CHAPTER IV. ODDS AGAINST HIM.
Cottonwoods and quaking aspens along the creeks flaunted leaves of golden yellow to prove that fall had come, and Ranger O’Neill whistled a love tune under his breath as he rode down to Bad Cañon post office for his mail. Strange as it may seem, he was at peace with his neighbors—or so he would have told you, with a twinkle in his eye which might mean more than he would care to explain.
No mother of the Stillwater has yet been overheard in lauding the saintliness of Patrick O’Neill, it is true. But neither had he skinned his knuckles to enforce the rules and regulations of the forest service, and Isabelle Boyce thought well of his efforts and was still quite willing to ride out on a Thursday afternoon and give him encouragement and advice.
“But I’ll have a matter or two to tell her next Thursday, I’m thinking,” he broke off his whistling to mutter, speaking to his horse for want of other companionship, as is the way of men who live much alone. “I’ve the small triumph of being asked to sit down with the boss of the Seven L to dinner when I rode up last Saturday to his house. The first ranger who ever did that, I’m sure. It’s something I can boast of to Queen Isabelle.
“Also I held my temper in the matter of the sheep I found trespassing on the Trout Creek Range, and if I told the owner I’d hold the band for damages next time he drove them on, and charge him a full season’s grazing fee to boot, I did it politely and only once called him spawn of the devil and let it go at that.
“Then there’s the timber sale on Blind Bridger Creek—I handled that thief of a Blanding like a diplomat, which same I shall point out to Queen Isabelle. He’d broken his contract with deliberate intent, piling the logs this way and that in the yard, instead of all tops in one direction, according to agreement. I could have quarreled with the man and made a great talk and stir, but I did not. I calmly—and I shall describe how calmly it was done!—I very calmly scaled butts and tops as they came, and let Blanding splutter at the loss and be damned to him. He’ll yard his logs according to contract next time, I’m thinking!
“Pat, me lad, you’ve much to be proud of, and I shall tell her so. I shall likewise point out the fact that I’m aware her respected father, and others as well, are running far more cattle on the forest than their permits call for, but that I am shutting one eye to that, since the season is nearly over anyway, and I’ve no mind to fight the entire Stillwater at this time. But when next the permits are issued, there’ll be no violations without the penalty attached. And for these good deeds perhaps the queen will reward me by consenting to a little fishing trip next Thursday!”
Whereupon Patrick O’Neill resumed his whispered whistling of the love tune he liked best, and rode contentedly into the tiny settlement that was called Bad Cañon post office to distinguish it from the cañon itself, and into an event which spoiled whatever vanity he may have indulged in because of his saintliness.
A small group of rangemen sat dangling spurred heels from the narrow platform in front of the store, smoking and gossiping of this thing and that, when Patrick O’Neill rode jauntily up to the hitch rail and dismounted, still whistling the love tune under his breath. From the tail of his eye he saw them jerk thumbs in his direction, exchange a muttered sentence or two and laugh. Young Patrick O’Neill did not like that—being Irish; but being a saint for the moment as well, he let it pass.
As he approached the store, he nodded casually toward a man or two whom he disliked the least, and would have walked inside quite inoffensively had not Gus Peterson, the owner of the Box S brand, reached out a hairy paw and caught O’Neill by the arm.
“Aw, don’t be in such a damn hurry!” he arrogantly commanded. “I’d like to know what you let them sheep do with my grass. I think you’re one hell of a ranger! You can’t tell cows from sheeps! I paid good money for that grass. And I don’t stand for no damn ranger lettin’ sheep come and eat my grass!”
“Take your dirty claw off me!” snapped the saintly Patrick O’Neill, as he threw off Peterson’s hand. “No sheep are on your grazing ground, and you know it. And I think,” he added meaningly, “if you’d count your cattle, you’d find you were getting your money’s worth of grass, all right!”
“Yes, my cows ate grass before you come here an’, by damn, they eat grass when you go! Maybe you charge money for breathin’ air! Maybe——”
“And if I did, I’d collect the same, remember that! I’m running this proposition, my fine bully, as you’ll find out if you stick around a while. You’re going to pay for the grass your cows eat on the national forest—and you’ll pay for the cows on the range, mind you! As for the sheep—— Well, I’m running that end of it, too.”
“Yes, you’ll be runnin’ out of this country!” Peterson bellowed truculently, his red face thrust close to the blazing eyes of Ranger O’Neill. “We don’t need no damn forest ranger in here as a boss. We can run our cows without help from the government, and we’ll run you out just like we ran out the other damn rangers!”
“And when,” grated Patrick O’Neill, no longer wishing to be counted a saint, “do you expect to start running me out?”
“I’ll start now!” bawled Peterson, as he dived forward with outstretched arms for the grappling hold which was his pet way of crushing an enemy.
