Sheep Limit/Chapter 17
That night Rawlins drove Mrs. Peck's team to the ranch, leading Graball to carry him back. He found the fence hooked up loosely at the township line where he had cut it to enter, as if they had deferred permanent repairs until he either had been expelled or eliminated from the contest in some other effective way.
Mrs. Peck was relieved to see the wagon and team again. Her satisfaction increased when she learned that Rawlins had returned them until he had made his homestead within the fence secure. There was no intimation in his act of a doubt on the outcome of the purely physical contest scheduled to start on the day after to-morrow. He said he didn't want anything to happen to the team.
Mrs. Peck said she wished him good luck, and that it was a darned good thing she hadn't let him take any sheep in there. Her interest in the impending clash was lively; the prospect of a fight in which neither she nor her property was involved appeared to cheer her up mightily. It would give them something to talk about in the sheep country.
Edith Stone had little to say in the matter, but there was an anxious strain in her face that betrayed a more sympathetic interest than her aunt's. Rawlins was grateful for her unspoken support.
Mrs. Peck's marital adventure had not changed her for better or worse in appearance, although the disappointment she felt in her husband might have been sufficient to make lines in a less hardy woman's face. On this phase of her domestic relations Mrs. Peck was outspoken, with a frankness embarrassing to Rawlins in Edith's presence.
"It would be a grand thing for us sheepmen up here in Dry Wood this summer if you was to throw that country open to our sheep," Mrs. Peck said. "I wish I had a husband that was man enough to help you, but no woman ever had a poorer excuse for a man than me."
"A poor excuse is better than none, they say," Rawlins reminded her, reserving the opinion that she ought to be thankful for what she had grabbed out of the bag, considering her years, her flesh and her red neck.
"It may be in some things but it ain't in a man," she insisted with the certainty of wide experience. "Duke would 'a' made forty of that gogglin' gander. He said you run acrost him as you was comin' up to your claim, but you never said nothing about it to us."
"Yes, I met him on the range that day. He was looking well, taking it kind of easy."
"I guess easy!" she said meaningly. "He thinks he's workin' in a bank, he lays asleep till the sun burns him out. I went over there at eight o'clock one morning and found him still sawin' gourds, his sheep bellerin' so you'd think a man couldn't sleep in a mile of 'em, not if he had any heart in him, anyhow. He thinks I'll git disgusted with him and take them sheep away from him and kick him out, but I started to make a sheepman out of him and I'll either make him or break him. Did he tell you about tryin' to run off?"
"Yes, he said something about it. I met him, in fact, the night he was on his way."
"You did?"
"He stopped at Lineberger's, where I had taken shelter out of a storm. I felt kind of sorry for him to see him prisoner on the range again. Why don't you take the string off his leg, Mrs. Peck, and let him go?"
Edith had been making a pretense of looking at the pictures in a magazine. At Rawlins' suggestion in behalf of her one-time mail-order suitor the girl threw the magazine down with a slap, broke out in a sudden burst of laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair as if the net of merriment had made her as much a prisoner as Peck, and she was struggling to break through to liberty.
Mrs. Peck looked at her sourly.
"If you was married to him you'd laugh out of the other side of your mouth, young lady," she said.
"I'm not," said Edith, provokingly comfortable in her security.
"You're to blame for him, you brought him out here. By rights you ought to be the one to have the trouble with him."
"He cut me cold for you, auntie. He wouldn't have me. I lost out the night Elmer brought you the money to pay off the men."
"Yes, he tried to rob me," Mrs. Peck accused, turning to Rawlins, nodding ponderously. "He turned the house upside-down that time he made his break to run off with one of my horses. It'll take a smarter man than him to git his paws on any of my money, I'm here to tell you!"
"Where's the change?" said Edith, repeating Peck's well-remembered demand on Tippie. She looked her question straight into Rawlins' eyes, holding out her hand, severe, mandatory, gruff—to go off into another rocking fit of laughter the next moment, the demanding hand pressed to her side, where her riotous mirth was struggling like a cat in a sack.
"Maybe I'll surprise you one of these days by makin' a man out of that feller yet," Mrs. Peck almost threatened, her disapprobation of this hilarity strong in her face.
"You would," said Edith soberly.
"I think if you'd give him a dime now and then he'd be more contented," Rawlins said, so seriously that Edith collapsed, flinging her arms on the table, smothering her face in them, sputtering and gasping in the very climax of mirth.
"When he earns it like any other hand, I'll give it to him," Mrs. Peck said, resenting the criticism of her methods of making a man. "When any skite-poke like him thinks he can marry me and honey around till he gits his paws on my money, he's got a whole lot to learn."
