Part 8

“But the Strip won’t be opened for entry till a certain hour,” Hinman objected. “And right then there’ll be three men for every claim turned loose across the line at once.”

“There’s thousands making the run that don’t consider proving up,” said Carver. “They’ll relinquish for whatever they can get. I can furnish them with scrip to get their patent and they can deed it right back to me.”

Carver returned a week later, owner of scrip to the extent of nearly two thousand acres. As he stepped from the train he noted Bart and Noll Lassiter conversing, Bart grinning as usual while Noll’s face expressed black wrath.

“Noll is a trifle upset over our turn in off-brand steers,” Bart told Carver as he joined him. “He considers me a traitor and is deciding which of twenty different methods will be the most painful way to kill me. Says he’s no brother of mine, which it’s a relief for me to discover the fact, since I’ve always wished he wasn’t. He seemed real irate.”

They turned to view a murky haze off to the south, a haze that changed to dense billowing black smoke as a hungry blaze licked across the parched prairies. Some thought the soldiers had fired the grass to drive out the sooners that skulked in hiding in the Strip. Others averred that the cowmen, remembering that time when the boomers had fired the range, had waited till this time to retaliate, a few days before the settlers were to take over their old domain. Whatever its source, the fact remained that in the space of two days there were hundreds of square miles of the unowned lands transformed into a black and devastated waste.

VII

Soldiers sat their horses at half-mile intervals, awaiting the appointed hour to give the signal for the home seekers to cross the line.

Molly Lassiter’s eyes snapped excitedly as she viewed the scene, a spectacle which has never been duplicated in all history. More than a hundred and fifty thousand souls were banked up behind the Cherokee-Kansas line and a thinner wave had assembled on the Oklahoma side, where the barrier would be lowered at the same hour as that along the northern edge.

“And six months ago I was thinking it would take years to settle it,” Carver said. “There’s twelve thousand square miles in the unowned lands--and within four hours from the time the pistol cracks she’ll be settled solid; every foot of ground staked and tenanted, right down to the last odd scrap.”

Bart Lassiter joined them as they rode along behind the line. Every sort of conveyance the West has ever seen was represented. Hundreds of canvas-covered wagons were stationed along the front ranks of the mob, their owners having camped there for days, in frequent instances for months, to make certain of holding a place in the forefront of the run. Buckboards and lumbering farm wagons, top buggies and family carriages, shining runabouts, with here and there a racing cart, the slender, high-strung horse between the shafts fretting restlessly for the start. Saddle horses of every conceivable size and color. Scores of Kentucky thoroughbreds had been shipped in to make the run and even now, two hours before the start, their riders were maneuvering for favorable positions as formerly they had jockied at the wire.

Individuals reacted differently to the strain of waiting. Some genial souls called encouragement to others and optimistically predicted that there would be claims for all as they motioned some anxious newcomer in the rear to some gap nearer the front. Others glared suspiciously at all about them and resented every shift of their neighbors lest the movement provide space for another hopeful soul. Many men seemed anxious and careworn. Most of these had families and the next few hours would mean much to them, their every hope based upon staking out a claim. Some feverishly discussed their chances while others were quite stolid; many were boastful, announcing for the benefit of all within earshot that they knew exactly the best piece of ground in the Strip and would beat all others to the spot. One woman called out hysterically to a friend some yards away as the three riders passed behind her,

“Have your man stake the claim next to ourn,” she screeched. “Then we can neighbor back and forth. Watch now and pull right in behind us,” she urged, as if the start were but two seconds off instead of as many hours. “Don’t let any one wedge in between.”

There were already a half-dozen vehicles in between and their occupants fidgeted irritably under the constant scourge of her insistent screech.

One ample soul fanned her infant while answering the questions showered upon her by the rest of her brood, smiling meanwhile at all who caught her eye and occasionally dropping a word of good cheer to the tall lean man who occupied the seat beside her, his eyes roving moodily off across the burned and blackened area of the promised land. A meek little woman near by cried quietly while her man awkwardly sought to dissuade her, speaking gruffly in his concern over this unforeseen situation.

“Close up it sounds like a flock of chattering magpies,” said Carver. “And from a distance it sounds like the everlasting blat of a band of sheep. Whatever do you suppose brought all this swarm together?”

