Sheep Limit/Chapter 18
There was not much in the immediate outlook conducive to a calm spirit and peaceful repose. Such sleep as Rawlins had that night was crowded with strife and battle. The subconscious man inside him seemed allied with the enemy, for his sleepless imagination contrived dreams which harassed him by scenes of perils having neither beginning nor end, leaping from one to another like broken fragments of flame.
In all of them he was trammeled by some unseen force that made him impotent against his tormentors. When he shot in desperate defense of his threatened life, it was only a weak fizzle, the smoke dribbling from the muzzle of his gun as from a cigarette; when he battled bare-handed, punching for all that was in him, Hewitt, or the variations of Hewitt which all his enemies assumed, stood unmoved. No matter how much steam he put into his punches, his fists seemed to float gently against jaws and ribs of leering Hewitts as if he moved in a vacuum which affected nobody else.
If he had been a man who put any stock in visions, Rawlins would have packed up a day ahead of the date set for him to go. He was up at dawn, heavy, unrefreshed, feeling as if sand had blown into his eyes, distrustful of the truce Hewitt had set. He expected them to appear any moment, with destructive designs against his house, and his life if he should interpose to protect it.
He had not slept in the house that night, Tippie's counsel in that particular being heeded. Galloway's men might come in the night, drench his little house with kerosene, and roast him in it. Many a sheepman and herder had gone that fiery way in the contests of the northwestern range. Rawlins was no stranger to the hideous practice.
Rawlins' faith in his venture was shaken. Of course a man had to start somewhere, but, as Clemmons had said, there were safer places and more comfortable. Mrs. Peck had found a convenient excuse for repudiating her agreement; the sheepmen around would be quick to hop in and profit by his victory, chance it that he should win, and he would be left holding the sack.
But he could not abandon the venture now. His honor was involved, his courage had been challenged. More than that, the old feeling of resentment against Galloway for building that barrier, fencing him off from his destiny, as he regarded it, rose up renewed. Sheep or no sheep, he would hold that homestead, if for no other purpose or reward than the vindication of an American citizen's rights.
It was an aim entirely altruistic, somewhat uselessly heroic. Galloway would close the gap in the fence at the township line after Rawlins had been forced, by lack of funds to carry out his enterprise, to pursue his fortunes in some more congenial atmosphere. Or perhaps the sheepmen would be strong enough to hold it by that time, and one of them would jump his claim the hour his back was turned.
For all Rawlins' qualms, that day passed uneventfully. Hewitt evidently was a man who respected his word. Rawlins felt that he would be as inexorable in the other extreme as he was faithful in the observance of his truce.
Rawlins spent the day in vigilance, planning what his action should be if they appeared on this side; how he would move to defend his little house if they came up on that. His situation was in a valley about two miles wide, the hills on its borders dwindling down to blend with it out of their rough cast and sullen aspect, their slopes refreshed with abundant grass and green shrubs. By day, a surprise was impossible; even at night a watchful man would have warning of an approach, unless made stealthily on foot, an unlikely way for Hewitt's men to come on that business against a man whose puny defiance they would despise.
They would come in determination to wipe him out so effectually, and humiliate him so thoroughly, as to discourage others. The success of this bold homesteader would mean the loss of their idle jobs of fence-riding, for others would pour in if he could make that piece of paper from a misguided land agent hold. Rawlins realized that he faced the anomaly of being in greater danger on account of his unquestionable tenure, a situation not uncommon in the relations of might and right.
There would be no sleep for him this night, the last before the great issue between him and Galloway's men.
The strategy of the savage man, instead of the careful planning of the trained mind, is the resort of one matched against many, almost invariably. Instead of plotting some cunning method of defense in which one man might equal several, Rawlins withdrew a discreet distance from his haystacks and house, posting himself in a little depressed circle which he recognized, from old association on the Kansas prairies, as a buffalo wallow.
Greasewood and small bushes had grown thick around the edges of this embankment, which was about fifty yards from his house. It made a screen and shelter behind which a man might lie and do considerable damage with a rifle before even ten men could drive him into the open. At night it would be almost unassailable from any direction except the front, screened in the rear and flanked on either hand by a thick growth of sage and taller greasewood.
It must have been thirty years since a buffalo bull rolled and wallowed in that pit, rubbing off his shaggy winter coat, but it had been worn so deep, and trampled so hard, that no seed or shoot of shrub had sprung there in all the intervening leap of time. Grass had crept in and woven its tenacious sod, as some faithful custodian keeping the castle of an absent baron ready to his repose against his long-deferred return.
A man could watch there in comfortable security, Rawlins believed. He could creep out, dodging in the skirting bushes, and approach within twenty yards of the house, even in daylight, without being seen. He was grateful to the old buffalo that had planned so well to meet his needs these long years after its bones had whitened in the sun and gone back to dust in the pasture of the plains. In the security of this place he sat down, canteen at hand, to wait the turn of the card that was to decide his destiny in the Dry Wood country.
