The Happy Family written by Bertha Muzzy Bower
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15 [Illustration: "A man's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he
knows"]
The Happy Family
BY
B.M. BOWER
(B.M. SINCLAIR)
AUTHOR OF
"Chip of the Flying U," "The Range Dwellers," "Her Prairie
Knight," "The Lure of the Dim Trails," "The Lonesome Trail,"
"The Long Shadow," Etc.
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_1907, 1909, 1910, by_ STREET & SMITH.
_1910, by_ G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.
_The Happy Family_.
To B.W.V.
_"... met the Ananias of the cow camp. I have knocked about cow
camps, mining camps, railroad and telegraph camps, and kicked
up alkali dust for many a weary mile on the desert. Yet
wherever I went I never failed to meet him. He is part and
parcel of every outfit.... He is indispensable, irresistible,
and incorrigible; and while in but few cases can he be held a
thing of beauty, he is certainly a joy forever--at least to
those who have known his type with some degree of
understanding...."_
From a letter.
CONTENTS.
ANANIAS GREEN 7
BLINK 35
MISS MARTIN'S MISSION 61
HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN 90
A TAMER OF WILD ONES 118
ANDY, THE LIAR 178
"WOLF! WOLF!" 210
FOOL'S GOLD 241
LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS 269
* * * * *
THE HAPPY FAMILY
* * * * *
ANANIAS GREEN
Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also
knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep,
rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R.
General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock
bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.
It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a
party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were
quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested
in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew,
besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.
Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R,
watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he
himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding
gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the
bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was
beautiful to behold.
"Lord, but this is a big, wild country," he was saying
enthusiastically, "and the people in it are big and--"
"Wild," supplied Andy. "Yes, you've just about got us sized up
correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and
thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it
is sometimes a bit wearisome.
"Oh, but I didn't mean that," the young man protested. "What I meant
was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men
don't run in grooves."
"No, nor horses," assented Andy. "Leastways, not in oiled ones." He
was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.
"You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I've never
seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part
of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things--"
"Oh, it ain't so raw as you might think," Andy defended jealously,
"nor yet new."
"Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can't," he
asserted triumphantly, "point to anything man-made that existed a
hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in
the cradle--a lusty infant, and a--er--vociferous one, but still an
infant in swaddling clothes." Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures
before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of
him as "gifted," and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.
Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also, was
"gifted," in his modest Western way.
"A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization
old as the Phenixes of Egypt," he said, in a drawling tone that was
absolutely convincing, "ain't what I'd call raw." He decided that a
little more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent
over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood
Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the
presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to
disputation at times--even to enmity; but not to indifference. He
blinked. "My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement
might seem to imply?" he queried haughtily.
Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a "real," objected
strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at
the other disapprovingly. "I don't as a general thing find myself
guilty of talking in my sleep," he retorted, "and I'm prepared to let
anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous,
out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain't no
infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the
Pilgrim Fathers' rock wasn't nothing but a pebble to let fly at the
birds!"
"Indeed!" fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much
intangible insult to one's intelligence.
Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for
the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was
another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and
reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second
nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.
"Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain't none to blame for what
you don't know, but you're talking wild and scattering. When you stand
up and tell me I can't point to nothing man-made that's fifty years
old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to
something--or I've seen something--that's older than swearing; and I
reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a
sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions."
"Are you crazy, man?" Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.
"Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I
was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse
went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh
course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don't
half know all that might signify to _imply_." This last in open
imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix,
to put it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty
half the time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That
there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid
hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it's
about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can
show up; and I've ambled around considerable and am in a position to
pass judgment.
"So there I was, and I wasn't in no mood to view the beauties uh
nature to speak of; for instance, I didn't admire the clouds sailing
around promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and
dry and the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was
high-heel and rubbed blisters before I'd covered a mile of that
acrobatic territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got
it I wanted it a heap worse." He stopped, cupped his slim fingers
around a match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what
was coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling.
He almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.
"Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced
cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable
institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a
way that wasn't any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on." His
cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.
"What about the--whatever it was you started to tell me?" urged
Branciforte, grown impatient.
Andy looked him over calmly. "You've lived in ignorance for about
thirty years or so--giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can
stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a
dogy when it's first turned loose on the range and is trying to find
the old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket. And like the
dogy, I didn't run across anything that looked natural or inviting.
