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The Happy Family written by Bertha Muzzy Bower

B >> Bertha Muzzy Bower >> The Happy Family




Realizing, in much pain, that some protection for his feet was an
absolute necessity, he tore a pelt in two for sandals. Much search
resulted in the discovery of a bit of rotted rope, which he unraveled
and thereby bound a piece of sheepskin upon each bruised foot. They
were not pretty, but they answered the purpose. The other pelt he
disposed of easily by tying the two front legs together around his
neck and letting the pelt hang down his back as far as it would reach.
There being nothing more that he could do in the way of
self-adornment, Happy Jack went out again into the hot afternoon. At
his best, Happy Jack could never truthfully be called handsome; just
now, clothed inadequately in gray Stetson hat and two meager
sheepskins, he looked scarce human.

Cheered a bit, he set out sturdily over the hills toward the mouth of
Suction Creek. The Happy Family would make all kinds of fools of
themselves, he supposed, if he showed up like this; but he might not
be obliged to appear before them in his present state of undress; he
might strike some other camp, first. Happy Jack was still forced to be
hopeful. He quite counted on striking another camp before reaching the
wagons of the Flying U.

The sun slid farther and farther toward the western rim of tumbled
ridges as Happy Jack, in his strange raiment, plodded laboriously to
the north. The mantle he was forced to shift constantly into a new
position as the sun's rays burned deep a new place, or the stiff hide
galled his blistered shoulders. The sandals did better, except that
the rotten strands of rope were continually wearing through on the
bottom, so that he must stop and tie fresh knots, or replace the bit
from the scant surplus which he had prudently brought along.

Till sundown he climbed toilfully up the steep hills and then
scrambled as toilfully into the coulees, taking the straightest course
he knew for the mouth of Suction Creek; that, as a last resort, while
he watched keenly for the white flake against green which would tell
of a tent pitched there in the wilderness. He was hungry--when he
forgot other discomforts long enough to think of it. Worst, perhaps,
was the way in which the gaunt sage brush scratched his unclothed legs
when he was compelled to cross a patch on some coulee bottom. Happy
Jack swore a great deal, in those long, heat-laden hours, and never
did he so completely belie the name men had in sarcasm given him.

Just when he was given over to the most gloomy forebodings, a white
square stood out for a moment sharply against a background of pines,
far below him in a coulee where the sun was peering fleetingly before
it dove out of sight over a hill. Happy Jack--of a truth, the most
unhappy Jack one could find, though he searched far and long--stood
still and eyed the white patch critically. There was only the one; but
another might be hidden in the trees. Still, there was no herd grazing
anywhere in the coulee, and no jingle of cavvy bells came to his ears,
though he listened long. He was sure that it was not the camp of the
Flying U, where he would be ministered unto faithfully, to be sure,
yet where the ministrations would be mingled with much wit-sharpened
raillery harder even to bear than was his present condition of
sun-blisters and scratches. He thanked the Lord in sincere if
unorthodox terms, and went down the hill in long, ungraceful strides.

It was far down that hill, and it was farther across the coulee. Each
step grew more wearisome to Happy Jack, unaccustomed as he was to
using his own feet as a mode of travel. But away in the edge of the
pine grove were food and raiment, and a shelter from the night that
was creeping down on him with the hurried stealth of a mountain lion
after its quarry. He shifted the sheepskin mantle for the thousandth
time; this time he untied it from his galled shoulders and festooned
it modestly if unbecomingly about his middle.

Feeling sure of the unfailing hospitality of the rangeland, be the
tent-dweller whom he might, Happy Jack walked boldly through the soft,
spring twilight that lasts long in Montana, and up to the very door of
the tent. A figure--a female figure--slender and topped by thin face
and eyes sheltered behind glasses, rose up, gazed upon him in horror,
shrieked till one could hear her a mile, and fell backward into the
tent. Another female figure appeared, looked, and shrieked also--and
even louder than did the first. Happy Jack, with a squawk of dismay,
turned and flew incontinently afar into the dusk. A man's voice he
heard, shouting inquiry; another, shouting what, from a distance,
sounded like threats. Happy Jack did not wait to make sure; he ran
blindly, until he brought up in a patch of prickly-pear, at which he
yelled, forgetting for the instant that he was pursued. Somehow he
floundered out and away from the torture of the stinging spines, and
took to the hills. A moon, big as the mouth of a barrel, climbed over
a ridge and betrayed him to the men searching below, and they shouted
and fired a gun. Happy Jack did not believe they could shoot very
straight, but he was in no mood to take chances; he sought refuge
among a jumble of great, gray bowlders; sat himself down in the shadow
and caressed gingerly the places where the prickly-pear had punctured
his skin, and gave himself riotously over to blasphemy.

