THE T UP AND DOWN
The next day Cal Smith said that a joke was all very well, but twenty-five miles was far enough to carry it, and he staked Whitey to a horse to make the rest of the trip with, Whitey to return the horse on his way back. When they reached Zumbro Creek it hadn't gone down a bit, except to go down stream, and it was doing that like the dickens. It certainly was a very bad-tempered-looking creek, but Cal Smith wasn't afraid of it.
He had brought along all his sons, and a couple of ranch hands, and instructed them to stand by with ropes, while he took Whitey about a quarter of a mile up the creek, and the two of them plunged in. Cal Smith was not going to let any kid try to swim a horse across that creek by himself.
It was quite a sight to see all those Smith boys standing in a line on the bank. With the biggest one, Abe, at one end, and the smallest one, Cal, at the other, and the rest of them standing according to their sizes, they looked like a flight of steps. And little Cal was too small to be of any use, but he didn't know that, and some one had given him the end of a lariat to hold, and he clutched it, and looked as anxious and important as any one.
All went well with Cal Smith and Whitey until they got to about the middle of the creek, and then, zowie! the full force of the current hit them, and they went down the stream as though they were a couple of feathers. But the little range ponies were just as game as Cal Smith, and they kept fighting that stream as though they were humans, and kept edging over and edging over until they finally got a footing and scrambled out on the other bank, a full quarter of a mile below the ford. So Zumbro Creek had beat them a whole half-mile down stream, on that trip across.
"So long, son," said Cal Smith. "You've only got about twelve miles to go to reach the T Up and Down, and you'd better stay there a couple of days before you start back, to give this creek a chance to learn how to behave itself."
Then Cal Smith rode back a half-mile up the stream to make the return trip, and Whitey watched, and the flight of steps of Smith boys watched. And when Cal landed safely, and Whitey waved at them all from a distance, as he rode away, he felt, as I think you will feel, that it was no wonder Western men had the reputation of being big-hearted, when a man like Cal Smith would take all that trouble for a boy he never had seen before.
The T Up and Down was a rather small ranch, boasting not over a thousand head of cattle, but its manager, Dan Brayton, proved to be a very large man. That is, he was large around, for he was not tall. He must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and when Whitey first saw him, he at once wondered how he ever got on a horse, and then Whitey reflected that it sure would take a mighty strong horse to buck with Dan on it.
When Whitey arrived, Dan was in what he called his office, a small room all fitted up with saddles and bridles, and boots and spurs, and belts and guns, and—oh, yes; there was a little desk almost hidden in the litter, and Dan Brayton was seated at it, his face all wrinkled in the effort to solve some figures written on a piece of paper.
Dan received Whitey cordially, but seemed surprised to hear that he was the bearer of an important letter from Bill Jordan. He held the letter in his hand and looked at it critically, as people do who are not in the habit of receiving many letters, and he asked:
"How is Silent?"
"Silent?" inquired the puzzled Whitey.
"Sure, Silent," replied Dan. "That's what we allus called Bill Jordan back in Wyomin'."
"Why, he talks all the time," said Whitey.
"That's th' reason we called him Silent," Dan answered, chuckling.
Whitey did not know that Bill Jordan hated this nickname, and had done his best to leave it behind when he moved from Wyoming, and that when he came to Montana he only got rid of it by licking several cowpunchers who tried to tack it onto him there. But he answered that Bill was very well. When Dan had looked the letter up and down, and behind and before, and over and back, he finally opened it and read it.
But before he had finished it, he was attacked by a violent fit of coughing and choking, and became almost purple in the face. Whitey feared that he might be about to have a fit of apoplexy, which he had heard that stout people are subject to, but Dan gasped out something about going to get a drink, and hurried from the room, and was gone a long time.
Even then Whitey did not suspect anything. He was so pleased with the journey—barring the twenty-five-mile walk—and with the strange experiences he was having, that his mind had no room in which to harbor suspicious thoughts of Bill Jordan. When Dan returned, he seemed better, though his face was a trifle red. He apologized to Whitey, saying that he was subject to such "spells." Then he inquired how Whitey got along on his trip to the T Up and Down.
Whitey described his journey, and Dan seemed much concerned about Whitey's having had to walk the twenty-five miles, and couldn't understand how Bill Jordan had made the mistake of supposing that Cal Smith's ranch was on the stage road. And when Whitey told him that the driver thought Bill was playing a joke on him, Dan shook his head solemnly, and seemed almost about to have another spell, and allowed that Bill suttinly wouldn't play no joke o' that kind.