Patrick O’Neill stepped backward and waited until the huge arms had all but embraced him. Then he lifted his right knee sharply, grabbed Peterson’s head and jerked it down upon that knee. The impact was terrific. The big rancher staggered back with a roar of pain and baffled rage, and as he straightened, he got a frightfully direct blow in his middle and another on the jaw that snapped his head backward. A second blow found the big jaw, and Peterson of the Box S, bully of the Stillwater District, crumpled down in a heap and lay there.
“Git him!” yelled a lanky cow-puncher, one of Boyce’s riders, as Patrick O’Neill knew well. The puncher came in with a sideswipe, two others at his heels.
Patrick O’Neill grinned and gave him the neatest uppercut West Point boxers could teach him. A man at his right tried to trip him, while the Boyce man came in again, and it was right then that the spirit of all the wild, fighting O’Neills came into its own.
Young Patrick—no more a saint—lost a sleeve from his coat, which was likewise split up the back to his collar. He barked a knuckle against a man’s teeth—who thereafter grew a mustache to hide the gap in his grin—and his lip was cut where a flailing fist found him. But, oh, how the fighting spirit of all the Irish O’Neills did glory in the fray!
“Cleaned ’em cleaner than a new shotgun!” the postmaster reported the incident to his wife that night.
Ranger Patrick O’Neill did not whistle a love tune as he rode home with his mail, but that was chiefly because of his swollen lip, for the fighting spirit of the O’Neills once aroused was hard to down.
“Pat, me lad, I think you’d better not broach the subject of a fishing trip, next Thursday,” he reflected, as he climbed the steep trail up along the west bank of Limestone Creek. “I think you’ll be better considerin’ how you’re to convince Queen Isabelle that you’re a man of peace.” And then he sighed, and grinned as well as his stiff and puffy lip would permit. “But oh, doctor! It sure was one lovely scrimmage while it lasted, and it did the heart of me good to hear them howl that they’d had enough!” he murmured unrepentantly, and flexed his sore muscles in pleasant retrospection.
With the lip still swollen, and standing askew in a sardonic smile of irony which his twinkling eyes belied, Patrick O’Neill rode with some secret trepidation next Thursday to make his weekly report to the girl whom he had now called “Queen Isabelle” to her face.
She listened in silence to his cheerful account of the manner in which he had taught Blanding a lesson in good pine timber, and when he had stressed his mild demeanor as much as he dared, she looked at him coldly and said:
“I’ve heard another story of how you, representing the government, cheated Mr. Blanding out of more than twenty-five thousand feet of timber by scaling the butts of his logs instead of the tops. According to your version, he brought the loss on himself, so I’ll say nothing about that—except that as a measure of winning the Stillwater to friendship with the forest service, you seem to have made haste backward. The timber men are all up in arms over what they call a government steal, and Blanding says he is going to write to Washington and have you removed. We can’t very well call that a gain in friendly confidence, but I suppose it will straighten out in time. What else, Mr. Ranger?”
Patrick O’Neill thereupon told her of the trespassing sheep and how he had dealt with the owner.
“That’s better,” she praised him, “though if I know anything about old Jensen, you aren’t through with him yet by any means. You’ll have to go carefully there, if you want to avoid trouble. Is that all?” And she looked very meaningly at the swollen lip. “You’ve hurt yourself, I see. Did you fall off your horse, Mr. O’Neill?”
“I did not,” Pat returned, in a distressed tone. “A Bar B man—the long-legged one you call ‘Little Bill’—flung out a hand in his sleep, as it were, and it chanced to graze my lip. It’s no more than a scratch, for the man was unconscious—or nearly so—when he made the gesture. I’m sure he never meant to touch me there, Queen Isabelle. And now I have to tell you that I had dinner at the Seven L Ranch last Saturday——”
“Little Bill didn’t mean to strike you in the mouth, I know,” said Isabelle, disregarding the change of subject. “What he meant to do—what he still means to do, in fact, is to beat your blinkety-blink, do-re-mi-sol-dough brains out and spread them thinly over the entire Stillwater district. Or, at least, that is what I heard him saying as I rode past the bunk house last evening. I suppose he was dreaming while he slept!”
“I think he must have been, Queen Isabelle, and others along with him.”
“I suppose he also dreamed that you swaggered up to him and others at the post office, and boasted that you would show them who was running this country, thereupon attacking them with your loaded quirt.”
Patrick O’Neill stared fixedly into her face, his own a bit pale under his tan. He swung his horse short around in the trail then and started back the way they had come.
“Where away, Mr. Bad Man?” Isabelle’s voice held a note of panic under the raillery.
