Silence reigned in the little thicket after that. Harding listened with all his ears, but could not hear a leaf rustle or a twig snap as Carl moved away from the spot. He waited all of five minutes, and then moved up to take possession of his property. After a little search he found them all there, and with something that sounded like an oath he took them under his arm and made the best of his way back to his lodge.
“I’ve either got to go with them fellows to the Bad Lands, and get whipped when they do, or I must go and surrender myself,” he said to himself. “I know that little snipe could have said something for me if he had chosen to do it; but here I am, with everybody down on me. Blessed if I know what to do.”
“I think he has more cheek than any man I ever saw,” muttered Carl, as he moved cautiously away from his place of concealment. “He makes an attempt to rob father and gets a bullet in him for his pains, and then comes to me with the request that I will say something for him! Mighty clear of it. I would say something that would get him stretched up by the neck, if I could.”
CHAPTER XV.
Five Years Before.
About forty miles distant from Fort Scott, in a quiet valley surrounded on all sides by stately hills, the ranch of Mr. Preston was located. The valley was fifty miles long and half as wide, and the owner had no difficulty in protecting his stock during the winter storms which now and then spread over the valley, accompanied by a driving snow that effectually shut the cowboys off from all contact with the outside world. A river flowed through within a hundred yards or so of the house, and on the wild fowl that frequented its banks during the fall and winter Carl Preston had received his first instruction in wing-shooting. Game of nearly all kinds was abundant, and it was no trouble at all for the ranchmen who wanted a haunch of venison to shoot a deer when they came to the river for water. It was a quiet, happy home, and Carl never would have thought of leaving it had his father been spared to him.
The house was a rambling structure, built of rough boards, dismal-looking enough on the outside, but in the interior it was fitted up as any boy would care to have it. A porch ran the full length of the front of the house, and one day in the month of June Carl Preston sat on it, deeply interested in some work the foreman was doing upon his saddle. Carl was at that time seventeen years of age, and, to quote from the herdsmen, with whom he was an especial favorite, he was “as likely a boy as ever stood up.” But there was one objection to Carl, and that was, he never would study his books. According to Colonel Dodge, he found more excitement in horses and guns than he did in anything else. He tried hard to master a lesson that his father gave him, but just as surely as anything happened outside, he would go out to see what the matter was. Did any of the cattle become alarmed and threaten a stampede, Carl wanted to be sure that the cowboy got ahead of them and kept them from going out at the entrance of the valley onto the prairie; or, if a horseman was selected that morning at breakfast to break in a bronco, Carl would happen on the porch about the time he got ready to begin, and see that the horse did not do the cowboy any damage. At last his father became disheartened, put away the books, and began work on Carl’s education himself. He took him into the field with him every time he went, all the while discoursing upon some subject in which he hoped Carl would be interested, and in this way the boy learned much that he could not have got out of books.
“So you think you won’t be lonely any more after your cousin comes?” said the foreman, stopping to pound down a waxed end with his hammer. “Well, I hope you will like him, but I am afraid you won’t.”
Mr. Preston had left home three days before to go to Standing Rock Agency for the purpose of meeting this cousin, and he had purposely left Carl at home till he could see what manner of boy it was that he was going to meet.
This boy Claude was the only son of Mr. Preston’s brother, who lived in St. Louis. During his father’s lifetime, for Claude was now an orphan, Mr. Preston often had calls for money and assistance, until he began to believe that really his brother did not amount to much. He got him situations, only to have the man throw them up at last. To his brother’s inquiry as to why he had done so he always replied that it was something to which he was not adapted, and begged for something easier. Now the man was dead and Claude was left alone. He wrote to Mr. Preston, and, telling of the death of his father, asked him what he should do.