Hal G. Evarts

“ There were many present who would heed that plea which would one day be issued for all the old-time peelers and bronc fighters of the Cherokee lands to assemble for a final rally. They would not then travel across the open range with chuck wagons and saddle horse. Some would be carried in luxuriously appointed coaches that roared along steel rails; others in glittering vehicles that purred swiftly along fenced and well-kept highways; some would arrive in strange craft that swept across the skies above thriving western cities situated on spots now widely known as ideal cow-camp sites. ”

“ Her habitual self-control had broken down.
“You know he’ll never forget,” she said. “But I can’t have that—a shooting between brothers—don’t you see? Not that Noll really is a brother; but people will always think of it that way. I wish something had happened to Noll before I ever saw him—just for what he’s done to Dad and Bart. I’m wicked enough to wish him dead; he should be; he’s not fit to live. But Bart mustn’t do it. He’d never live it down.”
She spoke disjointedly, her voice high-pitched and unnatural. Carver vaulted the corral bars and laid an arm about her shoulders. ”

“ Molly burrowed her face deep in the pillow. During the day she had seen much that was gold beneath that rusty exterior of the tumbleweeds and much that was dross beneath the golden surface of many of the pumpkins. These men who rallied to Carver, drifters all, were a different breed of drifters than those she had met as friends of her two half-brothers. And now the tumbleweeds had been cast out of their domain.
“Hand me them cards,” said the big Texan. “Now we’ll have an honest deal. I’d trust myself further than any other man I ever met.” ”

“ The green summer range stretched away to the far horizon with never a plow furrow to break it. Two trail herds had been bedded for the night at widely separate points. A third, whose trail boss had evidently made a hard day’s drive to reach the quarantine belt in hope of an earlier clearance and shipping date than that accorded to his slower fellows, passed below the two on the knoll and plodded northward. Two men rode the points, the right and left forward extremities of the herd, guiding the foremost animals on the chosen course. ”

“ Carl Mattison was destined to become one of the most-famed marshals of all time. Even now the fame of his reputation as a man hunter was mounting. The name of Crowfoot was slated to become synonymous with prestige and power, linked with perhaps the most impressive fortune in the whole Southwest. There would be many others who would attain high places. Milt Lassiter would create a place in history as one who would defy the law for a dozen years with a price on his head and with every officer in five States desirous of collecting it. ”

“ Carver shook his head doubtfully as he studied the two patient, bony horses that were destined to carry the ancient couple into the wild scramble of the most desperate stampede of the century.
“Not much, I’m fearing,” he returned. “This will be one awful tangle, with every man for himself. Poor old souls; they oughtn’t to go into it with that worn-out team.”
He turned to Molly and she was looking up at him, in her eyes that same expression which, at that first meeting, had impressed him with the thought that she was in grave need of something. ”

“ The land was rich and beckoned temptingly to those who sought a scrap of ground which might constitute a home, yet beyond Hinman’s holdings the virgin sod extended to the far horizon with never a ribbon of smoke by day or a twinkling window by night to indicate the friendly presence of a settler’s cabin,—the Cherokee Strip, upon which the white man was forbidden to settle by the terms of an ancient treaty. ”

“ As Bart and Molly turned aside, the big Texan dropped from his horse a hundred yards down the little stream and planted his flag.
A dozen riders were almost abreast of Carver as he rounded the point and flung from his saddle in the ranch yard of the Half Diamond H. He had staked the old home ranch.
He turned to watch the rest flash past and recognized a big paint horse as a circle mount of Bradshaw’s string. The group that had clung so persistently instead of staking farther up the valley was composed of old friends to a man. ”

“ Never again in history were these men to gather as a whole on the open range. This night was the last. Many would meet in the future; others would never meet again. Some would be neighbors for a lifetime and it was slated that the trails of others should cross in far places. Perhaps it is well that it is not given to man to look far into the future. ”

“ The years he had served as marshal had fitted him for this work. He could visualize a scene in advance, discount its dangerous features and perfect an alibi that would stand the test. His was the mind that planned but he had seldom been present to witness the execution of those plans. His actual participation in the Wharton hold-up, the one misdeed of its kind where he had been present in person, had been occasioned by a desire to impress upon his associates that he was of the same fiber as themselves. ”

