Part 7

“It’s only my surplus I’m spreading out so thin,” Carver explained. “My capital is still intact.” He exhibited his silver dollar. “My one rule of life is never to impair my principal.”

“Fine,” Hinman encouraged. “That’s conservative business. I was satisfied you’d play it slow and safe.”

“Now if you’ll do me just one more little kindness I’ll be grateful;” Carver said. “You and Nate engage Freel in conversation up on the corner where he’s standing and inside of five minutes I’ll saunter up and direct the course of the interview.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Hinman said. “We’ll detain him.”

Carver joined them before the appointed space of time had elapsed.

“Freel, I’ve been feeling real contrite about resisting arrest a few weeks back,” Carver said. “I’ve decided to surrender and stand trial.”

The deputy marshal glanced apprehensively at the two old cowmen.

“Oh--that,” he said. “Why, I’ve let that matter drop. That’s all closed.”

“And it was real accommodating of you to close it,” Carver returned, “but I can’t stand by and see you get in trouble on my account. Orders are orders, and you had yours. That’s the reason I wrote this letter to Art Webb.” He tendered an unsealed letter to the deputy. Webb was Freel’s chief, the head United States marshal of the district. “Webb is a good friend of mine and I’m demanding that he inform me just why he sent an order down here to you to pick me up. That will put you in the clear for not rearresting me since that night I escaped.”

Carver turned to his two friends.

“You’ve both known Webb for years,” he said. “Did you write him like I asked you?”

“It clear slipped my mind,” Hinman apologized. “I’ll get it off this evening.”

“Mine goes on the same mail,” Nate concurred. “We’ll sift this thing right to the bottom layer and clear Freel of any possible blame.”

“Freel will be on my side himself if it comes to a showdown,” Carver asserted. “He’ll be the first to testify that I’d been away from home for a solid month prior to the time that charge was lodged. Some one’s tried to deal me from the bottom, and between the four of us we’ll discover who it is.”

Freel laughed and slapped Carver on the shoulder.

“Matter of fact, that inquiry was for another party, wanting to know if he’d turned up in these parts,” he said. “I went and got the names mixed. The joke’s on me--likewise the drinks, and I’ll buy right now.”

He slowly tore up the letter to Webb.

“And here I’ve been worried almost sick,” Carver said. “It’s a big relief to have it all cleared up. I still owe you fifty on that little bet. Here’s an agreement to pay in ninety days, just as an evidence of good faith.”

He handed Freel a folded paper and the marshal frowned as he read it.

“You’ll notice I stated why I owed it,” Carver amplified. “You’ve always played square with the boys--and there’s maybe a half dozen that’s willing to step forth and declare how you’ve always met them halfway the same as you did with me.”

During the next hour Carver accosted a dozen intimate acquaintances and told each in turn, quite confidentially, that there was a rumor afloat to the effect that Freel was about to resign as deputy marshal and that Mattison was making application for the post.

“By this time to-morrow every man in Caldwell will have commented on this matter to Mattison and Freel,” Carver said to Hinman. “Not because they take any special interest in it but just to make conversation. But the principals, being only human and therefore self-centered, will decide that the whole town is breathless over their affairs. Mattison will feel his ambition mounting and Freel will suspect that there’s been a fire kindled under him. Now if only you and Nate will put in your pull with Webb to give Mattison the appointment, it looks as if things would come out right.”

He rented an extra saddlehorse and invited Molly to join him in an afternoon ride. They jogged out past the stockyards where cowhands prodded unwilling steers through the loading chutes, on beyond the sound of the wheezing switch engine and the rattle and smash of cars, then angled westward through the quarantine belt where riders guarded thousands of head of cows. In the gathering dusk they rode out on the point of a lofty knoll which afforded a view throughout a great expanse of country.

“Have a last look at all this, Molly girl,” Carver said, extending an arm to the south. “There’s yesterday.”

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. One man skirted either flank and two others rode the “drags” in the rear of the herd to press forward any stragglers as the weary cattle drifted slowly toward the chuck wagon which was stationed a mile or more ahead and where the rest of the trail-herd crew had already gathered.

“That’s yesterday, girl,” Carver repeated. “Remember all this as you see it now; the green range and the trail herds coming up from the south. Have a last look at it--for here comes to-morrow,” and he pointed off to the northward.

Miles away across the quarantine belt a slender ragged line extended either way beyond the range of their vision. A thousand ribbons of white smoke writhed aloft and glowed in pallid outline against the darkening sky. For two hundred miles along the line, wherever water was available, there was one continuous camp of squatters, and still the land seekers increased at the rate of two thousand families a week, all the landless of a mighty nation gathering here to participate in what would go down in history as the Cherokee Run, the most frenzied stampede of the century.