There was a little lemon-rind of new moon in the south-west, which was down before ten o'clock, leaving the earth starlit, and full of baffling shadows. It was as if the dregs of night had settled to the ground, like the precipitate of clarifying water, in a shallow stratum of obscuration. The tops of trees along Rawlins' stream, the roof of his house, the peaks of his haystacks, reached above this low-lying darkness. Below that height things were indefinite, merged in the low-pressing shades. The ear, not the eye, must be a man's sentinel a night like that.
It was well enough, Rawlins thought, accustomed as he was to night-watches over herds. A man could not strike a match behind house or haystack without betraying his presence; in the quiet of the valley, no live stock except Graball to stamp and make a noise, Hewitt's men would have to ride on air to surprise him. Graball was picketed well out of the way of wild bullets under the bank of the creek, yet near enough to reach him if the desperate necessity of getting away in a hurry should come.
A surprise was out of the question, Rawlins assured himself. What he should do when they came must be resolved by the event. Planning and imagining ahead was only a waste and strain. He hoped it would not be necessary even to wound anybody, although he knew they would not come with any such charitable reservations toward him. Justice and the law were on his side, which was a comfortable assurance, although he had been told that Galloway was bigger than either in that part of the State.
Rawlins got out his pipe after the moon had been gone two hours or more, to ease the tension of his silent waiting. There was no honesty in secrecy, let the smoke betray his presence as it might. He was not hiding out from anybody, only availing himself of the advantage that caution might give him. He did not want them to believe him absent, but to take it that he was standing off just that way, watching and ready, with his gun at his hand, determined to fight for that little chunk of earth that was his birthright as a citizen of the United States.
So he reasoned, back against the bowl of the old buffalo wallow, hands clasped behind his head, looking up at the cold blue points of the stars.
Rawlins sprang out of what he thought a momentary doze, alarmed by the creak of riving planks, the splintering crash of breaking glass. He cursed his treasonable lapse when he saw that it was daylight, and that four men on horseback were trying to drag his house down with ropes tied to their saddle-horns.
Another mounted man, who was supervising the job, was posted before the door, as if watching for the inhabitant of the little plank box to appear. This man was holding his gun poised ready to throw it down in a quick shot, just as if he waited for a rabbit at a hole in a hedge.
Rawlins was not concerned about the house coming down, for he had anchored it well at the corners to posts set deep in the ground, as he had seen such houses on the Kansas prairies tied down against the wind. It would take more than four horses with ropes tied to saddle-horns to budge the building, although his little window had burst under the strain.
It was the thought that these scoundrels believed he was in the house, and that they were putting over a great joke on him by upsetting and exposing him in his confusion like a bug under a rock, that put the torch to his resentment and wrath. He jumped from his concealment with a yell, throwing a shot toward the bunch as he came into the clear.
Whether his shot cut one of the ropes, or whether it broke at that exact moment, Rawlins had no way of knowing, but a rope parted at any rate, letting the straining horse down so suddenly it rolled over, throwing its rider clear. The man watching the door pitched a shot at Rawlins, which went wild on account of the shooter's trouble with his horse. It was plunging to break and run, frightened out of its wits by the horse that had fallen and come rolling toward it in a scramble of legs and dust.
There was confusion among the three whose ropes were still attached to the house, their horses threatening disastrous complications with legs and lines. Between trying to cast off the ropes from their saddles and preventing the excited horses getting their legs snared in them, these fellows had no hands for their guns. The battle was left for the moment to the one who appeared to be the leader, and he was doing a lot of shooting for one man, it seemed to Rawlins as he hopped and dodged from bush to bush, cracking away at the whirl of dust, horses and men beside his little house.
The one who had been thrown made a flying tackle for his horse's neck as the animal scrambled to its feet. Rawlins had a fantastic glimpse of him, spread against the animal's side, one hand on its mane, one heel over the saddle, as it dashed wildly around the house and out of sight.
Much to Rawlins' satisfaction the free horse ridden by the shooting man broke away to follow it, but only to appear on the farther side of the confused bunch in a moment, its rider to go right on shooting with the same mean persistency as before.
Two of the men emerged from the tangle now, leaving the third hung up at the end of his lariat, which he seemed unable to untie or cut. They began to shoot, nothing more substantial between them and Rawlins than a little greasewood bush about shoulder high and not wide enough to hide a post. Lucky for Rawlins their horses were out of hand, pitching and dashing around, wild to be away out of there. The man who had stood at the door rode in and cut the rope that held, freeing all hands to the unequal fight.
It was time to get back to cover. Rawlins realized that when the four of them began to shoot, spreading out to encircle him, their purpose deflected from the destruction of his property to himself. He crouched behind the bush, holding his fire while he figured the chance of dashing back to the buffalo wallow.
