The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 3

Mr. Senator refused to be perturbed by the edge of that question.

"You ask Wayland how much the grazing fee is. You know it's my belief there ought to be no grazing fee. We stockmen can take care of ourselves without Was.h.i.+ngton worrying--"

"Yes," interrupted Williams, "you took such good care of the sheep herders last spring, some of you put them to eternal sleep."

"We're not living in Paradise or Utopia," a.s.sented Moyese. "We can take care of our own. Men who won't listen to warning must look out for stronger arguments; and it's a great deal quicker than carrying long-drawn legal cases up to the Supreme Court. You sheepmen are asking us to take care of you. I'm asking MacDonald to vote so he can take care of us. Majority rules. What I'm trying to get at is which side you are on! We're not taking care of neutrals and aliens--"

"Aliens." The low tense voice bit into the word like acid. "And I suppose you're not taking care of pea-nut politicians either. My ancestors have lived in this country since 1759. Mr. Senator, how many generations have your people lived in this country?"

Eleanor became conscious that a question had been asked fraught with explosion; but the Senator smiled the big soft voiceless smile down in his waist-coat as if not one of the group knew that memories of the ghetto had not faded from his own generation.

"We're not strong on ancestry out West," he rubbed his whiskerless chin. "It goes back too often to--" he looked up quietly at MacDonald, "to bow and arrow aristocracy, scalps, in fact; but as for myself," if a little oily, still the smile remained genial, "for myself, from what my name means in French, I should judge we were Hugenots--what do you call 'em?--Psalm singing lot that came over in that big boat, growing bigger every year; boat that brought all the true blues over here; Mayflower--that's what I'm trying to say--all our ancestors came over in the Mayflower--"

The sheep rancher's thin lips slowly curled in a contemptuous smile.

"Then I guess my ancestors on one side of the house were chanting war whoops to welcome you--"

Bat Brydges uttered a snort. Eleanor puckered her brows as at news.

The Senator was fanning himself again with his hat. Even Wayland was smiling. He had heard political opponents of Moyese say that dynamite wouldn't disturb the Senator. "Only way you could raise him was yeast cake stamped with S: two sticks through it."

Certainly--Eleanor was thinking--there was some good in the worst of dragons. St. George had put his foot on one ancient beast. Wasn't it possible to tame this one, to tame all modern dragons, put a bit in their mouths and harness them to good nation building?

"Girt round with mine enemies, Miss Eleanor," he laughed, "and I slay them with the jaw bone of an a.s.s."

The white waist-coat chortled; and she laughed. This dragon didn't spout flame but gentle ridicule, which was elusive as quicksilver slipping through your fingers.

"The point is," explained the Ranger, coming forward, "the sheep have almost grazed off up here; at least, far as we allow them to graze--"

"Besides, it's too cold for the lambs," effervesced the Missionary's boy, bouncing out of the woods.

"Shut up, Fordie," ordered Williams, holding aloof.

"Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Williams want to transfer from this Divide to the Mesas above the Rim Rocks," continued Wayland.

"Well, Mr. Forest Ranger, _that_ is _your_ business! The Rim Rocks are National Forest, tho' to save my life, I have never seen _one_ tree on those Mesas. What in the world they are in the National Forest for, I don't know! You know very well I think there oughtn't to be any National Forests--each State look after its own job. Have you issued the grazing permits, Wayland? I don't see that it's _any_ of _my_ business."

The Senator had leisurely seated himself on the slab. Eleanor knew now why he wielded such power in the Valley. He was human: he was the man in the street: something with red blood giving and taking in a game of win and lose among men. In a word, she had to acknowledge, the Dragon of the Valley was decidedly likable; and behind the genial front were the big hands that would crush; behind the plausible eyes, the craft that would undermine what the hands could not crush. Anaemic teachers and preachers might as well throw paper wads at a wall as attempt to dislodge this man with argument. Right was an empty term to him.

Might he understood; not right.

He sat waiting for them to go on. She remembered afterwards how he made them play down from the first; and how, all the time that he was watching them, plans of his own were busy as shuttles in behind the plausible eyes.

"The point," continued Wayland, "is to get fifteen-thousand sheep up there."

"Fifteen-thousand." It was the number, not the getting there that touched him.

"A deep stone gully runs between the Holy Cross and the bench of the Rim Rocks," explained the Missionary. "Look--behind the cabin--you can see where the cut runs through the timber, a notch right in the saddle of the sky line."

"How many of those fifteen-thousand are yours, Mr. Missionary?"

The Senator was gazing down in the Valley. Just for a second, Eleanor thought the genial look hardened and centred.

"About two-thousand, Senator! I've just brought a thousand angoras in to see if we can't teach weaving to the Indians. It would mean a good deal if we could teach them to be self-supporting--"

"It would mean the loss of a lot of possible patronage to this Valley,"

said the Senator absently. "Are you still determined not to accept Government aid?"

"Absolutely sir: my work is to Christianize these Indians, not just leave them educated savages."

"Hm," from the Senator. "What do you suppose they think we are?"