“ In their restlessness many of these turned to the green tables for relaxation and there were stud games where hundreds and often thousands were wagered on the turn of every card. All the cowhands of the Strip were banked up in the quarantine belt, holding the cows of their employers on grass until such time as they could be cleared and shipped. In their leisure hours they swarmed the streets of Caldwell. Added to these were the trail-herd crews from the whole Southwest, among them many Mexican peelers with their tremendous hats, silver-mounted saddles and three-inch silver rowels. ”

“ Groups of tall-hatted, chap-clad men hailed Carver from the sidewalk as he rode down the wide main street. Scores of saddled horses drowsed at the hitch rails and ranchers’ families rattled past in buckboards drawn by half-wild ponies. The street was thronged with blanketed Indians, for the Government beef issue was parcelled out semi-monthly on the little hill south of Caldwell and every two weeks the whole Cherokee nation made the pilgrimage to receive the largess of the Great White Father. ”

“ When one peered through the grass from a prone position the view was none too distinct at best. He hitched forward another two feet. Surely he was holding the decoy sufficiently high to bring it into Noll’s range of vision. Another hitch of two feet, and suddenly his wrist was jarred by the sharp sidewise wrench of the knife as a rifle shot crashed forth from sixty yards to the eastward and the heavy ball tore through the jacket and the block across which it was draped. Carver emitted a single coughing gasp. ”

“ Protection came high and both Freel and Wellman profited accordingly. Oval Springs was a hotbed of lawlessness and a concession for any known transgression could be purchased for a price, a state of affairs confined not merely to Oval Springs alone but prevalent throughout the Strip.
The line between the law and the lawless was but vaguely defined. Instances of the apprehension of any wrong-doer were decidedly infrequent. Petty graft and crooked gambling flourished. As a carcass attracts scavenger birds so conditions in the Strip drew the vicious of the whole Southwest. ”

“ Hinman had come with the vanguard of the invaders and had watched succeeding waves of home seekers swarm past on all the ancient trails, the bull trains stretching almost without a break from the Missouri to the Colorado hills, when Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche contested the advance at every crossing of the Republican and the Smoky Hill, at the Great Bend of the Arkansas, and historic Pawnee Rock; had watched the bull teams and the prairie schooner giving way to freight cars that rattled past on steel rails which spanned a continent. ”

“ As Carver had reflected that such a move would inflict an undeserved hardship upon his employer, so Nate was wondering as to what effect it would have upon his hands, for in common with all cowmen of his type, Younger was proud of the accomplishments of his riders.
Every brand owner would stand back of the men who rode for him; every rider evidenced a similar devotion to the owner’s interests,—a loyalty to the brand for which he worked. ”

“ Just beyond the wreck a man had leaped from a wagon to plant his flag while his wife held the horses. A single man had unloaded from a runabout with similar intent and as the girl passed them the two were fighting savagely, endeavoring through the medium of physical combat to settle the question as to which one had first placed foot upon the ground. While the wife and family of the one gazed upon the scene from the wagon, the horse of the other was running away with the runabout which was lurching perilously across the dips and sways of the prairie. ”

“ The man in the door whirled and fired at the sound of his voice, the flash of his gun a crimson streak in the velvet black of the night. Carver shot back at the flash and Bart’s gun chimed with the report of his own. There was a second flash from the doorway but this time the crimson spurt leaped skyward for the shot was fired as the man sagged and fell forward. There was a splintering crash of breaking glass as the man inside cleared a window on the far side of the house. ”

“ He had ridden the length of a shallow draw and he left it only to discover that the landscape had flattened out into low waves of ground. It was the sight of the upper half of a riderless horse standing in the shallow depression beyond one of these waves which had occasioned his sudden fling from the saddle. Noll had dismounted in the next dip ahead, intending to shoot as Carver rode into sight. ”

“ The tongue was stabbed into the earth, buckled and snapped, piling the outfit up in a tangled heap in the bottom of the dry gulch. A man in a light rig cheered the accident as he made a safe crossing of the wash at a point some few feet away where the banks were less precipitate, shrieking a derisive farewell to the unfortunates as he passed. A chap-clad rider set his horse back on its haunches and dismounted.
“Crawl him, stranger,” he invited. “Give that pony his head and he’ll take you where you’re aiming for. I’ll help the woman straighten out this tangle.” ”

“ In a breeding-ranch country the herd would have been worked on the spot, calves roped and ironed with the brand worn by their mothers, and only the beef steers cut into a day herd, the she-stuff and all stock younger than two-year-olds [88] being allowed to scatter once more on the range. But there were no calves to brand, no she-stock on the range, for of late the cowmen of the Strip had come to follow one set rule in accord with the transition of the cow business, forming an intermediate link between the old-time cattle kings of the open range and the modern feeders of the corn belt. ”

