the Drift Fence (1992) (8 page)

"Boss, I ain't doin' nothin'," he said, slowly.

"Who said you were?" returned Jim, realizing that he must have looked sharply at the boy.

"You're lookin' for Curly?"

"Yes," answered Jim, suddenly inspired.

"Sheriff Bray just collared Curly. Honest, boss, Curly was behavin' himself strick proper. But Bray has got it in for us Diamond fellars. An'

Curly"--here the cowboy came round the table to be closer to Jim--"Curly was pretty drunk an' noisy. It was a chance for Bray, who'd never had nerve enough any other time. This sheriff is a four-flusher, boss. He's never had one of us in jail yet."

"Which way did they go?" asked Jim.

"Down the street. The jail's across the tracks."

Jim hurried out and in the direction advised, not certain of his position in the matter. Still, he did not take kindly to the idea of one of his cowboys going to jail. Moreover, he had met Sheriff Bray and had not been greatly impressed in that individual's favour. Jim, while crossing the tracks, espied Bray dragging a reluctant and protesting cowboy along the station platform, followed by a small crowd. Running ahead, Jim intercepted them. This cowboy he also recognized, a tall, handsome fellow with curly yellow hair, just now very red in the face, but not so drunk as Jim had been led to suppose.

"Hold on, Sheriff!" called Jim, as he confronted them. "You've got one of my boys. What's the charge?"

"Hullo!" gruffly returned Bray.

He was a burly man, thick-featured, with a bluish cast of countenance, and he wore his sheriff's badge and gun rather prominently. "Oh, it's young Mr. Traft. I didn't know you... Wal, this boy was gettin' a little too obstreperous to suit me. So I'm runnin' him in."

"Obstreperous! What do you mean by that?" demanded Jim, arriving at his decision.

"Wal, thet's what I call it."

"Curly, what'd you do?" inquired Jim of the red-faced, blue-eyed boy.

"Boss, I was singin'," asserted Curly. "This heah one-hoss occifer sings in--choir an' he thinks he's--only singer."

"Wal, you can sing in jail," declared the sheriff, with a gleam in his eye.

"Bray, I reckon you'd better not run Curly in," said Jim, coolly. "Let's walk along across and get away from this crowd. I'll take Curly around the block."

"Say, for a tenderfoot you're startin' fiat in to play a high hand," sneered Bray. All the same, he had his doubts, which Jim was quick to observe.

"Correct, Bray," rejoined Jim, as he took Curly's arm. Between them they walked him away from the curious onlookers, and round a corner to the entrance of the jail. Here Curly's face was a study. Manifestly before Jim's arrival he had surrendered to the majesty of the law, but this amazing champion in the shape of his boss had galvanized him.

"Bray, there ain't none of Diamond outfit ever been--in jail. It's disgrash," he asserted, belligerently.

"I'll vouch for him, Sheriff," added Jim.

"Prentiss, you come along," ordered Bray, roughly.

By this time Jim's blood had grown a little hot. He had recalled what his uncle had said about Bray and thought he might just as well face the issue. He jerked Curly free from the sheriff, and interposed himself between them.

"If you had any charge against Curly I wouldn't interfere. But you haven't. Why, he isn't half drunk."

"I'll arrest you both for resistin' an officer," threatened Bray, his hand going to his hip.

Jim saw the action, followed it with his eye.

"So you'd throw your gun on us," he said, with derision.

"Boss, let go an' stand aside. This heah ain't funny no more," spoke up Curly. The change in him, the ring in his voice, made Jim jump, but he did not release the cowboy.

"No, Curly, I'm responsible here," he replied.

Bray had subtly altered, which fact Jim grasped to have to do with Curly's sudden menace.

"Wal, Traft, I'll let him go in your care," he growled. "But I'm givin' you a hunch. Prentiss said somethin'. This Diamond outfit ain't funny no more."

"Thanks, Bray. I consider that a compliment to me. Come on, Curly."

Jim walked the cowboy down the block and up a side street until they got out of the centre of the town. Neither he nor Curly broke silence during his walk. Finally Jim halted on a corner.

