Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1067
“Thanks. And how to get to Nick Bligh’s ranch?”
Andrew became aware of keen blue eyes fixed upon him.
“You know Nick?”
“Sorry to say I don’t, but I’d like to,” replied Andrew heartily.
“Selling hardware, life insurance, lightning rods — or bootleg whiskey?” queried the old man dryly.
“No. Just trying to sell myself.”
“Job, eh?”
“Yes, I want a job.”
“Who told you to hit Nick Bligh?”
“I happened to hear that he’d lately come to this range with cattle and no cowboys. So I thought he might want one.”
“Wal, son, I happen to know Nick wants cowboys. But he’s hard up at present. Looking for big wages?”
“I’ll work for my board,” declared Andrew eagerly. “Where you from?”
“East.”
“Reckoned that. But East means anywhere from the Missouri to the Atlantic.”
“All right, call it Missouri. I don’t want to advertise I’m a dude.”
“I reckon Nick will be glad to talk to you...Don’t cross the river. Take the road left and drive onto his place. You can’t miss it, as there’s only one. If Nick’s not home, wait.”
“Much obliged. I’ll do that,” rejoined Andrew heartily.
The Westerner turned to resume his walk, almost bumping into a tall man wearing a wide sombrero. “Morning, Slade,” he said shortly and passed on.
“Howdy, Nick,” drawled the other. Then he approached Andrew and gave him a searching look from keen yellow eyes. Andrew was quick to see the glint of a silver shield half concealed under the man’s vest. He was without a coat. His face was sallow and he wore a long drooping mustache. Andrew’s pulse quickened a few beats when he realized that he was facing Sheriff Slade.
“Stranger hereabouts?” he queried.
“You bet I am,” responded Andrew pleasantly enough.
“Salesman?”
“Nope, Just a tin-Lizzie tramp looking for a job.”
“Was that what you was askin’ Nick Bligh?”
“Who?”
“Wal, the man you was jest talkin’ to,” returned the sheriff tersely.
“Oh — him! Was that Nick Bligh?”
“Air you shore you didn’t know thet?”
“Say, mister, I just arrived here this A.M. I was merely asking the gentleman about work on ranches.”
“I see you’re loaded up with a cowpuncher’s junk. Wonder what you got hid under all this...Get out!”
“Sheriff, eh?” rejoined Andrew lightly as he slid out of the seat. “Delighted to meet you.”
Slade searched the car thoroughly, during which performance a little crowd collected. Andrew pretended a show of resentment.
“I’m a stranger, out of work, driving west — and get held up for doing nothing,” he complained to the bystanders resentfully.
Slade continued his search in silence. Finally he closed the car door and spoke: “Quien Sabe? You can never tell who’s packin’ liquor.”
“No offense,” returned Andrew cheerily. “I appreciate what the West is up against...Why, Officer Slade, even you might be a bootlegger!” And Andrew gave the sheriff a cool stare, mitigated by a smile.
“Don’t get fresh, young feller,” replied Slade gruffly, annoyed by the laughter among the bystanders. “Be on your way an’ keep goin’.”
Andrew got back into his car. “Most western towns welcome travelers and prospective settlers. What’s the matter with this burg?”
“Wal, we Wyomin’ folks air partic’lar about our brands,” drawled the sheriff.
“But not so particular about whose calf you slap them on,” retorted Andrew, and stepped on the throttle. “Gosh!” he ejaculated. “This will never do. I must learn to keep my mouth shut and my temper down. But wouldn’t I have liked to sock that yellow-eyed hypocrite!”
Once out of town he slowed to the speed he liked best, which was in fact merely crawling along. All the way across Wyoming he had feasted his eyes upon the increasingly fascinating vistas. What he could not get enough of was the far-flung leagues of open rangeland. Along here, however, he was shut in by low mountains to the north, and some few miles to the south by a higher, rougher range.
For the time being Andrew shelved some of the aspects of his latest adventure, content to return to them again after he had reached the ranch on the Sweetwater. Why, he wondered, had Nick Bligh not revealed his identity?