All that day I perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn't
enjoying the stroll none. You're right when you say things can happen,
out here. There's some things it's just as well they don't happen too
frequent, and getting lost and afoot in the Bad-lands is one.
"That afternoon I dragged myself up to the edge of a deep coulee and
looked over to see if there was any way of getting down. There was a
bright green streak down there that couldn't mean nothing but water,
at that time of year; this was last fall. And over beyond, I could see
the river that I'd went and lost. I looked and looked, but the walls
looked straight as a Boston's man's pedigree. And then the sun come
out from behind a cloud and lit up a spot that made me forget for a
minute that I was thirsty as a dog and near starved besides.
"I was looking down on the ruins--and yet it was near perfect--of an
old castle. Every stone stood out that clear and distinct I could have
counted 'em. There was a tower at one end, partly fell to pieces but
yet enough left to easy tell what it was. I could see it had kinda
loop-holes in it. There was an open place where I took it the main
entrance had used to be; what I'd call the official entrance. But
there was other entrances besides, and some of 'em was made by time
and hard weather. There was what looked like awhat-you-may-call-'em--
a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge
business. Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it
yuh needed to use your imagination on. I laid there for quite a spell
looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down
there. It didn't look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a
school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and
prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen."
"The deuce! A castle in the Bad-lands!" ejaculated Branciforte.
"That's what it was, all right. I found a trail it would make a
mountain sheep seasick to follow, and I got down into the coulee. It
was lonesome as sin, and spooky; but there was a spring close by, and
a creek running from it; and what is a treat in that part uh the
country, it was good drinking and didn't have neither alkali nor
sulphur nor mineral in it. It was just straight water, and you can
gamble I filled up on it a-plenty. Then I shot a rabbit or two that
was hanging out around the ruins, and camped there till next day, when
I found a pass out, and got my bearings by the river and come on into
camp. So when you throw slurs on our plumb newness and shininess, I've
got the cards to call yuh. That castle wasn't built last summer,
Mister. And whoever did build it was some civilized. So there yuh
are."
Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into
the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his
head at its accustomed don't-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the
door and the sunlight.
"Oh, but say! didn't you find out anything about it afterwards? There
must have been something--"
"If it's relics uh the dim and musty past yuh mean, there was; relics
to burn. I kicked up specimens of ancient dishes, and truck like that,
while I was prowling around for fire-wood. And inside the castle, in
what I reckon was used for the main hall, I run acrost a skeleton.
That is, part of one. I don't believe it was all there, though."
"But, man alive, why haven't you made use of a discovery like that?"
Branciforte followed him out, lighting his pipe with fingers that
trembled. "Don't you realize what a thing like that means?"
Andy turned and smiled lazily down at him. "At the time I was there, I
was all took up with the idea uh getting home. I couldn't eat
skeletons, Mister, nor yet the remains uh prehistoric dishes. And I
didn't run acrost no money, nor no plan marked up with crosses where
you're supposed to do your excavating for treasure. It wasn't nothing,
that I could see, for a man to starve to death while he examined it
thorough. And so far as I know there ain't any record of it. I never
heard no one mention building it, anyhow." He stooped and adjusted the
spur to his heel to see if it were quite right, and went off to the
stable humming under his breath.
Branciforte stood at the door of the blacksmith shop and gazed after
him, puffing meditatively at his pipe. "Lord! the ignorance of these
Western folk! To run upon a find like that, and to think it less
important than getting home in time for supper. To let a discovery
like that lie forgotten, a mere incident in a day's travel! That
fellow thinks more, right now, about his horse going lame and himself
raising blisters on his heels, than of--Jove, what ignorance! He--he
couldn't _eat_ the skeleton or the dishes! Jerusalem!" Branciforte
knocked his pipe gently against the door-casing, put in into his coat
pocket and hurried to the house to hunt up the others and tell them
what he had heard.
That night the roundup pulled in to the home ranch.
The visitors, headed by their host, swooped down upon the roundup
wagons just when the boys were gathered together for a cigarette or
two apiece and a little talk before rolling in. There was no
night-guarding to do, and trouble winged afar. Sherwood Branciforte
hunted out Andy Green where he lay at ease with head and shoulders
propped against a wheel of the bed-wagon and gossipped with Pink and a
few others.
"Look here, Green," he said in a voice to arrest the attention of the
whole camp, "I wish you'd tell the others that tale you told me this
afternoon--about that ruined castle down in the hills. Mason, here, is
a newspaper man; he scents a story for his paper. And the rest refuse
to believe a word I say."