"Well, he's yours," said Rawlins, in a manner dumping Peck and the subject of his proper subjugation on her hands at the same time. "Go to it. I wish you luck. Is Elmer up in the mountains?"
"No, he's out on the range somewhere. I look for him in to-night. He's been around payin' off the men—this is the first week in the month, you know."
"I'd kind of lost track of time," Rawlins laughed. "A man surrounded by a wire fence is like a castaway on an island. Nobody ever passes his way to remind him whether it's to-day or to-morrow."
"If Elmer was here he could tell you a lot about Hewitt. Elmer used to be over west of here runnin' sheep of his own five or six years ago. A couple of sheepmen cut Galloway's fence over there one time and tried to take their sheep in. Hewitt's fence-riders killed 'em both. Nothing ever was done to 'em, they never as much as arrested 'em for it, because them sheepmen had guns on'em. That'll be the end of it if they shoot and kill you in there. They'll say they was defending their lives."
"They would be," said Edith, with conclusive emphasis. "Do you think Ned's going to stand there hands down and let anybody shoot him off the face of the earth?"
"I'd like to have it said a man of mine was standin' by the side of you when you put up a fight for your rights in there," Mrs. Peck said wistfully. "But I might as well wish for self-shearin' sheep. Duke wouldn't 'a' done it, much less this stumble-over-nothin' I've got now. Duke was a good sheepman, but he was juberous about a fight. But I stick to what I said: if you make good holdin' your homestead in there till fall I'll let you take in a band of sheep. I guess if you can stand Galloway's men off you can stand off these little sheepmen around here that's watchin' and hopin' for a chance to go in there and hog the water."
"When it's open to one it's open to all," Rawlins said, putting a cold hand on her greedy plans.
"That'd be foolish," Mrs. Peck chided him severely. "What a man fights for and wins is hisn."
"According to Galloway's argument it is," Rawlins agreed, "If I take sheep limit off for myself, I take it off for everybody."
"Well, I wasn't figgerin' that way when I said you could have a band of mine to run on shares," Mrs. Peck said. "If we couldn't git the good out of it I might as well keep my sheep at home. I thought you was aimin' to go in there and have it all to yourself for a year or two, anyhow."
"You misunderstood me then," Rawlins corrected her, more disappointed than surprised to see this narrow greediness.
"If it's goin' to be throwed open to all corners I might as well put my herders in there as to put in a band on shares with you. I never did go shares with anybody, although Duke started up two or three of these sheepmen around here that way. I only made the offer to you, Ned, because I thought we'd have that land to ourselves. You can see how it'll be if it's open to everybody that comes along. Homesteadin' farmers'll grab the land, us sheepmen won't have any place to go inside of a year."
"I wouldn't think you'd go back on your word, Aunt Lila," Edith declared, flushing with shame for the family honor.
Rawlins had a sort of gone feeling as he listened to this repudiation of the bargain upon which his hopes were shaped. He saw himself a struggling homesteader in a land where he had almost everything to learn, surrounded by sheepmen who knew all there was to be acquired in their tricky trade. Unless he could compete with them on their own terms he'd just as well save his energies for a more promising field. There was about as much honesty on one side of Galloway's fence as the other.
"Business is business," Mrs. Peck said in reply to Edith's criticism of her ethics.
"You ought to feel like a horsethief even to think of such a backdown on your word, Aunt Lila."
"Well, I ain't goin' to lose no sheep next winter, no difference whether Galloway's fence comes down or not," Mrs. Peck said, defiant in her stand. "I can feed, I'm ready to feed, but I'm not sayin' it wouldn't be cheaper for me and better for my sheep to run 'em in there where the grass ain't been touched all summer. I ain't beholdin' to nobody for openin' up no land. I'm purty well fixed the way I am."
"You promised Ned you'd let him have a band on shares if he held down his homestead three months, and now when you see it's going to be a free-for-all you pull in your horns."
"It's all right," Rawlins hastened to interpose in the interest of family peace, "your decision one way or the other doesn't make any difference to me, Mrs. Peck."
"If I were you," Edith advised him, "I'd take a shot at the first sheepman to show his nose within five miles of my place."
Edith was hot about it; her cheeks were as red as if she had just turned from the kitchen stove. Rawlins grinned assuringly, grateful for her interest in his diminishing chance of a band of sheep to run on shares, although his spirits were as low as the water in the creek before the sheepwoman's door.
"I ain't said I'll not let him have a band," Mrs. Peck defended herself, calmly, with no resentment of her niece's hard handling of her business methods; "but I am sayin' I'd lose money by it if that's the way it's to be. I thought Ned was openin' that land for himself, not everybody that comes along; I thought he'd make Galloway build a lane up to his claim to let him out and in, and the rest of it would be shut up as tight as it is now."