"I don't see very well how I can train them to be honest men if, out of every dollar a.s.signed to aid the Indian school, sixty cents goes to Government contracts and party heelers?"

"Hm!" Moyese was stroking his bare chin with a crookt forefinger. "I suppose if I were the story-book villain, I'd say 'yes, you must teach 'em to be honest'; but I don't. Fact is, Mr. Missionary, if you go into the ethics of things, you're stumped the first bat: who gave us their land, in the first place? This whole business isn't a golden rule job: it's an iron proposition; and if I were an under-dog beaten in the game by the law that rules all life, I'd take half a bone rather than no meat. I make a point of never quarreling with the conditions that existed when I came into the world. I accept 'em and make the best of 'em; and I advise _you_ to do the same."

"You can't take the contracts of a bargain-counter to regulate the things of the spirit, Mr. Senator."

"Oh, as for things of the spirit," deprecated the Senator, smiling the big soft smile that lost itself down in his vest; and he spread his broad palms in suave protest, "don't please quote spirit to me! I have all I can do managing things right here on earth. To put it briefly, far as this sheep business is concerned, if you can't get the sheep across the saddle between the Holy Cross and the Rim Rocks, you want to bring 'em along the trail through my ranch?"

"That's it," a.s.sented Wayland. "I've issued grazing permits for the Upper Range: and it only remains to get your permission to drive them across the land that is not Forest Range."

The Senator crossed his legs and hung his hat on one knee.

"As I make it out, here's our situation! I ask MacDonald here, who is the richest sheepman west of the Mississippi, what's he willing to do for the party. Far as I can see without a telescope or microscope, he doesn't raise a finger--won't even take out papers so he can vote! I ask Parson Williams here what he is willing to do for the party; and he objects to his copper-gentry taking a free-for-all forty cents on the dollar. Then, you both come asking me to pa.s.s fifteen-thousand sheep across my ranch to the Rim Rocks, though they ruin the pasture and there isn't room enough for all the cattle, let alone sheep. I hate 'em! I'm free to say I hate 'em! Every cattleman hates the sheep business. We haven't Range enough for our cattle, let alone sheep and this fool business of fencing off free pasturage in Forest Reserves.

And your sheep herders never make settlers. You know how it is. We'd run your sheep to Hades if we could! We aren't all in the missionary business like Williams. We are in for what we can get; and this nation is the biggest nation on earth because all men are free to go in for all they can get. The sheep destroy the Range: and I'm cattle! You neither of you raise a hand to help the party; and I'm a plain party man; yes, I guess, Miss Eleanor--I'm a spoilsman, all right; and you come asking favors of me. It isn't reasonable; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll show you that I'm ready to meet you in a fair half-way!

MacDonald, you and Williams and the Kid, there, go along and see if that saddle can be crossed, here to the Rim Rocks. If it can't, you can come down through the Valley and pa.s.s your sheep up through my ranch. I guess it's light enough yet for you to see. The gully is not five minutes away. Bat, you go off and entertain Miss Eleanor. I want to talk to Wayland here."

Wayland was in no mood for straddling, for palaver, for "carrying water on both shoulders." He was weary to death of talk and compromise and temporize and discretionize and all the other "izes" by which the politicians were hedging right and wrong and somehow euchring the many in the interests of the few and transforming democracy into plutocracy.

Besides, memory that merged to conscious realization was playing in lambent flames through his whole being round the form of the figure against the skyline of the Ridge.

The light of the cow-boy camp blinked through the lilac mist of the Valley. A veil impalpable as dreams hovered over the River. The boom and roll of a snow cornice falling somewhere in the Gorge behind the Holy Cross came in dull rolling m.u.f.fled thunder through the spruce forests. Had her eyes flashed it in that recognition of love; or had she said it; or had the thought been born of the peace that had come?

It kept coming back and back to Wayland as the boom of falling snow faded, _as if one man or generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than a man could stop an avalanche by refusing to heed the law of the snowflake_!

He heard the wordless chant that the suff of the evening wind sang; that the storm wind of the mountains shouted in spring as from a million trumpets; that the dream winds of the ghost mornings forerunner of fresh life for the sons of men whispered, singing, chanting, trumpeting the message that snowflake and avalanche told: yet beside him on the slab seat sat a man who heard none of those voices, and knew no law but the law of his own desire to get.

The Ranger drew a deep breath of the pervading fragrance, a tang of resin and balsam, a barky smell of clean earth-mould and moss, an odor as of some illusive frankincense proffered from the vesper chalices and censer cups of the flower world.

"Great thing to be alive night like this," opened the Senator. Then he pulled down his waist coat and pulled up his limp spine and wheeled on the slab seat facing the Ranger. Very quietly, in a soft even voice he was reasoning--

"We have been fighting each other for four years now?"

"We certainly have, Mr. Senator."

"You're a good fighter, Wayland! I like the way you fight! You fight square; and you fight hard; and you never let up."

No answer from the Forest Ranger.

"I wouldn't really have enough respect for you to say what I am going to say, if you hadn't fought exactly as you have fought--"