He had come too far in his first hot charge to get back to that shelter. They were getting mean, their bullets were cutting close, for the horses were steadying down to control, the dust settling, giving them a clear drive. The haystacks were too far off to do him any good, the creek bank where Graball stood saddled and ready to go was behind him nearly a hundred yards, the way to it blocked by bushes, the ground rough for a man to make his get-away across on foot. Besides that, he was not ready to retreat; he would not be ready to retreat until he could no longer pump a cartridge into his gun.
To the left of him a little way, roughly estimated forty feet, there was a clump of sage, ancient and grey, with the dead wood of many years in the center of its slowly spreading ring. After the manner of this grim, deep-rooted desert shrub the soil had heaped around it as snow drifts around a shock of corn. Here it held in a little hummock against the attrition of wind and water, the solemn plant fortifying itself to withstand drought and fire in its island by clinging to every particle of soil whisked to it on the desert winds.
Rawlins drove back the two who pressed in nearest with a few quick shots not intended to knock anybody off his horse, for he did not want to hurt a man of them if they could be dispersed without it. He hoped to cut their horses from under them, knowing very well from the way they rode and slung their guns with little snapping jerks, elbows against their ribs, that they would be as helpless as worms on foot. They were range men; panic would defeat them when they saw their horses begin to go.
As Rawlins dropped behind the clump of sage after 'a breathless spurt to reach it, a bullet spread a fan of dust before his face. He thought they had him, blinded a moment by the dust, but the bullet must have struck after he hit the ground. It was only dust in the eyes, but that was bad enough for a man with a fight against good gunmen like those fellows on his hands.
Rawlins gasped and rubbed, able presently to make out his assailants in watery contortion where they were bunched over near the haystacks, looking in his direction questioningly, holding up on their shooting as if they believed they had disposed of that annoying incidental of their day's business, but would wait a little while to make sure before going on with the rest.
Considering it a very good move to encourage this belief, Rawlins lay flat, a copious outpouring of tears washing the dirt in some measure out of his eyes, his vision improving momentarily. Two of them had their rifles out, keen for the first motion of life behind the sage-mound. The other two had ridden up to the wire fence around the haystacks, where one of them dismounted, hesitatingly doubtfully before making a dive through it, which he did presently, disappearing from sight.
Rawlins did not believe they intended to burn the hay. Hewitt would want that. There were several tons, worth a considerable sum, but there was no way of stopping them now if they had changed their minds or got their orders wrong. He could live without the hay; it wasn't worth killing a man over, or getting killed to save.
They were not going to burn the hay; they only wanted an armful of it to kindle the house. The man came to the fence with a big armload, which he threw over, crawling after it. He tried to kick the door in, the hay in his arms, appealing to his companions for help when he failed, for it was a strong hand-made door of vertical planks, hung on heavy strap hinges.
The boss of the outfit told him to push it through the broken window and throw a match on it. One of them rode up and kicked in the sash.
The man who had carried the hay was striking a match when Rawlins fired. The fellow turned from the window, the burning match in his fingers, running toward his horse as if he had snatched a brand from the fire and rushed out in the night to light his way. He ran with such desperate eagerness, hand holding the blazing match extended as if he hurried to save the precious flame, that Rawlins believed he had missed.
The others evidently shared this belief. After they had made a quick scurry to get behind the stacks, Rawlins heard them laughing at their friend's ridiculous efforts to save the match. As the man made a sweeping reach for his saddle, he fell.
The others rode out and looked at him, where he lay stretched full-length and still, his face to the ground. None of them dismounted to inquire into his condition, all hurrying off behind the house as if to consult over this unexpected, and perhaps unprecedented, resistance from the homesteader. Fearing they would set fire to the house from that side, Rawlins left his hole again, edging around the fringe of his little clearing, keeping out of sight as well as he could behind the sparse bushes.
Two were riding out from behind the house to draw a long encircling movement and get back where they supposed him to be; the third was whittling a shingle torn from the eaves, preparing to make a fire in the roof. The man nearest Rawlins let out a yell when he discovered him, pulling up short, cutting loose with his rifle, a one-handed shot. Rawlins felt the breath of the bullet in his face.
After that, things mounted to a turmoil in which Rawlins felt himself a shaving driven before a flame. He had a confused sense of dodging from sage-clump to sage-clump, doubling, firing; oppressed by a suffocating desperation, a wild hopelessness. He did not know whether he was wounded or whole, for his body seemed a thing apart, a sort of dumb ally who handled the hot rifle, above whom his frantic mind fluttered like a mother bird which screams at sight of a serpent at her nest.
It ended with Rawlins standing in the open not far from the corner of his house. How he got there, moved by what intention, he did not know. A horse was down by the wire fence around the stacks. The man who had ridden it had taken the riderless horse and gone off with the other two—there they were, galloping off down the creek, bending low, trying to make themselves small in the sight of this most unreasonable person that ever took up a homestead in the Dry Wood country.
The one who had gone running with the match was lying there, his hat a little way ahead of him, stretched out as if he had reached with his last strength to stop the closing door of life. His right arm was extended, the wasted match-end lying close by his finger-tips.