The men below were prowling half-heartedly, it seemed to him--as if
they were afraid of running upon him too suddenly. It came to him that
they were afraid of him--and he grinned feebly at the joke. He had not
before stopped to consider his appearance, being concerned with more
important matters. Now, however, as he pulled the scant covering of
the pelt over his shoulders to keep off the chill of the night, he
could not wonder that the woman at the tent had fainted. Happy Jack
suspected shrewdly that he could, in that rig, startle almost any one.

He watched the coulee wistfully. They were making fires, down there
below him; great, revealing bonfires at intervals that would make it
impossible to pass their line unseen. He could not doubt that some one
was _cached_ in the shadows with a gun. There were more than two men;
Happy Jack thought that there must be at least four or five. He would
have liked to go down, just out of gun range, and shout explanations
and a request for some clothes--only for the women. Happy was always
ill at ease in the presence of strange women, and he felt, just now,
quite unequal to the ordeal of facing those two. He sat huddled in the
shadow of a rock and wished profanely that women would stay at home
and not go camping out in the Badlands, where their presence was
distinctly inappropriate and undesirable. If the men down there were
alone, he felt sure that he could make them understand. Seeing they
were not alone, however, he stayed where he was and watched the fires,
while his teeth chattered with cold and his stomach ached with the
hunger he could not appease.

Till daylight he sat there unhappily and watched the unwinking
challenge of the flames below, and miserably wished himself elsewhere;
even the jibes of the Happy Family would be endurable, so long as he
had the comfort afforded by the Flying U camp. But that was miles
away. And when daylight brought warmth and returning courage, he went
so far as to wish the Flying U camp farther away than it probably was.
He wanted to get somewhere, and ask help from strangers rather than
those he knew best.

With that idea fixed in his mind, he got stiffly to his bruised feet,
readjusted the sheepskin and began wearily to climb higher. When the
sun tinged all the hilltops golden yellow, he turned and shook his
fist impotently at the camp far beneath him. Then he went on doggedly.

Standing at last on a high peak, he looked away toward the sunrise and
made out a white speck on a grassy side-hill; beside it, a gray square
moved slowly over the green. Sheep, and a sheep camp--and Happy Jack,
hater of sheep though he was, hailed the sight as a bit of rare good
luck. His spirits rose immediately, and he started straight for the
place.

Down in the next coulee--there were always coulees to cross, no matter
in what direction one would travel--he came near running plump into
three riders, who were Irish Mallory, and Weary, and Pink. They were
riding down from the direction of the camp where were the women, and
they caught sight of him immediately and gave chase. Happy Jack had no
mind to be rounded up by that trio; he dodged into the bushes, and
though they dug long, unmerciful scratches in his person, clung to the
shelter they gave and made off at top speed. He could hear the others
shouting at one another as they galloped here and there trying to
locate him, and he skulked where the bushes were deepest, like a
criminal in fear of lynching.

Luck, for once, was with him, and he got out into another
brush-fringed coulee without being seen, and felt himself, for the
present, safe from that portion of the Happy Family. Thereafter he
avoided religiously the higher ridges, and kept the direction more by
instinct than by actual knowledge. The sun grew hot again and he
hurried on, shifting the sheepskin as the need impressed.

When at last he sighted again the sheep, they were very close. Happy
Jack grew cautious; he crept down upon the unsuspecting herder as
stealthily as an animal hunting its breakfast. Herders sometimes carry
guns--and the experience of last night burned hot in his memory.

Slipping warily from rock to rock, he was within a dozen feet, when a
dog barked and betrayed his presence. The herder did not have a gun.
He gave a yell of pure terror and started for camp after his weapon.
Happy Jack, yelling also, with long leaps followed after. Twice the
herder looked over his shoulder at the weird figure in gray hat and
flapping sheepskin, and immediately after each glance his pace
increased perceptibly. Still Happy Jack, desperate beyond measure,
doggedly pursued, and his long legs lessened at each jump the distance
between. From a spectacular viewpoint, it must have been a pretty
race.