At the end of two hours of somewhat rough going, he passed the limits of the Granite Range. From there the rolling plains to the north appeared endless. He saw a winding line of trees which probably marked the river course. Cattle in considerable number in the aggregate, but scattered so far and wide over the rangeland that they seemed very few could be seen grazing. Once he spied a lone horseman topping a ridge, and the sight gave Andrew an inexplicable thrill.
The black patches on the green, so few and far between, he had come to recognize as ranch houses. By his uncertain calculation a dozen miles or more separated the closest of the ranches. And gradually these distances widened, as the ranches decreased in number, until the hour came when he could not see a single house.
At length he approached the river on a long gradual down grade. When he arrived at the point where the highway crossed a bridge, and an apology for a road branched to the south, it was the big moment in that day’s drive.
The Sweetwater River was a delight to the eye, as it must have been a boon to the immense range that it traversed. It wound away between wooded banks, now flowing in shallow ripples over gravel bars, and now in long deep reaches, and again spread into several channels around willow-bordered islands. Coyotes stood on the opposite bank to watch Andrew; jack rabbits abounded, and wild ducks skittered off the shoals to wing in rapid flight up the river.
Andrew’s view to the south was obstructed owing to the foothills of the Green Mountains which encroached upon the river bottom lands.
After gazing long at the superb view, the traveler turned into the branch road, with the feeling that he was leaving his bridges behind him, if not burning them. The road kept to the river bank, and was of such a nature that he had to attend to careful driving instead of indulging his desire for enjoying the scenery. In due time he arrived at the point where the foothills trooped to the stream. He drove along their base until he had passed the last one. Here two scenic spots met his delighted gaze — the first, a grove of cottonwoods just bursting into bright green, and the other, a high, isolated knoll from which he was certain one could get a commanding view of the country. Andrew did not make any choice. He would possess them both; and he drove down into the grove of cottonwoods.
A wide-spreading giant of a tree invited rest. Grassy plots and sandy places alternated through the grove down to the high weeds and yellow daisies, and the wall of willows.
“Immense!” ejaculated Andrew with a tremendous sigh. He did not know exactly what he meant by immense, but the feeling was profound. Lifting out the boxes of food, Andrew selected crackers and sardines and a can of peaches for his lunch. This was faring sumptuously. He had a canteen full of fresh water, but he decided to go down to the river. Finding a cattle track he followed it out of the grove, through the breast-high sunflowers and the willows, down to where the river murmured and gurgled over a gravelly bar. Andrew waded in, and scooped up water with his cupped hands. It was sweet and cold. He wondered where it came from and tried to picture its rocky source.
He retraced his steps, stripping leaves and a few of the yellow daisies on the way. Andrew put the boxes back in the car and then headed for the knoll.
As he had been deceived before by distance and elevation, so he was again in this instance. The knoll proved not very close to the road and considerably higher than he had imagined it to be. As he climbed, the necessity for taking the easiest way worked him round to the north slope, so that when he surmounted the knoll he faced the range keenly expectant but completely unprepared for what greeted his view.
“My Lord!” he gasped, amazed at the vivid coloring and infinite grandeur of the view.
The vast panorama spreading fan-shaped before him, with the green-bordered shining river turning to the right, and the rugged slopes of the mountain range on the left, formed a gateway to what appeared to be a purple abyss, and leading to a blue-based, white-peaked barrier in the far distance.
“Aw, have a heart, Wyoming!” cried Andrew. “What are you giving me?...Are you real — or is this just one of my dreams?”
He stood there gazing his fill. This was his first unlimited view. The sweep of prairie land, hills and valleys, mountain ranges in the distance — these had become scenes of growing frequency and increasing impressiveness during the last few days of travel. But the scene unfolding before him here dwarfed anything that he had yet seen.
“No, this is no mirage. This is real...And oh, boy, this is the one spot in all the world I’ve been looking for,” he exclaimed.