“The need that every human feels,” Molly answered. “The urge to have a home.”

She had pulled up her horse and Carver, following the direction of her gaze, saw an old couple on the seat of a wagon on the very front of the line. The man’s beard was white and a ragged fringe of white hair showed beneath his battered hat; one of the pioneers who had helped hew out homes in the West for others but who had neglected to retain one for himself. For a year old Judd Armstrong had been camped at various points along the line and Caldwell had come to know him. The little old lady beside him was hatless, her hair drawn tightly back from her brows and twisted in a scanty knot behind, the blistering sun falling full upon her wrinkled, weather-beaten face. She gazed serenely forth upon the restless horde of humanity around her, undisturbed by the nearness of the hour which would determine whether at last she should have a home after having been deprived of one for all these many years. Life had handed her many reverses but she had faced them all with that same serenity, confident that old Judd would see her through.

“Is there any chance for them?” the girl anxiously inquired.

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.

“Don’t look at me like that, Honey,” he said. “Not with folks looking on. I might lose my head and forget there was any one around. Maybe they’ll find a scrap of ground that the rest have run over without noticing. We’ll hope it transpires that way, won’t we?”

She nodded without speaking and they rode on down the line. A little knot of horsemen appeared some distance out across the blackened landscape, their progress marked by puffs of fine black ashes and tossed aloft by their horses’ hoofs.

“Cavalry patrol bringing out some sooner they’ve picked up,” Carver stated, as he watched the group approach. “There’s likely two hundred odd hiding out down there to take their pick of the claims when the run sets in.”

All through the preceding night there had been irregular spurts of rifle shots at various points along the line as troopers opened up on sooners that had watched their chance to slip through the cordon of guards and make a run for it.

“Did you hear the shooting last night?” she asked, and Carver nodded.

“Tumbleweeds drifting through,” he said. “Most of them urged on just for the love of taking chances--others on the chance of making a few dollars by selling out.”

“Are there many like that?” she asked. “I mean ones who are doing it for the sake of a few dollars instead of with the idea of living on their claims.”

“Thousands,” Carver testified. “Every puncher that ever rode in the Strip will stake a claim and there’s not one out of ten that would live on the place a week. Most of them are going in for the sport of making the run.”

“And they’ll stake the best tracts,” she said.

“They will,” Carver agreed. “They know the country and are equipped to get there first. But there’s such a scattering few compared to the size of the country that their filings all combined won’t make a pin-prick on the map.”

“And where will you file?” she inquired.

“The Half Diamond H,” he said. “That’s my destination. Every ranch down there stands just as she was left when the cowmen vacated the Strip. Owners are privileged to move their improvements off but they’re mostly sod buildings. The parties filing on them will be saved the trouble and expense of erecting new sod huts.”

“But there’s a frame house on the Half Diamond H,” she said.

“Four rooms--the only one in this end of the Strip,” he returned. “Old Nate said he couldn’t move it off with any profit and that whoever staked it wouldn’t likely offer any sum to speak of, so it was mine if only I’d stake the place myself.”

“But won’t all the boys that used to ride that country be heading for that same spot?” she asked.

“The old home-ranch sites will be the plums,” he admitted. “They’re located in good country and all the peelers will line out for them. If one of the boys beats me to it, I’ll give him a hundred to move on and stake the next. The Half Diamond H sets in twenty sections of rich bottom land in the Cabin Creek valley. There’ll likely be thirty or more old friends of mine head right into that bottom to file, and I can buy the big part of them out. They’ll sell to the first man who appears and puts in a bid. That will be me.”

“You’ve found one customer now,” Bart announced. “You can buy me out cheap.”

“Pick your places in the line and hold them,” Molly urged. “You’ll have a bad start otherwise.”

“Plenty of time,” Carver said. “We couldn’t get into the front rank or anywhere near it, so I’d as soon start from behind. A fifty-yard handicap won’t matter much in a long pull. Those thoroughbreds will stretch out in the lead for the first couple of miles and give their riders a chance to stake, but they wouldn’t last on a long hard drag. One of them would run my horse off his feet in the first three miles and mine would kill him off in the next ten or twelve. You notice the boys aren’t much concerned over places,” and he motioned toward an irregular string of riders well back of the congested throng banked up along the Cherokee-Kansas line.