The herder, with a gasp, dove into the tent; into the tent Happy Jack
dove after him--and none too soon. The hand of the herder had almost
clasped his rifle when the weight of Happy bore him shrieking to the
earthen floor.

"Aw, yuh locoed old fool, shut up, can't yuh, a minute?" Happy Jack,
with his fingers pressed against the windpipe of the other, had the
satisfaction of seeing his request granted at once. The shrieks died
to mere gurgling. "What I want uh _you_," Happy went on crossly,
"ain't your lifeblood, yuh dam' Swede idiot. I want some clothes, and
some grub; and I want to borry that pinto I seen picketed out in the
hollow, down there. Now, will yuh let up that yelling and act white,
or must I pound some p'liteness into yuh? Say!"

"By damn, Ay tank yo' vas got soom crazy," apologized the herder
humbly, sanity growing in his pale blue eyes. "Ay tank--"

"Oh, I don't give a cuss what you _tank_," Happy Jack cut in. "I ain't
had anything to eat sence yesterday forenoon, and I ain't had any
clothes on sence yesterday, either. Send them darn dogs back to watch
your sheep, and get busy with breakfast! I've got a lot to do, t'-day.
I've got to round up my horse and get my clothes that's tied to the
saddle, and get t' where I'm going. Get up, darn yuh! I ain't going t'
eat yuh--not unless you're too slow with that grub."

The herder was submissive and placating, and permitted Happy Jack to
appropriate the conventional garb of a male human, the while coffee
and bacon were maddening his hunger with their tantalizing odor. He
seemed much more at ease, once he saw that Happy Jack, properly
clothed, was not particularly fearsome to look upon, and talked
volubly while he got out bread and stewed prunes and boiled beans for
the thrice-unexpected guest.

Happy Jack, clothed and fed, became himself again and prophesied
gloomily: "The chances is, that horse uh mine'll be forty miles away
and still going, by this time; but soon as I can round him up, I'll
bring your pinto back. Yuh needn't t' worry none; I guess I got all
the sense I've ever had."

Once more astride a horse--albeit the pinto pony of a
sheepherder--Happy Jack felt abundantly able to cope with the
situation. He made a detour that put him far from where the three he
most dreaded to meet were apt to be, and struck out at the pinto's
best pace for the river at the point where he had crossed so
disastrously the day before.

Having a good memory for directions and localities, he easily found
the place of unhappy memory; and taking up Stranger's trail through
the sand from there, he got the general direction of his flight and
followed vengefully after; rode for an hour up a long, grassy coulee,
and came suddenly upon the fugitive feeding quietly beside a spring.
The bundle of clothing was still tied firmly to the saddle, and at
sight of it the face of Happy Jack relaxed somewhat from its gloom.

When Happy rode up and cast a loop over his head Stranger nickered a
bit, as if he did not much enjoy freedom while he yet bore the
trappings of servitude. And his submission was so instant and
voluntary that Happy Jack had not the heart to do as he had threatened
many times in the last few hours--"to beat the hide off him." Instead,
he got hastily into his clothes--quite as if he feared they might
again be whisked away from him--and then rubbed forgivingly the nose
of Stranger, and solicitously pulled a few strands of his forelock
from under the brow-band. In the heart of Happy Jack was a great
peace, marred only by the physical discomforts of much sun-blister and
many deep scratches. After that he got thankfully into his own saddle
and rode gladly away, leading the pinto pony behind him. He had got
out of the scrape, and the Happy Family would never find it out; it
was not likely that they would chance upon the Swede herder, or if
they did, that they would exchange with him many words. The Happy
Family held itself physically, mentally, morally and socially far
above sheepherders--and in that lay the safety of Happy Jack.

It was nearly noon when he reached again the sheep camp, and the Swede
hospitably urged him to stay and eat with him; but Happy Jack would
not tarry, for he was anxious to reach the camp of the Flying U. A
mile from the herder's camp he saw again on a distant hilltop three
familiar figures. This time he did not dodge into shelter, but urged
Stranger to a gallop and rode boldly toward them. They greeted him
joyfully and at the top of their voices when he came within shouting
distance.

"How comes it you're riding the pinnacles over here?" Weary wanted to
know, as soon as he rode alongside.