"I'd hate to have a rep like that, Mr. Branciforte," Andy said
commiseratingly, and turned his big, honest gray eyes to where stood
the women--two breezy young persons with sleeves rolled to tanned
elbows and cowboy hats of the musical comedy brand. Also they had gay
silk handkerchiefs knotted picturesquely around their throats. There
was another, a giggly, gurgly lady with gray hair fluffed up into a
pompadour. You know the sort. She was the kind who refuses to grow
old, and so merely grows imbecile.
"Do tell us, Mr. Green," this young old lady urged, displaying much
gold by her smile. "It sounds so romantic."
"It's funny you never mentioned it to any of us," put in the "old man"
suspiciously.
Andy pulled himself up into a more decorous position, and turned his
eyes towards his boss. "I never knew yuh took any interest in
relic-hunting," he explained mildly.
"Sherwood says you found a _skeleton!_" said the young old lady,
shuddering pleasurably.
"Yes, I did find one--or part of one," Andy admitted reluctantly.
"What were the relics of pottery like?" demanded one of the
cowboy-hatted girls, as if she meant to test him. "I do some
collecting of that sort of thing."
Andy threw away his cigarette, and with it all compunction. "Well, I
wasn't so much interested in the dishes as in getting something to
eat," he apologized. "I saw several different kinds. One was a big,
awkward looking thing and was pretty heavy, and had straight sides.
Then I come across one or two more that was ornamented some. One had
what looked like a fish on it, and the other I couldn't make out very
well. They didn't look to be worth much, none of 'em."
"Green," said his employer steadily, "_was_ there such a place?"
Andy returned his look honestly. "There was, and there is yet, I
guess," he asserted. "I'll tell you how you can find it and what it's
like--if yuh doubt my words." He glanced around and found every man,
including the cook, listening intently. He picked a blade of new grass
and began splitting it into tiny threads. The host found boxes for the
women to sit upon, and the men sat down upon the grass.
"Before I come here to work, I was riding for the Circle C. One day I
was riding away down in the Bad-lands alone and my horse slipped in
some shale rock and went lame; strained his shoulder so I couldn't
ride him. That put me afoot, and climbing up and down them hills I
lost my bearings and didn't know where I was at for a day or two. I
wandered around aimless, and got into a strip uh country that was new
to me and plumb lonesome and wild.
"That second day is when I happened across this ruin. I was looking
down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out
and shone straight on to this place. It was right down under me; a
stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled down so it
wasn't so awful high--the tower wasn't. There was a--a--"
"Moat," Branciforte suggested.
"That's the word--a moat around it, and a bridge that was just about
gone to pieces. It had loopholes, like the pictures of castles, and
a--"
"Battlement?" ventured one of the musical-comedy cowgirls.
Andy had not meant to say battlement; of a truth, his conception of
battlements was extremely hazy, but he caught up the word and warmed
to the subject. "Battlement? well I should guess yes! There was about
as elegant a battlement as I'd want to see anywhere. It was sure a
peach. It was--" he hesitated for a fraction of a second. "It was high
as the tower, and it had figures carved all over it; them kind that
looks like kid-drawing in school, with bows and arrows stuck out in
front of 'em, threatening."
"Not the old Greek!" exclaimed one of the girls in a little,
breathless voice.
"I couldn't say as to that," Andy made guarded reply. "I never made no
special study of them things. But they was sure old. And--"
"About how large was the castle?" put in the man who wrote things.
"How many rooms, say?"
"I'd hate to give a guess at the size. I didn't step it off, and I'm a
punk guesser. The rooms I didn't count. I only explored around in the
main hall, like, a little. But it got dark early, down in there, and I
didn't have no matches to waste. And next morning I started right out
at sun-up to find the way home. No, I never counted the rooms, and if
I had, the chances are I'd have likely counted the same one more'n
once; to count them rooms would take an expert, which I ain't--not at
counting. I don't reckon, though, that there was so awful many.
Anyway, not more than fifteen or twenty. But as I say, I couldn't
rightly make a guess, even; or I'd hate to. Ruins don't interest me
much, though I was kinda surprised to run acrost that one, all right,
and I'm willing to gamble there was warm and exciting times down there
when the place was in running order. I'd kinda like to have been down
there then. Last fall, though, there wasn't nothing to get excited
over, except getting out uh there."
"A castle away out here! Just think, good people, what that means!
