# The Popular Magazine/Volume 82/Number 3/For the Good of the Service

from The Popular Magazine, 1926 Nov 20, pp. 135-156. Accompanying illustration may be omitted.
Peace with a punch in the forest ranges.
For the Good of the Service
By B. M. Bower
Author of “Where Stillwater Runs Deep,” “The White Wolf Pack," Etc.
Forest rangers were not popular in Bad Cañon, and when Patrick R. O'Neill took over the job of ranger he was up against heavy odds. But, first and last, he was Irish, and he had a sense of humor which helped him mightily in the face of opposition.
CAREFULLY Forest Ranger Patrick O'Neill of the Stillwater District inspected the gun he had just finished cleaning, loaded it just as carefully, thrust it into the holster that swung at his him, tested the withdrawing of it a time or two, pulled his hat down and stepped cautiously out of the station cabin. He sent a quick, searching glance around the little meadow, noted the tranquil activities of a couple of jays flitting undisturbed from tip to tip of the lodge-pole pines that rimmed the clearing, and relaxed. A steady breeze was slowly pushing together a flock of clouds and driving them over the high peaks of the Beartooth Range. An occasional gust swooping earthward plucked dead leaves from the quaking aspens along the creek bottom, tossing them into the air like a covey of frightened quail.
“Pat, me lad, there's a storm brewing in this vicinity, and the atmospheric disturbance noted in the Stillwater District will probably reach as far east as Washington, D. C. Low barometric pressure indicates high wind and a rise in temperature in the supervisor's office, with severe thunder and lightning when I arrive with my report. I had better beat the storm if I can—and the bullets of my outraged neighbors if possible.”
Whereupon Ranger O'Neill proceeded to the stable, where he saddled his favorite horse Morenci. With stuffed saddle pockets and a rifle swinging in its case just under his thigh, he rode away into what he was pleased to call the path of the storm, keeping his eyes not so much upon the trail as upon the undergrowth that bordered it on either side.
From which you may gather that the Stillwater District offered little nesting room for the dove of peace, and that Ranger O'Neill was not the most popular man in that district, by a wider margin than was altogether safe.
As the door of the supervisor's office swung open, to admit Ranger O'Neill, the supervisor—whose desk faced that door—half rose from his chair to meet what he had felt was calamity.
“Don't tell me you've quit!” he blurted by way of greeting. “I thought you had nerve enough to stick till you had the Stillwater whipped into shape. You've stayed four months—almost. Winter's coming on and who can I get to take your place? Not a damn soul! O'Neill, if you've let them run you out of the Stillwater——”
“Run me out, my eye! They have not run me out, Mr. Murray, and I can lick the man who intimates that they have—be he forest supervisor or the President of these United States!” Ranger O'Neill sternly denied, though the twinkle in his Irish eyes and the devil-may-care tone of his Irish voice belied the ferocity of his retort. “It's a matter of forest-service policy that brings me here at this time,” he added, more mildly.
“Oh!” Murray settled back into his chair with a sigh of relief. “I've been getting echoes of your doings over on the Stillwater, and from all reports of your fighting and philandering, I've been prepared for anything, Pat, from a funeral to a wedding.”
“Now just what am I to infer from that last remark, Mr. Murray?” Ranger O'Neill shot a piercing look at his grinning supervisor. “Fights I have had, and I'm not the one to deny it; but as for weddings, I must confess——”
“None of my business, of course, but don't think I haven't heard all about you, Pat. My daughter Beatrice is the most intimate friend 'Queen Isabelle' Boyce has in the State, I reckon. They graduated together from the same school, and Isabelle has just spent three days at our house. I know all about you, young man. So when I say I'm prepared for——”
“Mr. Murray,” the secretary here interrupted, “if you don't mind, I should like to leave these reports until to-morrow and go home now.”
“Huh? What's the matter, Christine? Sick?”
“No, sir,” Christine drawled, while she tidied her desk. “Except I am sick of trying to work when there is so much yelling and laughing in this office.” She cast a look of deep reproach upon her employer and lifted her sailor hat off its hook behind the door. She put on her hat and marched out, slamming the door behind her.
THE two men looked blankly at each other. They had not laughed, nor had they yelled. But suddenly Murray gave an understanding chuckle, and Ranger O'Neill flushed.
“And now Christine's got it!” Murray exclaimed. “Pat, with them winning ways of yours, you ought to win the Stillwater ranchers, I should think!”
“I have won nothing save three rifle bullets fired from a distance and with poor aim,” O'Neill told him stiffly. “They were fired at me by Gus Peterson or one of his men, I believe—though I could not prove it.”
“Over that calf-stealing affair?” Murray was serious now. “Isabelle told us about it—from her angle, however. I'd like to have your version, Pat.”
“It was nothing, Mr. Murray, though Peterson no doubt resents my interference in his plans. I chanced to overhear his plans to steal a bunch of Boyce's beef steers that were put into the Castle Creek bottom until such time as Boyce was ready to take them out to the railroad. Not having time to warn Boyce of the plot—and not wishing to stir up more trouble and quarreling between neighbors—there being always sufficient on hand—I hurried over to Castle Creek and drove the Boyce cattle through onto Picket Pin—a Bar B grazing lease adjoining—and then I took a convenient little herd of Peterson's cattle and put them in the Castle Creek bottom and went on home again. So Peterson stole his own cattle that night and drove them to some high and hidden basin in the hills where he had hoped to hold the Bar B steers until the brands he meant to work over should heal.”
“Yes, but that isn't the whole story, according to Isabelle. What's that about her father and Drew?”
“There was a small matter of shooting each other's cattle by mistake, as it were. Peterson drove Drew's cattle in upon Castle Creek so that the bottom would not look empty to the casual eye and his thief's work should not be too soon discovered. I had hoped to ride over and tell Boyce what I had done before he found his steers had been moved, but it happened that he found Drew's cattle in Castle Creek bottom, and he shot a couple. And being prone to quarrels and bickerings, each man accused the other of stealing grass and so began a small war. But I was able to stop all that, Mr. Murray, by a simple explanation and an offer to make things right—a matter of adjusting the shotgun damage. Boyce had me to dinner that night and Drew sat beside me at table, and we talked of the best method of clearing the range of rustling. Very peaceful and happy we were, Mr. Murray. But Peterson carries a grudge against me, as is natural, I suppose.”
“Is Peterson rustling again?”
“I could not rightly say that he is rustling again, Mr. Murray. He is rustling still, or else he is a much maligned man. It is about him that I came in to talk with you. Until the rustling is stopped, I see no hope of promoting a lasting peace in the Stillwater District.”
“Well, you're right there,” Murray agreed, his mind going back to the days when he was a stock inspector; and farther back to the days when he himself rode the range, cow-puncher and cowman and glorying in the fact. “Once let a running iron and a long rope get to work in a community and the cowmen are on the prod and ready to fight the first thing that looks hostile. Have you any suggestions to make? What do you want to do, Pat?”
Ranger O'Neill pulled down the corners of his humorous mouth.
“What I want to do is shoot him and drag him off somewhere,” he said. “That being considered illegal, I really have no very tangible substitute plan. I'd like to get him off the forest, Mr. Murray. But I am not permitted to discriminate against any stockman who is willing to pay the grazing fee and abide by the rules of the permits. If I could convict him of rustling, I'd be happy to do so and get him out of the country and into the penitentiary, where he belongs. The man is really a menace to any district where he happens to live. But I have no proof that he is a cow thief. Not a man in the Stillwater seems able to prove it—or willing to prove it, rather. Peterson has bullied the rest of them until even old Boyce himself seems to sidestep any direct clash with Peterson. As matters now stand, his word would probably go as far as mine before a jury. So I rode over in hopes that you might know of some reason why I could deny him a grazing permit for the coming year. That would force him to some other range and leave me in peace, perhaps.”
MURRAY sat quiet for some time while he studied the problem, or, more properly, the menace of Peterson.
“We've got to devise some means of getting him off the forest,” he grumbled, half to himself. “He's always giving trouble; he has, ever since the forest was established.” He straightened in his chair, slapped a palm down on the desk and then leaned forward upon his folded arms. “Do you know what he meant to do with the Bar B steers, Pat?” he asked, as if he had something back of the question.
“From what I overheard, I judge that he meant to work the brand—he could, owning the Box S as he does. They spoke of holding the cattle in some hidden basin until the brands healed.”
“Well, don't you suppose, if he had some place to hide the stolen cattle, he'd work the same scheme on others this season?”
“I couldn't say positively, Mr. Murray, but I do know that he has been stealing calves. At least, I am morally certain of it. Last summer I was riding the ridges and looking over the grazing, and I saw a man chasing a calf, trying to rope it away from its mother. Through the glasses I recognized Peterson, and I knew there was no excuse for the performance, since he could drive his calves into his own corral much easier than to worry with them out in the open. Though he was in a hollow, for that matter. I took a long shot at him by way of a warning, and let it go at that—especially since he jumped his horse into the bushes and made off.”
