The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound Part 15

The dog was seated upon his clothing, watching him with suspicious eyes, and it growled when he stood up knee-deep. Frank hesitated. The dog did not look amiable, but he was beginning to feel cold, and he walked slowly forward a pace or two. Then the creature raised itself on its forepaws, with white fangs bare, and once more broke into a deep, ominous growl. There was no doubt that it intended to guard his clothes.

He threw a piece of s.h.i.+ngle at it and was glad on the whole that he had not succeeded in hitting it when it stood up with bristling hair and a most determined look in its eyes. Frank floundered back into the water, wondering uneasily if it was coming in after him, and then standing still up to his waist considered what he should do. It was evident that he could not stay where he was much longer, and the dog showed no sign of going away. It was equally impossible for him to walk back to the ranch without his clothes, and in the meanwhile he was growing unpleasantly chilly. Then he noticed that although the shadow of the crags above rested upon the spot where he stood the suns.h.i.+ne fell upon a boulder which rose out of the water not far away. Swimming to it he crawled out and found it a little warmer there, but this brought him no nearer to finding a way out of the difficulty.

He did not remember how long he lay s.h.i.+vering upon the stone, but the shadow had crept across it and the tall firs above him showed up more blackly against the evening light, when at last Harry came clattering over the s.h.i.+ngle and stopped in astonishment on seeing him.

"Whatever are you doing there?" he asked.

"Waiting until your dog goes home," said Frank. "He won't let me have my clothes. If you hadn't come I expect I'd have to stay here until to-morrow."

Harry couldn't help grinning when he observed the resolute animal.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to come out and whack him off?"

"No," said Frank decidedly. "If you were in my place you wouldn't want to try."

Harry walked up to the creature and picked up the clothes, whereat it rose immediately and wagged its tail as though satisfied in having done its duty.

"He doesn't seem to mind me," Harry observed dryly. "Anyway, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out now unless, of course, you're happier where you are."

Frank swam across, dressed, and ran all the way to the ranch, but it was half an hour before he was moderately warm again. The next day he set about teaching the dog to guard. It occurred to him that it was not desirable that Harry and Miss Oliver should be the only ones to whom the animal would give any stray article of clothing he might come across.

A week or two later Miss Oliver went away on a visit to Tacoma, and Mr.

Oliver, who had bought a new mower, commenced to cut his timothy hay.

The machine could only work on the cleared land, and where the stumps were thick he set the boys to mow with the scythe. Frank found it troublesome work, for the big roots ran along the surface of the ground.

The fern had grown up among these roots, and it was their task to cut and pick it out from the gra.s.s, while every few minutes the scythe point struck a root and sometimes stuck in it. In places it struck gravel, which made dents in it, and the blade often got entangled among shooting willows and young fir saplings. Frank decided that while it was evidently a costly and difficult thing to clear a ranch, it must be almost as hard for its owner to keep what he had won, since the forest persistently crept back again.

"Suppose you left this place alone for a couple of years?" he asked, stopping to whet his dinted scythe.

"You wouldn't know it again," Harry answered with a smile. "It would be a waste of willows, with young firs growing up between them. You couldn't tell it from the bush, only that the trees all round would be higher."

Frank dropped his scythe blade and leaned upon the haft. He had been mowing since sunrise, and the shadows were now rapidly lengthening. His back ached and his hands were sore, and he found it a relief to stand still a moment and look about him. On one side of the clearing the slanting sunrays struck deep into the forest, forcing up great columnar trunks out of the shadow. On the other, the fretted pinnacles of the firs cut sharp against the sky, and between stretched long swathes of fallen timothy and fern already turning yellow. Not far away, Mr.

Oliver, sitting in the mower's saddle, was guiding his team along the edge of the gra.s.s which fell beneath the rasping knife, and the clink and rattle of the machine rang sharply through the still, evening air.

Frank, stripped to blue s.h.i.+rt and trousers, found everything his eyes rested on pleasant, and he felt that, after all, he had done wisely when he left the cities.

Then he noticed Jake, who had been to the settlement, crossing the clearing with some letters in his hand. He gave them to Mr. Oliver, who pulled his team up and sat still for some minutes reading them. After that he stepped out and walked toward the boys.

"You might take the team along, Harry, and put the kettle on the stove,"

he said. "We'll have supper as soon as it's ready."

Harry moved away and Mr. Oliver leaned against a neighboring stump with his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Frank.

"I've a letter from your mother," he said. "She wants to know if I'm satisfied with you." He paused a moment and added with a smile: "That's a question I think I can answer in the affirmative."

"Thank you, sir," said Frank.

"Then," Mr. Oliver continued, "she goes into one or two other matters on which she seems to want my opinion. In the first place, somebody has offered to find you an opening in the office of a Philadelphia business firm. You'll have to decide about it, and it seems to me that the choice is rather a big one. You see, if you stay out here ranching two or three years it will probably spoil you for a business life in the eastern cities."

