A FOOL'S ERRAND
When Whitey arrived at the Star Circle Ranch, at about ten o'clock in the morning, he was still a very tired boy. The Star Circle was a much larger ranch than the T Up and Down, with a much smaller manager, for Walt Lampson, who was also part owner of the place, was not much taller than Whitey, and he was serious-looking, too—didn't look at all like Cal Brayton.
After Whitey had delivered his letter to Walt Lampson and had eaten some breakfast, which the cook had rustled for him, he began to tell Walt of his adventures in coming from the T Up and Down, and he was surprised when Walt roared with laughter. This attracted some of the cowpunchers, and they roared, too. Whitey had to repeat the part about Felix going home. It seemed strange to Whitey that Cal Brayton who looked so merry should be so solemn, and Walt Lampson who looked so solemn should be so merry.
After sleeping for about twelve hours at a stretch for three nights Whitey might be said to be a trifle rested and able to look around and take an interest in his surroundings. And he began to discover things about the character of the men on the Star Circle Ranch. They were given to loud laughter, but he noticed that most of this laughter was at the misfortunes of others. And they were always playing jokes on one another and cutting up tricks; but beneath this playfulness there seemed to be a sort of fierceness—something like the ferocity that lurks beneath the play of a tiger.
He had plenty of time for these reflections and feelings, as Walt Lampson did not seem to be in a hurry about attending to Mr. Sherwood's business, and Whitey caught Walt and the men looking at him in a peculiar way, when they thought he was not noticing them. On the third day after his arrival—an unpleasant, lowering day, for that time of the year, with a cold wind—Walt spoke thus to Whitey:
"I'm havin' some stock cut out, t'day, t' send to your dad. How'd ye like t' go out on th' range an' take a look at it?"
"Is that the business Bill sent me on?" asked Whitey.
"Partly," Walt answered. "What d'ye say? You might as well do that as loaf around here."
"I'll go," said Whitey.
"All right. You c'n go with Hank Dawes. He's startin' pretty soon, an' he'll get you a hoss."
It was some relief to Whitey to be galloping over the prairie, though Hank Dawes was not the man he would have chosen as a companion. Hank's cruelty to his horse turned Whitey against him. Whitey had seen many animals treated unfeelingly, but he never could understand how a man could enjoy torturing one, as Hank seemed to. Finally, after an outburst on Hank's part that included quirting and spurring and swearing, Whitey could hold in no longer.
"If you'd treat your horse better he'd behave better," he said angrily. "You ought to know that."
For a moment Hank looked blankly at Whitey, then burst out laughing. He could not understand any one's having consideration for a horse, and the boy's anger struck him as being funny. Whitey turned from him in disgust, baffled by such a lack of understanding and feeling.
The writer knows many men in the West, and, having been born and raised there, naturally thinks Westerners the finest men in the world. But for him to deny that there are good and bad among them would be idle. As idle to deny that some of them were cruel to their horses. Among these the Indians and Mexicans bear the worst reputations with those who are supposed to know. But, for the sake of truth, the author wishes to say that he found the Indians uniformly kind to their horses. And as for the Mexicans, not only were they always kind and considerate to their mounts, but they were among the greatest horsemen in the world.
Whitey and Hank rode for a time in a silence broken only by Hank's occasional profane mutterings at his patient horse, then Whitey descried two objects moving toward him from the west. At first he mistook them for two horsemen, then discovered that one horse was being led, then that the rider was Injun, and the led horse was Monty. With a whoop of astonishment and joy Whitey galloped toward them.
"Hello, Injun, what's all this?" yelled Whitey when within speaking distance, so glad that he was almost ready to embrace his friend.
Injun, as usual, showed no surprise, but there was a gleam of welcome in his eye. "Monty, him stolen," he said. "Me find him."
Whitey wormed Injun's story from him, in jerky sentences, while Hank Dawes rode up and looked on, and listened indifferently. It seemed that two days before, at the Bar O Ranch Monty had "turned up missing." Injun, who knew Monty's hoofprints as one friend would know the color of another's eyes, had taken it upon himself to follow them. They had led him a long chase, ending at a night camp, many miles west of the spot where he and Whitey met.
