CHAPTER II. TOO MUCH MISERY.
“Ed, I’m through!” Ranger Cushman tossed his hat onto the pine table where Pat O’Neill had whistled softly over the making of his maps, and where he whistled no more now that the job was beautifully finished. O’Neill was now waiting around the office with an expectant, eager look in his eyes which Murray had studiously ignored while he pondered the problem of keeping the happy Irishman busy.
“Huh! What’s the trouble now? Cushman, I want you to meet Pat O’Neill; been making maps; part of the office force now. Well, what’s wrong with the Stillwater District this time?”
“Ain’t this time, Ed. It’s all the time, and I’m darned good and tired of it. Man was not born to stand the grief I’ve stood with them wild cats. I’m goin’ back to the peaceful life of roughin’ broncs for a livin’. Why, them coyotes over on the Stillwater are so poison mean they won’t even speak to each other, except when they call a convention to devise ways and means of dealin’ me misery, and old Boyce is chairman of the committee.
“They’ve cut the wires on my pasture fence every night for a month, so every time I want a horse I got to wrangle him afoot. They steal my grub. I ride day an’ night, hazin’ cattle off the reserve, and they drive ’em on faster than I can drive ’em off. Why, even the sheepmen are gettin’ gay! Found two bands of sheep on the reserve, last week, over Trout Creek way. Killed a few sheep and took a shot at the herder, but that won’t stop ’em. They’ll keep a-comin’, now they’ve started.
“Another thing: Them darn timber pirates on Blind Bridger Creek are cuttin’ everything they come to, regardless. Ed, it’d take a hull regiment of rangers with a Gatlin’ gun apiece to keep that country straight! Why, damn it, some of the cowmen even went so far as to hint I was in on the rustlin’ that’s goin’ on over there. If there’s any brand of cussedness they ain’t been up to, they’ll think it up while I’m gone. You can save your breath, Ed. This time you can’t talk me into goin’ back. I’m through! Ab-so-lutely, eternally through!”
“Huh! Guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Cushman. This makes the third time you’ve come in here bellerin’ that you’ve quit the Stillwater.” He whirled his chair around and glared hard at Pat O’Neill, who was making a map case of his own invention. “Now, what’re you lickin’ your chops for, like a dog watchin’ a Christmas dinner? Think there’s a turkey leg comin’ to you outa this?”
“Oh, doctor, but it listens sweet to my fightin’ Irish ears, Mr. Murray!” Pat O’Neill retorted, with the faintest hint of a brogue in his voice.
“Huh! Think I’d give you the best ranger station in the Northwest? Good, three-room log house, good barn, plenty of corrals, thirty acres of alfalfa under ditch and over two hundred acres of good pasture land fenced with a four-wire fence——”
“Cut in two or three places every night,” Ranger Cushman dourly interjected.
“Well, yes, cut occasionally, but a fine pasture for all that. Most important district in the Absarokee Division; settled clear up to the base of the mountains with nesters, cow outfits, sheep ranches, all dead set against the forest service——”
“Puttin’ it mild!” again from Ranger Cushman.
“Well, I admit they’re prejudiced some. Think I’d give that district to a devil-may-care Irishman just because he happened to know how to make up a batch of maps? Huh! What d’you expect me to do, O’Neill? Give you the best and biggest—also the meanest and fightin’est—district I’ve got in my division?”
For answer, Patrick O’Neill with the West Point figure and mien facetiously pantomimed his emotions in a manner that sent the blond secretary into shoulder-heaving convulsions of mirth. That is, he tilted his head to one side, licked his tongue out over one corner of his mouth and waggled a hand behind him like a tail.
Ranger Cushman gave a great snort of laughter. Ed Murray roared and lifted a boot toward the impudent mimic.
“Sick ’em!” he chuckled. “Dog-gone yuh! I was going to send you over to Stillwater to help Cushman whip that district into shape, but now you’ll have to tackle it alone.” He eyed O’Neill thoughtfully, his face gradually settling to a sober look. “I dunno about it, though. Can you ride?”
“Yes, sir.” O’Neill smelled serious business in the air and quit his foolery.
“Huh! That’s what you said when I asked you if you could make maps, but—this is out West, remember. By riding, I mean—well, riding.”
“They ride down in the Black Mesa country, sir.” O’Neill paused, with the twinkle in his eyes. “I mean—they ride.”
“Black Mesa—yeah, that’s right, you’re from that country. Wel-l—you’ll be on your own, so to speak, once you get up there. You heard what Ranger Cushman said about it. On the square, do you think you can handle it?”
“I’d like to try it, Mr. Murray.”
Murray cocked a suspicious eye at him, probably wondering just what lay back of that sudden modesty—coupled with the Irish tone and the twinkle. He glanced at Cushman, caught the pitying smile on his saturnine face and swung back to the desk, perhaps to hide a grin.
“All right, O’Neill, you’ll take over the Stillwater District. You will have charge of the grazing permits and the timber sales, of course. You will find that the stockmen are inclined to resent the grazing fee of thirty-five cents a head for their stock, and if it is possible I should like to see a better feeling between the ranchers and the forest service. The service is really a protection to the stockmen, but as yet they look upon us as oppressors who delight in interfering with their inalienable rights. Boyce, of the Bar B Ranch—which is nearest the Stillwater station—is apparently the bitterest enemy we have.”
“He’s a devil!” growled Cushman.
“He came from Boston, but that don’t make him any the less a cowman. Do the best you can with him and all the rest, and I’ll back you up as far as Washington will let me.”
“That won’t mean a thing to yuh,” Ranger Cushman told O’Neill, with the emphasis born of his late tribulations. “This absent treatment for protection don’t go; not when you’ve got to fight them wild cats over on the Stillwater. I had Washington and Ed Murray to back me up, too—but my fences was cut just the same, I noticed!”
“All in the day’s work!” O’Neill laughed, happy over the prospect. “I learned to mend reserve fences down on the Black Mesa. They cut them there, too—for a while.”
“Meanin’, I reckon, that you tamed ’em down. But I notice you changed your range just the same—and I’m changin’ mine. I ain’t goin’ to Black Mesa, either.”