B. M. Bower

“ But you—if you can make them like you, the work is half done. Won't you try, Mr. O’Neill? I heard how you talked to father, and while I admit he is terribly exasperating, still, that attitude of yours won’t make him love the service any better. If you’d seize every opportunity to make each individual like you personally——”
“I will that!” cried Patrick O’Neill, beaming upon her with the Irish twinkle which she had perhaps noticed. “I grasp the idea, and I find it wonderful! But I shall need encouragement and advice—and might I begin with yourself, Miss Boyce?” ”

“ You're going to pay for the grass your cows eat on the national forest—and you'll pay for the cows on the range, mind you! As for the sheep—— Well, I’m running that end of it, too.”
“Yes, you'll be runnin’ out of this country!” Peterson bellowed truculently, his red face thrust close to the blazing eyes of Ranger O’Neill. “We don’t need no damn forest ranger in here as a boss. We can run our cows without help from the government, and we'll run you out just like we ran out the other damn rangers!” ”

“ TT is strange how training oft will drop away from a man like a garment of winter grown uncomfortable as summer approaches, yet fall into place when the need of it arises again. So with Ranger Patrick O’Neill when he pulled up his horse at Drew’s gate. In the years since West Point he had put aside much of his military bearing in everyday life, and he had gone rather irresponsibly out to meet life, with his rollicky Irish manner to the front because it was easy to wear. ”

“ The same thing that’s wrong with all the rest of the Stillwater people, Mr. O’Neill. All you rangers seem to have overlooked the fact that this is an isolated country, where it’s very difficult to keep a fine sense of values. This world in here is bounded by cows, horses, crops and kids. The men are only servants to their live stock, and the women are slaves to the men. No one seems able to take a day off, to get out of the rut. They live in shacks, for the most part, and life is a monotonous grind of the very things that have made them so narrow and sordid. ”

“ I think you’re one hell of a ranger! You can’t tell cows from sheeps! I paid good money for that grass. And I don’t stand for no damn ranger lettin’ sheep come and eat my grass!”
“Take your dirty claw off me!” snapped the saintly Patrick O’Neill, as he threw off Peterson’s hand. “No sheep are on your grazing ground, and you know it. And I think,” he added meaningly, “if you’d count your cattle, you'd find you were getting your money’s worth of grass, all right!”
“Yes, my cows ate grass before you come here an’, by damn, they eat grass when you go! Maybe you charge money for breathin’ air! ”

“ You will have charge of the grazing permits and the timber sales, of course. You will find that the stockmen are inclined to resent the grazing fee of thirty-five cents a head for their stock, and if it is possible I should like to see a better feeling between the ranchers and the forest service. The service is really a protection to the stockmen, but as yet they look upon us as oppressors who delight in interfering with their inalienable rights. Boyce, of the Bar B Ranch—which is nearest the Stillwater station—is apparently the bitterest enemy we have. ”

“ We can break the drift fence there and make it look like the cattle done it, and take the bunch out that way, on Drew’s range, and haze some of Drew’s cattle back through the fence onto Castle Creek. That way, old Boyce won't miss his cattle for a week, maybe. Neither will Drew, because he ain’t half through with his round-up yet. When they’re ready to make their drive out, it’ll look like the cattle got mixed up, is all. And if Boyce don’t find his steers over on Drew's range, let ’em lock horns over it if they want to! They're always fighting, anyway, over the line or some darn thing. ”

“ The afternoon was older than he had suspected when he rode up out of Bad Cañon and across the high grazing ground that lay between his fishing place and Lodgepole Basin. He had a plan which he felt would work beautifully, if only he had time for it; but now with the sinking of the sun, he was not so sure. A great deal depended upon his horse, and he had not spared the animal in his roundabout ride to cut the homeward trail of Peterson and his men.
“First, I must be sure that Boyce’s steers are safe,” he decided, and crossed Limestone Creek with a splash and a clatter of hoofs on the stones. ”

