The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 14

The Ranger saddled his own broncho for himself and a horse belonging to one of his a.s.sistants for the old frontiersman, who must be some where on the upper Mesas. To each saddle he fastened a Service hatchet and a cased rifle. Then, he caught one of the mules of the road gang for the pack saddle. Going inside the cabin, he furbished together such provisions as his biscuit box shelves afforded, a sack containing half a ham, a quarter bag of flour, one tin of canned beans, a tobacco pouch filled with tea, another pouch with sugar on one side of the dividing leather and salt in the other. Then, he cinched a couple of cow-boy slickers over the pack saddle, and, in place of the green Service coat which he had left at the Mission, donned a leather jacket, took a last look to see if a water-proof match case were in the inside pocket, ran back to the cabin for a half-flask of brandy, and an extra hat, and with the other horse and the pack mule in front, he mounted his pony and set out for the Rim Rocks. It will be seen this was not the equipment of a man who intended to remain marking time.

Just for a second, he pondered which path to follow. It would take an hour to go down the Ridge trail, cross the Valley and ascend the terra-cotta road of the Rim Rocks. Couldn't he jump his horses over the gully that cut between the Holy Cross and the Upper Mesa? He headed his horse into the tangle of hemlock and larch, the mule trotting ahead s.n.a.t.c.hing bites of dogwood and willow from the edge of the dripping trail, the Ranger riding as Westerners ride, glued to the leather, guiding by the loose neck rein instead of the bit, with a wave of his hand to keep the little mule in line.

A turn to the left through a thicket of devil's club brought him where the Ridge overlooked the River. Wayland reined up sharply. A pile of logs scaled and marked with the U. S. stamp lay where the slightest topple would send them over a natural chute into the River. He had not scaled those logs: neither had his a.s.sistants. There was no record of them on the books. Of course, he had heard the chop and slash at the settlers' cabins, but homesteaders don't farm on the edge of a vertical precipice unless they are a lumber company; and logs tossed over that precipice to the River were destined for only one market, Smelter City.

Then he remembered giving a permit to a Swede settler of the Homestead Slope to take out windfall and dead tops for a little portable gasoline engine; but the permit didn't cover this area.

"Having stopped stealing half a million from the Bitter Boot, they've started their dummies in here." He looked at the gashed timber-slash as a thrifty man looks at wantonness and waste; it was a gaping wound in the forest side, old and young trees alike hacked down, the stumps of the big trees, not eighteen inches low as the regulations provided, but three and four and five feet high of waste to rot and gather fungus, the biggest of the giant spruce cut from a scaffolding nine feet from the ground, leaving wasted lumber enough to build a house.

"This was done when I was away on my last long patrol," reflected Wayland. The slash of brushwood and wasted tops lay higher than his horse's head. "A fine fire-trap for the fall drought," thought Wayland angrily. "One spark in that tinder pile in a high wind; and there would be no forests left on Holy Cross."

What did it mean, this open defiance, not of himself, (he was a mere cog in the big wheel; so was the entire Forest Service,) this open defiance of law; this open theft of Government property? Connected with the outrage of the Range War, and the Senator's advice for him to stop suing for rest.i.tution of the two-thousand acres of coal lands, and the handy-man's urgent arguments for him "to chuck the fight and come down to the Valley," the Ranger knew well enough what the pile of stolen logs stamped with a counterfeit Government hatchet meant; stamped, of course, by some poor ignorant dummy foreigner. The Ring were setting their hired tools on to the fight. And far away in the East--yes it was the East's business to see what went on in the West--were myriads of wage-earners forced to pay exorbitantly for coal and wood and lumber and house rent because of this wanton waste; this seizing fraudulently by the few of the property belonging to the many.

If they had thrown down the challenge, a.s.suredly he was taking it up!

What would the people do about it, he wondered, when they came to know?

Would any power on earth waken the people up to do something, and stop talking? _A Roman ruler had fiddled while his imperial city burned.

What was the many-headed ruler of the great republic doing, while enemies burned and cut and slashed and wasted in wantonness the property of the public for the enrichment of the Ring_?

The Ranger touched his horse to a gallop and jumped all three animals through the criss-cross of wind-fall and slash, coming out on the edge of the rock chasm that cut the Upper Mesas off from the Holy Cross.

The gully crumbled on the near side and shelved on the far, twenty feet deep and fifty wide, altogether not very jumpable, the Ranger thought.