"Mainly for the benefit of Mrs. Peck," said Edith. "If I were you, Ned, I'd throw over the whole business. These sheepmen around here are all standin' on one leg waitin' to jump the minute you show 'em it's safe inside of that fence."
"I suppose that's to be expected," said Rawlins.
"And they'd be about as grateful as the sheep."
"She always is hard on us sheepmen," Mrs. Peck laughed, "and she'll end up by marryin' one, I'll bet."
"I've had enough of sheep-wagons, thank you."
"They don't all live in wagons," Mrs. Peck giggled. "I know one that's begun by buildin' him a house—even before he's got any sheep. She can say what she pleases about sheepmen, Ned, but she's as good a sheepman as any of 'em, and she likes the business, too. I learnt her, and I learnt her good. There's Elmer. Yes, that's him. I'd know that man's step in a thousand. It's funny I didn't hear him ride up."
"We heard him," Edith said, grinning knowingly at Ned. "You're gettin' deaf, Aunt Lila. And what would Mr. Peck say if he heard you talkin' that way about another man's step? I'll bet you wouldn't know his if he had mule shoes on his heels."
"Oh, you git out!" Mrs. Peck said, red as inflammation.
Tippie saved her from being drowned in confusion, the two young people laughing unfeelingly. The ranch foreman opened the door without ceremony, standing a moment with hand on the knob after closing it behind him, hat on his head, looking as glum and sour as if he might be the householder returning home unexpectedly and surprising a scene of unauthorized festivity.
"Hello, Elmer," Edith greeted him, jumping up nimbly to begin getting out his supper, kept in the warming oven in expectation of his coming.
"Um-m-m," said Elmer, in his usual close-mouthed form.
Rawlins shook hands with him, a ceremony which Tippie entered into with more spirit than his unsmiling face and severe eyes gave warrant for expecting, for he liked Rawlins and was glad to see him. He doubtless felt that his friendly handclasp was sufficient expression of his regard and interest, turning without a word to hang his leather coat and floppy hat on the accustomed hook behind the door.
"How's the range lookin' by now, Elmer?" Mrs. Peck inquired.
"Dried up and blowed away," said Elmer.
"How's the sheep lookin' on the south range?"
"Like skins hangin' on the fence," said Elmer.
He was ladling water from pail to washpan, solemn of face, fixed and attentive as if he must measure an exact quantity before putting a finger in it. A dipperful more or less might throw it off balance with shocking result. He washed with a dry, rasping sound, as if he had sandpaper on his hands. While he stood drying himself on the clean towel Edith handed him, Mrs. Peck gave him an edgeways look, as if sizing him up for some question she wanted to ask, but was not certain whether the time had arrived for its friendly reception. She chanced it, win or lose.
"Did you see that long-hungry, step-on-his-feet-and-fall-down man of mine over there around Lost Horse Canyon?"
"Um-m-m," said Elmer, giving the grunt an inflection of affirmation.
"You didn't give him any money, did you, Elmer?" Anxiously, wetting her dry lips with her tongue, which she lopped around with a little more effectiveness than elegance.
"Did he have any comin'?" Elmer inquired, pausing in his wiping to fix her with stern eyes.
"You know he never."
"He got all that was due him, then."
"What was he doin'?"
"Readin' a book Riley lent him."
"You don't tell me?" Hopefully, a little proudly. "It must 'a' been a law book, Riley don't read anything but law books. Did you see what it was about, Elmer?"
"Divorces," said Elmer shortly.
But that was plenty. Mrs. Peck rose slowly, as if about to start out on some duty, distasteful and long deferred. She had a grim, combative look on her shallow forehead, where her large eyebrows were bunched over her nose like a swarm of bees. Over at the stove Edith's unruly laughter jumped the fence again. She stood swaying back and forth in the gale of merriment, beating the pot, from which she had been dipping mutton stew, with the big iron spoon.
Even Tippie was robbed of a grin in the surprising assault against his short ribs. Rawlins turned to the window, pretending to look out, although it was so dark nothing but his own picture could be seen in the pane. Mrs. Peck glared around at them, as if she suspected everyone present of a hand in the conspiracy.
"I'll learn him about divorces!" she announced, so cold in her rage she almost shivered. "I'm goin' over there this very night and wear him out with a strap!"
"Go on," Elmer encouraged, getting a grim pleasure out of it. "That's what he's achin' for. The minute you lay a rough hand on him he's got you by the short hair."
"The man never lived that could git a divorce from me!" Mrs. Peck declared furiously. "I'll cut the livers out of him!"
"Damages is what he's achin' for," said Elmer, provokingly calm.