“And does he know it was you that shot at him?”
“Well,” Patrick O'Neill grinned, “I think he has strong suspicions that it was his hated superior. I think that lay back of his attack upon me at the post office soon afterward. He hopes to run me out of the country, Mr. Murray, and I cannot think it is because he objects to the way I part my hair!”
“You want to be careful, Pat. Peterson's a bad hombre, and always has been. He wouldn't stop at murder, if he thought he could get away with it.”
“Neither would I,” said Ranger O'Neill softly. “Though I should call it another name, perhaps.”
Murray laughed, for he didn't believe it at all.
“That being the case, you'd better have the authority, Pat. I've been thinking that as a stock inspector you could look through the Box S cattle for altered brands. You could also make it your business to be at the loading pens when Peterson ships his beef. Then, if you saw any suspicious-looking brands, you could wire and have the hides held at the slaughter house that finally gets the Box S beef. Altered brands always show up on the wrong side of the hide, if no other place. I'll have you appointed stock inspector for Stillwater District. How does that suit?”
“Fine, as far as it goes, Mr. Murray. But there's another matter——”
“Well, let's thresh it out while we're about it, Pat.”
“I have discovered why the forest service is hated so badly by the people who are compelled to do business with us, Mr. Murray.”
“That's more than any one else has ever found out, then!”
“There's always a reason, if a man can find it. The cold fact, Mr. Murray, is that the service is not keeping faith with the forest users.”
“What's that?” Murray came bolt upright in his chair.
“It is not doing much for the stockmen, at least. It's this way, Mr. Murray. We claim that we protect the stockmen by assigning certain grazing grounds to each one according to the number of cattle he grazes there. We charge him a small grazing fee—a mere thirty-five cents a head—and we have a ranger whose business it is to see that no man encroaches upon the range of his neighbor. So far, fine and dandy.
BUT what happens when it becomes necessary to close an area to stock while the grass recuperates from the constant grazing? We allot another grazing area to the stockman, and he must move his cattle upon the new ground and hold them there in spite of their efforts to get back where they are accustomed to feed. He is probably given grazing farther from home, and he must put on more riders and increase his cost of handling his cattle. Yet we charge him the same fee for the new and inconvenient range that we did for the old. And as for protection——”
“Well, we do protect the stockmen, don't we? We've stopped a lot of squabbling among themselves over range rights.”
“And turned them all against the forest. How much money is available for building more drift fences to help lessen the cost of using the forest?”
“Not a darned cent, Pat.”
“Vet there is range going to waste for want of fences to hold the stock upon it. The users are barred from that range unless they are able to hire enough riders to herd their cattle on it. The small rancher with a few head of stock is barred from the forest because we lack the fences to hold his cattle upon their allotted grazing ground. Such fenced areas as we have are fed down until they've got to be closed for a couple of years, some of them. Now, here are the cold facts.”
Ranger O'Neill reached into his inner pocket and produced a thick bundle of documents.
“Here are signed applications from thirty-three small stockmen who are anxious to use the Bad Cañon and Trout Creek Range, and their cattle total nearly thirty-five hundred head. They can't afford to hire herders, however, and there is no drift fence that would hold their cattle on the range which the forest reserve is willing to lease to them. It will take about seven miles of fence, at a cost of seven hundred dollars, to make that range usable for the small stockmen. What's to be done? I know what I'm not going to do!” O'Neill snapped out. “I'm not going to take money for something I can't deliver. That fence is an investment that would pay for itself and leave a fine profit for the very first year. The ranchers need the range. Can you get an appropriation through to build the fence?”
“I might—in the course of a year or so,” Murray told him dryly. “That wouldn't help much right now, would it?”
“If we could stretch red tape from Washington around the Bad Cañon Forest boundary,” said Ranger O'Neill, “sure, Mr. Murray, we'd have a fence to stand for all time to come! And speaking of red tape, if I could be given the grazing fee for next season on that one range, I'd build the drift fence myself and have a nice profit on the investment.”
“Sure you would! You'd double your money on the deal. But that can't be done, of course, so I'm afraid those little stockmen will have to pool their stock and hire riders——”
“And also pay the same fee for open range which other men are paying for fenced pasturage! No, Mr. Murray, they'd have the right to shoot me if I did them that trick. But I would like to have something to offer those thirty-three stockmen at the annual meeting we'll be holding. I should like to go before them with a definite plan that will give them some hope of getting what they pay the government for. It would do more to make them the friends of the forest than all the saintly kindness which Ranger O'Neill can and does consistently offer the Stillwater, to a man.” His eyes twinkled then, as if his memory recalled to him certain acts not so saintly which Patrick O'Neill had felt impelled to perform.
Supervisor Ed Murray slowly turned his swivel chair until he could stare out through the window upon a stormy sky as he pondered, his fingers interlocked while he rolled his thumbs over and over each other. Suddenly he spun back to the desk and faced Ranger O'Neill, who had been patiently watching him.
“It's snowing in the hills, this minute. That means the fire hazard is over for this season—and I've got over fifteen hundred dollars left in the fire-protection fund. Pat, you beat it back to the Stillwater and have a thousand-dollar fire! Pick a good place away back in the mountains where the inspector won't bother to ride—thank Heaven, he's getting fatter every year—the one that always inspects your district. You have your fire, and I'll turn over the money to build that drift fence. Lord help us if Washington ever finds out how we've diverted the funds! But then, Washington doesn't know——”
“Those high officials in Washington—whom the Honorable Standish Boyce of the Bar B is so fond of quoting, should be compelled to run cattle in the Stillwater District, depending wholly upon the forest service for their grazing!” declared O'Neill. “There'd be revisions made in the little red book of the forest, and that right soon, I'm thinking.”
“You understand, Pat, what would happen if this thing leaks out?”
“f understand, Mr. Murray. I will say that I appreciate the trust you have in my discretion, and I hope you'll not regret it. It's cutting a bit of red tape for the good of the service, as I see it. So you will very soon receive my report of a fire in the Stillwater District. And I shall have a drift fence built that will serve the small ranchers as they have never been served before—and the government will be the richer by a few hundred dollars this year, and by many more as time goes on.”
Ranger O'Neill rose smiling from his chair and held out his hand to Murray.
“I'll be getting a bit of ammunition, Mr. Murray, before the stores close for the night. And to-morrow I'll be on my way by dawn. I knew you'd not fail me in this matter, for you've the good of the service at heart, the same as I.”
“Make the Stillwater recognize that fact, Pat, and I'll get you promoted to assistant forest supervisor. The salary will be fifteen hundred a year, and, from all the signs, you'll be needing it to set up housekeeping!”
Ranger Patrick O'Neill blushed to his collar.
“But—but I've never asked her, yet!” he blurted, and immediately felt like kicking himself for rising so beautifully to the bait.
“Well, nothing like being prepared,” Murray drawled, as he walked with O'Neill to the door. “Wonderful snow—couldn't beat it for——”
“Good day to you, Mr. Murray. I shall do my best for the service!”
“Well, we won't do much hurrahing till the reports are in and O. K'd., but—I leave it to you, Pat.” Whereupon the forest supervisor mentally washed his hands of the matter and went in, shutting out the storm that was brewing.
AS he rode back down the trail into Lodgepole Basin, Ranger Patrick O'Neill whistled under his breath. The storm had passed and the sun was already digging through the new snow to draw steam from the pine needles lying soaked on the wet ground. But the high peaks were a chill white against the blue-washed sky and the pines looked purple upon their farther slopes.
“A fine time for a fire,” mused Ranger O'Neill, as he glanced up through an opening in the trees and saw the purple-patched white of the mountains. “Sure, it's good to be back again—and to know that I come laden with good will toward all men and with benefits for the Stillwater. For the love of accomplishing what I set out to do is strong upon me to-day, and that means the winning of the Stillwater men with kindness and patience and the like. It's a fine game to be playing up here in the hills. I can offer them something more than promises now, I'm thinking.”
Dreaming thus optimistically of the good he would do and the gratitude he would win, Ranger O'Neill rode straight to the stable where he unsaddled Morenci, watered him sparingly and led him to a manger piled with hay before he went on to the cabin with his mind upon his own comfort.
As he unlocked the cabin door and pushed it open, something dragged along the rough floor inside—a ragged square of cardboard torn from some box end by the look of it. As O'Neill glanced down, he saw that there was writing of a sort, and he stooped for the message before he went farther. Smudged and scrawled with a blunt pencil, almost indecipherable in its crudeness, he managed to make out the illiterate communication:
We don want yu hear yu git out 24 ours if yu don we git yu. tak wornin.