Ranger O’Neill held his horse to a walk while he looked back at her. “I was going to bring Little Bill to you and hear him admit how the tongue of him lied,” he said grimly. “Or you may come with me, if it pleases you better than to wait.” He looked at her, eyes demanding an answer.
Isabelle laughed as she rode up to him. “I was only teasing you, Mr. Ranger Man,” she said pacifically, perhaps because she understood the look she saw in his eyes. “The postmaster’s wife told me all about it. She saw the whole thing through the window, and heard what was said. I can’t blame you for fighting them, and since you did fight, I’m glad you whipped the bunch. Do please get down off your high horse, you man of peace, and let’s talk seriously. I don’t blame you for fighting—they must learn to respect you, I suppose, before they will ever come to like you, and if you had backed down from Peterson, every cowboy in the country would despise you for it. Not one of them would ever have taken you seriously after that, or given you anything but contempt.
“Little Bill happens to be a great crony of Peterson’s outfit, though why he doesn’t work for the Box S instead of for father I never could tell you. He isn’t so awfully popular with our boys. Most of our riders are pretty good fellows, as you would discover for yourself if there wasn’t this grudge against the forest reserve which keeps you seeing their most disagreeable traits.
“One thing I wanted to tell you, ranger man, is that Peterson and his bunch are going to ‘get’ you, on account of that fight. I heard Little Bill telling the boys so. He wanted them to go in on the scheme, but they wouldn’t do it: or, at least, that’s what I understood from what I overheard.”
“I take it your father would not object to the plan, at any rate.” Patrick O’Neill was not smiling now.
“Father? He never would have anything to do with it! I—I happen to know, ranger, that he has a scheme of his own for getting rid of you.”
“Yes? And if I might ask——”
“I shouldn’t tell you, because it isn’t going to work, anyway. He merely wrote to his brother-in-law—who is my uncle, of course—in Washington, asking him to see that you are removed from this district as your conduct is most obnoxious. But that doesn’t mean anything at all, for I wrote in the very next mail to my uncle, and told him that father is merely prejudiced against the forest service in general, and that—that you are the most competent ranger we have ever had here. I said he must not pay any attention to father. He won’t, either. I lived with Uncle John and Aunt Martha while I was in school, and they know just how cranky and unreasonable father can be. So that’s all right. But Peterson is a different proposition. From what Little Bill said——”
“I think,” said Ranger O’Neill, turning to his horse, “I had better go and have a little talk with our friend Peterson.”
“You will not!” Isabelle caught him by the arm. “That’s exactly what you must not do! I only told you so that you would be on your guard and refuse to be drawn into any argument, as you were at Bad Cañon the other day. Can’t you see? If you know how they feel, you can avoid coming into contact with them until they forget about it. It’s only because they were licked, and Peterson hates that worse than anything else.”
“And would you have me stick close to my station, then?” O’Neill’s eyes held a sparkle it was as well Isabelle did not see. “And what then, if they come after me there?”
“That,” cried Isabelle, “is beside the point! They would never dare attack you at the station. What I think they will do is probably start another quarrel with you, and when you are silly enough to fight, they mean to—to shoot you, for all I know! Little Bill said: ‘We’re goin’ to get him, next time, and get him good! And you’ve got to keep out, I tell you. All this fighting is exactly what they want.’
“And they’ll get what they’re wantin’ or my name is not Patrick O’Neill! Leave go my arm, Queen Isabelle, and let me carry the war to the enemy’s camp—for that’s what they taught me at West Point, and it’s one thing they taught that I thoroughly approve!”
“Oh,” wailed Isabelle, while tears of anger stood in her eyes, “you’re such a blithering fool! All you Irish can think of is fighting! You’re worse than Cushman or Waller or any of the other shoot-’em-up rangers that had to leave or get killed. You promised me you’d win them to you with kindness and courtesy, and if you break that promise, I hope they break your head!”
“And thank you for that same, Miss Boyce,” said Patrick O’Neill, with icy politeness, as he sprang to the saddle. “It’s a fine example of kindness and courtesy you’re setting me now—as like your father as one white bean is like another! So I’ll pass it along to Peterson and Little Bill, and crack their heads as you so sweetly wish them to do by me!”
He lifted his hat from his thick brown hair and gave her a courtly bow that left her furiously stamping her foot and gritting her teeth at him as he galloped away, headed north to the Box S Range that lay along Bad Cañon Creek, between Lodgepole Basin and Trout Creek where the sheep had entered. That the trail led homeward as well never once occurred to Isabelle, who saw him going foolhardily to place his head in the jaws of the lion that roared for his bones to crunch; in other words, to fight on their own ground Peterson and his crowd that had boasted how they would get him.
“She’ll do me the favor to be thinking of me now,” said Patrick O’Neill to himself, though he never once looked back.