“ Isabelle Boyce was right, and Ranger Cushman also summed up the situation rather accurately. The stockmen were ready to fly at each other’s throats for little cause, but they stood as one man against the forest service.
“And it’s man by man that I must take them and make them see sense, if I have to crowd it down the throats of them with my fist!” mused Patrick O’Neill, as he reined his horse into the trail that led with steep and devious turnings down into Bad Cañon, which he must cross in order to reach Peterson’s home ranch. ”

“ Father knows better, and so do you, but he has permitted himself to drop into the ways of the country. There isn’t even that excuse for you at all, don’t you see?”
“Miss Boyce, you have the pitiless logic of a Portia,” Patrick O’Neill sighed. “For the first time in my life, I humbly apologize for my fightin’ Irish temper, and I promise to be a saint from this moment, so that Stillwater mothers shall beg the little ones at their knees to be sweet, loving little gentlemen and ladies, like the kind, forgiving young man at the ranger station, who would not hurt a fly. ”

“ Do you know how Tod Drew’s cattle came to be on father’s best range, and father’s beef herd over on that barren ground that wouldn’t furnish grazing for a sheep? And the drift fence down——”
“Do I know? It’s a night’s sleep I lost in getting full knowledge of the mystery, Queen Isabelle! I drove your father’s cattle to the Picket Pin——”
“Indeed?” So much meaning may be crowded into one word with a rising inflection that Patrick O’Neill felt a momentary panic. “I hope, Mr. O’Neill, you will oblige me with your reasons for so astounding a piece of trouble making. ”

“ Whereupon he resumed his whistling and jogged down to the comfortable log house in the grove of lodgepole pines, opened all the windows and went happily to work at what he called policing camp. After that he got out the files and studied the grazing permits, the brands, owners thereof and the territory assigned to each, It took the rest of the day and most of the evening to memorize the stuff he felt he should have ready behind the tip of his tongue, but he enjoyed it all and repeated his cheerful prophecies concerning the work of gentling Stillwater District. ”

“ You’re—meaning the forest service—the only thing they can all band together to fight, don’t you see? Once you take that community spirit away from them, I don’t know what would happen. It’s the primitive impulse of self-preservation, working out in a normal, primitive way. It requires a common enemy—hunger, the menace of some terrible creature of the wild, protection against some element that would destroy, and which no one man is strong enough to conquer alone ”

“ Cushman, I want you to meet Pat O’Neill; been making maps; part of the office force now. Well, what's wrong with the Stillwater District this time?”
“Ain't this time, Ed. It’s all the time, and I’m darned good and tired of it. Man was not born to stand the grief I’ve stood with them wild cats. I’m goin’ back to the peaceful life of roughin’ broncs for a livin’. Why, them coyotes over on the Stillwater are so poison mean they won’t even speak to each other, except when they call a convention to devise ways and means of dealin’ me misery, and old Boyce is chairman of the committee. ”

“ O'Neill turned and rode that way, peering down satisfiedly at the dark forms of the Bar B beef steers bedded down on a rise of ground just back from the creek and the mosquitoes and close to the fence.
“What did I tell you, Morenci? Now, rout them up and we'll haze them on down the fence toward Picket Pin. If it’s through a fence they want to travel, they may try the other side of the fence on Picket Pin and welcome—and the farther they drift, the safer they’ll be, though it will make more work for the Bar B riders.” ”

“ Little Bill happens to be a great crony of Peterson’s outfit, though why he doesn’t work for the Box S instead of for father I never could tell you. He isn’t so awfully popular with our boys. Most of our riders are pretty good fellows, as you would discover for yourself if there wasn’t this grudge against the forest reserve which keeps you seeing their most disagreeable traits.
“One thing I wanted to tell you, ranger man, is that Peterson and his bunch are going to ‘get’ you, on account of that fight. ”

“ Christine at length decided. “If they are big maps, I could fold them lengthwise without carbon, but they might slip on the roller, which is too slick. If it is figures, I do not mind so much, but if it is those funny signs for surveying I must copy them with a pen, and that is no joke if I am in a hurry. I think if it is much work, Mr. Murray, I should get more wages.” ”