"Aw, I just came over after more orders; hope they send somebody else
over there, if they want any more repping done," Happy Jack said, in
his customary tone of discontent with circumstances.

"Say! Yuh didn't see anything of a wild man, down next the river, did
yuh?" put in Pink.

"Aw, gwan! what wild man?" Happy Jack eyed them suspiciously.

"Honest, there's a wild man ranging around here in these hills," Pink
declared. "We've been mooching around all forenoon, hunting him. Got
sight of him, early this morning, but he got away in the brush."

Happy Jack looked guilty, and even more suspicious. Was it possible
that they had recognized him?

"The way we come to hear about him," Weary explained, "we happened
across some campers, over in a little coulee to the west uh here. They
was all worked up over him. Seems he went into camp last night, and
like to scared the ladies into fits. He ain't got enough clothes on to
flag an antelope, according to them, and he's about seven feet high,
and looks more like a missing link than a plain, ordinary man. The one
that didn't faint away got the best look at him, and she's ready to
take oath he ain't more'n half human. They kept fires burning all
night to scare him out uh the coulee, and they're going to break camp
to-day and hike for home. They say he give a screech that'd put a
crimp in the devil himself, and went galloping off, jumping about
twenty feet at a lick. And--"

"Aw, gwan!" protested Happy Jack, feebly.

"So help me Josephine, it's the truth," abetted Pink, round-eyed and
unmistakably in earnest. "We wouldn't uh taken much stock in it,
either, only we saw him ourselves, not more than two hundred yards
off. He was just over the hill from the coulee where they were camped,
so it's bound to be the same animal. It's a fact, he didn't have much
covering--just something hung over his shoulders. And he was sure
wild, for soon as he seen us he humped himself and got into the brush.
We could hear him go crashing away like a whole bunch of elephants.
It's a damn' shame he got away on us," Pink sighed regretfully. "We
was going to rope him and put him in a cage; we could sure uh made
money on him, at two bits a look."

Happy Jack continued to eye the three distrustfully. Too often had he
been the victim of their humor for him now to believe implicitly in
their ignorance. It was too good to be real, it seemed to him. Still,
if by any good luck it _were_ real, he hated to think what would
happen if they ever found out the truth. He eased the clothing
cautiously away from his smarting back, and stared hard into a coulee.

"It was likely some sheepherder gone clean nutty," mused Irish.

"Well, the most uh them wouldn't have far to go," ventured Happy Jack,
thinking of the Swede.

"What we ought to do," said Pink, keen for the chase, "is for the
whole bunch of us to come down here and round him up. Wonder if we
couldn't talk Chip into laying off for a day or so; there's no herd to
hold. I sure would like to get a good look at him."

"Somebody ought to take him in," observed Irish longingly. "He ain't
safe, running around loose like that. There's no telling what he might
do. The way them campers read his brand, he's plumb dangerous to meet
up with alone. It's lucky you didn't run onto him, Happy."

"Well, I didn't," growled Happy Jack. "And what's more, I betche there
ain't any such person."

"Don't call us liars to our faces, Happy," Weary reproved. "We told
yuh, a dozen times, that we saw him ourselves. Yuh might be polite
enough to take our word for it."

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack grunted, still not quite sure of how much--or
how little--they knew. While they discussed further the wild man, he
watched furtively for the surreptitious lowering of lids that would
betray their insincerity. When they appealed to him for an opinion of
some phase of the subject, he answered with caution. He tried to turn
the talk to his experiences on the Shonkin range, and found the wild
man cropping up with disheartening persistency. He shifted often in
the saddle, because of the deep sunburns which smarted continually and
maddeningly. He wondered if the boys had used all of that big box of
carbolic salve which used to be kept in a corner of the mess-box; and
was carbolic salve good for sun-blisters? He told himself gloomily
that if there was any of it left, and if it were good for his ailment,
there wouldn't be half enough of it, anyway. He estimated unhappily
that he would need about two quarts.

When they reached camp, the welcome of Happy Jack was overshadowed and
made insignificant by the strange story of the wild man. Happy Jack,
mentally and physically miserable, was forced to hear it all told over
again, and to listen to the excited comments of the others. He was
sick of the subject. He had heard enough about the wild man, and he
wished fervently that they would shut up about it. He couldn't see
that it was anything to make such a fuss about, anyway. And he wished
he could get his hands on that carbolic salve, without having the
whole bunch rubbering around and asking questions about something that
was none of their business. He even wished, in that first bitter hour
after he had eaten and while they were lying idly in the shady spots,
that he was back on the Shonkin range with an alien crew.

