Two Wyoming Girls and Their Homestead Claim Part 10

"Your father was a good man," Mr. Wilson continued. "He had one big advantage over Horton from the start--he was able to hold both his tongue and his temper even when Horton, by his acts, kept him so short-handed that he was unable to build the fence that would have saved his crops and so helped to defeat Horton. The fencing will cost about three hundred dollars. When I sold off that big bunch of steers, two years ago, I offered to lend him money to fence his claim, but, no sir, he wouldn't touch a cent--seemed to have a kind of prejudice agin' borrowing money, even of me. Another thing about Horton is,"

went on our friend, who seemed to have made an exhaustive study of his subject, "that he must brag about what he's going to do before he does it. That's how every one knows, in reason, that he is the one who has made you all this trouble. He hasn't scrupled to say that he's bound to have this place, by hook or by crook, whatever happens--and so he looks out for it that things happen. But there is one thing that I will say for him, and it's kind of curious, too--let him once be fairly and squarely beaten, so that there's no way but for him to own up to it, and you needn't ask for a better or more faithful friend than he is; but he's like--" Mr. Wilson lifted his hat and scratched his grizzled head, casting about for a simile; his eye fell on Guard.

"Why, he's like a bull-dog, you might say--he'll hang on until beaten, and then he's yours to command ever after."

Jessie was greatly cast down; she looked at Guard and accepted the simile mournfully.

"There's no hope of our ever being able to do anything that will make him admit himself beaten," she said, "so, I suppose, we must resign ourselves to enduring his enmity as best we can."

"I ain't calculating on his keeping up this racket after you get your t.i.tle," Mr. Wilson declared, hopefully; "he's dead set on getting this land now. He's made his brags that he would have it, but when it's once pa.s.sed out of his reach, he'll kind of tame down, I'm thinking.

Now, about your fences," he continued, with a sudden, cheery change of tone: "they're going up. Don't you worry about the loss of your crop, but Joe, you just whirl in and go to plowing those fields again for fall wheat; nothing better for raising money on than fall wheat; and by the time it's sprouted, we'll have it fenced, snug and tight; we will, if I have to mortgage my farm to do it! But I shan't have to do that. I can raise the money for you somehow."

Jessie was sitting on the wagon-tongue. She looked gratefully up into the ranchman's weather-beaten face.

"I think you're just awful good, Mr. Wilson, but--would it be right for us to let you lend us the money when we know how opposed poor father was to anything of that kind?"

This was a vital question. I leaned forward, awaiting the answer, while Jessie listened with parted lips, as she might if our good neighbor had been some ancient oracle, whose lightest word was law.

Mr. Wilson regarded us steadfastly for a moment, then scratched his head again.

"Well," he said slowly, at last, "I s'pose, setting aside all questions of circ.u.mstances, that when the Bible said: 'Honor thy father and thy mother in the days of thy youth,' it meant to reach clean down to the things that your parents wanted you to do--or not to do--whether they was alive to see it done or not. I do s'pose that that was what it means, and your father he was sure set against borrowing."

Stooping, he picked up a straw, and began biting it meditatively, while we two pondered his plain interpretation of a very plain text.

Suddenly he dropped the straw, and looked at us with a brightening face:

"Why, say, you can give a mortgage on your own land, when you get your t.i.tle, and your father, nor the Bible, nor n.o.body else, would say there was anything wrong in your neighbor's helping you out, if so be that you couldn't lift the mortgage when the time come. Not that there'll be any danger of that, with the price that wheat always brings in this grazing country."

He went away shortly after, leaving us much comforted. Joe had housed the un-needed reaper in the shed and was examining the plow before he had been gone an hour. Some bolts needed tightening and Jessie offered her services as a.s.sistant.

"We'll get ahead of Mr. Horton yet!" she exclaimed, hammering away at the head of the bolt that she was manipulating, under Joe's direction, as vigorously as though it might have been the head of the gentleman in question.

CHAPTER XII

ON THE TRAIL OF A WILDCAT

Joe went at the plowing the next morning and kept at it with dogged perseverance for several days. Jessie and I, busy with the sewing, at first paid little attention to him, but after a few days the look of settled exasperation on his sable countenance, as he returned to the house at the close of his day's work, drew my attention.

"Joe," I said to him one morning, as he was about starting for the field, "what is the matter? You look discouraged."

"I ain' discouraged, so my looks is deceivin', den; but I is kine o'

wore out in my patience."

"Why; what about?"

"Hit's dat 'ar Frank horse; nothin' gwine ter do him, but he mus' stop in de furrer, ebbery few ya'ahds, an' tun aroun' in de ha'ness ter look at me. 'Pears like he can' be satisfy dat I knows my own business, but he's got to obersee hit. Hit done gets mighty worrisome afore de day's out," he concluded with a heavy sigh.

