Desert Conquest Part 6

Dunne's eye followed the lines of the ditches, marked by margins of green willows. They cut through the fields of wheat, of oats, of alfalfa, timothy, and red clover. They were the main arteries. From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life--the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. At that distance, in the clear, dry air, they looked like toys, miniatures, sharply defined in angle and shadow. So, too, the stock grazing in the fields were of lilliputian dimensions.

From where he sat in the saddle Dunne could see the Coldstream, scarcely more than a large creek, dignified in that land of dryness by the name of river, whose source was in the great green glaciers and everlasting snows of the hills. Its banks were green with willow and cottonwood. It was a treasure stream of untold value. With it the land prospered; without it the land and the men who peopled the land must fail.

"And that ranch, and others like it," Dunne muttered through his teeth, "must go dry and back to brown prairie unless the owners sell out to that old holdup, York, at his own price. Well, Mr. York----You yellow devil!"

The last words did not refer to Cromwell York. For, without provocation or preliminaries, the buckskin's head had dived between his legs, his back arched like an indignant cat's, and with a vicious squeal he began to pitch.

Dunne drew his quirt and let him have it. The brown, plaited leather played like lightning on quarters, flanks, cached head, and flattened ears.

"No work, and a bellyful of oats three times a day!" he gritted.

"Forgotten who's your boss, hey? I'll show you, you hammer-headed, saffron-hided----"

"Stay with him, Casey!"

Dunne turned his head, and shut his teeth upon forthcoming references to his steed's pedigree. A girl, brown, lean, aquiline of feature, sat astride a big slas.h.i.+ng bay, and watched the contest with amus.e.m.e.nt.

Dunne's face, red from exertion, deepened in colour; for some of his remarks, though exceedingly apposite, had not been intended for feminine ears. He answered, between pitches, in the vernacular:

"You bet I will, Sheila! Go to it, old son! b.u.mp to glory if you like!"

But as suddenly as he had begun the buckskin desisted. He heaved a sigh, stood still, and turned a mildly inquiring, backward eye on his rider. It was as if he had said: "What! Still there? You surprise me!"

Sheila McCrae laughed. "He's pa.s.sing it off as a joke, Casey."

"He nearly got me, the old sinner," said Dunne. "Now he'll be good till next time. You miserable, imitation bad horse, some day I'll manhandle you."

"s.h.i.+ner knows you won't," the girl commented.

"He knows you're fond of him. You'll quirt him when he pitches, and then give him an extra feed."

"Well, maybe," Casey admitted shamelessly. "I like the old hyena. I've frazzled out leather on his hide that cost more than he did, but I never went after him right. He certainly can drift when he has to.

What's the news, Sheila? All well at the ranch?"

She nodded, running a keen eye over his face. "All well. But you're the news bureau, Casey."

"Am I?" he said. "Well, then, I haven't a piece of good news in my saddlebags--not one."

"I knew it," she said. "Well, it can't be helped, Casey. There will be some way out. Let's go on to the ranch. Supper will be ready. Most of the men won't come till afterward. I won't be at your council of war, but I want you to let me know just what you decide on."

"Of course," he replied. "You've got a better head than most men, Sheila. I don't know what we will do--haven't a notion. It looks as though we were up against a tough proposition."

His dejection was apparent, and, womanlike, she tried to cheer him.

Some way would be found. The action of the railway was so high-handed and unjust that it could not succeed. But though she spoke cheerfully, her keen eyes were troubled, and her face was clouded as they rode up to the ranch.

They found Donald McCrae at the stables. He was a dark-faced giant of a man, and for all his years carried himself as straight as a young pine.

All his life had been spent on the frontier. He had seen it move westward, and had moved with it from the Great Lakes across the Great Plains. He had seen it vanish, as the wild pigeon and the buffalo had gone--mysteriously, in a season, almost. Wheat fields, etched in green and gold, lay where he had made his lonely camps; orchards nestled by little lakes and in mountain valleys where he had trapped the beaver; strings of bra.s.s-bound, vestibuled coaches whirled where he had ridden his pony with the pack train shuffling behind. And here, on the Coldstream, he had made his last stand, taken up land, and turned, when past his prime, to the quiet life of a rancher.