It was perhaps an hour later that Pink, always of an investigative
turn of mind, came slipping quietly up through the rose bushes from
the creek. The Happy Family, lying luxuriously upon the grass, were
still discussing the latest excitement. Pink watched his chance and
when none but Weary observed him jerked his head mysteriously toward
the creek.

Weary got up, yawned ostentatiously, and sauntered away in the wake of
Pink. "What's the matter, Cadwolloper?" he asked, when he was close
enough. "Seen a garter snake?" Pink was notoriously afraid of snakes.

"You come with me, and I'll show yuh the wild man," he grinned.

"Mama!" ejaculated Weary, and followed stealthily where Pink led.

Some distance up the creek Pink signalled caution, and they crept like
Indians on hands and knees through the grass. On the edge of the high
bank they stopped, and Pink motioned. Weary looked over and came near
whooping at the sight below. He gazed a minute, drew back and put his
face close to the face of Pink.

"Cadwolloper, go get the bunch!" he commanded in a whisper, and Pink,
again signalling needlessly for silence, slipped hastily away from the
spot.

Happy Jack, secure in the seclusion offered by the high bank of the
creek, ran his finger regretfully around the inside of the carbolic
salve box, eyed the result dissatisfiedly, and applied the finger
carefully to a deep cut on his knee. He had got that cut while going
up the bluff, just after leaving the tent where had been the shrieking
females. He wished there was more salve, and he picked up the cover of
the box and painstakingly wiped out the inside; the result was
disheartening.

He examined his knee dolefully. It was beginning to look inflamed, and
it was going to make him limp. He wondered if the boys would notice
anything queer about his walk. If they did, there was the conventional
excuse that his horse had fallen down with him--Happy Jack hoped that
it would be convincing. He took up the box again and looked at the
shining emptiness of it. It had been half full--not enough, by a long
way--and maybe some one would wonder what had become of it. Darn a
bunch that always had to know everything, anyway!

Happy Jack, warned at last by that unnamed instinct which tells of a
presence unseen, turned around and looked up apprehensively. The Happy
Family, sitting in a row upon their heels on the bank, looked down at
him gravely and appreciatively.

"There's a can uh wagon dope, up at camp," Cal Emmett informed him
sympathetically.

"Aw--" Happy Jack began, and choked upon his humiliation.

"I used to know a piece uh poetry about a fellow like Happy," Weary
remarked sweetly. "It said

_'He raised his veil, the maid turned slowly round_
_Looked at him, shrieked, and fell upon the ground.'_

Only, in this case," Weary smiled blandly down upon him, "Happy didn't
have no veil."

"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack helplessly, and reached for his
clothes, while the Happy Family chorused a demand for explanations.

* * * * *




A TAMER OF WILD ONES.


When the days grow crisp at each end and languorous in the middle;
when a haze ripples the skyline like a waving ribbon of faded blue;
when the winds and the grasses stop and listen for the first on-rush
of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain
intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do
something--anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not
measured by precedent or prudence.

In days like that one grows venturesome and ignores difficulties and
limitations with a fine disregard for probable consequences, a mental
snapping of fingers. On a day like that, the Happy Family, riding
together out of Dry Lake with the latest news in mind and speech,
urged Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, to enter the rough-riding
contest exploited as one of the features of the Northern Montana Fair,
to be held at Great Falls in two weeks. Pink could not enter, because
a horse had fallen with him and hurt his leg, so that he was picking
the gentlest in his string for daily riding. Weary would not, because
he had promised his Little Schoolma'am to take care of himself and not
take any useless risks; even the temptation of a two-hundred-dollar
purse could not persuade him that a rough-riding contest is perfectly
safe and without the ban. But Andy, impelled by the leaping blood of
him and urged by the loyal Family, consented and said he'd try it a
whirl, anyway.

They had only ridden four or five miles when the decision was reached,
and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so
that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping
with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being
able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let
the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that
Andy Green would ride for the purse, and nearly all Chouteau County
backed him with all the money it could command; certainly, all of it
that knew Andy Green and had seen him ride, made haste to find someone
who did not know him and whose faith in another contestant was strong,
and to bet all the money it could lay hands upon.