He zig-zagged in and out among the larches along the margin of the rock cut-way, noting "dead tops" ripe for the axe, pines where the squirrels had cached cone seed at the root, spruce logs gone to punk with alien seedlings coming up from the dead trunk, yellow ant-eaten wood-rot ripped open by some bear hunting the white eggs; noting, above all, the wonderful flame of the painter's brush, spikes with the tints of the rainbow, like Indian arrows dipped in blood, knee-deep, multi-colored, fiery, dyed in the very essence of sunglow, humming with bees and alive with b.u.t.terflies, lives of a summer in the aeon of ages that the snow flakes had taken manufacturing soil out of granite, silt out of snow.

"The little snow flake gets there all right," reflected Wayland. "It takes time; but she carves out her little snow flake job all the same, and the rocks go down before her! Guess if we follow the law, we're hitched up with the stars all right."

He reined up and caught at a pine bough. A sight to hold the eye of any forester held his; the enormous trunk of a fallen giant, a dozen dwarfs growing from its punk, spanned the gully. Wayland slid off his horse. The great trunk lay dest.i.tute of lesser branches to the tip on the far side of the chasm like great characters that discard mannerisms.

The Ranger struck his Service axe into the trunk. The bark held firm, though he heard the ring of the dry-rot at the heart that had brought the old giant cras.h.i.+ng down to become food for the scrubs and pigmies of the forest. Wayland picked out two spindly birches. Quick strokes brought them down. Walking out on the dead trunk, he threw a birch on each side as a guard rail, affording fence, not protection, to the wavering faith of a shy horse, "all a feeling of security to steady a giddy head," he reflected. He led the little pack mule; and the bronchos followed. A moment later, he was galloping through the larches and low juniper that fringed the Mesas above the Rim Rock trail, the mule huff-huffing to the fore s.n.a.t.c.hing mouthfuls on the run. Then, with a lope, Wayland's broncho leaped out on the bare sage-grown Mesas, the mule with ears pointed, nose high, heading straight for the white canvas-top of a tented wagon.

For a moment, the light blinded Wayland's sight; for the sun had come up in an orange fan; and the sky was not blue: it shone the dazzling silver of mercury. Against the high rarefied air came in view the figure of a man, grotesquely exaggerated, head and shoulders first, then body, riding a heavy horse, saddleless, hatless, coatless, white of hair, heels pressed to his horse's flanks, bent far over the animal's neck as Indians ride, galloping for the Rim Rock trail, or a second jump from the battlements.

Wayland stood up in his stirrups and with hands trumpeted uttered a yell. The rider jerked his horse to a rear flounder, waved frantically, then split the air--

"Glory be to the powers--but--A'm glad to see you! A've headed them off from the South trail. We've got them, Wayland, the low dastard scoundrels! We've got them trapped like rats in a trap! They're in the Pa.s.s if you've a man in the Valley with spirit enough to get out with a gun!" He stopped for breath as the two horses floundered together.

"We haven't," answered Wayland.

"They jumped the gully! Man alive, y' ought t' seen them jump the gully! A slammed them right down into the bottom of it. A would to G.o.d 't had been to the bottomless pit. The same gentry A saw that night under your Ridge, saving his High Mightiness. The evil fellow wi' the sheep hide leggings, an' the one armed blackguard in the cow-boy slicker, an' the corduroy dandy wi' the red tie, an' four more of them same card-sharp gentry. A rode 'long the top of y'r gully an'

poured six bullets after 'em! Man alive! A heard the fellow in the yellow slicker yell b.l.o.o.d.y murder when A fired! A'm hopin'--G.o.d forgive me--A've nipped him in the other arm an' brought him winged t'

th' throne o' Grace! They followed the gully bed behind y'r Mountain, the white horse same as yon night under y'r Ridge, limpin', the one armed man rockin' in the saddle an' spittin' out blasphemous filth for th' others to wait. A've kept guard all night, yellin' an' howlin'

like a vigilantee, knowin' they're not the gentry to run into the arms of them good old-time neck-tie com'tees; an' not dreamin' A hadn't another cartridge to my name!" The old man swabbed the sweat from his brow.

"A left m' coat and togs back at yon chuck wagon!" Wayland noticed he was riding stocking soled.

"I have an extra hat for you here." Wayland tossed the soft felt from the pocket of his leather coat.

"Oh, A saw 'em plain enough; same ill-lookin' six that y'r h.e.l.l-kite laws hatch on a bad frontier! Make no mistake. Yon white vest is at the bottom o' this deviltry! Who is he, Wayland?"