He did not need to guess who was the author of the literary gem. Peterson undoubtedly had scrawled it. Patrick O'Neill read it through twice to make sure of it, gave a contemptuous snort and flipped the card toward the wood box. But immediately he changed his mind about destroying it, and picked it up and read it through again with a stiffening of the jaw.
“I could ignore it, and that would give any other man something to worry about,” he mused. “But contempt is wasted upon hogs, and Peterson would go bragging that I'm scared to face him with it. Pat, me lad, you have fine prospects of a fight in the morning!”
But though fighting was a sport that thrilled the Irish soul of him, he nevertheless scowled over his supper, for he had planned to call at the Bar B with the letter which Beatrice Murray had intrusted to his care for safe delivery to Isabelle Boyce, and now his business with Peterson must take him in the opposite direction.
“But if I do not make him eat his words at once and be done with it, he will take courage from the delay and likely compel me to shoot him—which would be bothersome at this time, when I have a thousand-dollar fire on my hands,” Pat mused. “If I start for his place at daybreak, I can possibly be through with him and be back at the Bar B for supper.” So he cheered up at that thought and went happily enough to his bunk.
AT the corral Peterson was bullying a Mexican who was setting a post in a hole he had just dug for it, when Ranger O'Neill rode up at the swinging fox trot which made a docile-looking pair of Morenci and his master. One does not expect the worst from a man who comes jogging up in that leisurely fashion, and Peterson finished his tirade before he turned to give insolent attention to his caller.
“Peterson, you left a note under my door,” Ranger O'Neill began, without preliminary.
“How you know I left a note?” Peterson's eyes turned fishy.
“Nobody in the country would spell it the way you did. And you're the only man in the district who's afraid of me!”
“I'm not afraid of anybody,” growled Peterson. “Just for that, I'll lick you now.”
“No, you won't lick me.” Ranger O'Neill swung a leg back over the cantle of his saddle and stepped down. “What you're going to do is eat this note!”
“That's a good joke!” drawled Peterson.
Two of Peterson's men came up, walking fast to see what was about to happen. O'Neill turned to them and waved a hand toward the corral fence.
“You fellows climb up there and stay there,” he snapped. “Your boss says this is going to be a joke, and I think he's right. Hit the perch, there, Mex. Don't get down till I tell you—and you, Peterson, take this pasteboard and eat it! It's one way to make you swallow your words.”
“Aw, you got a cinch, with that gun strapped on yuh!” one of the men on the fence taunted, as Peterson backed.
“All right, I'll take it off,” said the ranger. “There! Now, Peterson, come away from that fence. You know what I know about you, and I know that's why you want me out of the country. You figure that one of us had better leave, and the pickings are too good for you to give them up, so you'd like to scare me out. Well, you heard what I said—eat that!”
Peterson, dumfounded, still backed, his eyes glued to the scrap of cardboard. O'Neill followed him up, shaking the note close to the man's face. As Peterson touched the fence, the Mexican abruptly lost his balance—or so it appeared—and came down on all fours inside the fence and behind his boss. Peterson turned and looked, then one hand went backward.
O'Neill caught the shine of a knife as Peterson whirled, and struck with a force that nearly carried him off his feet.
“You would, eh!”
O'Neill lifted a foot viciously to Peterson's stomach as he lurched forward after the blow, which had failed to land on anything. Peterson doubled himself together and went down in a heap, grunting as he fell.
Ranger O'Neill was a quick young man in action. He darted forward, picked up the knife and sent it whirling into the bushes behind him and made a grab for the Mexican through the fence. That scared employee of Mr. Peterson jumped wide and started running, but O'Neill shinned up the fence, made a flying leap from the top and took after him. He caught the fellow as he was climbing the farther side of the corral, and flung him sprawling in the dust. Like a hawk, O'Neill was upon him, and right then the terrified Mexican began to beg.
“Señor! Meester, if yo' pleese! I could tell yo' ver' moch——”
“Oh, you could, eh? Well, all right, Mex. You do that and I'll let you live, maybe.”
Peterson was crawling to his feet, using the corral rails for support. One big hand was pressed against his diaphragm, and he looked sick. Ranger O'Neill climbed out of the corral and stood eying Peterson for a minute.
“Now, eat this!” Pat commanded, and relentlessly shoved the broken cardboard toward him.
Fumbling a little, looking rather bewildered, Peterson took the thing and turned it stupidly in his shaking fingers.
“Eat it, damn you!” O'Neill said softly.
Whether from fear or whether the power of reiterated suggestion impelled obedience, Peterson slowly crowded the cardboard into his mouth, while his two hired men goggled at him from the top of the fence.
“Now, get this, Peterson!” O'Neill went on. “You can't run me out of the Stillwater district. I'm paid to represent the government here, and my salary will go on, whether I do the work I'm supposed to do, or whether I spend my time watching you. I can lick you any day in the week, Peterson, and if I hear another yip out of you, I'll do it, too! That is, I'll do it as long as you're in the country. If you had any sense, you'd leave the country now, while you're free to go where you want to. But if——”
“What do you mean?” Still bleary eyed from the impact of O'Neill's foot in his stomach, Peterson glared at the ranger.
“You know what I mean.” O'Neill was buckling on his gun. “You don't want me to draw a map, do you?” He turned to his horse—though he would not have bet much that a bullet would not find his back—and mounted.
It was not the policy of Ranger O'Neill to bandy words with the men of his district, wherefore he turned Morenci with a twist of his body and rode away, not taking the trail by which he had arrived, but going on in the direction of Trout Creek. He had a double purpose in that. His unhurried departure gave his brief call the casual note which he felt would have the best effect upon the Box S men; as if, in passing, he had merely tarried long enough to attend to the small matter of a threat against his life. Also, it gave him the opportunity to speak to the Mexican as he rode past the stable—whither the scared man had retreated—without being observed by the others.
As he passed the Mexican, O'Neill spoke one sentence softly in the man's own language.
“Si, señor,” the fellow murmured, with proper deference, as he turned away.
“Maybe he'll come, and maybe he won't,” mused Patrick O'Neill, as he jogged on out of sight down the brushy, winding trail. “But there's the chance that he will, so I'll just postpone my trip to the Bar B, and ride on down Trout Creek and lay my plans for the fence—and the fire. The Mex will maybe watch for me on my way home. But then again Peterson may be waiting with his rifle, so I think I had best not come back this way. The Mex can find me at the station if he's anything to say to me.”
WITH the snow gone from the sunny slopes of Trout Creek Range, Patrick O'Neill rode gloatingly all up and down the boundary where he proposed to build the fence. It was good range. Sheep had trespassed there from time to time, but they had not devastated the grassland, save in the narrow strips where they had found easy crossing of the creek to feed upon the slopes that tempted them beyond. A splendid range! With a fence running south from the rimrock and ridges on Blind Bridger, straight across Trout Creek and over the high grassland to Bad Cañon, across that to the high broken ridge which was the southern boundary of the forest and the southeast corner of Drew's range, there would be no more trespassing of sheep on the forest and the cattle of the small ranchers could not drift down into the main valley of the Stillwater and off the range for which their owners had paid a price. Cattle are stubborn beasts, and in the matter of range, they prefer to do their own choosing. If it is a question of moving on to better grass, they prefer to make their own choice of the route they shall take.
“It would take four men riding line to keep them on the forest,” O'Neill decided, as he rode back from the farther end of the range boundary. “The fence must go in, that's certain. It will be a godsend to the ranchers—and I think I shall keep it a secret until the time has come to issue new grazing permits. I'll just surprise them with the new, fenced range. They'll see then that I have their interests close to my heart, and it's peace and promotion for Patrick O'Neill. Perhaps,” he added softly to himself, after a moment of gazing wishfully into the future—“perhaps it will also be a wedding. Who knows? At least, she cares enough to talk about me to some of her friends——”
O'NEILL was in bed, and asleep, that night, when there came a tap on the window just over his bunk. It brought him up wide awake and alert, for the slow-burning enmity of Peterson had bulked large in his dreams. So he opened the door an inch with his left hand and stood to one side with his gun in his right.
“Who's out there? Come to the door,” he called.
“Señor, eet es Pedro!”
“All right, Pedro. You may come in pronto.”
Ranger O'Neill dressed to his tunic and gun belt and placed a chair so that the lamplight would fall full upon it. So the gulf yawned widely between the representative of a great and glorious government and the abashed and shrinking Pedro when he entered—which was exactly what Ranger O'Neill wanted. Pedro sat dumb and diffident on the edge of his chair and put up a hasty palm to smooth his uncombed black hair, and Patrick O'Neill looked him over and considered what use he might make of the man.
“Pedro, why did you give Peterson your knife to kill me?” The question shot suddenly, but softly withal, into the silence.