"Curly, will you go back to the ranch? I'd go with you, but I've errands to do."

"Boss, are you orderin' me?" queried the cowboy.

"No, I'm asking you."

"Then I ain't a-goin'."

"Very well, then. I'll have to make it an order. Will you go now?"

"I reckon. The Diamond ain't disobeyin' orders. But what'd you want to go do this heah trick for?"

"Trick? I've only kept you out of jail."

"Shore. An' the outfit will be sore at me."

"Curly, I don't understand you," protested Jim.

"They ain't a-goin' to stand for me bein' friends with a tenderfoot boss."

Jim began to get a glimmering. The tall cowboy seemed pained over this little service. He looked most disapprovingly at Jim. "Curly, you needn't let that embarrass you."

Apparently Curly could not help being embarrassed. He wheeled and strode away. Half across the street he turned. "Boss, I fort. I'm in an orful fix," he said, and strode back. "My gurl's in town. I haven't laid eyes on her for two months. Shore it won't be safe to let it go longer."

"Curly, are you asking me to explain to your girl or to allow you to come back to town?" queried Jim.

"Reckon I was just tellin' you."

"Well, I dare say you are in a fix. What do you want of me?" rejoined Jim, who divined that the cowboy did not like to ask a favour.

"It'd never do for you to see Nancy. I lost one gurl that way."

"Curly, I'll help you out. Promise you'll not take another drink today.

Then walk out to the ranch and walk back tonight. That'll sober you. And you can see your girl."

Curly swore. He bent a strange blue gaze upon Jim.

"I reckon there ain't no help for it," he muttered, as if declaring an inevitable fact to himself. Then he strode away.

Jim scarcely knew how to take this last declaration and he went back uptown, pondering over it. These cowboys were certainly going to be problems. They were like children. But he had had a most pleasing reaction from this first encounter with one of the Diamond outfit.

Jim returned to his errands, which took him up and down the main throughfare of Flagerstown, and therefore past the saloons and pool-halls. It struck him that the town was growing rather lively as evening approached. All the hitching-rails were crowded with saddle-horses, many of which took Jim's appreciative eye.

Jim was entering the hotel, where he expected to meet his uncle and ride home with him, when he was detained by another member of the Diamond, who barred his way obviously if not rudely. Two other cowboys drew back.

"Excuse me, Mister Traft. I'm Hack Jocelyn, an' I'm wantin a word with you."

He was cool, insolent, and something else Jim could not name. "Aren't you one of my cowboys?" asked Jim.

"I've been ridin' with the Diamond, if thet's what you mean. But I ain't shore I'm stayin' with the outfit."

Jim had been told by no less an authority than Ring Locke that horses and men could not separate the Diamond outfit. "You're not, eh? Well, you want to be pretty sure, or you won't be riding for it. What do you want?"

Jocelyn appeared to be gauging Jim.

"I was in Babbitt's an' they told me they'd sent out a wagonload of barbed wire to the ranch. Fer the Diamond outfit! An' I calls him a liar."

"Then you'll have to apologize. It was for the Diamond. And there's a carload more ordered."

"Hell you say!" ejaculated Jocelyn, in amaze and gathering anger. "An' what's it fer?"

"None of your business, Jocelyn," retorted Jim. "If you'd asked me civilly I'd have told you."

"But barbed wire is most used fer fences!" exclaimed the cowboy. His two comrades edged closer until they were beside him, watchful, hiding their feelings, if they had any. "An' nobody in Gawd's world would reckon the Diamond'd have anything to do with thet!"

"The Diamond is in for some new experience, Jocelyn. And you may as well know fence-building is one of them."

"Haw! Haw! It shore is. A tenderfoot dude foreman! Then barbed-wire fence! My Gawd! what's the range comin' to?"

Jocelyn had turned to his companions, to whom, in fact, his exclamation had been directed. Jim shot out a hand and spun him around like a top.