Romance, adventure and scientific discoveries! We must go right down
there and explore the place. Why can't we start at once--in the
morning? This gentleman can guide us to the place, and--"
"It ain't easy going," Andy remarked, conscientiously. "It's pretty
rough; some places, you'd have to walk and lead your horses."
They swept aside the discouragement.
"We'd need pick and shovels, and men to dig," cried one enthusiast.
"Uncle Peter can lend us some of his men. There may be treasure to
unearth. There may be _anything_ that is wonderful and mysterious. Get
busy, Uncle Peter, and get your outfit together; you've boasted that a
roundup can beat the army in getting under way quickly, now let us
have a practical demonstration. We want to start by six o'clock--all
of us, with a cook and four or five men to do the excavating. Bring it
to pass!" It was the voice of the girl whom her friends spoke of as
"The life of the party;" the voice of the-girl-who-does-things.
"It's sixty-five miles from here, good and strong--and mostly up and
down," put in Andy.
"'Quoth the raven,'" mocked the-girl-who-does-things. "We are prepared
to face the ups-and-downs. Do we start at six, Uncle Peter?"
Uncle Peter glanced sideways at the roundup boss. To bring it to pass,
he would be obliged to impress the roundup cook and part of the crew.
It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was
doing something unbusiness-like and foolish. But not even the owner of
the Rocking R may withstand the pleading of a pretty woman. Uncle
Peter squirmed, but he promised:
"We start at six; earlier if you say so."
The roundup boss gave his employer a look of disgust and walked away;
the crew took it that he went off to some secluded place to swear.
Thereafter there was much discussion of ways and means, and much
enthusiasm among the visitors from the East--equalled by the
depression of the crew, for cowboys do not, as a rule, take kindly to
pick and shovel, and the excavators had not yet been chosen from among
them. They were uneasy, and they stole frequent, betraying glances at
one another. All of which amused Pink much. Pink would like to have
gone along, and would certainly have offered his services, but for the
fact that his work there was done and he would have to start back to
the Flying U just as soon as one of his best saddle horses, which had
stepped on a broken beer bottle and cut its foot, was able to travel.
That would be in a few days, probably. So Pink sighed and watched the
preparations enviously.
Since he was fairly committed into breaking all precedents, uncle
Peter plunged recklessly. He ordered the mess-wagon to be restocked
and prepared for the trip, and he took the bed-tent and half the crew.
The foreman he wisely left behind with the remnant of his outfit. They
were all to eat at the house while the mess-wagon was away, and they
were to spread their soogans--which is to say beds--where they might,
if the bunk-house proved too small or too hot.
The foreman, outraged beyond words, saddled at daybreak and rode to
the nearest town, and the unchosen half turned out in a body to watch
the departure of the explorers, which speaks eloquently of their
interest; for cowboys off duty are prone to sleep long.
Andy, as guide, bolted ahead of the party that he might open the gate.
Bolted is a good word, for his horse swerved and kept on running,
swerved again, and came down in a heap. Andy did not get up, and the
women screamed. Then Pink and some others hurried out and bore Andy,
groaning, to the bunk-house.
The visitors from the East gathered, perturbed, around the door,
sympathetic and dismayed. It looked very much as if their exploration
must end where it began, and the-girl-who-does-things looked about to
weep, until Andy, still groaning, sent Pink out to comfort them.
"He says you needn't give up the trip on his account," Pink announced
musically from the doorway. "He's drawing a map and marking the coulee
where the ruin is. He says most any of the boys that know the country
at all can find the place for yuh. And he isn't hurt permanent; he
strained his back so he can't ride, is all." Pink dimpled at the young
old lady who was admiring him frankly, and withdrew.
Inside, Andy Green was making pencil marks and giving the chosen half
explicit directions. At last he folded the paper and handed it to one
called Sandy.
"That's the best I can do for yuh," he finished. "I don't see how yuh
can miss it if yuh follow that map close. And if them gay females make
any kick on the trail, you just remind 'em that I said all along it
was rough going. So long, and good luck."
So with high-keyed, feminine laughter and much dust, passed the
exploring party from the Rocking R.
"Say," Pink began two days later to Andy, who was sitting on the shady
side of the bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a
word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and
I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the
tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any
neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in
the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself.
Where did you learn that? Ever ride in Wyoming?"
Andy turned his eyes, but not his head--which was a way he had--and
regarded Pink slantwise for at least ten seconds. "Yes, I've rode in
Wyoming," he answered quietly. Then: "What's the chance for a job, up
your way? Is the Flying U open for good men and true?"
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