Wayland related the visit of a white-vest to his Ridge cabin; and they trotted forward towards a sheep wagon.

"How did y' come up here?" asked the old frontiersman.

"Where did you get that horse?" retorted the Ranger.

"One of the chuck wagons' teams--"

"Herders all right?" asked Wayland. He knew what the answer must be; the same answer that had been disgracing the West these twenty years.

The old man jerked his horse to a dead stop, drew himself erect and looked straight at the Ranger.

"Wayland, man, is this Russia--or h.e.l.l? Is there another country in the world calls itself civilized would allow four herder men to be burned to death? Does the country know what is doing? Do you know what happened? Do you know that last wagon is left there only because the rains put out the fire? Y'll find the iron tires of the other wagons with skeletons of men chained to the wheels. A came up just as they were settin' aboot firin' the second wagon. They'd ripped all the flour bags open and loosed the horses. This one, A caught full pelther down the trail."

The old man shook his head.

They trotted their horses across the Mesas in silence towards the glaring white canvas wagon. Broken harness, half-burned spokes, the charred hub of a wheel, snapped whiffle-trees, the white dust of scattered flour littered the ground. A brown scorch of flame up the back of the tent above the remaining wagon marked where the rains had extinguished the fire. A smouldering ill-smelling ash heap told the fate of the other wagons.

"h.e.l.l-devilish work, h.e.l.l-devilish work! Th' beasts of the field couldna' conceive such baseness, Wayland! 'Tis the work o' devils sp.a.w.ned by harpies! They say there is no devil to-day! Hoh!" The old man puffed the heresy from his pursed lips. "The beasts don't prey on their own 'cepting the rats that starve; but, man, there's no explanation of his self-destruction 'cepting the old fas.h.i.+oned one, Wayland. 'He was possessed by a devil.'"

The Ranger had dismounted and was prodding the ash-heap with his heavy boot sole. Then, he gave the embers a smart flap with his whip. The blackened hub of a wheel went circling out. Suddenly, Wayland turned away his face, white and nauseated, hardened to resolution granite as the rocks. Eyeless sockets of a skeleton face protruded from the ashes; and on the ground were stains which the rains had not washed out. It was then Wayland noticed the b.l.o.o.d.y thumb marks round the canvas front of the wagon seat where the driver had been dragged down.

For a little time neither man spoke. But, was it not the natural ending of brutality unleashed of law; of crime left alone by the good?

"To mutilate thousands of sheep was d.a.m.nable enough," said Wayland; "but--this?"

The old frontiersman had picked up coat and boots flung aside the night before. He stood holding by his horse's mane looking down. "And this is a white man's land," he said. "To this have y' prost.i.tuted freedom bought by th' blood of saints an' martyrs? Not in th' heat o' pa.s.sion, but for filthy gain, has a free people come to this? _The heads o'

kings fell on the b.l.o.o.d.y block for less crime in days not so soft spoken as these_. Is y'r freedom, freedom to right or to wrong? Is it to send y'r Nation smash over the precipice? Wayland, _is this Democracy_?"

The Ranger did not answer for a moment.

"No," he said quietly, "it isn't Democracy any more than your Robber Barons were Monarchy! Don't you make that mistake; this is Anarchy, the Anarchy of unrestrained greed! You fought it in your plundering Scotch Robber Barons long ago! We have to fight it to-day in our plundering plutocrats!"

CHAPTER XII

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW VEILS ITSELF

"Do you mean me to believe," the old frontiersman drew himself up to the full height of British superiority to everything outside the island of its own circ.u.mscribed knowledge, "do you mean me to believe that if any of these poor herders had escaped as witnesses, we'd not have been able to send these blackguard murderers to the gallows?"

The Ranger had signalled for some of the road gang to ascend from below the battlements to keep guard till the coroner could come. The little pack mule to the fore, Wayland and Matthews were picking the way slowly down the terra cotta trail of the Rim Rocks.

"It does not make the slightest difference in the world what you or I believe, Sir! The facts are unless you could offer a witness money enough to take him out the United States and to keep him for the rest of his life, he would develop a good-forgetter, or else the same old gag--'been blind folded,' 'didn't see,' and so on, and on, and on; you can't blame them! I'll bet if every one of the herders had escaped instead of festering there in the ash heap, they'd all be legging it out of the country far and fast as they could go."

The little mule came to a stand at a bend in the switch back; and the old evangelist sat ruminating silently on his broncho.