The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 13

"Oh, I wouldn't," drawled Bat sleepily. "It isn't worth it. I've just come down. Whole row's over. You can't get a dub in the Valley to open his mouth. Same old gag we've used for the last ten years, 'heavily armed band of masked men,' 'scene like a butcher's shambles,'

and that guy of a sheriff 'scouring the hills for the miscreants.'

I'll bet he's under his bed scared blue."

"Who did it?"

"Same old gang of outside grazers, drovers who skipped the State line.

I succeeded in getting their names after a good deal of trouble."

"You did, did you? Then give us a stick about it, will you? Date it special at the Rim Rocks! Trouble is, if I do send a man up, business office will kick at the expense account; for there's nothing in it; and that kind of news hurts the Valley."

So Mr. Bat Brydges wrote forty lines of two paragraphs in which he warned the public that this sort of thing had to stop; the West would not stand for interference from outside cattlemen who were trying to wrest the range away from local grazers. There followed the names of six men concerned in the Rim Rock fray. Whose names they were, neither Bat nor anyone else knew. Also Mr. Sheriff Flood was not described as "a guy" nor pictured as reposing under his bed. He might have been a walking a.r.s.enal of defence for the Valley. According to Mr. Bat Brydges, Sheriff Flood was busy on the case and had wired the authorities of the adjoining States to be on the look out for the guilty parties. There followed a description of the guilty parties photographed accurately from Mr. Bat Brydges's retina.

The third newspaper office was the least easy for the handy man's tactics. The editor was an independent of the fiery order. Bat avoided the editor and tackled a young reporter at the noon hour.

"What do you say to a spin in the 40 h. p. to-night?" he asked.

"What's on?"

The youth was reading an ink-smudged galley proof.

Bat sat down on the desk where he could read over the other's shoulder.

The proof reeked of "gore" and "shambles" and "heavily armed masked men" and rifle shots thick as hail stones with a sheriff careening over the Mesas at break neck speed slathered with zeal for law.

"What reforms are you jollying along now?" asked Bat.

"We'll jolly you fellows when this comes out."

"I've always said if I were his Satanic Majesty and wished to defeat the goody-goodies, I wouldn't bother fighting 'em! I'd take an afternoon nap and let them buck themselves by their lies and bickerings."

The youth ran his eye down the galley proof.

"Who filled you up with this dope?" Brydges lowered his voice to an altogether amused and very confidential key.

"What's the matter with it?"

"Matter? There's nothing right about it."

"Goes all the same. Got snap! It's good stuff."

"Stuffing, you mean," corrected the handy man. "Say, where ever did you get it? Talk of stuff? Somebody has mistaken you for a spring chicken."

"Got it straight. It's all right! Fellow from the English colony--"

"English Colony? Those Rookeries--Mother Carey's chickens. Do you know what that Rookery gang is? A lot of gambling toughs, remittance doughheads--"

"That doesn't spoil a ripping good story! I'm going to wire a column to Chicago."

"No, you're not," contradicted Brydges. "That kind of thing hurts the State more than ten thousand dollars will advertise it. You go over your advertising columns my boy--"

"All right! It's up to you?"

Bat whistled and swung the galley proofs between his knees.

"Doesn't matter what you say out here. Everybody knows your rag sheet will contradict to-morrow what you say to-day in headings red and long as a lead pencil. You'll contradict in a little hidden paragraph tucked away among the ads., and I guess we know which are the ads. out here; but, if you want any more dope on inside stuff, don't you send that East! You have applied for a job on our paper twice. If you want one, don't you send that East! What do they pay you, anyway?"

The youth paused to estimate; and youth's hopes are ever high.

"That's worth a hundred to me!"

"No, you don't! They pay you six and ten and sometimes two, but it's worth a hundred if you keep it out, nice crisp little bills, my boy.

Call for you to-night at five; but don't you play that story up."

It was then and there Bat showed himself a past master. He sauntered out of the office humming.

"Say, Brydges," called the youth, "what's wrong with this account, anyway?"

"All wrong," reiterated Brydges stepping back. "Wasn't a man lost his life. Wasn't a man on the Range at the time, only a kid got in the way of a stampede! Here, I'll give it to you straight! I've just come down from the Valley! You tell what happened down in Mesa and Garfield counties ten years ago, and up in Wyoming last spring! Give it to the other States. Don't give your own State a black eye! Come on out and have something with me, and I'll fix you up as we feed."

So when the Independent's fiery columns came out with red scare heads and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of Denmark" and "d.a.m.nable rascality," there was only one emasculated innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were steeped with the b.l.o.o.d.y details of sheep ma.s.sacres and stock raids and Range Wars in other states in "the good old gun-toting days."

Bat's last act that day was to send a telegram care of the East-bound Limited to Senator Moyese. It read, "All local papers out highly gratulatory references your efforts to punish guilty parties."

CHAPTER XI

SETTING OUT ON THE LONG TRAIL

In the half light of mist and dawn, the Ranger ascended the Ridge trail.

Life was at flood-tide. Thought focussed to one point of consciousness set on fire of its own rays. He walked as one unseeing, unhearing, hardened to singleness of purpose, heedless of the steepness of the climb, of his blood leaping like a mountain cataract, of his muscles moving with the ease of piston rods; heedless of all but the warmth of the glow enveloping his outer body from the flame burning within.

He did not follow the zig-zag Ridge trail but clambered straight up the face of the slope, following pretty much the short cut-off they had taken the night before. He came to the crag where the spruce logs spanned the tinkling water course. There was a gossamer scarf of cloud hanging among the mosses of the trees. The peak came out opal fire above belts of clouds. The sage-green moss spanning the spruces turned to a jewel-dropped thing in a sun-bathed rain-washed world of flawless clouds and jubilant waters. He drew a deep breath. The air was tonic of imprisoned sunlight and resinous healing. Was each day's birth the dawn to new being?

It was here he had met her the night before. Waves of consciousness, tender delirious consciousness, flooded and surprised him. He had asked for a seal of memory. He knew now it would never be a memory: it would be consciousness, ever-living, ever present; a compulsion not to be controlled because it was not his own; and never to be quenched because it burned within. If he had been a weakling, the seal would have been a seal to self; but because an elemental war for right was winnowing the self out of him, he knew it was a seal to service.

Day-dawn marked the creation of a new world; and That had opened the doors for him to a life that no telling could have revealed. Would it be the same with the Nation? Would this struggle open the doors to a new life; or would the powers that stood for law and right go on marking time inside the firing line, while the powers that stood for wrong and outrage held their course rampant, unchecked; straining the law not to protect right but to extend wrong; perverting the courts; stealing where they chose to steal; killing where they chose to kill; deluging the land with anarchy by sweeping away law, just as surely as the removal of the sluice gates would set loose flood waters?

He ascended the rest of the dripping Ridge trail in a swing that was almost a run.

Below the Ranger cabin on the Homestead Slope stood the large oblong canvas bunk house of the road gang employed by the Forest Service.

"Hi--fellows," shouted Wayland, shaking the tent flap. "All hands up!"

And he ordered the foreman to send the road gang to skin and burn and bury what lay at the foot of the battlements. As the Rim Rocks lay a few feet outside the bounds of the National Forests, it will be seen that Wayland _had stopped marking time behind the law and gone out beyond the firing line_. If it isn't clear to you how the Ranger was exceeding the authority of the law, then read the Senator's speeches about "the Forest and Land Service men going outside their jurisdiction employing Government men to do work which was not Government Service at all."