“Ah, señor! Me, I'm 'fraid for dose Peterson. When the Señor Ranger come, Peterson say: 'Pedro, you stop behind me. You give me knife when my hand go back.' Me, I'm 'fraid for not doing dose t'ing what he say.”
Pedro shifted his feet uneasily on the floor, but the sidelong glance he sent up under his black eyebrows at the ranger heartened him somewhat. For Patrick O'Neill had the Irish twinkle in his eyes, and no man need fear one whose eyes are laughing. Pedro was aware of that.
“And when I sat on you and told you I'd let you live,” remarked O'Neill, “I take it you were afraid I might change my mind. So when I told you to come and tell me all you know, you came right along because you were afraid not to come. That it?”
Pedro sensed a touch of Irish humor, perhaps, for he gave Ranger O'Neill a flash of his teeth and an eloquent lift of his shoulders.
“Si, señor! Me, I'm be moch 'fraid man.” He spread his hands palm upward and let them drop again to his knees.
Patrick O'Neill studied him more attentively.
“Now,” he said evenly at last, “tell me why you let Peterson have that knife!”
The Mexican fixed his gaze on Patrick O'Neill's boots, where the spur marks showed shiny around the heel leather. He slowly lifted his glance until his eyes met full the Irish-blue eyes that were not twinkling now. Pedro looked into them and his lips seemed to grow thinner, somehow.
“Señor, Peterson is beeg bully, but he don't be moch danger weeth knife. Me, I'm t'ink if Peterson come for the señor weeth knife, then p'raps the Señor Ranger keel him.”
“Sure, I thought there was some reason of that kind. I wonder why you don't kill him yourself, Pedro!”
Pedro had nothing to say to that, directly. But he did make a rather unpleasant gesture of being hanged by the neck.
“Me, I'm damn greaser,” he said laconically, and let it go at that.
“Sorry, Pedro, but killing men is not in the book; I don't want to kill Peterson.”
“He moch like for keel the Señor Ranger.” Pedro shrugged.
“Well, I'm not doubting that at all. What do you know about Peterson's cattle stealing, Pedro?”
Pedro spread his eloquent hands and lifted his shoulders.
“Has he got any stolen stock now?” O'Neill asked.
“Si, señor.” Pedro smiled faintly.
“Could you show me where he keeps them?”
“Señor, me, I'm watch all time.” His eyes wandered to the wall, where hung a beautifully executed map which Patrick O'Neill had drawn, using one of the forest-service maps of his district and adding details of his own. “Pardon, señor. I'm show on map.”
Which he proceeded to do, haltingly at first, while he studied creeks and cañons. But at last his brown finger stopped upon a certain point.
“Drew cattle on that place, señor, weeth sore brand from new burning.” His finger traced its way from the head of Bad Cañon across toward the head of Trout Creek. “P'raps one dossen cow on dees place. Dose Bar B cattles, señor. Small, leetle basin dose place. No grass for moch cows. P'raps twenty.”
“And the brands are fresh worked to Box S?”
“Si, señor.”
“And how do you get to those basins, Pedro?”
PEDRO explained, relapsing often into his own language and making lavish use of his hands and the map. It was a rough trail and a hidden one, but if the Señor Ranger would follow his instructions carefully, he would surely reach the small, grassy basins and find the stolen cattle just as Pedro had described them.
“All right, Pedro. You have done the government a great service to-night. And now, me lad, it's a long, cold ride back to the Box S, and I'm thinking a pot of coffee will not come amiss.”
“Gracias, señor!” Pedro showed all his teeth in a grin of surprised gratitude
“So that's that!” mused Patrick O'Neill, as he mixed pancake batter in an old lard bucket for his three-o'clock-in-the-morning breakfast. Pedro had been gone for half an hour, full of gratitude and a cold lunch with plenty of coffee made sirup sweet with sugar. “To the head of Bad Cañon, I can follow the old patrol trail to Blind Bridger—it must be passable yet, though it hasn't been used since the lower trail was put through. I'll hit the cañon at daybreak, and from there on I can follow Pedro's landmarks. And if the fellow was building a fine trap for Patrick O'Neill, I'll be making the trip and back home again before they expect me to start. It's a chance I had to take—sending Pedro back to Peterson with a warning to keep his visit close under his sombrero.
“Pedro will tell, or he will not tell. I'll have my look at the cattle long before they can move them out, if he tells. And in the snow they must leave tracks behind them, unless they can take wings and fly. And if he does not tell, then the sheriff will find them there with Peterson's fresh work on their ribs. For I cannot expect the stock inspector's appointment to reach me in time to handle this case myself—and sure, I'm thinking it would be best not to publish that appointment abroad! There are other brand artists in the Stillwater District, unless I'm badly mistaken.”
He tossed the frying pan expertly, flipping a golden-brown cake. Then he yawned widely and looked at his watch.
“I think I had best take a blanket along with me, and a snack of food,” he went on planning, “and have that fire while I'm up in the hills. There could be danger of my fine supervisor suffering an attack of heart failure as he sits in his office and thinks of the consequences should things go wrong.” He flopped the cake neatly upon his plate, swabbed the frying pan with a wide bacon rind and poured in more batter.
“Pat, me lad, you must stiffen your lip and take him at his word quick, before he can send you another to spoil it all,” he said to himself, and deluged the cake with corn sirup. “You'll not get to see Queen Isabelle this day—nor the next, either. For there's no telling where you must ride before you are done. There'll be fire fighters to summon—and if the fire is best controlled by digging a straight line of holes twenty-six inches deep and one rod apart for a distance of seven miles or so, I am the man to say it shall be done in that way.”
He poured more coffee and flipped the cake in the pan while he was up. He was grinning with satisfaction when he sat down again.
“On the whole, I think I had best take a pack horse along and make camp until the fire is out and the fire break completed and the men are gone home again,” he decided, further elaborating his plan. “There are nesters over beyond the mountains who will be glad of the work, I'm thinking.
“I can set them to work at the fire break.” Patrick O'Neill rolled the words “fire break” like a sweet morsel over his tongue. “And then I can go call upon the sheriff and attend to Peterson. There is wisdom in that; for if he is taken away to jail for rustling his neighbor's cattle. the Stillwater will have plenty to talk about for many a day. The mere trifle of nesters building a fence somewhere, even if it is discovered, will cause no comment when bigger events nearer home are to be discussed. Pat, me lad, you were born for the diplomatic service!”
For all his haste to be gone, Ranger O'Neill went briskly about washing his breakfast dishes, making his bed and sweeping some bits of bark from the floor beside the stove. So much for his military training, which drove him to making the cabin tidy before he left it. Then he spread out his tarp and folded his field bed upon it and got what provisions he would need for the job. At the last, he put in the ammunition he had bought while in town.
“For who can foresee the hazards of fighting a fire in the forest?” he asked himself, grinning.
Two hours before dawn, he rode up out of Lodgepole Basin on the old trail to Blind Bridger, which had long been abandoned for a better one, but he did not whistle as he rode along in the cold night wind; he was thinking too deeply for that.
DAYLIGHT found O'Neill leading Morenci down a steep declivity that rimmed the upper ridges at the head of Bad Cañon Creek, while his pack horse cautiously followed his leader. At the foot of the steep ridge, Pedro had said there was a small, grassy glade surrounded by trees and walled in with hills too precipitous to encourage climbing, with one narrow entrance along the little creek which Peterson closed with poles.
O'Neill had chosen to descend the ridge, which Pedro had thought it was possible to do, as there were no actual cliffs on the side toward Lodgepole Basin. All along the little creek stood thick clumps of pines with the lacy, bare branches of quaking aspens huddled together as if they were seeking the warmth of contact. It was a setting worthy a better use than the hiding place of stolen stock, O'Neill was thinking as he sidled down the last steep bank and mounted Morenci on the level.
He rode on up the narrow cañon, forcing his way through the thickets until he emerged upon the edge of a small glade, where the snow was all trodden and pawed by the cattle that fed apathetically within the hidden pasture. They stood in groups of three or more and stared at him with bovine questioning as he rode here and there among them. O'Neill counted eighteen steers, the Box S brand fresh on every one; good work, too, he admitted to himself. They would pass under any stockman's eye without arousing suspicion, especially after the scars haired over. Peterson, he guessed, would not attempt to ship these steers until next fall. They were young and another year would add bone and meat to their bodies—worth waiting for, as any man could see. During the winter, they would mingle with the other Box S cattle in some remote corner of Peterson's winter grazing ground. It was safe enough—safe as any thieving could be made.
Unless Pedro had been sent to decoy the ranger into a trap, Peterson would not move the steers out for a couple of weeks at least, and there was evidence enough right here to send him to the penitentiary where he belonged. Ranger O'Neill's wind-whipped face wore a satisfied look as he chose a ridge which looked barely passable as a means of climbing out, and got off Morenci to make the scramble easier for the horse.