Westward he followed the black and green river bottom and the shining water to the north of a low range of symmetrical knolls, marked Antelope Hills on his map. Then miles or more beyond he sighted the ranch that must be Nick Bligh’s. Indeed, there was no other ranch visible south of the Sweetwater. Its location seemed all satisfying to the traveler. The river went on and on, growing dimmer, becoming a mere thread, to vanish in a blue haze out of which the Rocky Mountains rose, first obscure and like low masses of clouds, and then clear blue, to rise up and up in magnificent reaches to pierce the sky with their snow-white peaks. That was the Continental Divide, the backbone of the West, the end of the Great Plains, the wall of iron, set so formidably on the earth with its jagged teeth in the heavens.
The Antelope Hills blocked the center of the gateway to the south. They shone white and gray and pink in the sunlight. Some were crowned with a fringe of black; others showed black clefts deep down between the domes; still others appeared craggy and rough, with belts of timber at their bases.
But it was the spreading of the fanlike range southward that drew and held Andrew Bonning’s gaze. He felt dwarfed. How cramped he had been all his life! New York City would hardly have been a visible dot down in the center of that purple immensity. Poor, struggling, plodding, suffocating millions of men — of toilers — if they could only have found themselves there! Andrew felt a singular uplift of spirits. His instinct had been true. Its source and its meaning still remained inscrutable, but he realized that in following it he had found an unknown heritage.
So engrossed had Andrew been that he had forgotten the field glasses he had carried up the hill with him. These he now remembered and focused upon that mysterious gulf of purple.
What had been wavy lines and pale spots and dim shadows and blank reaches, veiled in differing degrees of the purple hue of distance, resolved themselves into endless rolling ridges like atolls in a smooth sea, and vast areas of flat land, bare and desolate, and wide green valleys, with here and there the tiny dots of ranches leagues apart.
The Easterner descended the knoll with giant strides. He had never, that he could remember, heard the singing of his heart as at that moment. Whatever had brought about the accident of his arrival here, he would bless all his life long. His failures now seemed like successive steps to a new life. He divined that any labors he undertook on this range would be labors of love, and they could not fail. He was profoundly grateful now to his own past inability to fit into an office or to sell bonds or to play the market; to the criticism, the misunderstanding, the bitter defeats and his father’s financial fall that had sent him to Wyoming.
Andrew Bonning drove up to Bligh’s ranch in this almost reverent mood, which perhaps cast a sort of glamour over the low-walled, mud-roofed rambling cabin, and especially to a large structure on the river bank — a cabin, deserted, with gaping windows, bleached gray logs and crumbling, yellow chimney. He had no time for more than this first glance because the old man whom he had interviewed in town suddenly appeared from behind the nearer cabin.
“You beat me here, Mr. Bligh,” said Andrew smilingly.
“Yes, I saw your car as I passed the cottonwoods. How’d you know me?” His blue eyes were twinkling and kindly. Andrew read in them liking for his fellow man. Yet the bronzed thin face, wrinkled like withered parchment, attested to a life of struggle and trial.
“I heard that Sheriff Slade call your name...What do you know? He held me up, searched my car for contraband — the yellow-eyed goofer! I didn’t take much to him, Mr. Bligh.”
“Did he find any?” inquired the rancher. Andrew saw more in the penetrating eyes than the casual query testified.
“He did not. It made me sore — that digging into my gear. And I made a crack that I’m afraid was pretty foolish. It made the crowd laugh, anyway.”
“Yeah? What’d you say to Slade?”
“I told him he might be a bootlegger himself, for all I knew.”
“Wal! You said that to Slade? Young man, you should bridle your tongue...But get down and come in.”
“Say, that’s a new one on me,” declared Andrew. “‘Get down and come in!’ Range greeting, eh?”
“Yes. Motors will never take the place of horses on the range.”
“Thanks, Mr. Bligh. But before I get out — or down — please give me some hope that I can land a job with you. I climbed a hill back there to get a look at the country. I’m just plain crazy about it. I’ll simply have to get a job here. I can do any kind of work...And, well, Mr. Bligh, I’m the man you need.”
