“I reckon you’re a new man who has just been put into office,” said he, as soon as he could speak. “If you were an old hand at the business you would know that it would take pretty considerable of a posse to arrest any man in this outfit. I wouldn’t try it if I were sheriff.”
“Well, you have heard my warning,” said Mr. Walker, “and the blame for whatever happens will be on your own head. Nearly all the farmers in the county have assembled to resist your advance, and they sent me out here to tell you that you have come far enough. Now, will you turn back or not?”
“I aint got much patience with a man who has two good eyes in his head to keep on asking such a question as that. Of course we’ll not turn back! We can’t!”
“Then we shall drive you back,” said Mr. Walker. “That’s all there is about it. Because the drought has ruined your business you need not think we are going to let you ruin ours.”
The farmer rode away, shaking his head and muttering to himself, and paying no sort of attention to the sheriff, who spurred to his side and tried to reason with him. After a while the sheriff came back to expostulate with the leader of the cattlemen; but the latter waved him aside.
“I don’t blame you, Mr. Officer,” said he. “You have done nothing but duty in warning us not to trespass on them farmers’ grounds, but you see how we are fixed, don’t you? We can’t stop where we are. All the cowboys in Texas could not turn the critters back now that they have got a sniff of the water that is flashing along sparkling and cold behind them willows, and what is there left for us but to go on? All we ask of you and your posse is to keep out of the way. We cattlemen know how to take care of ourselves.”
“But don’t you see that I can’t keep out of your way?” demanded the sheriff. “As an officer it is my duty to oppose your further progress!”
“Then it will be my duty to ride over you rough-shod,” said the cattleman cheerfully. “I don’t want to do that, for you seem to be a good sort, even if you are an officer. If you will be governed by the advice of one who knows more about this country and the men who live in it than you are ever likely to learn, you will ride down to the willows and tell them farmers to fall back and give our perishing stock a chance at the water. If they will listen to you there will be no trouble. Me and my friends will camp nigh the stream to-night, hold a council of war in the morning, and like as not we’ll come to some sort of an understanding. But I can’t spend any more time with you. If you or the farmers are going to force a fight upon us, we must get ready for it.”
So saying Mr. Chisholm waved his hand to the officer and rode away, leaving us three boys from the North, who had ridden up close to hear this consultation and the threats it contained, in a state of dreadful uncertainty. We had come from our homes, somewhere near Denver, which at that time was little more than a sprinkling of miner cabins, with no such thoughts as this in our minds, and here we were right in the midst of it—civil war! We had come down there to invest a few hundred dollars in cattle. We thought we could make something by it. By keeping far to the eastward, along the banks of the Red River, we had got beyond reach of the Comanche and Kiowas and other Indians who felt inclined to steal everything we had, and then by turning rapidly to the west had found ourselves right among the cattlemen almost before we knew it.
You remember that there were three of us boys—Elam Storm, now no longer moody and reticent, but hail fellow well met with everybody, for we had found the nugget of which he had been in search for so many years; Tom Mason, who went by the name of “Lucky Tom”; and myself, Carlos Burton, upon whom devolves the duty of writing this story. We had seen some adventures during our long ride, some that I would gladly like a chance to relate; but they differed so widely from the scenes we passed through among those cattlemen that I am glad to pass them by to tell this story of “Tom Mason’s luck.” Tom was a lucky fellow, that’s a fact, and for a runaway boy he had a good deal of pluck. I don’t know that he thought of making any money at the time he was working with us, but at the same time he took the right way to get it. You know he was trying to scrape together five thousand dollars, the amount he stole from his uncle—a large sum for a boy of his age to make; but he had that amount and more too when he went home. I will tell all about it when I get to it.