So far, Pedro had spoken the truth, and O'Neill's confidence in the Mexican strengthened. He had urged O'Neill to keep away from the pole bars which closed the lower end of the pasture, because Peterson had a secret mark by which he would know if any man other than himself passed through that gateway. Pedro did not know just what the secret was, but he knew that Peterson was always the last man to leave the bars and that he told his men never to touch them, but to leave their opening to him, so that he could be sure no one had passed through into the basin.
“He's t'ink dose hill es too moch bad for climb,” Pedro had said, with a grin. “Me, I'm t'ink different perhaps, but I'm no speak of dose t'ing. I'm close de mouth.”
PEDRO had been right in his surmise. Ranger O'Neill had managed the hill without breaking his neck or the necks of his horses. And now, since the stolen steers were safe enough for the time being, he would leave them alone while he attended to the fire. For that, in the opinion of Patrick O'Neill, was the most pressing necessity of the Stillwater District at present.
For hours he rode into the hills, back beyond the head of the cañons where no man would have occasion to ride. And on the brink of a steep, wooded ravine where the sides rose bare and covered with rocky ledges now blanketed with snow, Ranger O'Neill sat long upon his horse and studied the surrounding summits, and nodded his head and grinned when finally he made his way down along the ridge to a place where he could descend.
So there, in that remote cañon so beautifully wooded in the bottom and so picturesquely walled round with rock, the Stillwater District suffered from a thousand-dollar forest fire which, in Ranger O'Neill's opinion, could only be controlled by building seven miles of fire break, with three wires strung very tightly upon cedar posts set into the ground, sixteen feet apart. and further strengthened by stays set midway between each post.
Ranger O'Neill rode, by the straightest route possible in that wild country, down into a certain valley where small ranches were doing their best to blossom as a rose under adverse conditions, chiefly arising from a scarcity of dollars among the various tillers and toilers of the valley.
Ranger O'Neill was fortunately able to assemble a fine crew of volunteers, armed with picks, shovels, axes, hammers and the like, and to have them bring along several loads of barbed wire as well.
So the fire break was constructed in record time by an army of nesters working overtime, and Ranger O'Neill rode grinning along the line to direct and encourage the men, promising them all a day's pay for a bonus if the fence was completed by Wednesday night—he having reasons of his own for wanting a free Thursday, which was his day of liberty, when he was in the habit of riding over to see Isabelle Boyce and tell her all the reasons why he felt that he should have praise for the good work he was doing for the Stillwater District. It was now two weeks since he had seen her and the days were beginning to drag noticeably. There was much that he wanted to say; and there was Beatrice Murray's letter to deliver—he really should not put it off any longer.
He had meant to get the sheriff and show him the evidence of the stolen steers, and go with him with a warrant for Peterson's arrest. But now O'Neill suddenly decided that Peterson could wait. He must go back to the station and make out his report of the fire and send in his bill for the fire fighters' wages—adding something for equipment, to be sure, since barbed wire is not given away in these commercial days.
Wherefore Ranger O'Neill took the homeward trail with his heart lighter than the pack on the brown horse that followed loyally at Morenci's heels. On the brow of the long slope that tilted gently down toward Blind Bridger on the east and Bad Cañon Creek on the west, he pulled up and leveled his field glasses upon the dotted line faintly discernible across the foot of the great sloping mesa. As he focused the glasses to the distance, the new fence jumped into his field of vision, the taut wires glistening in the low-hanging sun of late afternoon.
“There she is—giving the little fellows a chance at the grass!” he exulted to himself. “And what's the loss of a small stand of timber in a cañon where only a bird could get at the trees? The government will get double the cost of the fence every year from now on, and at no further expense, save perhaps a bit of mending now and again. And by close management I have saved one hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-five cents from the thousand Murray named as the limit, though I did underestimate the cost of the drift fence, which was longer than I thought it would be.
“And the nesters are happy with the prospect of some extra cash to start the winter on; which some of them needed, poor devils. So it's a fine story of good deeds well done which I shall have to tell Queen Isabelle when I see her to-morrow.” With something of a flourish, he waved the field glasses in the general direction of the fence and turned homeward again, and one cannot wonder that he whistled a love tune as he rode.
BUT when he was riding down the ford at Limestone Creek, not far from his station, the brown pack horse he was leading suddenly gave a great leap away from him and dropped all in a huddle on the bank. And as the horse fell a rifle some distance up the creek barked spitefully.
Ranger O'Neill jumped Morenci into the bushes out of sight, swung down and snatched his own carbine from its scabbard. He tied the horse in the thicket of willows under the protection of the bank and made his way cautiously to the edge of the brush, where he could take a look at the pack horse which he called “Terence,” with whimsical irony. So he saw that Terence was no more a horse but only meat for the coyotes, with a round hole just over one eye. He remembered how the pack horse had come up almost alongside him as they neared the water, eager for a drink, no doubt; so Terence had taken the bullet badly aimed for O'Neill.
“It's Peterson's work, without a doubt,” O'Neill thought swiftly, as he took a sandy stretch on his toes, half doubled over to bring his head below the fringe of young growth that would reach to his waist. “He's gone too far with his shooting—he's passed his limit—and I'll kill him for that!”
But though he searched the creek bottom until dark, stalking Peterson as he would stalk a deer in hunting season, O'Neill found nothing save a scuffed place behind a rock where Peterson had evidently lain in wait for him, no doubt having seen him come riding down the trail off the ridge to the ford. He had taken his long shot and had fled—and when O'Neill got down behind the rock and sighted along his rifle barrel, he understood fairly well why Peterson had not waited longer. For he could see just the edge of the water through an opening in the willows, and he knew that Peterson must have seen a horse go down and, being excited, had no doubt fancied it had taken O'Neill down with it. So his coward's heart had turned cold with fear for himself and he had fled the place without waiting to make sure of his enemy.
“And that settles it!” growled O'Neill, as he made his way back to Morenci. “There's no time to be wasted now. I shall just send in my report of the fire and fill up with grub, and beat it straight in to the sheriff. He'll want me to sign a complaint against Peterson before he comes with a warrant, no doubt. So I'll do that and put Peterson where he belongs. And if he thinks, when he sees it's the pack horse he shot, that he's scared me out of the country, all the better! He'll not be moving the steers for a time yet, since they're safest where they are for the present. And within forty-eight hours he'll be on his way to jail, the brute!”
So Ranger Patrick O'Neill sat up late in his kitchen, with the windows well covered with blankets, and made his report of the fire and sent in his time sheet, urging that the fire fighters be paid promptly, since they needed the money. And then, with food for a day in his saddle pockets and his light carbine resting across the saddle in front of him, he started for the county seat and the sheriff.
The thought of Isabelle Boyce clung like a shadow to the back of his plans, for he owned himself heartsick to see the girl. But there was the stuff of a soldier in his make-up, even though the love of Isabelle filled all of his heart. The fight was on—the sweetheart must wait. Not even the happy-go-lucky Irish temperament could win him away from his purpose. He would finish the job first, and have all the more good news to carry with him when he rode at last to the Bar B and to the smiling presence of Isabelle Boyce.
THE preliminary measures for placing a man under arrest are frequently as simple as the paying of taxes. Adventure, mystery, tragedy may enter at any time before or afterward, but the actual entering of a complaint and the issuing of a warrant of arrest are routine business and should not take long. Ranger O'Neill spent half an hour with the prosecuting attorney, who called in the sheriff; and the three talked together happily over the prospect of sending Gus Peterson “up” for cattle stealing.
O'Neill gathered that the small, official world of Big Timber had long had its eye on Peterson and would be delighted to see him caught. So he signed the complaint and went away to find a restaurant and a place to sleep. He had made a long ride of it and he would be out early again in the morning, for he must lead the sheriff to the hidden basin where the eighteen stolen steers browsed apathetically upon the tender twigs or rooted under the snow for grass.
The rough trail back was uphill, most of it, and the little party made camp at an abandoned cabin within ten miles of the spot and went on at daylight, Ranger O'Neill leading the way on that tough and long-winded animal, Morenci.
“Well, there they are, as I told you,” he finally announced. “The Mexican has kept his word with me, and Peterson has had no warning that he had best do away with this evidence against him. Will you go out through the bars, sheriff, and spoil Peterson's secret sign which he has placed there, according to Pedro?”
“Sure, if it takes us straight down to his place,” the sheriff replied. “He ain't going to need any secret signs for a while, from the looks of this bunch. We've got him dead to rights. Now, if we can get him without a fuss——”
“The man's a coward,” said O'Neill. “Still, your coward is the man who is most likely to kill if you scare him badly enough. I think it may be well if I ride up alone and engage him in one of our usual pleasant chats when we meet. Then you can come and take him without trouble. But if he sees you first, he will probably try to get away—and it's poor weather for the long chase in the hills which he'd try to give you.”