"Did you call me a tenderfoot dude foreman?" he queried, and despite his temper he was quick-witted enough to ascertain that Jocelyn was not armed. Otherwise he would wisely have restrained himself altogether.

"Wal, Mister Traft, I reckon I did," he drawled. He expressed the usual cowboy nonchalance, but there was also a vindictive quality in his words, if not their content.

Jim knocked him flat. He had not calculated consequences. In accepting his uncle's job he had burned his bridges behind him. But when Jim saw Jocelyn lying there, then slowly rising, his hand to his face, which was black as a thundercloud, he awoke to another sensation. He would not, however, have recalled the blow.

"Jocelyn, you're fired," he said, as coolly as the cowboy had spoken.

"But if you come out to the ranch and apologize to me I'll take you on again."

"You better be packin' a gun," declared Jocelyn, darkly.

"Aw, shut up, if you can't talk sense," returned Jim, in disgust. "You insulted me. And if you're not man enough to own up to it you can bet there's no place on the Diamond for you."

Jocelyn's two friends laid hold of him and drew him away. Whereupon Jim turned to enter the hotel, where among several persons who had been spectators of the little by-play were his uncle and Ring Locke.

"Hello! Say, I'm sorry you happened to see that," said Jim, regretfully.

"But, Uncle, he just made me boil."

"Come inside," rejoined Traft, and when the three of them were out of earshot of bystanders he turned to Locke. "Ring, he called Hack's bluff.

An' mebbe he didn't poke that puncher's snoot! I damn near choked myself to keep from yellin'."

"Uncle!" exclaimed Jim, as surprised at this speech as at Traft's glee.

"Son, the only fault I can locate in you so far is you talk too quick an' too much. It'll get you in serious trouble."

"But I nearly burst at that," expostulated Jim.

Ring Locke shook his lean hawklike head forebodingly. "Wal, it's six for me an' half a dozen fer the other," he said. "It's bad an' good. More good, I'd say. If the new foreman of the Diamond had stood fer that--wal, he couldn't have had a chance. Mebbe the boys put Hack up to it. If so he'll be as nice as pie an' come back to square himself. If not--" Here Locke shook his head gravely.

"Ring, I'll bet you four bits he'll be out here tomorrow," said Traft.

"But suppose he doesn't come?"

"Can't we fill his place?" asked Jim, anxiously.

"Nope. We can't fill the place of any of thet outfit," rejoined Locke.

"But I was thinkin' of what it'd mean... Young man, this same Hack Jocelyn has shot fellars fer less."

"It's true, son," corroborated Traft, sombrely. "That's the worst of it.

This gang of yours has made way with nine men since they rode for me. Six years! Shore some of them were damn good riddance."

"More'n nine, boss," corrected Locke. "Lonestar Holliday got drove out of Texas fer a shootin'."

"What!" gasped Jim. "Those fine clean boys murderers?"

"Jim, you're out West now," said his uncle, testily. "When two men get into an argument or quarrel an' draw--it ain't murder if one is killed.

We couldn't run the range without cowboys an' they're shore a tough crowd of young roosters... Ring, fetch round the buckboard an' we'll go home."

On the way out Traft dilated on the serious and uncertain side of range life. Jim realized that his education on the West had but just begun. He had not been ignorant of facts, but they seemed vastly significant and perturbing at close hand. During the ride out and at supper he maintained silence. Later, when he had recovered from the effect of this first clash, he could not feel that he would have desired to have met it in any other way. But neither his uncle nor Ring Locke could understand his feelings. Jim himself found them rather complicated. He had been furious, then frightened, then cold. And now, instead of wanting to go home to Missouri, he surrendered still more to Arizona.

Chapter
SEVEN

Late on Sunday afternoon, while Jim sat on the porch, his uncle called attention to a cowboy approaching from a direction in which he could not be seen from the bunkhouses.

"Bud Chalfack," announced Traft, with a chuckle.

"Who's Bud?"

"You'll see pronto. He's the peacemaker of the outfit. Bud's a diplomat, the slickest, coolest hand on the range. Whenever anyone is in wrong, Bud is elected to set him right."