“I like your enthusiasm. What’s your name?”
“Andrew Bonning.”
“Where from?”
“I told you — the East. Some day I’ll tell you more about myself. It ought to be enough now to say I come to you clean and straight.” And Andrew met the keen scrutiny of those usually mild blue eyes with a level open glance.
“Bonning, we cattlemen often hire men without names or homes or pasts. What counts here is, what you are — what you can do.”
“Well, in that case all a fellow can do is to ask for a chance to prove himself.”
“It amounts to that.”
“Will you give me a chance, Mr. Bligh?”
“I reckon I will, on conditions.”
“What are they?”
“You offered to work for your keep, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be glad to. You see, I bought a secondhand cowboy outfit.”
“No cattleman could miss seein’ all them trappin’s, son...My condition is this — that you work for your board until I can afford to pay you real wages — provided we get along together.”
“Okay. Suits me and I’m much obliged. I’ll do my level best to please you — and I’m darned sure I can help you.”
“Can you ride?”
“Yes.”
“Throw a rope?”
“No.”
“Or a gun?”
“No, but I’m a good rifle shot.”
“Cook?”
“No, I thought I could. But eating my own cooking for two weeks has changed my mind.”
“Good at figures?”
“Lord, no! I couldn’t add up a column of figures ten times and get less than ten different sums.”
“Neither can I. But we won’t have much figuring to do...Bonning, I like your looks and I like your talk. One more question and it’s a deal.”
“Okay. Spring that one on me.”
“Have you got guts?”
“Guts!” echoed Andrew.
“Nerve, in an Easterner’s way of puttin’ it. I got robbed of most of my cattle up north. Had a ranch on the Belle Fourche River, near Aladdin. Made up my mind to pull up stakes an’ try a new range. Like this one fine. But today I learned there’s some cattle stealing here, same as everywhere on the Wyomin’ ranges.”
“Who told you, Mr. Bligh?”
“Cattleman named McCall. Agreeable chap. Went out of his way to scrape acquaintance with me. An’ I verified that news. Got laughed at for my pains. One old rancher said to me, ‘Rustlin’? Hell, yes, enough left to make the cattle business healthy. When rustlin’ peters out in Wyomin’ thet’ll be the end of the cattleman!’”
“Well, that’s a point of view to make one think!”
“Wal, it needn’t worry you. But when I put it up to you I’m makin’ it plain. If you’re white-livered or softhearted, not to say yellow, you just won’t do. I’ve only one man on the ranch. Happened to run across him on the Belle Fourche. He’s from Arizona, has seen a lot of range life, crippled — which is why he finds it hard to get jobs — but he’s a real man. Married, by the way, to a nice little woman who sure can keep house. I never had a woman about my ranch before. An’ eatin’ my own sourdough biscuits nearly killed me...Wal, his name is Jim Fenner, an’ if you make a good runnin’ mate for him, I reckon my stock will increase.”
“I’m only a tenderfoot,” replied Andrew, discouraged in spite of his ardor. Bligh had a set, hard look around his mouth.
“I don’t need to be told that. In a way it’s in your favor. The thing is — will you learn this hard game of the range — fight for my interests — an’ stick to me? It might lead to your good fortune. An’ I’m puttin’ it strong because I want you to declare yourself strong.”
“I do, Mr. Bligh,” replied Andrew ringingly, as he took the proffered hand. “I see it as tough, steady work — and no lark. It’s a chance that will make a man of me. I’ll do my damnedest!”
CHAPTER V
MARTHA ANN RESPONDED quickly to the cheery and kindly interest of the two travelers who had come upon her in the road, just after the ugly episode with the bully in the Ford. They were on a fishing trip to northern Nebraska.
They did not again refer to the distressing incident, and their keen sense of humor and lively knack of relating their own experiences soon restored Martha Ann to her old self.
They drove at a steady pace all the rest of the day, stopping only for a light supper, and at half past eight they arrived at the small town of Colfax. The men were camping along the way, so they left Martha at the inn, promising to call for her in the morning.