“ They will not be satisfied to stay at the upper end of the bottom where the grass is quite as good, but must range farther in the vain hope of finding range that pleases them better. At any rate, it’s worth the gamble.”
As he opened the wire gate in the drift fence which separated Drew’s range from Boyce’s on Castle Creek just above its junction with Limestone, the parklike basin was dusky with the coming of night, but as he led his horse through, closed the gate and remounted, a steer snorted dew from its nostrils not far away. ”

“ And the time is short for a ride to the Bar B and back again to Castle Creek soon enough to stop them.
“Morenci, you've the mark of a good cow pony in the way you handle yourself on range inspection, and if you work fast enough, I’m thinking we can handle this little matter alone; though it’s little encouragement I’ve lately received for playing the patron saint to old Boyce. Still, there’s a way to work it that appeals to my sense of humor, and it’s that we’re going to do. So shake a leg, Morenci! You've a lot of violent exercise between you and your feed box to-night.” ”

“ For to teach a dog new tricks you must first convince him that you’re the master of him—and faith, I shall point that out to Queen Isabelle, should some rumors of what is to take place to-day reach her before next Thursday. ”

“ Dog-gone that June 11th Act and its maps and pamphlets and systems and all that bunk! What I’m going to need is a crew of civil engineers and an addition on this office. Washington must think all forest rangers are merely desk men! Why——”
“Should that be incorporated in the body of the letter, Mr. Murray?” Christine was patiently waiting with pencil point on her pad. “I could make a note and beg to inform them in a polite way that you have no office force and your secretary works until six o'clock sometimes——”
“No!” shouted Murray. “What does Washington care how long my secretary works? ”

“ Well, as you say, making maps on a typewriter is no joke, and I guess you’d earn your money all right!” Her employer noted the clearing of Christine’s placid blue eyes, gave another inarticulate snort and returned to his own problem, knowing that Christine was unlikely to repeat his words.
“Seems like I’ve got troubles enough in this district, fighting every cowman, sheepman, timberman and nester in the State. I’m always short-handed, always got a row on my hands with some one who thinks I ought to turn the reserve over to him just because we used to punch cows together! ”

“ Peterson objected. “A five-spot just for drivin’ the cattle is too much. I won’t pay five dollars for just to-night’s work.”
WHILE they wrangled over the money, Patrick O’Neill went down the creek to where his horse was tied, mounted and urged the animal across the creek and up the farther side of the cañon, taking a trail that led sharply away from his objective, which was the trail up from Bad Cañon to the Box S Ranch. He wanted very much to see the three men whose voices he failed to recognize. ”

“ They’ve cut the wires on my pasture fence every night for a month, so every time I want a horse I got to wrangle him afoot. They steal my grub. I ride day an’ night, hazin’ cattle off the reserve, and they drive ’em on faster than I can drive ’em off. Why, even the sheepmen are gettin’ gay! Found two bands of sheep on the reserve, last week, over Trout Creek way. Killed a few sheep and took a shot at the herder, but that won’t stop ’em. They’ll keep a-comin’, now they‘ve started.
“Another thing: Them darn timber pirates on Blind Bridger Creek are cuttin’ everything they come to, regardless. ”

“ If you take ’em up around Lodgepole Basin and across Squaw Gulch and that way—why, hell! You might just as well ride up to Boyce and tell ’em you got his steers—and what'll he do to yuh! He’s goin’ to miss the bunch first time any one rides to Castle Creek, an’ a blind man could foller their trail. ”

“ That way, there ain’t any mysterious tracks across Myers Creek and up Squaw Gulch way, and it’s about as close to where you want to hold ’em, Gus. Time the brands is healed and you get ’em down outa that high basin, winter’ll be on and you're dead safe. You'll make a late drive this year with your beef, that’s all, and you'll have all Box S brands—see? ”