Both watchers felt a sudden tightening of the throat as they gazed upon the scene, their feelings much the same but occasioned by different viewpoints. Carver’s sympathy was with the riders who handled the cows on the near side of that continuous camp, men who, like himself, had loved the old open range, the range that was passing for all time. The girl’s heart went out to those homeless hosts outside the line, for she herself was homeless and could understand the longing which had brought them to this spot to join in a mad and desperate rush on the chance that they might be among the fortunate locaters who should be first to drive their stakes on any scrap of ground which would constitute a home. Perhaps they too were tired of gypsying, she reflected, and yearned for some one spot which they might call their own.

He pointed to the tiny scattering specks that were riders moving from point to point, then on beyond them to that stolid line.

“Yonder come the pumpkins to crowd out the tumbleweeds,” he said.

The soft summer night shut down and transformed the pale smoke columns into a tortuous trail of twinkling fires which extended for two hundred miles along the line.

“We’d best be going now,” the girl said at last. “There’s a fifteen-mile ride ahead. I’m glad you brought me here to see all this. It means one thing to you, Don, and exactly the opposite to me. But it’s something we won’t forget.”

“No,” he said. “We’ll not forget.”

They rode on in silence, the girl occupied with her thoughts of the homeless legions who would soon have homes, Carver content with the mere fact of her nearness. When he decided that this thoughtfulness had claimed her for too long a time he recounted his transactions of the past few days.

“About those responsibilities I promised you I’d acquire,” he said, “I’m taking them on rapid. In addition to both residence and business property here in town, I’m owning a considerable number of horses and a hundred head of calves, not to mention harness, wagons and a few score miles of good barbed wire. I’m accumulating responsibilities so fast that there’s times I can’t be real sure whether they’re mine or some one’s else.”

VI

A stray steer moved out of a coulee and bawled lustily for company. The animal traveled at a fast walk, occasionally breaking into an awkward trot but halting frequently to loose a plaintive bawl.

“He’s lonesome, that old fellow,” Carver surmised. “And hunting hard for company.”

As he watched the animal he speculated idly as to the probable number of stray steers scattered throughout the Strip. Always there was a certain small percentage overlooked in the round-up, those feeding in choppy timbered breaks or bedded in scrub-oak tangles and missed by the circle riders who covered such stretches. These missing ones were caught in subsequent roundups, so it mattered little. But on this occasion they could be charged off, Carver reflected, for there would be no future round-up. The owners could not afford to outfit parties to cover such a great stretch of country for what few were left, yet Carver estimated that there would be well over a hundred steers still ranging the rougher parts of the twelve thousand square miles of the unowned lands. He pulled up his horse and looked back at the bawling steer, then drew forth his silver dollar and addressed it.

“An idea just hit me,” he asserted. “You and I don’t believe in taking chances. Conservative, slow and safe, like Hinman said; that’s us every time. But we’re going to make one more little investment in tumbleweeds before we settle down.”

A few hours later he went into conference with Nate Younger.

“If you’ll get most of the brand owners that operated in the western half of the Strip to sign an agreement whereby I get half the market price of any of their stray steers I bring into Caldwell I’ll outfit a combing party and go in after them,” Carver offered.

“They’d sign up quick enough,” Younger stated. “Jump at the chance in fact. But if the owners themselves figure they can’t prorate the expense of a trip like that and come out ahead, how does it come you see a profit in footing all the expense for only half the proceeds?”

“Just a whim of mine,” Carver answered.

“Another point you’re overlooking is the nature of a steer,” Younger protested. “Once he gets lonesome he’ll bawl and travel and attach himself to the first trail herd that drifts through. Did you ever consider that little kink in the make-up of a steer?”

“It was through studying over that very point that I acquired the notion,” Carver said.

“Oh,” said Younger. “Yes, I see. All right, son, I’ll sign them up.”

“There’s the trail bosses of forty different Texas brands in town,” Carver continued. “And there’s a dozen or so I’d like to sign up on the same basis. I’ll go out and interview them while you fix up the others.”

“But you won’t find any Texas strays in this end of the Strip,” Younger predicted. “A trail boss isn’t so much averse to letting an off-brand join his herd, but he’s dead set against letting one of his own steers desert it.”