"I'll damage him! I'll give him all the damage he can pack—oh, shut up!"
This adjuration was fired at Edith with a passionate shriek that shivered and broke at the end, as if it had hit the wall. Edith wiped her eyes on her apron, neither sorry nor subdued.
"You poor old fat goose," she said, with a sort of gentle pity.
"I'm none so fat, I'll thank you!" Mrs. Peck shot back, her tenderest point touched, for the delusion of a fleshy lady is not confined to social circles and city squares.
Edith grinned, her corrective douche having shown the desired effect. Mrs. Peck's flurry of wrath began to subside. She sat down, panting as if she had been chasing a scattered band of sheep.
"I'll learn him!" she promised. "He'll stay there with them sheep till wool grows down to his eyes like a ram. I'll go over there in the morning, I'll law-book him! I'll wear it out on his head."
"You better take him a pie," Elmer suggested.
"And give him a dime for chewin' gum," Edith contributed to the domestic advice.
"I'll comb that long hair of his with a board full of tenpenny nails! I'll learn him that no man that ever marries me's goin' to hop up and quit because he can't squander my money on hair oil and fancy vests."
"He's learnin'," Elmer assured her from his place at the table. "I wouldn't be surprised if he rared up and bit a sheep one of these days. He knows all about divorces and property."
"He can't touch a cent of my money, divorce or no divorce."
"Alimony," said Elmer, with glum finality. "If you marry a cripple you've got to support him."
"He'll be a cripple when IJ git through with him! I'm goin' over there early in the morning, and if that excuse opens his head to me about a divorce I'll lay him out. I'm not goin' to be disgraced by no divorce. I'd sooner have it said I was married to three livin' men at one time than divorced from half a one."
Mrs. Peck left the kitchen, and the three unsympathetic ones who were passing grins between themselves at her expense, probably to prepare for her visit to the range next morning, or perhaps to relieve her anger and dread of disgrace in unsheepwomanly tears. That seemed the more likely, indeed, as her voice had quivered even in the most dreadful and threatening passages against the security and beauty of her spouse.
Edith at once swung the talk to Rawlins' situation and the notice he had received from Hewitt to tear down his house and be gone. Elmer heard this with a deeper seriousness clouding his face. He advised Rawlins to quit the venture. He knew Hewitt of old. He was a soft man with his words, but a hard one in his deeds. They would come against him in such force he'd have no show to hold his own.
Taking off sheep limit was not a job for one man, Elmer said. It was a task for a hundred, organized and armed and ready to lay down their lives. Even then Galloway would beat them. Come along out of there, Elmer advised, while the coming was good.
Rawlins heard the advice in good spirit, non-committal on whether he would act upon it or allow it to float away on the wind. Edith went with him when he left to mount Graball and return to his perilous homestead beyond sheep limit.
"You didn't tell Elmer whether you're going to come out or stay," she said, a strange, strained anxiety in her face, an unwonted timidity in her manner.
"No, I didn't tell Elmer," he replied.
Rawlins was standing at the open gate ready to mount, hand on the saddle-horn. It was a clear, placid night, the wind coming from the mountains refreshed and scented with the spicy dryness of sage and drought-withered herbs. There did not seem to be a mote in the age-old path of the starbeams, spearing through cold space to find their journey's end in the transitory reflection of a human eye.
"Are you going to give it up?"
"What do you say about it, Edith?"
"I haven't got anything to say. I was just wondering, after Elmer's talk."
"Elmer's talk was well-meant, and maybe I'd be wise to follow his advice. But I'm not going to do it."
"I'd have been disappointed in you if you had," she said, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. "Hewitt expects you to leave, he thinks you'll act like a sheepman. I don't."
"You're not very strong for sheepmen. Aren't you a little disloyal to your craft?"
"I may be a little rough in my judgment of them," she admitted, "but they don't inspire much admiration when they'll ride forty miles around a fence to get their mail. I've hoped for years," she confessed wistfully, "that some man would come along here big enough to make them take down that fence. I've been betting on you, Ned. It would have given me an awful jolt if you'd let Elmer's talk scare you out."
"Now, I've got to make good!" he laughed.
"I can see your house from the top of that hill where I cut the wire that time," she said.
"You can?" He was more pleased that she had taken the interest to look for it than to know it was so conspicuous from afar.
"Yes," she sighed, "but it's out of range. I couldn't help you any from there."
"You can help me a whole lot anywhere, Edith. Just wish me good luck from the top of the hill—or anywhere you happen to be."
"Always," she said, with simple sincerity.
She gave him her hand with the word, for one quick, warm, assuring little clasp, and turned and ran to the house in a queer break of shyness not at all in keeping with her boisterous hilarity and unreserved fellowship of a little while before.