The sheriff agreed to that, and Ranger O'Neill continued to lead the way briskly, for he wanted the thing over.
Peterson was in the house when O'Neill rode up, but he came out so suspiciously eager for a fight that O'Neill guessed there was a bottle inside. Yet even that failed to lend any excitement to the capture, for the sheriff did not wait for any psychological moment, but rode up with his deputy as soon as Peterson appeared.
“Hello, Peterson! I'll have to take you along back with me, I guess,” the sheriff said mildly—being an old hand at the business.
“This damn ranger is just makin' a lot of trouble all the time for nothing!” Peterson protested, swinging a baleful glance toward Ranger O'Neill. “I'll go with you all right! He's lyin' about me all the time. Some day I'll fix him!”
And that, if you please, was the worst that happened. It was evident that Peterson thought the arrest had grown out of his various quarrels with Ranger O'Neill—the shooting of the pack horse, perhaps. The worst he anticipated was a fine, or possibly a short term in the county jail—no great catastrophe to a man like Peterson. He insisted upon stating his own version of the trouble, and he painted Ranger Patrick O'Neill very black indeed, a man who picked quarrels for the love of fighting, a man who lived to make trouble for inoffensive ranchers such as Gus Peterson portrayed himself to be. The sheriff lowered a sly eyelid at O'Neill as the three men rode off, and thereafter he professed much sympathy with Peterson.
“You needn't worry a minute, Gus, but what the truth will prevail. When you get before the judge——”
“I'll tell the judge somethin' about that fellow!” Peterson promised darkly. “I'll tell the judge how he's all the time lookin' for a fight. He'll find himself in jail pretty soon!”
NOT even the men who edged together in a surly group suspected the real charge against their boss—for the Mexican, Pedro, was nowhere to be seen. The shooting of the pack horse lay at the back of the sheriff's visit, they guessed, and they argued in the bunk house afterward about it, and decided that Peterson couldn't be held for a thing like that, especially since the ranger could not produce any witnesses who could swear that Peterson shot the horse.
They took it for granted, you see, that Ranger O'Neill was going to Big Timber with the sheriff and the prisoner. They would have been puzzled had they seen him rein Morenci into the trail that crossed Bad Cañon aid led to the station. They would have wondered why he did not go in to complete his case against Peterson.
As a matter of fact, Ranger O'Neill was already putting the thought of Peterson behind him and wondering whether he still had a clean shirt in camp, thinking too of the speed with which he could shave and bathe and make himself presentable for the ride to the Bar B. If he hurried enough—— He would have to catch up another horse from the pasture, he decided, in mercy for Morenci, who was gaunt as a greyhound from the miles he had covered; but if he hurried enough, he could reach the Boyce ranch house an hour before supper, which would be about right, he thought. If he went earlier, he might not have the excuse for lingering, and if he arrived later, it would look too much as if he had planned to force their hospitality. Ranger Patrick O'Neill was a careful young man, in some ways, and sensitive to criticism. Still——
“Unless the Murrays were all conspiring to deceive me,” he mused, “Queen Isabelle cannot be said to despise me, and there will be much that she will want me to tell her of the visit I had that evening with her friends. And then there is the letter which I promised to deliver. It is breaking my Thursday rule for going to the Bar B, but she'll agree that I have delayed my errand long enough.” And after a thoughtful period, he added: “The Honorable Standish Boyce should receive me with open arms after what I have done for him.”
The Honorable Standish Boyce, however, had another way of looking at the activities of Ranger O'Neill. He must have seen O'Neill coming, for he made it a point to be leaning over his front gate, staring up at the clouds, when O'Neill galloped up and dismounted. The hour was right for the call and Ranger O'Neill was smiling broadly as he swung down and came forward with hand outstretched in greeting.
“How are you, Mr. Boyce, and how is everything? Sure, it seems a long time since I've seen you!”
“Humph!” The Honorable Standish Boyce removed his gaze from the wind-pushed clouds and turned cold eyes toward the visitor. He did not seem to see the hand extended toward him. “For a man who is paid by the government to administer the affairs of the forest service in this district, you seem to spend less time on the job than you do off it. Young man, I thought you were going to protect this district from the depredations of the thieves who have been robbing the stockmen systematically for some time. You made great promises of what you would do for this district and how you would see to it that lessees of the forest received full value for the fee they paid for grazing.”
“I did that, Mr. Boyce, and I have been——”
“You've been flagrantly neglecting your duties, or else you have had reason to be conveniently absent where no one could reach you. For two weeks you have not been seen by any man in the district, and I have been losing stock in spite of your boast that you could put a stop to the stealing!”
“I think,” said Ranger O'Neill, stepping back to his horse, “you will find I have not been idle, Mr. Boyce.”
The Honorable Standish Boyce gave a contemptuous snort.
“And you will find that I have not been idle, either! This district is going to be thoroughly investigated, I'll have you to know! I happen to have considerable influence among the higher officials of the department of forestry in Washington, and I have reported the criminal negligence from which the forest-service affairs have suffered—especially during the past four months! There's going to be an investigation here, and that in the very near future. Your work is going to be checked up and a full report made to the proper officials——”
Ranger O'Neill froze in his tracks, staring at Isabelle's father in blank consternation. What more the old man said, he did not know. The fact that struck him with terrific impact was sufficient—an investigation would be made, checking up his work. The fire and the fence would be reported!
“Why, you damn old fool!” he said slowly and softly at last. “You damn, interfering old fool!” And then, to crown his dismay, he turned and found himself face to face with Isabelle, who had ridden slowly up in the sand and had no doubt heard what he had said. But he lifted his hat to her and somehow managed a smile, though he felt little enough like smiling now.
“Oh, so you are back again, Mr. O'Neill!” Isabelle said crisply. “Father, dear, will you open the gate for me?”
“I should like a—I came over to see you—Miss Beatrice Murray gave me a letter——” Not since his school days had Patrick O'Neill stammered like that.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. O'Neill, but I hardly think the letter is worth delivering—now. Beatrice has written me twice since then.” She was pressing forward to the gate, though her father had made no move to swing it open. And although she smiled at the ranger, there was a quality of scornful rebuke in that smile which chilled the warmth in O'Neill's eyes while he looked at her.
“It was urgent business that detained me, Miss Boyce. I would have come before had it been possible——”
HOW stilted it all was, how abominably stiff and formal! Like an old-fashioned melodrama, he thought furiously as he galloped back along the trail to his station. Because he had not dropped everything and gone hotfoot to deliver the silly schoolgirl missive, she would not even invite him to the house! He had given her the letter—in some doubt as to whether she would deign to accept it—and had touched his hat with a half-military salute and mounted his horse and ridden away.
It was no great comfort now to remember how she had looked at him, biting her lip and holding her horse quiet with a firm hand on the reins. But she had not said a word to detain him, and that was what stung him the deepest.
What if he had called her father a damn fool? Even Isabelle had more than once expressed her mind rather freely concerning her father's narrow prejudice and his unreasoning temper. She must know that there was good cause for the epithet. She couldn't be so petty as to turn him down cold—Ranger O'Neill himself described her manner in those words—just because he had not delivered that note promptly. There must be something else—and then O'Neill went cold in the region of his heart. Was it possible that his words to Murray had been repeated and twisted and repeated again to Isabelle? Had Beatrice conveyed the impression that Patrick O'Neill was not interested in her?
But there had been times—certain glorious Thursdays when the two rode slowly side by side, stirrups clicking now and then while they talked—when Isabelle Boyce must have known that he cared. There were times, too, when he had felt quite certain that she cared a little, and he had gone singing home to the lonely cabin set high in Lodgepole Basin. He did not sing now. Instead, he rode jogging along the trail, once the climb into the hills had quieted the big bay, and his chin was sunk upon his chest while his Irish-blue eyes stared straight out between his horse's ears, seeing neither bush nor stone nor bare, frozen earth, but only a girl's face with a scornful smile upon her lips.
But, oh, she was beautiful in his eyes, and the hungry heart of him ached with the hurt he had got that day!
Yet there was that quality in Patrick O'Neill which would not let him throw up his hands and wait for disaster to overtake him. If he went down, he would go fighting, for that was the way he was made. So presently he turned his thoughts deliberately away from Isabelle and began to consider what he might do before the cataclysm, which in this case assumed the person of the man who was coming all the way from Washington to investigate the Stillwater District of the Absarokee National Forest.