All the old-time cowhands of the Strip were prowling here and there, inspecting those who were so soon to swarm in and take over their old stamping ground.

The crowd tightened as the hour approached, squeezing a few feet toward the front as if every inch in the direction of their goal would count for much in the final frenzied spurt of the get-away. Carver looked at his watch and snapped it shut.

“Five minutes,” he announced. “You follow along to the Half Diamond H if you lose us, Molly. I’ve got a food cache there.”

They pulled up their horses, having returned to the point of their original stand. Judd Armstrong seemed never to have shifted in his seat and the emaciated horses drooped contentedly, unmindful of the sudden tenseness that gripped all those around. The more high-strung horses sensed it and fidgeted nervously. The ample soul still mothered her infant and smiled while her man sat as stolidly as before, gazing somberly out across the blackened waste that stretched out ahead. The troopers had ceased patrolling the line and now sat their horses at half-mile intervals and faced the eager horde they had held in check for so long a time. The hysterical lady cut short a screech of advice to her neighbor four rigs away as the strains of a bugle sounded faintly from afar, penetrating the buzz of conversation and silencing it. A second note, far to the westward, joined the first and in a space of two seconds the clear ringing strains of the bugles pealed the same message along a front of two hundred miles.

There was a sudden tense hush, the troopers sitting rigidly in their saddles. As the last notes died away each soldier fired a single shot, and with a tremendous sullen roar the most spectacular run of all time was off to a running start.

VIII

A slender thoroughbred leaped forward with the shots, his rider crouched low along his neck. Carver had a brief glimpse of hundreds of saddle horses fanning ahead of the main bulk of the stampede. Then his view was cut off by the dense fog of black ashes churned aloft.

“Look!” he exclaimed.

In either direction, as far as the eye could reach this murky cloud was sweeping forward. As it eddied and curled he could catch glimpses of the swaying gray tops of covered wagons and the glittering flash of newly painted runabouts. It seemed that a black cyclone belt a hundred yards in width had sucked up thousands of strange land craft and churned them across the prairies over an endless front.

Men shouted frenzied encouragement to their horses, their voices lifting above the rattle of the laboring vehicles. Not infrequently there sounded a splintering crash as some outfit was piled up in a wreck or the sudden smash and subsequent groaning screech which announced that two rival wagons had collided and locked hubs. A shrill cowboy yelp of exultation rose high above the uproar.

“Now we can break through,” Carver stated, and they urged their horses into a lope and passed the wagons that lagged behind, darting past others as opportunity offered.

The girl saw humanity in the raw, the bars of convention lowered by excitement and each man’s true nature standing forth undisguised. She was treated to kaleidoscopic flashes of human avarice and sublime generosity. A heavy wagon came to grief as its owner lashed his horses over the four-foot bank of a dry wash. 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.”

The man boarded the horse and darted off, leaving the cowboy to care for his wife and children and the struggling team.

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.

They passed old Judd Armstrong, his bony horses surging on at an awkward gallop. The little old lady gripped a staff topped by a white scrap of cloth with which she intended to flag the first scrap of ground they crossed where she could see no others out ahead. But always there was a swarm of scurrying shapes far out in the lead.

Just as Carver pulled out ahead of the last fringe of wheeled conveyances the girl heard again the shrill exultant cowboy yelp and saw the man riding just ahead of them. He was a big fellow with a week-old growth of beard, mounted on a rangy bay horse that wore a Texas brand. He had given the animal its head and was half-turned in the saddle, looking back at the sea of lurching, swaying vehicles. His mouth was extended in a grin and he waved his gun aloft.

“Charge!” he bellowed. “Charge!”

He emptied his gun in the air and waved them on as if he were leading the line into some desperate affray. He bawled facetious commands to all within earshot. His noisy clamor reminded the girl of Noll, and she hated the big Texan from the instant her mind conceived this fancied resemblance. She herself read the pathos that was written in every movement of the mad scramble, the hungry rush of the homeless; and she told herself that the noisy horseman viewed it in the light of a screaming comedy.

