B. M. Bower

“ He drove Drew’s cattle off with his six-shooter. He killed one and crippled another so Drew had to have it shot. If Tod Drew had been at that drift fence, Mr. O’Neill, there would have been murder! There will be yet, if something isn’t done to stop them, for Tod Drew shot our cattle with a shotgun! For a man who was going to do such great things in psychology,” she cried distractedly, “and instill both liking and respect for the forest service into the hearts of the Stillwater men, you have promoted as bloodthirsty a feud as ever happened anywhere! ”

“ It 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it possible you don’t know that father and Tod Drew are always at sword’s points over something, and jump at the least excuse for quarreling? You’ve managed to stir up a pretty mess, Mr. O’Neill. You may have saved father’s beef herd—but what is that when he and Drew have sent each other warning that it will be shoot on sight from now on? I’ve had all I could do to keep father from riding over and killing Drew deliberately! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’ve the small triumph of being asked to sit down with the boss of the Seven L to dinner when I rode up last Saturday to his house. The first ranger who ever did that, I’m sure. It’s something I can boast of to Queen Isabelle.
“Also I held my temper in the matter of the sheep I found trespassing on the Trout Creek Range, and if I told the owner I’d hold the band for damages next time he drove them on, and charge him a full season’s grazing fee to boot, I did it politely and only once called him spawn of the devil and let it go at that. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I wouldn’t let any iron-visaged ranger dictate much to me, if I were a rancher. The human note—no up-stage attitude—just be one of them, friendlylike and peaceful. That’s the ticket. Like gentling a bronc, this thing is going to be. Treat ’em right and they’ll treat you right.”
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Patrick O’Neill laughed. “No, I think I’d prefer to make the maps myself. It would be child’s play after the map making at West Point, and help me to familiarize myself with forest boundaries before you assign me to a district. If I can get hold of a couple of surfaced boards and a two-by-four, Mr. Murray, I’ll just knock together a table and set it beside that north window and go to work, sir.”
“Huh! Christine, phone the lumber yard and tell them to let Pat O’Neill have whatever material he wants to pick out, and send it up here immediately. Say it’s for the forest service.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So this is how Patrick O’Neill, some time of West Point and lately of Black Mesa, Arizona, came into the service of the Yellowstone National Forest.
CHAPTER II. TOO MUCH MISERY.
“Ed, I’m through!” Ranger Cushman tossed his hat onto the pine table where Pat O’Neill had whistled softly over the making of his maps, and where he whistled no more now that the job was beautifully finished. O’Neill was now waiting around the office with an expectant, eager look in his eyes which Murray had studiously ignored while he pondered the problem of keeping the happy Irishman busy. ”

“ O’Neill protested. “What if the fence is down and Drew’s cattle were found on your father’s range? That’s not a shooting matter, with sane men.”
Isabelle gave him a withering look. “Oh, how can you be so dense! Do you suppose for one minute that father could ride to Castle Creek and discover Tod Drew’s cattle there, and his own driven over on Picket Pin—because there was no fence broken down there to lay the blame on the cattle!—without doing something about it? ”

“ 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? ”