“There's Murray, who must stand from under,” O'Neill said to himself. “They'll not get another supervisor who would risk his job to help the forest, and I'll tell them so if it comes to the worst. So I must write him to-night and tell him of the investigation—yes, and I'll tell him who is to be thanked for it!—and warn him that he must know nothing whatever of my new drift fence. I have only one job to lose, and there's no family to suffer—nor likely to be!” That last thought brought other gloomy ones in its train and he fell silent a while and let them mock him with the high hopes he had lost that evening.
“Well, there's one thing I can do which will justify the graft upon the fire fund,” he came back to the issue at last. “I can call the meeting and issue the grazing permits, and let the investigation reveal the fact that I've put money into the treasury that would not have been there if I had gone my way, as other Stillwater rangers have done before me, and left well enough alone. I can do that, and keep the supervisor out of it, and show the investigation that Patrick O'Neill is willing to stand or fall by his own acts, begging favor from no one.”
That helped, a little. He fed the big bay and lighted a fire in the cold kitchen of the station cabin, and moved briskly about, cooking his lonely supper. He did not know the flavor of anything he ate, however, for his mind was busy composing the letter he would write to Supervisor Murray. It must be cheerful, even while it conveyed the bad tidings; far be it from Patrick O'Neill's nature to go whining his woes to any man, least of all big-hearted Ed Murray, who would take the last ditch for a friend and count it no more than his plain duty. No, O'Neill must put it in such a way that Murray would chuckle and say to himself that Pat O'Neill would put it over.
By the time the few dishes were washed and the kitchen table wiped clean, the Irish twinkle was back in O'Neill's eyes and the humorous Irish grin was tilting the corners of his mouth. And this is what he wrote:
Edw. Murray, Forest Supervisor,
Absarokee Division.
Yellowstone National Forest,
Livingston,
Mont.
Dear Sir: Some men acquire a knack for devilment in this life. Others bring with them a genius for evil deeds perfected in a previous incarnation. The Honorable Standish Boyce is a shining example of a long line of concentrated cussedness, to wit:
The hatchet-faced old pie gummer has prevailed upon his relative in the department of forestry to send out an inspector from Washington to investigate my work in the Stillwater District. I don't know when this inspector is due to arrive, but I am going to post notices to-morrow of the annual meeting for the issuing of grazing permits for the coming year. Thirty-three new permits will be issued and a fine new grazing tract will be apportioned, and this is to warn you that you are not to admit anything, but leave the result to Heaven and Patrick O'Neill.
Pray for deep snow in the Stillwater before the inspector arrives.
Peterson was arrested to-day and is now on his way to Big Timber with the sheriff and a deputy.
He thinks it's for killing my pack horse, but I showed the rebranded stock in the hills to the sheriff.
I have a Mexican who worked for Peterson, and he will testify against Gus when the time comes.
For Heaven's sake, pay those vouchers and swear you thought it was for a fire—quick, before he gets here.
Very truly yours, Patrick R. O'Neill.
After that, he wrote several notices of the annual meeting to be held in the schoolhouse at Bad Cañon post office on Saturday afternoon at two o'clock, November 10th. These he would post in conspicuous places throughout the district, riding all the next day to do so.
Then, having completed his barricade, he retired to his bunk and lay there for hours, stretched on his back between his blankets, staring out at a few cold stars visible through his window, and thought lonely, hurt thoughts of Isabelle Boyce.
THE eyes of Ranger Patrick O'Neill hardened and his mouth drew into a straight line as he rose and rapped for order in the crowded little schoolroom at Bad Cañon. Well up toward the front of the room, Isabelle Boyce sat in one of the school seats, a jolly-looking little woman with gray hair squeezed in beside her. Just back of Isabelle was her father, the width of a scratched desk between them.
A few other women, wives of stockmen whose economic existence depended upon their grazing permits, sprinkled the gathering with bright bits of color in their makeshift millinery, but Ranger O'Neill saw none of these while Isabelle Boyce was present. Yet one swift glance was all he gave her, and then his head went up and he faced the men in the room, who were waiting to hear what he might have to say before he opened his books and began the allotment of grazing land.
It was not much that he wished to tell them, though there was plenty crowding hot in his mind. Let them find out the good things for themselves, he thought. First, he would explode a bombshell for his own edification—a small personal satisfaction which he meant to have at their expense before his neck went under the ax of the inspector's report.
“Before issuing any permits,” he began crisply, without the usual preamble, “I want to say that I have found it necessary to withdraw certain tracts from grazing for a period of a year—possibly two, depending of course upon the season. I find that the Picket Pin Range is in bad condition from overgrazing, there having been nearly one third more cattle upon that range than the permit of last year allowed.”
Here O'Neill saw Boyce squirm in his seat, and a gleam came into his eyes, though he gave no other sign.
“I find that all of the ranges have suffered from this infraction of the grazing permits,” the ranger went on, “though not all are fed down as closely as the Picket Pin and some of them can still be used, if the number of cattle is sufficiently decreased. Horseman's Flat will also be closed for at least one year. In the matter of the Bad Cañon Range, lately occupied by the Box S, I shall apportion that to Mr. Drew and Mr. Boyce in lieu of the ranges which I have withdrawn. Since it was my duty to have Peterson arrested for cattle stealing, his stock will be removed from the forest and held elsewhere by order of the court.”
News of Peterson's arrest had of course spread to the last, loneliest ranch in the district and beyond, but Ranger O'Neill judged, from the flutter of excitement that went whispering and nodding through the crowd, that no one had suspected the real charge against the man. The sheriff had wanted the thing kept from common knowledge until he had collected evidence against certain accomplices of Peterson, and it was evident that he had succeeded. Ranger O'Neill hoped that he had not spilled the news too soon, but the thing was done now.
“I find that there have been many flagrant violations of the grazing law in the past,” he continued. “Men have paid the grazing fee for a thousand or two thousand head of stock, and have run in a few hundred extra head on the range allowed them, thinking that, since it was the government they were cheating, anything went so long as it got by the ranger in charge of this district. Now, I may not be in charge here long, but while I am here the law will be enforced to the letter. Any violation of the permits will result in the violator's loss of grazing ground.
“In other words, if I catch more cattle or horses on any man's range than his permit calls for, his stock will be put off the forest and his permit canceled, and I shall report the violation to the forest supervisor. It's just that stealing of range that has fed the grass down to the roots, and made it necessary to close certain tracts to give the grass a chance to grow. I find it necessary to reduce the number of animals on each range now——”
The Honorable Standish Boyce half rose, a baleful glare in his eyes. But Ranger O'Neill calmly waved him down and continued, with a secret, malicious humor that tried its best to salve some hurts:
“I have here thirty-three fresh applications for grazing permits, aggregating thirty-five-hundred head of cattle, which I shall apportion——”
“You can't do it, with two ranges closed!”
“Among which I shall apportion the Trout Creek Range, and also place there fifteen hundred of the Bar B cattle——”
“This is an outrage!” shouted the Honorable Standish Boyce, springing to his feet and starting forward with his gray beard bristling. “It would take half my crew of men to hold the cattle on that range! It's the farthest range in the district and I'd have to drive——”
“Sit down!” Ranger O'Neill's voice slashed through the old man's torrent of words. “If you want any grazing land this year, sit down and shut up!”
The very effrontery of the command won obedience. The Honorable Standish Boyce sat down and began talking behind his hand to the old gentleman beside him. Ranger O'Neill gave him one look, saw that Isabelle was biting her underlip and that her eyes seemed to be laughing, and turned resolutely back to his subject.
“It will not be necessary for any line riders to hold the cattle on the Trout Creek Range,” he announced clearly, to the alert audience. “Since coming to this district four months ago, I have gone thoroughly into the grazing situation. You have not had range enough for the stock already running under permits, and I found that the small stockmen were grazing their cattle here and there, catch as catch can, while there was open range on the forest going to waste for want of proper drift fences. The Trout Creek mesa was a sort of no man's land, with bands of sheep trespassing there almost at will.
“By stretching a point and acting more or less upon my own initiative, I have been able to throw a fence across the lower boundary of the forest reserve between Bridger Creek and Bad Cañon, thus turning all of the Trout Creek country into fenced grazing land. This, as I said, will be apportioned among the thirty-three applicants who wish to graze small herds on the forest, but who are unable to hire riders to keep their stock on the range. These can pool their forces at branding time and all use the same range. There is room for another fifteen hundred head of stock, and I shall place Bar B stock there, as I said.
“The other permits will be reissued without change, except—the fee of thirty-five cents a head will be paid for all the stock grazing on the forest! Any violation of this rule will be summarily dealt with, and I shall make no exception whatever. In the interest of the government, the rich man must abide by the law, the same as the poor man. You will therefore please be careful to include in your applications all the stock which you expect to graze on the forest reserve.”
