the Drift Fence (1992) (2 page)

Molly conceived a resentment against the rich cattleman who could impose such restrictions and embitter the lives of poor people. And as for Traft's tenderfoot relative, who had come out from Missouri to run a hard outfit and build barbed-wire fences, Molly certainly hated him. Funny if she should meet him! What would he be like? A change from long-legged, unshaved, ragged boys who smelled of horses would be a relief, even if he was an enemy. It was unlikely, however, that she should have the luck to encounter Mr. Traft's nephew from Missouri, which fact would be good luck for him, at least. Molly would certainly let him know what she thought of him.

It occurred to her presently that Arch had seen this new foreman of Traft's and could tell her all about him. How was Arch going to take this newcomer? Seth Haverly was as easy-going a boy as Arch, but dangerous when crossed. Molly was prone to spells of depression and she felt the imminence of one here.

Wherefore, in order to shake off the insidious shadow, she devoted herself to the ride and to her companion, who needed a little cheering also.

It had been years since Molly had been so many miles from the village.

She did not remember the road. From her own porch she always had a wonderful view down the valley and across to the rand upheaval of earth and rock locally called the Diamond, and atthe rugged black hills to the south. But now she was riding at a fast trot of a spirited team through a winding timbered canyon, along the banks of the West Fork. As there was a gradual down grade, the gray cliff walls grew higher until they were far above. Only a lone horseman was encountered in all the fifteen miles down to where the West Fork poured its white torrent into the Cibeque. Here Mr. See took the main road, which climbed and wound and zigzagged up the long slope. Molly looked down and back at the wilderness which was her home. All green and gray, and so big! She could not hate it, somehow. All her life she had known that kind of country. She had played among the ferns and the rock, and in the amber water, and under the brown-barked pines and spruces, where deer and elk and wild turkeys were as common as the cows she drove from pasture in the dusk. She felt that it would be a terrible break to sever her from this home of forest and gorge.

Chapter
TWO

From the head of the Cibeque the road wound through undulating forest land, heading the deep draws and glens, and gradually ascending to the zone of cedar and pi+-on, which marked the edge of the cattle-range.

There had been snow on the ground all winter, which accounted for the abundance of gramma grass, now beginning to bleach in the early summer sun. Cattle dotted all the glades and flats and wide silvery meadows; and toward afternoon, from a ridge top the vast gray-green range spread like a billowy ocean far as eye could see.

Several ranches were passed at any one of which See would have been welcome to spend the night, but he kept going all of daylight, and by night had covered more than half the journey to Flagerstown.

"Wal, wife, we've made Keech's, an' that's good, considerin' our late start," remarked See, with satisfaction, as he drove into a wide clearing, the hideousness of which attested to the presence of an old sawmill. Rude clapboard cabins and fences, not to note the barking dogs, gave evidence of habitation.

The cabins, however, were more inviting inside, Molly was to learn, and that the widow Keech was a most kindly and loquacious hostess. She had two grown daughters, and a son about fourteen years old, an enormously tall boy who straightway became victim to Molly, a conspicuous fact soon broadly hinted by his elders.

"So this hyar is John Dunn's girl growed up," said Mrs. Keech. "I knowed your father well, an' I seen you when you was a big-eyed kid. Now you're a woman ridin' to Flag."

Molly, however, was not to be led into conversation. This adventure seemed to her too grand to be joked about. She was keen to listen, and during the dinner hour heard much about Flagerstown and the fair to begin there on the morrow, and to end on Saturday with a rodeo. Mrs. See had not imparted all this marvellous news to Molly and she laughed at the girl's excitement.

"What you know aboot this drift fence?" finally asked See.

"Caleb, it's a downright fact," replied the widow, forcefully. "Harry has seen it. Traft's outfit are camped ten miles north of us. They'll pass here this summer an' be down on your Diamond by the time snow flies."

"Ahuh. So we heerd. But what's your idee aboot it?"

"Wal, Caleb, all things considered, it'll be good for the range. For no matter what folks say, cattle-rustlin' is not a thing of the past.