Frank thought hard for a minute or two. There was no doubt that ranching, when it included clearing land, as it generally seemed to do, was remarkably arduous work. In the case of a man with little money it evidently meant almost incessant toil, for it was only by persistent effort that one could chop and saw up the great trees and grub the stumps out. Still, he was growing fond of it, and, what was more, he was conscious that he was gaining a resolution and muscular vigor that in all probability he would never have acquired in the crowded cities.

Finally he looked up. "I don't think I would care to go back to them now," he said.

Mr. Oliver nodded gravely. "Your mother doesn't seem to think a great deal of this opening, but, on the other hand, you want to bear in mind that if you expect to make money in ranching you must be able to invest it. Raising cattle and fruit for sale is a trade, and a trader gets no more than a certain interest on his money and the wages which an equally capable managing clerk or foreman in the same profession would receive.

There are few respectable businesses in which that interest is a very big one. As the result of this, the trader must be content with a little unless he has the money to earn him more."

"Yes," said Frank somewhat ruefully, "that's clear. I'm afraid I can hardly count on much."

"Your mother mentions that when you are three or four years older she might perhaps be able to raise you about two thousand dollars."

"I suppose that wouldn't go very far, sir?"

"It certainly wouldn't buy you a ranch anywhere near a city, but you might get land enough to make a small one back in the bush. If you bought such a place, you would probably have to go out and work at one of the sawmills or logging camps now and then. It would be several years before you could make much of a living, because it would cost you so much to bring your stock to market."

"Yes," said Frank. "I suppose that is why the land would be cheap?"

Mr. Oliver made a sign of a.s.sent. "It's a difficulty which is, however, usually got over in this country. You hold on and cultivate your land, and by and by the market comes to you. Somebody starts a sawmill or a pulp mill in the locality, or, if there's ore about, a smelter. New trails are cut, settlements spring up, and presently a branch railroad comes along, and the rancher can sell everything he can raise." He broke off for a moment, and smiled rather dryly. "In such a case you may get big prices, but if you average them out over the years of working and waiting, you'll find you have earned them, and that, after all, the stuff you sell is mighty cheap."

Then he handed Frank the letter. "I'd consider it carefully. The mail won't leave for the next three days, and now we'll go along to supper."

Harry had managed to prepare a meal, and when it was over Mr. Oliver turned to the boys.

"A friend of mine in Victoria has written asking me to look at a big piece of bush land he thinks of buying on the west coast of Vancouver Island. He offers to pay my expenses and a fee, and I've an idea that we might run across in the sloop if we get moderately fine weather after the hay is in. I wonder if you would like to go with me?"

There was no doubt that the prospect appealed to them and Mr. Oliver smiled his approval.

"Then," he said, "you had better hustle that hay in. We'll start as soon as we're through with it."

CHAPTER X

A BREEZE OF WIND

The hay was almost in when Frank and Harry stood one evening close under the apex of the roof in the log barn. The crop was heavy and because the barn was small it had been their business during the afternoon to spread and trample down the gra.s.s Jake flung up to them. They had been working at high pressure at one task or another since soon after daylight that morning, and now the confined s.p.a.ce was very hot, though the sun was low. Its slanting rays smote the cedar s.h.i.+ngles above their bent heads, and the dust that rose from the gra.s.s floated about them in a cloud and clung to their dripping faces. Frank felt that the veins on his forehead were swollen when they paused a moment for breath, leaning on their forks.

"I suppose we could get a couple more loads in, and there can't be more than that," said Harry dubiously. "I wouldn't mind a great deal if the next jumperful upset."

Frank devoutly wished it would, for he felt that he must get out into the open air, but a few moments later they heard the plodding oxen's feet and the groaning of the clumsy sled. The sounds ceased abruptly and Jake's voice reached them.

"Tramp it down good!" he called. "You've got to squeeze in this lot and another."

Frank choked down the answer which rose to his lips. But the hay must be got in, and the boys fell with their forks upon the first of the crackling gra.s.s Jake flung up to them. There seemed to be more dust in it than usual, and before the jumper was half unloaded they were panting heavily. When at last the oxen hauled the sled away they stood doubled up knee-deep in the hay with their backs close against the roof.

"I can't see how we're to make room for the last lot," Harry gasped.

"Still, I guess it has to be done."

They set to work again, packing the hay into corners and stamping it down, and his occupation reminded Frank of what he had heard about mining in a thin seam of coal. It seemed hotter than ever, the dust was choking, and at every incautious move he b.u.mped his head or shoulders against the beams. The last sled arrived before they were ready for it, and they crawled about half buried, dragging the gra.s.s here and there with their hands and ramming it with their feet and knees into any odd s.p.a.ces left. At length the work was finished, and wriggling toward the opening in the wall, Harry caught at the edge of it and finding a foothold on a log beneath boldly leaped down. Frank was, however, less fortunate when he followed his companion, for some of the hay slipped away beneath him, and, without the least intention of leaving the barn in that undignified fas.h.i.+on, he suddenly shot out through the hole. He felt the air rush past him, and then, somewhat to his astonishment, found himself on the ground, none the worse except for the jar of the fall.