The bombshell was thus exploded, and the result was gratifying to Ranger O'Neill. As he sat down and opened his book of permits, men left their seats and came crowding forward, those who had ridden in to the meeting clanking spur chains on the bare floor. The room hummed with voices. Women leaned into the aisles, smiling and nodding approval of the new ranger, as they exchanged shy opinions behind the backs of their menfolk, whose minds were all upon the grazing permits.
OVER the blackboard behind the desk, Ranger O'Neill hung a map of the district with the various fenced ranges outlined in colors. This, too, was an innovation which appealed to the stockmen. They gathered before the map while they were waiting their turns at the desk, and traced boundaries with their forefingers as they discussed the relative advantages of certain grazing tracts. Heretofore they had squatted on boot heels and drawn maps in the dust with twig or gloved finger, and there had been arguments which bred grudges.
Into the group, the Honorable Standish Boyce elbowed his way, the old gentleman who had sat beside him following now close upon his heels. When they could get near enough, they craned necks at the map, and Boyce indicated with his finger the new Trout Creek Range, the fence boldly drawn in red and the legend, 5,000 head of grown cattle, May 15th to October 15th,” lettered upon the tract with the beautifully blocked-in characters of a trained draftsman.
“Don't know when or how he built that fence,” Boyce muttered to his companion. “Don't believe it's there. I'd have to see it——”
“He'd scarcely go on record with a statement of that kind unless it was true,” the other murmured. “Seems to make quite an extensive addition to the grazing land. Wonder why that fence was not built long ago? It certainly should have been, it seems to me. The demand for grazing seems to warrant fencing all the land available. Stan, you've got a man in a thousand here! What you'd better do is back him up in anything he wants to undertake—even to paying the grazing fee in full, to the last roan cow!”
“Humph!” grunted the Honorable Standish Boyce, and turned abruptly away from the map.
The old gentleman gave a chuckle of amusement and stood aside, hands clasped behind him while he watched the expeditious manner in which Ranger Patrick O'Neill put through the work of issuing grazing permits. Crisp, businesslike tone that discouraged argument yet had a certain Irish warmth in the soft slurring of the vowels, rapid-fire clerical work that showed how thoroughly he knew what he was about—and the gorgeous nonchalance with which he turned to settle his grazing business with the Honorable Standish Boyce, who was inclined to bluster. The old gentleman stepped closer, so that he would miss no word of it.
“Seven thousand head you wish to pay for, Mr. Boyce?” O'Neill was asking. “Then you will move four hundred head of cattle from your North Fork Range, and do it at once. You will take two hundred and sixty off the Picket Pin Range——”
“I'll do nothing of the kind! I've paid grazing fees for the last——”
“I hope, Mr. Boyce, you will continue to pay grazing fees, for that is what the government wants and expects. But I have very carefully estimated the cattle on your ranges, and I find that you have dead-headed more than two thousand, all told, on the forest. You will therefore cut down your herds on these ranges or you will revise your application, Mr. Boyce, so that it will cover all the cattle now grazing on the forest.”
Boyce leaned closer, so that his gray beard waggled beside O'Neill's smooth, tanned cheek.
“I'll have you to know that my brother-in-law, the associate forester in——”
“I don't give a damn if you're brother-in-law to Abraham Lincoln!” snapped Ranger O'Neill. “The president himself can't give you a license to graft off this forest! Fix that application blank, or get off the forest.”
“My brother-in——”
“Oh, get to hell with your brother-in-law!” said Ranger O'Neill, in a tone of weary exasperation, and reached past Boyce for the application of another, a young rancher who wanted grazing for twenty-nine head of cattle and eight head of horses. O'Neill smiled up at this man.
“All right, Mr. Turner. Trout Creek Range for you, and your stock won't have to walk themselves to death trying to get enough to eat, either. It's fat and lazy they'll be growing, over there, and the cows will wear their teeth down to the jawbone chewing their cuds day and night, I'm thinking.” He wrote rapidly. “Twelve dollars and ninety-five cents, and you'll get the worth of your money ten times over.”
He reached for another man's application and had a cheerful word for him also, ignoring the Honorable Standish Boyce, who was the big toad of that particular puddle.
So it happened that Boyce was the last man to be served and his temper was up. But even with the brother-in-law, the associate forester from Washington, beside him, he got just what he paid for and was warned to ask for no more. And that, thought Ranger Patrick O'Neill, fairly evened his score with Boyce, though it would probably cost him his job. So he finally put on his hat and left the schoolhouse, his books under his arm.
FROM Bad Cañon post office to the ranger station in Lodgepole Basin, there is a lonely stretch of trail which winds up a long slope through a stand of spruce timber, where the forest ventures down toward the valley in a majestic advance that stops short at Limestone Creek, as if the dignity of the straight-trunked trees hesitated at crossing the stream and climbing the farther bank. The winding trail may also be used as a somewhat roundabout road to the Bar B Ranch, if one has plenty of time and a mood for the occasional fine vistas which the openings in the forest afford at certain points.
It was on this trail, just as Morenci gave up the idea of galloping uphill and settled himself to a walk, that Ranger O'Neill looked up from his gloom staring at the ground and discovered that Isabelle Boyce was just ahead of him, and that she seemed to be in some trouble with her saddle. To be explicit, she was standing beside her horse and eying the saddle, which had turned to one side and hung there with a rather appalling suggestion of an accident. Ranger O'Neill felt a jump of his heart at the sight and rode forward, quite forgetting that he had resolved to steer clear of Isabelle Boyce hereafter and forever.
“Oh, it's you!” she cried, in a tone of unmistakable relief, as he drew near. “It's such a lonely trail! I wondered if any one would happen along before dark. I—I'm afraid to do anything, for Absarokee is touchy about saddles, and I'm afraid he may kick!”
Ranger Patrick O'Neill should have taken that utterly feminine statement with several grains of salt. In the first place, Isabelle Boyce must certainly have known that he would ride home this way, since there was no other direct trail to his station; which discounted her fear that no one would happen along. Moreover, a girl who has grown up with horses would scarcely choose for her own especial saddle horse an animal that is touchy and will kick on such slight provocation as the resetting of a saddle. But Ranger O'Neill swallowed her statements whole. In fact, he was so fully occupied with his own emotions at finding her there that it never occurred to him she might have planned the meeting.
“You didn't fall?” he asked anxiously, his heart in his eyes as he looked at her.
“Oh—not—seriously. I leaned to pull off a branch with cones, and I felt myself going——” Only a young and beautiful woman can speak a few disjointed phrases and imply so much that reaches a man's soul and wrenches it free of its anchor of pride.
Patrick O'Neill unconsciously stepped close to her and looked down into her eyes.
“You're sure you're not hurt, Isabelle? You are pale——”
“Only a little—faint——” Isabelle closed her eyes for a moment, snapping them open again when she felt Ranger Patrick O'Neill's lips pressed against her mouth.
Absarokee could have kicked them both into kingdom come if he had wanted to. He could not have been so very touchy after all, since he stood quiet and even dozed a little while those two stood there, oblivious to all the world save themselves.
“Though I shouldn't be asking you, my darling, when I may not have a job to-morrow morning, after the way I talked to your father—and the associate forester standing there at his elbow and hearing every word I said, though I didn't know him from Adam at the time!”
“We should worry about father and the associate forester,” murmured Isabelle, quite recovered now from her faintness. “I heard Uncle Andrew say you're the most intelligent ranger in America—or words to that effect—and he'll recommend you for promotion when he goes home. He's only out here on a visit, anyway—he and Aunt Belle. He didn't come to investigate you, silly. That's just father's cantankerous way of putting things.”
“I've the offer of promotion to assistant supervisor of this division,” Ranger O'Neill remembered, after another interval of emotional dialogue. “That is, I have the offer upon the condition that I bring the Stillwater to live in peace and harmony. So now I have some faint hopes——”
“And father really likes you, ranger, just because you do talk back to him and aren't afraid. A lot of his bluster is mere camouflage. So you will come home with me and have supper with us, and meet Uncle Andrew and Aunt Belle, won't you? I'll want you there when I tell father——”
Still, it was growing dusk in the spruce grove when Ranger O'Neill finally got the saddle in place on Absarokee and the two mounted and rode away toward the Bar B, foolishly riding side by side with their hands clasped between them, and with stirrups clicking, while they told each other over and over that they had all along known it was love they felt for each other.
“And I was just sick for the sight of you,” Queen Isabelle confessed, the luminous dusk shielding her face from his searching eyes. “And when I rode up and heard you and father quarreling, that day you came with Beatrice Murray's letter, I simply couldn't endure the thought of it, so I sent you away and thought I would see you in the morning and explain. But you were here and there and everywhere, and I couldn't seem to run across you anywhere. Oh, men are so stupid, sometimes!”
“I'll have great news to write to Ed Murray to-night!” Ranger O'Neill exulted, much farther along the trail, when the lights of the Bar B ranch house twinkled into view.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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