Two-bit stealin' of calves is what it really is. But rustlin', for all that. An' up this way, anyhow, it'll help."

"Are you runnin' any stock?" asked See, thoughtfully.

"Cows, mostly. I send a good deal of butter in to town. Really am gettin' on better than when we tried to ranch it. I don't have to hire no-good punchers. People travel the road a lot these days. An' they all stop hyar. I've run up some little cabins."

"An' that's a good idee," said See.

Molly listened to hear everything, and particularly wanted to learn more about the young Missouri tenderfoot who had come out West to build fences for Traft. He would certainly have a miserable existence. And it was most liable to be short. To Molly's disappointment, no more was said about the drift fence.

"Wal, we'll rustle off to bed," concluded See. "Mrs. Keech, I'll want to leave early in the mornin'."

Molly shared one of the new cabins with Mrs. See. It was small, clean, and smelled fragrantly of dry pine. It had three windows, and that to Molly was an innovation. She vowed she would have one like it, where she could have light in the daytime and air at night. She was tired, but not sleepy. Perhaps the bed was too comfortable. Anyway, Molly lay wide awake in the dark, wondering what was going to happen to her. This trip to Flagerstown might be a calamity for her. But she must have it. She must enjoy every moment of it, no matter what discontent it might engender.

The hounds bayed the wolves and made her shudder. Wolves and coyotes seldom ranged down in the brakes of the Ciberque. Bears and lions were plentiful, but Molly had never feared them. Wolves had such a mournful, blood-curdling howl. And when the hounds answered it they imitated that note', or else imparted to it something of hunger for the free life their wild brothers enjoyed.

When at last Molly fell asleep it seemed only a moment until she was rudely awakened. Mrs. See was up, dressing by lamplight. A gray darkness showed outside the open window, and the air that blew in on Molly was cold enough for early fall, down on the West Fork.

But the great day was at hand. She found her voice, and even had a friendly word for the boy Harry, who certainly made the most of it. When she came out from breakfast, a clear cold morning, with rosy flush in the east, greeted her triumphantly, as if to impart that it had some magic in store.

Harry squeezed Molly's arm, as he helped her into the buckboard, and said, confidently, "I'll see you at the rodeo."

"Hope so," replied Molly.

Then they were off behind fresh horses and soon into the cedars. Jack rabbits bounded away, with their ridiculously long ears bobbing erect; lean gray coyotes watched them roll along; deer trotted out of sight into thick clumps of brush.

Soon they came to the open top of a ridge and Molly say a gray, dim, speckled world of range, so immense as to dwarf her sight. The scent from that vast gulf was intoxicating.

"What's the sweet smell?" she asked.

"Sage, you Cibeque Valley backwoods girl," replied Mrs. See. "Anyone would think you'd never been out of the timber."

"I haven't, much," laughed Molly. "I've seen an' smelled sage, but it's so long ago I'd forgotten. Reckon I'd better be pretty careful up at Flag, Auntie See?"

"Shore you had. But what aboot?"

"Talkin'. I'm so ignorant," sighed Molly.

"You don't need to be dumb. You just think before you speak. You're such a pretty little mouse that it'll become you. I don't care for gabby girls, myself. An' I never seen a man who did, if he was in earnest."

Molly was silent enough for the next long stretch. She watched a sunrise that made her think how beautiful the world was and how little she had seen, hidden down there in the green brakes. But she reproved herself for that. From her porch she could see the sun set in the great valley when the Diamond sheered abruptly down into the Cibeque, and nothing could have excelled that. And what could be better than the wooded canyons, deep and gray and green, with their rushing streams? But this open range took her breath. Here was the cattle country--what Mr. See had called the free range, and which riders like her brother Arch and Seth Haverly regarded as their own. Yet was it not a shame to fence that magnificent rolling land of green? For a moment Molly understood what it meant to be a range-rider, to have been born on a horse. She sympathized with Arch and Seth. A barbed-wire fence, no matter how far away, spoiled the freedom of that cedared grassy land.