A wave of ground cut off her view toward the east, but as the slight crest flattened to merge gradually with the surrounding prairie the objects on the far side reappeared, at first merely the heads and shoulders of those who traveled a parallel course, then their bodies, then the mounts that carried them. One form seemed to progress smoothly but there was a queer crouch to the head and shoulders. As more of him rose into her level of vision, she saw that he rode an antiquated bicycle with one huge wheel in front and a tiny one trailing in its wake. The man was hunched over the handle bars and was pedalling desperately, a grotesque figure with coattails streaming out behind, a water bottle slung across his back with the shaft of a small flag thrust through the strap.

“Oh, Don! Bart! Do look,” Molly implored. She was laughing in sheer delight yet she was conscious of a swift, hot resentment when the big Texan raised his voice in a joyous whoop as he sighted the strange apparition and gave chase. He veered his mount to the left, unbuckling his rope strap, and as the animal stretched into a full run behind the speeding cyclist he shook out a few coils of his rope and whirled his loop aloft. He did not make his throw but contented himself with giving voice to a wild yelp with every jump of his horse. His victim turned to cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder and the front wheel collided with a dog mound and threw him. Even in the act of rising he thrust his flag into the ground and staked his claim, the big fellow cheering him as he passed.

Hundreds of riders were scattered out in the lead of the line of oncoming vehicles that was strung out as far as the girl could see toward the east and west. Whenever one horseman attained the lead in his own particular section of the field he flung from the saddle and planted his flag. Scattered at intervals through it all Molly could make out moving specks of color--bright reds and purples, brilliant orange and softer effects of lavender--and she knew these for the gaudy regalia of the cowboys. These were not dismounting but riding steadily ahead, each with some particular destination in mind, saving their horses for the last wild spurt. Little by little the field thinned out. Some few of the cowmen had dashed suddenly ahead to stake their claims in some of the better valleys but the majority of them were still holding on. They swept down into a wide brown valley untouched by the fire and three times during the crossing of it Molly saw riders dismount far ahead--too far; and she knew that these were sooners who had been hiding in the unowned lands and who had now put in an appearance as the peak of the run came in sight.

The Texan had lost ground in his chase of the cyclist but eventually Molly heard him off to the right and rear, his big voice raised in a song which she thought fitted him exactly.

“I’m a wild, wild rider And an awful mean fighter, I’m a rough, tough, callous son-of-a-gun. I murder some folks quick And I kill off others slow, That’s the only way I ever take my fun.

“I’m a devil with my quirt, A terror with my knife, A fearsome fiend when out for pistol practice, I wield a wicked spur, Twirl a nasty ten-foot loop And curry out my red mane with a cactus.”

When they had covered some ten miles Molly noted that the brilliant specks were forging steadily forward through the scattered ranks of their more somberly clad fellows and gradually attaining the very fore fringe of the run. Another two miles and the bright dots were out in the lead and it was apparent that many were converging upon the line which Carver followed toward a distant dip in the landscape. Every cowhand was up on a horse that had proved its speed and endurance in many a hard round-up circle. The clatter and crash of vehicles had died out behind. Carver glanced both ways along the line.

“The boys are drawing in toward the Cabin Creek bottoms,” he called to Molly. “Best land in the Strip. There’ll be many a friend of mine in the lot. Here’s hoping they stake near the old home ranch.”

He glanced along the scattered line again as they rode across a low wave of the prairie and the broad bottoms of Cabin Creek opened out below them, spared by the fire and carpeted with grass that was only now turning brown.

“Now!” he said. “Run for it!” and they let their horses out and raced down the gentle pitch.

Carver kept his eye on the low point of a ridge that thrust its nose into the edge of the valley three miles below. Just beyond that shoulder the Curl Fork of Cabin Creek joined in and the buildings of the Half Diamond H nestled under the hill. Below that point the bottoms widened out to twice the width of the part they now traversed. More than thirty riders were strung out across the level floor of the valley, careening down both sides of the creek.

Some dropped from the saddle and drove their flags, but a dozen or more on Carver’s side of the creek held straight on. This last spurt was a contest between seasoned riders and tried horses. Carver urged his mount and the animal drew on his last reserve of speed. Molly felt the smooth play of powerful muscle sweeping her on toward the goal as her own horse, fresher from having carried less weight over the long miles, ran nose to nose with Carver’s. Bart was twenty feet to their left and as far in the rear.