"Light down, light down, Casey!" he called. "Put your cayuse in the stable. Give me Beaver Boy, Sheila. Go up to the house and fix us some whiskey with a chip of ice in it, like a good girl. Stir up the c.h.i.n.k as you go through, and make him rustle supper in a hurry. We'll be right in." He took his daughter's horse, and in the stable turned to Dunne.

"Well?" he demanded tersely.

"Nothing," Casey replied. "They stand their hand."

"I was afraid of it," said McCrae. "And they outhold us, Casey."

"Yes. Too much money."

"Will they buy us?"

"No. York offered to buy me. I was to be a decoy for the rest, I think.

I refused. Now he will freeze us out."

"Will he?" said McCrae heavily. "Will he? Maybe so. And maybe----" He did not complete the sentence, but stood at the door, scowling at the fair fields. "Twenty years back, Casey--yes, ten, even--if a man jumped my staking I'd have known what to do. We own this water. What's the difference? Can't the law help us? Do we have to help ourselves?"

"It may come to that," Casey replied. "Yes, it's pretty nearly come to that, McCrae. I saw a lawyer--one of the best in the business. He says the odds are against us. They will appeal and appeal--carry it up to the highest court. Meanwhile our land will be dry likely. We're out on a limb. If we hang on they shoot, and if we drop off they skin us."

"I guess that's so," said McCrae. "It's a bad fix any way you look at it. There's the ranch. That ain't so much, far's I'm concerned. I've been broke before, and I can rustle for myself for years yet. But there's my wife and Sheila and Alec. It's theirs. I worked for them.

It's all I've got to leave them. You see, Casey, I can't stand to lose it."

"I know," said Casey sympathetically. "It's a hard position. Look here, Donald, if you wish it I'll vote for breaking our pool, and each man doing the best he can for himself."

"No, I didn't mean that," said McCrae. "The railway wouldn't give us a fair price, and n.o.body else would buy with this hanging over. I'll stick. But you, now, it's some different with you. You're young, you ain't married. It's your stake, of course, but then you've got time left you to get another. They offered to buy you out. I don't know but you'd best take their offer. That'll give you something to start on.

None of us will think the less of you for it."

"The agreement was that we were to fight this to a finish. If we sold out the railway was to buy all or none. If you can stay with that I can."

"But then, you see, Casey----"

"I see, Donald. You know me better than that."

McCrae slapped him on the shoulder with a huge hand, and his voice took on the Gaelic accent of his childhood learned from his father, that McCrae who had in his time ruled a thousand miles of wilderness for the great fur company.

"I do know ye, boy, and it is proud I will be of it. There's Sheila at the door, callin' us. A toss of liquor and a bite--it will put the heart in us again. We must cheer up for the women, lad."

But in spite of this resolution supper was not a merry meal. Talk was spasmodic, interrupted by long silences. Mrs. McCrae--slight, gentle, motherly, with wavy silver hair--was plainly worried. Her husband brooded unconsciously over his plate. Sheila and Casey, conversing on topics which neither was thinking about, blundered ridiculously. And the son of the house, Alec McCrae, a wiry, hawk-faced young man of twenty-two, strongly resembling his sister, was almost silent.

Soon after supper the ranchers who had banded together for mutual protection began to arrive by saddle and buckboard. Men of all ages, they comprised a dozen descents and nationalities, the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon strains predominating.

There was Oscar Swanson, heavy, slow-moving, blond as Harold Haarf.a.gar, a veritable Scandinavian colossus; Wyndham, clean-bred, clean-built, an English gentleman to his fingers' tips; old Ike James, whose tongue carried the idiom and soft-slurring drawl of his native South; Eugene Brule, three parts Quebec French and one part Cree; Carter, O'Gara, Bullen, Westwick, and half a dozen others.

One and all they were wind-and-sun tanned, steady of eye, mostly quiet and brief of speech. Life was a serious business with them just then.

Their ranches were their all. They had given hostages to competence. Up to a year ago they had believed themselves lucky, independent, on the way to modest fortune. Then came alarming rumours; next, construction of works confirming the rumours. Now they were come to hear the worst or best from the lips of their envoy, Casey Dunne.

They listened as he gave details of his interviews with York and Wade, lips grimly wrapped around cigars and pipe stems, troubled eyes straining through the blue smoke at the speaker.

"And you couldn't get an injunction?" said Wyndham.

"No. The judge said that the mere fact of building a dam did not show an intention to interfere with anybody's rights."