Whitey had thought that most fat people were jolly, and was surprised to find Dan Brayton so serious. But he thought maybe it was the letter that made him so, for when he looked at it, he wrinkled up his forehead, and coughed behind his hand, and seemed to be considering it very weightily. At last he spoke.
"This here letter's very important," Dan said, "an' I don't wonder Bill wouldn't trust none o' them fool punchers with it. An' 'course, Bill didn't c'nfide its insides t' you, knowin' how important your father takes all them important matters o' his."
Whitey wondered if Dan didn't know any other long word besides "important," but he said nothing, while Dan thought and thought about the letter, and finally spoke again.
"I bin thinkin'," he said, "that I'll have t' c'nsider this here matter 't some length, 'fore decidin' on no course o' action. You don't mind stayin' overnight, do you?"
Whitey replied that it had been his intention to remain at the T Up and Down for a day or two, if it was agreeable to Dan, so that matter was settled.
"Th' ain't much t' see 'round here, th' country bein' kind o' flat an' uninterestin', an' I reck'n, bein' rather tired, you wouldn't mind just settin' here an' readin', while I go an' c'nsult with my foreman," Dan said, and went away and presently returned with a big thick book, which was very heavy, and gave it to Whitey. "This here's my fav'rut book," Dan continued, "an' is very absorbin'. Set in my chair there, an' read y'self t' death, 'f you feel like it," and Dan took himself off.
So Whitey sat in Dan's chair, which happened to be the only chair in the room, and was extremely uncomfortable, being all sagged down on one side, on account of Dan's weight. The book proved to be a several-years-old copy of the Congressional Record, containing the speeches made before Congress at that time, and in addition to being heavy, it was more than dull. Whitey couldn't understand how Dan found it "absorbin'." Dan certainly must be a serious-minded person, despite his fat. And yet, from over near the bunk house, Whitey heard loud laughter coming from several men. He reflected hopefully that perhaps the hands were not so solemn as Dan Brayton.
But this hope was ill-founded, for later, when Dan took Whitey to the bunk house, he found all the punchers who were there were reading serious-looking books. Whitey supposed that "like master, like man," they must be taking after Dan Brayton. He did not know that some of those cowboys couldn't read at all, and if he had looked close enough he might have seen that some of those who could read were holding their books upside down.
Whitey's stay at the T Up and Down turned out to be as dull as the Congressional Record. There was an old-fashioned melodeon in the living-room of the ranch house, and it was very much out of tune. One of the punchers could play, and he played, and the others sang hymns, and sang them very badly, and when they had finished the hymns, they started on doleful songs like "The Cowboy's Lament," and "Bury Me On the Lone Perare-e-e."
These seemed to be great favorites with the punchers, and Whitey wondered at it. They were getting less popular with him every minute. Afterwards he learned what may have made them please the men; that almost all the songs sung on the ranges are written by the cowboys themselves, and they may be dismal because of being composed during lonely night rides.
One puncher called "Little" Thompson, who was high and narrow in build—shaped something like a lath, with a face something like an undertaker's—sang at length. First a doleful ditty that went like this:
"Oh! my name it is J.W. Wright, I came from Tennessee.
There was a killin' in th' mountains, th' sheriff got his, ye see.
I left my wife an' babies, them kids I loved so well,
An' I'll find a grave on th' lone prairee,
Oh! pardners, ain't it hell?"
After this had dragged out its weary length he got an encore, and responded with this gem:
"We came up over th' long trail,
Three thousand cattle strong.
Ned Saunders needed a hair cut,
Fer his hair was too darned long.
"Oh, th' night was dark an' stormee,
An' the Injuns round did yell,
So we herded into a canyon,
An' th' sons-o'-guns come like hell.
"Ned lost his hair, he didn't care,
Fer he had lots t' spare,
Oh, te-tumity tum-tum,"—and so on.
There were at least a hundred verses of this last, each verse more deadly dull than the one before, and Little was very conscientious; he didn't slight any of them. Long before he was through, Whitey envied the fate of Ned Saunders. But the evening was only mortal, it had to end, and at last it did.
Whitey must have shown signs of wear, for as they parted to go to bed, Dan Brayton said to him, "Cheer up, it may rain to-morrow," and it did!
Now, if there was anything more depressing than the T Up and Down when the weather was fine, it was that same ranch when it rained. How Whitey got through that awful day he never really knew. The most cheerful thing that happened was during dinner, when Dan Brayton told a long yarn about a brother of his, who had small-pox and fleas at one and the same time, and, as Dan said, "was more t' be pitied than scorned." And this might have been a joke, though no one laughed. But at last evening came with another programme of dirges, then night with its blessed sleep.