"Why don't you whip him for it?" demanded Jessie indignantly.

"W'ip nuffin'! Hes a saddle hoss; he's nebber been call' on fer to do such wuck afore, an' he doan know what hit means."

"I guess if he attended to his business he'd find out in time," Jessie insisted. But Frank, whatever other faults he had, had none under the saddle; he was, moreover, old Joe's especial pet. One of the work horses had died during the preceding winter, which was the reason that this one was called upon to perform labor that he evidently regarded with distrust, if not active disapproval.

So now the old man replied to Jessie's observation with unusual sharpness:

"De whole worl' is plum' full ob plow hosses, so fur's I kin see. Yo'

done meets 'em on de road, and in de chu'ch and de town meetin's, and on de ranches; yes, sir; yo' kin fine a plow hoss twenty times a day where yo' meets up wid a saddle hoss once in six mont's w'at is a saddle hoss, and not a saw-hoss wif a bridle on. Ef somebody's got fer to poun' dat Frank fer to make him drag a plow aroun', hit'll be somebody odder dan me w'at does. .h.i.t! I done cut dem wicked ole clumsy blinders, w'at is a relict ob ba'barism, ef dere ebber was one, offen his bridle, so's 't dem bright eyes ob his'n kin see w'ats goin' on aroun' him, an' now I ain' gwine spile a good saddle hoss ter make a poor plow hoss. Hit's too much like tryin' ter make a eagle inter a tame ole goose," the old man concluded soberly.

"Well, then, I suppose we'll have to give up the fall plowing, just on account of Frank's whims!" Jessie retorted, nettled.

"No," Joe returned patiently; "I'se done gwine ter keep at hit, we's get hit done somehow; if not dis year, den de nex'. I 'clar fur hit, sometimes I done been tempted fur t' hitch one ob de cow beasts up along o' Bill an' tryin' de plowin' dat way."

"Isn't there some way of making Frank keep straight without whipping him?" I asked, my sympathies being about equally divided between man and horse.

"Oh, yes! I done thought a hun'nerd times dat ef dere was only some small, active boy w'at would ride him whilst I--"

I sprang to my feet, tossing aside the pieces of gingham that were destined to form a new s.h.i.+rt for Mr. Horton: "Here am I, Joe, take me!"

"You!" Joe's mild eyes looked me over, and gleamed approvingly. "You is little, you is active, an' yo' has de bravest heart, and de unselfishest sperrit--" he said, half soliloquizing, until I interposed, laughingly:

"Come, now! Stop calling me names and say that I'll do!"

"Dat yo' will, honey, chile, but I nebber thought ob askin' yo' to do sech wuck as dat! Hit ain' fittin' nohow!"

"Fitting! Anything is fitting that is honest, and will help us out, Joe. Still, I am rather glad that the fields are quite out of sight from the road."

"Dat's w'at dey is. Come on, den. Frank gwine wuck like a hero, now, 'cause he done think hit's saddle wuck w'at he's a doin'."

"And I'll work all the harder at the sewing," Jessie said, smiling approval of this novel arrangement, and hastily rescuing Mr. Horton's unfinished s.h.i.+rt from Guard, who had been trying to utilize it for a bed. "There, now, see that!" she added, looking at me reproachfully.

"How could you be so careless, Leslie? Guard has been lying on Mr.

Horton's new s.h.i.+rt!"

"It is new, and Mr. Horton has never worn it, so I don't think it will contaminate Guard," I retorted, perversely, as I turned to follow Joe, who had already started for the fields.

With me perched upon his back, the long, awkward, pulling lines discarded, and his movements directed by a gentle touch of the bridle reins against the side of his neck, Frank worked, as Joe had said he would, like a hero. The other horse, being of a meek and quiet spirit, had made no trouble from the outset; he was content to follow Frank's lead, so we got on famously with the plowing from the day that I was installed as postillion.

"I always supposed that plowing was such a monotonous kind of business," I remarked to Joe one day, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by his stopping the team to wipe away the perspiration that was streaming down my face. For the day was very warm, and we had been working steadily.

"If mon'tonus means hot, honey chile, I reckons yo's right," responded Joe. "Yo's purty face is a sight to behole; red as a turkey c.o.c.k's comb, hit is, an' dat streaked wif dirt dat dey doan nuffin' show natteral but yo' eyes."

"One good thing, Joe, I can't look any dirtier than I feel," I replied wearily, and with a longing glance toward the river that rippled silver-white and cool at the foot of the hill beneath us. Joe saw the glance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WE GOT ON FAMOUSLY WITH THE PLOWING (Page 150)]

"Hol' on, honey," he exclaimed, as I was about starting the team again. "Dere's de lines looped up on the back band; I'll jess run 'em out an' finish up dish yer bit alone."

"Do you think you can?" I asked, wavering between a longing to rest and my sense of duty.