"Wal, lass, thar's the smoke of Flag," said Mrs. See. "Way down in the corner. Long ways yet. But we're shore gettin' there."

"Smoke," said Molly, dreamily. "Are they burnin' brush?"

"Haw! Haw! That smoke comes from the railroad an' the sawmill."

From there on the miles were long, yet interesting, almost every one of them, with herds of cattle wearing different brands, with ranches along the road, with the country appearing to spread and grow less cedared. Ten miles out of Flagerstown Mr. See pointed to a distant ridgetop, across which a new fence strung, startlingly clear against the sky. It gave Molly a pang.

"Traft's drift fence, I reckon," said See. "An' I'd almost rather have this a sheep range!"

For all her poor memory, Molly remembered Flagerstownthe black timbered mountain above it, the sawmill with its pile of yellow lumber, the gray cottages on the outskirts, and at last the thrilling long main street, with buildings that looked wonderful to her. Mr. See remarked with satisfaction that the time was not much past four o'clock. He drove straight down this busy thoroughfare. Molly was all eyes.

"Hyar we are," said Mr. See, halting before a pretentious brick building.

"This is the new hotel, Molly. Now, wife, make the best of our good trip in. Take Molly in the stores. I'll look after the horses, get our rooms, an' meet you hyar at six o'clock."

Molly leaped out of the buckboard with a grim yet happy realization that she would not need much longer to be ashamed of her shoes and stockings.

Three hours later, Molly, radiant and laden with bundles, tagged into the hotel behind Mrs. See, likewise laden, to be greeted vociferously by Mr.

See.

"For the land's sake! Have you robbed a store or been to a fire?--An' hyar me waitin' for supper!"

"Caleb, it happens seldom in a lifetime," replied his beaming wife. "Help us pack this outfit to our rooms. Then we'll have supper."

Molly had a room of her own. She had never even seen one like it. Loath to leave her precious purchases, she lingered until they called her from the hall. It struck her again how warmly these old people looked at her.

Molly guessed she was a circus and ruefully admitted reason for it.

The dining-room might have been only "fair to middlin'," as Mr. See put it, but it was the most sumptuous place Molly had ever entered. Sight of it added to the excitement of the few hours' shopping effectually robbed her of appetite.

"Wal, I reckon Molly wants a biscuit an' a hunk of venison," remarked Mr.

See.

Molly did not know quite how to take that remark. She became aware, too, of being noticed by two young men at a nearby table. They were certainly not cowboys or timber-rangers. Molly was glad to get out and upstairs to the privacy of her, room.

There she unpacked the numerous bundles and parcels, and laid out her newly acquired possessions upon the bed. How quickly her little hoard of money had vanished! Still, it had gone farther than she had anticipated.

Mrs. See had been incredibly generous. A blue print dress, a white dress with slippers and stockings to match, the prettiest little hat Molly had ever seen in her life, ribbons and gloves and what not--these had been the expansion of the good woman's promise.

But not only the pleasure of looking and buying had Molly to think of.

She had met more people than she had ever met before. She had been asked to serve in one of the booths at the fair. One of the storekeepers had offered her a position as clerk in his dry-goods department. And altogether the summing up of this day left Molly staggered with happiness.

"Oh, dear!" she said. "If it's true it'll spoil me." And she cried a little before she went to sleep.

Another morning probed deeper into Molly's faculties for enjoyment and wonder. Mrs. See had relatives and friends in Flagerstown, and they made much of Molly. Not the least of that morning's interest was a look at Jim Traft, cattle king of the range. It was in the bank, where Molly and Mrs.

See had visited with Mr. See.

"Thar's the old reprobate," whispered See to Molly. "Jim Traft, who's fencin' off West Fork from the range!"

Molly stared. She saw a big man in his shirt sleeves and dusty top boots.

He had a shrewd weather-beaten face, hard round the mouth and chin, but softened somewhat by bright blue eyes that certainly did not miss Molly.