombstones blew over, dust storms obliterated graves, photographs faded, but with a town named after him and safely on the map, nobody could forget him if he wanted to.

  The Major’s assertion concerning his “pull” was no idle boast. There were few men in the state with a wider acquaintance, and he was a conspicuous figure around election time. The experience he had acquired in his younger days selling Indian Herb Cough Syrup from the tailboard of a wagon, between two sputtering flambeaux, served him in good stead when, later, he was called upon to make a few patriotic remarks at a Fourth of July Celebration. His rise was rapid from that time, until now his services as an orator were so greatly in demand for cornerstone layings and barbecues that, owing to distance between towns, it kept him almost constantly on the road.

  The Major sold an occasional box of salve, and in an emergency pulled teeth, in addition to the compensation which he received for what was designated privately as his “gift of gab.” But the Major, nevertheless, had his dark moments, in which he contemplated the day when age should force him to retire to private life. Since the wagon containing his patent leather valise was his home, the Major had no private life to retire to, and his anxiety concerning the future would seem not without cause. Now in a flash all his worries smoothed out. He would capitalize his wide acquaintance and his influence, gain independence and perpetuate his name in the same stroke. At the moment he actually suffered because there was no one present to whom he could communicate his thoughts.

  The cloud of dust was closer, but not near enough yet to distinguish the moving objects that caused it, so he set himself energetically to applying White Badger Salve to the axle, replacing the wheel and tightening the nut. When he straightened a horseman who had ridden out of the creek bed was scrambling up the side of the “bench.” He was dressed like a top cowpuncher—silver-mounted saddle, split-ear bridle and hand-forged bit. The Major was familiar with the type, though this particular individual was unknown to him.

  “Howdy!” The cowboy let the reins slip through his fingers so his horse could feed, and sagged sidewise in the saddle.

  “How are you, sir?” There was nothing in the dignified restraint of the Major’s response to indicate that his vocal cords ached for exercise and he was fairly quivering in his eagerness for an ear to talk into. There was a silence in which he removed a nose bag, bridled and shoved a horse against the tongue.

  “Back, can’t ye!”

  “Nooned here, I reckon?”

  The Major thought of his chickenless handout and his face clouded.

  “I et a bite.”

  “Thought maybe you was in trouble when I first see you.”

  “Had a hot box, but I don’t call that trouble.” He added humorously:

  “I can chop my wagon to pieces and be on the road again in twenty minutes, if I got plenty of balin’ wire.”

  The cowboy laughed so appreciatively that the Major inquired ingratiatingly:

  “I bleeve your face is a stranger to me, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t mind meetin’ up with you before. I’ve just come to the country, as you might say.”

  The Major waited for further information, but since it was not forthcoming he ventured:

  “What might I call your name, sir?”

  The cowboy shifted his weight uneasily and hesitated. He said finally while the red of his shiny sun-blistered face deepened perceptibly: “My name is supposed to be Teeters—Clarence Teeters.”

  As a matter of fact he knew that his name was Teeters, but injecting an element of doubt into it in this fashion seemed somehow to make the telling easier. Teeters was bad enough, but combined with Clarence! Only Mr. Teeters knew the effort it cost him to tell his name to strangers. He added with the air of a man determined to make a clean breast of it:

  “I’m from Missoury.”

  The Major’s hand shot out unexpectedly.

  “Shake!” he cried warmly. “I was drug up myself at the foot of the Ozarks.”

  “I pulled out when I was a kid and wrangled ’round considerible.” Teeters made the statement as an extenuating circumstance.

  “I took out naturalization papers myself,” replied the Major good-humoredly. “My name is Prouty—Stephen Douglas Prouty. You’ll prob'ly hear of me if you stay in the country. The fact is, I’m thinkin’ of startin’ a town and namin’ it Prouty.”

  “Shoo—you don’t say so!” In polite inquiry, “Whur?”

  “Thur!”

  Mr. Teeters looked a little blank as he stared at the town site indicated.

  “It seems turrible fur from water,” he commented finally.

  “Sink—drill—artesian well—maybe we’ll strike a regular subterranean river. Anyway, ’twould be no trick at all to run a ditch from Dead Horse Canyon and get all the water we want.” He waved his arm at the distant mountains and settled that objection.

  “Wouldn’t them alkali bogs breedin’ a billion ‘no-see-’ems’ a second be kind of a drawback?” inquired Teeters tentatively.

  “That’ll all be drained, covered with sile and seeded down in lawns,” replied the Major quickly. “In two year that spot’ll be bloomin’ like the Garden of Eden.

  “I’ve got to be movin’,” the Major continued. “I’m on my way from a cornerstone layin’ at Buffalo Waller to a barbecue at No Wood Crick. I’m kind of an orator,” he added modestly.

  “And I got about three hundred head of calves to drag to the fire, if I kin git my rope on ’em,” said Teeters, straightening in the saddle.

  The Major asked in instant interest:

  “Oh, you’re workin’ for that wealthy eastern outfit?”

  “Don’t know how wealthy they be, but they’re plenty eastern,” Teeters replied dryly.

  “I was thinkin’ I might stop over night with ’em and git acquainted. The Scissors Outfit can’t be more'n fifteen mile out of my way, and it’ll be a kind of a change from the Widder Taylor’s, whur I stop generally.”

  The cowboy combed the horse’s mane with his fingers in silence. After waiting a reasonable time for the invitation which should have been forthcoming, the Major inquired:

  “They’re—sociable, ain’t they?”

  “They ain’t never yit run out in the road and drug anybody off his horse,” replied Teeters grimly. “They charge four bits a meal to strangers.”

  “What?” Surely his ears had deceived him.

  Inspired by the Major’s dumbfounded expression, the cowboy continued:

  “They have their big meal at night and call it dinner, and they wash their hands at the table when they git done eatin’, and Big Liz has to lope in from the kitchen when she hears the bell tinkle and pass ’em somethin’ e
ither one of ’em could git by reachin’.” He lowered his voice confidentially, “Most any meal I look fur her to hit one of ’em between the horns.”

  The Major stared round-eyed, breathless, like a child listening to a fairy tale which he feared would end if he interrupted.

  “In the evenin’ the boss puts on a kind of eatin’ jacket, a sawed-off coat that makes a growed man look plumb foolish, and she comes out in silk and satin that shows considerable hide. Have you met this here Toomey?”

  “Not yet; that’s a pleasure still in store for me.”

  “Pleasure!” exclaimed Teeters, who took the polite phrase literally. “More like you’ll want to knock his head off. Old Timer,” he leaned over the saddle horn, “seein’ as you’re from Missoury, I’ll tell you private that you’d better keep on travelin’. Company ain’t wanted at the Scissor Outfit, and they’d high-tone it over you so ’twouldn’t be noways enjoyable.”

  “There is plenty of ranches where I am welcome,” replied the Major with dignity. “I kin make the Widder Taylor’s by sundown.”

  “Miss Maggie plays good on the pianner,” Teeters commented, expectorating violently to conceal a certain embarrassment.

  “And the doughnuts the old lady keeps in that crock on the kitchen table is worth a day’s ride to git to.” The Major closed an eye and with the other looked quizzically at Teeters, adding, “If it wa'nt for Starlight—”