Injun had tied his pony some distance from the camp. This that he might not whinney a greeting to Monty. Then Injun had crept up on the camper-thief, and waited patiently until "him snore heap." Then Injun had quietly extracted Monty from that camp, and silently faded away into the night. He was now on his way to the Bar O.
"Didn't you see who the thief was?" asked Whitey.
"Him fire out. Me 'fraid make light," said Injun, unknowingly giving a hint of the time he must have visited at the camp.
Monty was showing his joy at meeting Whitey, who was patting the pony's neck.
"This isn't my saddle!" Whitey cried suddenly.
"Him Bill Jordan's saddle," said Injun, grinning. It seemed to appeal to Injun's peculiar sense of humor that the clever Mr. Jordan should have had his saddle stolen.
"Did Bill suspect any one?" inquired Whitey.
"Guess heap, can't tell," Injun replied. "Henry Dorgan, him leave Monday," Injun added darkly, plainly willing to connect the man he disliked with the theft.
Whitey hardly thought that Dorgan would risk a return to the ranch for Monty, though he always had admired the pony. If Dorgan had stolen Monty, it was pleasant to think that he was now wending his way across the plains on foot.
Another idea occurred to Whitey. "Why don't you stay with me, Injun?" he demanded. "Then we can ride back to the Bar O together."
Injun grinned his agreement to the idea, not saying that he had thought of it first. So Whitey transferred his person to Monty, and, leading the Star Circle horse, he and Injun and Hank Dawes continued on their way. And Mr. Dawes was allowed to ride ahead while Whitey told Injun what had befallen him since leaving the Bar O Ranch, and of his present errand.
Injun cast a knowing eye at the sky. "No cut out cows t'day," he said. "Heap storm comin'."
"What's the difference?" Whitey asked. "Maybe we can ride night herd. It'll be great fun."
Riding night herd was not Injun's idea of fun, but he was so glad to be with Whitey again that he made no objection. He seldom made objections, anyway. It occurred to neither of the boys that after Injun's long pursuit of the horse-thief, it would be a hardship for him to ride all that day and possibly that night. And, of course, Injun wasn't hungry. He had not been fool enough to start out on a long chase without providing himself with food.
So the boys rode on. Even had they known into what they were riding it is unlikely that they would have turned back. Had Walt Lampson known of the coming peril he would not have been at the Star Circle, laughingly telling his men of sending Whitey on a wild-goose chase, that would end with his spending a night in the saddle, facing a blinding storm. Lampson and all the men he could summon would have been heavily armed, dashing at full speed toward the threatened herd.
Buck Milton, the range boss, made a better impression on Whitey than any other man he had seen at the Star Circle. He was tall, blond, sinewy. He was thoughtful and serious, and not ill-natured. He looked like a man who could take a joke which he might not understand any too well, and put up a fight in which he would prove a deadly factor. In short, he was a character you would look at twice, and Whitey was surprised to find him in the Star Circle outfit.
Hank Dawes handed Buck a letter, which Whitey took to be instructions from Walt Lampson, and Buck read it, talked to Hank a moment, and when Buck rode over to where Whitey waited with Injun, he was smiling.
"There won't be no cuttin' out t'day," he said. "Too late, for one thing, and for another it's goin' t' storm. You boys like t' stay with th' herd t'night? Be kinda rough."
"Why, yes. We'd like it immensely. It'll be a sort of adventure," Whitey replied.
"Well, some folks might call it that," said Buck. "You might stick along with me." And he and the boys rode off together.
You must know of the old, old enmity that existed between the cowmen and the sheepmen of those early days of the Western ranges. In the neighborhood in which Whitey found himself, this enmity was particularly bitter, for more and more had the sheep been encroaching on the plains that the cattlemen regarded as their own. And the reason for this enmity: once the white-coated flocks had passed over the land it was dead as a feeding-ground for cattle.
So little wonder that the cattlemen thought of the sheep as pests or vermin, and considered their owners as deadly foes, and in turn were regarded as foes by the sheepmen. The cattlemen were in possession of most of the ranges, and possession was nine points of the law in a country in which there was little law, except that of the gun.