Carver knew that this rule was true. Trailherds, traveling as they did through cattle-populated ranges, experienced a certain accretion of numbers through the joining of curious or lonesome cows and it was no infrequent thing for a drove to reach the shipping point a number of head stronger than on the start. The foremen of trail crews were supposed to use every effort to avoid such accretions and to work their herds at intervals and throw out any off-brands. Many, in order to save time and trouble, waited until reaching the quarantine belt before cutting their herds. The brand owners grazing in the unowned lands had formed the Cherokee Strip Cattlemen’s Association, and this organization maintained brand inspectors at the Caldwell stockyards to guard against the possibility of any of its members’ cows being inadvertently shipped with droves that had been trail-herded through their ranges.

“No, the trail herds don’t usually drop many of their own steers en route,” Carver agreed. “It’s more apt to be reversed. But the rule holds good in Texas as well as in the Strip, so I’ll go out and sign up a dozen or so of them, even if the paper proves to be only a futile sort of a document in the end.”

Some three weeks thereafter Carver rode with Bart Lassiter up a scrub-oak side hill. A little camp nestled in the draw below them where two other men rode herd on a dozen head of steers.

“It appears to me like you’d staked a losing venture,” Bart asserted, “with three riders and a cook on your payroll and only a dozen steers in camp. We’ve covered this whole neighborhood thorough and yet you stay round. Why don’t we move to some more likely piece of country, say toward the head of the Cimarron?”

“But it’s so much simpler to let all those strays have time to come down here and join us than by our rushing things and trying to ride that whole big country in search of them ourselves,” said Carver.

They topped the ridge and Carver pulled up his horse behind a scrub-oak thicket. A trail herd streamed down the far slope of the valley and was halted in a meadow that opened out in the timbered bottoms of Turkey Creek two miles above Crowfoot’s ranch, the one place in the Strip not yet deserted. Crowfoot, having beef contracts to fill, had been permitted to retain a number of steers on the Turkey Creek range with the understanding that the last of the animals was to be slaughtered and the place vacated thirty days prior to the date scheduled for the entry of the Unowned Lands.

“Just consider the amount of territory that herd has covered,” Carver commented.

Bart recognized the herd as that of X I L with his two half-brothers in charge, and, as Carver had remarked, the drive had covered considerable territory. It suddenly occurred to Bart that the trail bosses whose signatures Carver had obtained were those representing Texas brands ranging south of the Washita or between that stream and the Canadian, the country through which the herd had passed. After entering the Strip it was not Milt’s custom to follow the regular trail-herd routes but instead he drifted his charges slowly down the North Fork of the Canadian, then across to the Cimarron and down that stream.

“I expect strays have been joining them all along the line,” Carver observed. “Now if they’d just happen to work the herd right here on Turkey Creek instead of waiting till they reach quarantine it would be right handy for us.”

Bart turned and regarded him, the main purpose of Carver’s venture now quite clear to him. Milt would cut his herd here on Turkey Creek and Crowfoot, having still time for one last turn in inexpensive beef, would present him with ten dollars for every off-brand thrown out of the herd. Bronson, the owner of the X I L and whose trail herd was the medium for this traffic, probably received a like sum from Crowfoot.

“It’s been a nice safe occupation for a trail boss,” Bart said. “He’s privileged to work his herd at any point he elects. It’s even considered the honorable thing to do if he’s willing to take the time. If by any chance some outside party gathers in the off-brands he’s throwed out of the herd, it’s no fault of his.”

“That’s why I’d decided to gather in those off-brands myself,” said Carver. “See how simple it is?”

“Oh, quite!” said Bart. “And also if I ride down with you on that errand it will create a rift in my family tree.”

“You once remarked to me that your family relations had been strained before now but that the breach had later healed,” said Carver. “This will likely leave a permanent scar, but I’ll pay you three dollars a head for all the off-brands we collect down there.”

“I value the esteem of Milt and Noll but I’m needing the money bad,” said Bart. “Let’s you and me ride down.”

“Not right this minute,” Carver dissented. “Let them finish working the herd. Then all we’ll have to do is to drive off our meat.”

“Or it’s just possible that we’ve mapped out quite a chore for ourselves,” said Bart. “Milt is in charge down there. He’s easy to get along with, mostly, but deadly as hell when he ain’t. I’m wondering how he’ll take it.”

“Being a person of fair average brains, and not a haphazard homicide like Noll, he’ll take it easy,” Carver said. “I’m armed with a permit from the military authorities to conduct my work in any part of the unowned lands. I represent half the brands that ranged in the Strip and hold a like authority from the trail bosses of a dozen Texas outfits.”