“ Thus do even wise men frequently fail to vision the immensity of the future which stretches forth [2] ahead within the puny span of their own remaining years.
Another few decades and old Joe Hinman, himself accounted a wise man among his fellows, sat his horse on a little rise of ground and lamented his own lack of foresight. Donald Carver, his younger companion, gazed off across the flat where several riders held some two thousand head of steers. ”

“ They continued to act upon this supposition, sanctioned by long years of custom, and the settlers looked with disfavor upon these rovers who dropped in at their cabins and expected to be fed as a matter of course, deeming them parasites upon the community, drones who were unwilling to work and produce; for the cowhands scornfully refused to milk or follow a plow in return for their board. From the first they had swarmed in upon Carver, overjoyed at finding one man of their own sort among all this clutter of aliens,—one man who understood. ”

“ I wear it as an ornament, kind of, the way a girl wears a ribbon,” and he moved on up the trail.
A few days later Molly mounted the ridge and watched the start of the harvesting. There was nothing to attract swarms of harvest hands such as crowded into the country farther north where the whole landscape seemed a solid body of wheat. Another year, when the acreage seeded to wheat would be increased fourfold, then they would come. But Carver had found no scarcity of hands to help him harvest his crop. From her point of vantage the girl could see tall-hatted, chap-clad men toiling in the fields. ”

“ A wagon had just crawled into view on the ridge on the far side of Bart’s filing and near the upper edge of it. The last rays of the setting sun caught the tattered canvas top. Even at a distance of three quarters of a mile both Carver and the girl recognized the outfit as old Judd Armstrong’s, the horses moving slowly, their heads drooping dejectedly.
“You wait here, Molly,” Carver said. “I’ll [162] ride over and help them pick a good place to camp. Then we’ll stir up a bite for the boys to eat.” ”

“ She thought a lot of him, Molly did, and hated Milt and Noll for leading him off.”
“Then why don’t you shake them?” Carver demanded. “There’s no common bond between you and them, and Molly would be way better off.”
“I’ve made the break now and again,” Bart explained. “But they always turn up. Our family line-up is fashioned after that fabled joint snake. You can disrupt the critter but the pieces crawl back together again and all stand united.” ”

“ Carver’s thoughts reverted to a similar prediction made by Hinman, “It’ll be one hair-raising, mad stampede,” old Joe had said. But Carver still dissented.
“It’ll take nearly fifty thousand families to file on every quarter section in the Strip,” he said. “They’ll come eventually. I know that. But where will that many come from in a few weeks’ time?”
“Son, they’ll come from every odd corner of the country,” Younger stated. “They’ll swarm in and settle down in clouds like blackbirds in a cane field. She’ll be the damnedest, wildest scramble a man will ever live to witness. ”

“ I’ll buy it up piece by piece, a quarter at a time, as fast as any party wants to sell; mortgage a part of it to buy more and turn back every dollar that comes off of it into more land. Some day [182] I’ll own all that lower valley with the Half Diamond H at the head of it so we can look out across it all from the house. I’ll follow the price up till it touches forty and then stop buying. Then there’ll come a day when we can stand there at the old ranch house and know that every acre between it and the flourishing city of Alvin will be worth a hundred dollars flat. ”

“ Long trainloads of cows rolled out of Caldwell in swift succession and loading was resumed as soon as empty cattle cars could be obtained. An antiquated switch engine wheezed noisily as it shunted cars along the switches and spotted them at the chutes. Day by day the congestion increased. The quarantine belt swarmed with stock, as some two hundred thousand head had been gathered from the Cherokee lands for shipment. In addition to these the regular run of summer business from the south continued as the trail herds from Texas and New Mexico came plodding up to add to the congestion. ”

“ His friend was nowhere in sight.
“The sun’s nice and warm,” Carver said. “I’ll find Brad napping on the sunny slope of the grade.”
A bare flat extended for four hundred yards [218] on the east side of the tracks. Beyond it the country was broken and rolling, studded with dwarf brush and scattered thickets of scrub oak. Carver located Bradshaw reclining on the west slope of the railroad embankment in the sun, his hat pulled over his eyes. When within a few feet of Bradshaw’s position Carver flinched convulsively as a rifle ball snapped past within a foot of his head. ”