He pointed to the work in progress in the bottoms. Riders were stationed at intervals round the herd to hold it. Others entered and singled out off-brands and once a trained cow-horse had spotted the animal wanted by his rider, he followed doggedly, never losing his prey, and when near the edge of the herd he crowded it out with a sudden swift rush.

“They’re throwing them off up the bottoms,” Carver said. “In a few hours we’ll get Bradshaw and saunter down. After chatting with them for a spell we’ll mention that we’ve been sent in by the Cattlemen’s Association. Their hands are tied.”

This assumption proved correct and Milt Lassiter, silent as always, failed even to comment upon the matter when, some hours later, the three men casually made known their errand and rode off up the bottoms in search of strays. Three days later Carver reached the stockyards with a hundred and twelve head of steers that wore brands of owners whom he represented. The majority of these bore the insignia of Texas outfits but there were some forty steers wearing the mark of Strip owners, strays which had been run into the herd on its way down the Cimarron. He was cleared and given immediate shipping facilities, for the congestion of cows in the quarantine belt had passed, only to be replaced by an even greater congestion of packed humanity just outside.

Thirty thousand souls had come to swell the transient population of Caldwell. A like number were camped along the line and Caldwell drew their trade. Day by day the jam increased. Incoming trains were packed and roads converging upon the town were filled with a solid procession of vehicles which bore families of hopeful home seekers toward the edge of the unowned lands. Caldwell, three months since a little cow town of but two thousand souls, was now doing business on the basis of a hundred thousand population. Property prices doubled overnight and still the swarm increased at the rate of a thousand a day.

And beyond, across the dead line which held the mob back from its goal, the cause of all this rush and turmoil basked in peaceful serenity, twelve thousand square miles of it, untenanted by a single soul. The soldiers rode the line on all four sides of it to hold the over-anxious back; on the west there were troopers stationed at intervals of a mile the length of the Cherokee-Texas border, and on the south along the Oklahoma line. To the east the Arkansas River, separating the Strip from old Indian Territory, was similarly patrolled; yet with all these precautions there were scores of sooners who had slipped through and secreted themselves inside. On the appointed day they would come forth from their retreat and drive their flag on some choice claim as the horde rushed in.

Late summer droughts had claimed the country and the range was parched and brown. Registration booths were erected along the line in the glaring heat and as the day of entry approached there were long strings of men, some extending for upwards of half a mile, lined up to await their turn for registration. They camped in the line, sleeping where they had been standing when night shut down and the registration booths were closed, some reposing on bare ground, others in campbeds which they rolled and utilized as seats throughout the day, dragging them along as the line progressed. Wives and daughters carried meals to their menfolk and vendors plied the line to peddle food and drink.

Every conceivable variety of business had opened up in Caldwell to cater to the ever-increasing throngs. It was the wildest of all frontier booms. Carver’s profit in stray steers had netted him something over eighteen hundred dollars. He disposed of his business building at a net profit of fifty-six hundred and sold out his three lots and little house on the outskirts of town for an even thousand. After clearing his indebtedness on calves, horses and equipment he had something over sixty-three hundred left. He then entered into consultation with Younger and Joe Hinman.

“How much would you figure the best of the bottom land in the Strip will bring when it’s proved up?” he asked.

“Not much over eight or ten dollars at the first, maybe twelve an acre for the best of it,” Hinman estimated.

“But if I live a long life I’ll see every foot of it touch fifty,” said Carver. “Don’t you think?”

“And if you live a while longer than that you’ll see it top a hundred,” Hinman stated. “It’ll take some time but it will get there. I’ve seen it repeated before now as a country settles up.”

“I’ve made my last bet on tumbleweeds,” said Carver. “And I’d as soon start my pumpkin patch down there as anywheres. It would be right nice to have something over a thousand acres of good land down on Cabin Creek, the old site of the Half Diamond H.”

“It would,” said Younger. “Only it can’t be done. A man can only file on a quarter section and he has to live there to prove up. Even if you could buy his relinquishment you couldn’t live on but one place at once.”

“Last year when I went up to Kansas City in charge of a train-load of your steers a banker showed me a collection of scrip he’d made,” said Carver. “It was Civil War Scrip, issued to veterans in lieu of pensions, or maybe on top of pensions, I don’t know which. Anyway, it entitles the holder to lay that paper on any tract of government land and get a patent to it without having to live there and prove up. A number used it on small plots left open round where they lived and sold off the fractions left over for whatever they could get. On and off in the last ten years this banker has accumulated such fractions to the amount of seventeen hundred acres. He intimated that he’d let them go for the price of the raw land. If he’ll sell for three dollars an acre he’s found a customer.”