“Chuck at the Y.D. to-night, and a bed under the shingles,” shouted Transley, waving to the procession to be off.
Linder, foreman and head teamster, straightened up from the half load of new hay in which he had been awaiting the final word, tightened the lines, made an unique sound in his throat, and the horses pressed their shoulders into the collars. Linder glanced back to see each wagon or implement take up the slack with a jerk like the cars of a freight train; the cushioned rumble of wagon wheels on the soft earth, and the noisy chatter of the steel teeth of the hay-rakes came up from the rear. Transley’s “outfit” was under way.
Transley was a contractor; a master of men and of circumstances. Six weeks before, the suspension of a grading order had left him high and dry, with a dozen men and as many teams on his hands and hired for the season. Transley galloped all that night into the foothills; when he returned next evening he had a contract with the Y.D. to cut all the hay from the ranch buildings to The Forks. By some deft touch of those financial strings on which he was one day to become so skilled a player Transley converted his dump scrapers into mowing machines, and three days later his outfit was at work in the upper reaches of the Y.D.
The contract had been decidedly profitable. Not an hour of broken weather had interrupted the operations, and to-day, with two thousand tons of hay in stack, Transley was moving down to the headquarters of the Y.D. The trail lay along a broad valley, warded on either side by ranges of foothills; hills which in any other country would have been dignified by the name of mountains. From their summits the grey-green up-tilted limestone protruded, whipped clean of soil by the chinooks of centuries. Here and there on their northern slopes hung a beard of scrub timber; sharp gulleys cut into their fastnesses to bring down the turbulent waters of their snows.
Some miles to the left of the trail lay the bed of the Y.D., fringed with poplar and cottonwood and occasional dark green splashes of spruce. Beyond the bed of the Y.D., beyond the foothills that looked down upon it, hung the mountains themselves, their giant crests pitched like mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four o’clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley’s outfit trailing down to the Y.D.
Linder, foreman and head teamster, cushioned his shoulders against his half load of hay and contemplated the scene with amiable satisfaction. The hay fields of the foothills had been a pleasant change from the railway grades of the plains below. Men and horses had fattened and grown content, and the foreman had reason to know that Transley’s bank account had profited by the sudden shift in his operations. Linder felt in his pocket for pipe and matches; then, with a frown, withdrew his fingers. He himself had laid down the law that there must be no smoking in the hay fields. A carelessly dropped match might in an hour nullify all their labor.
Linder’s frown had scarce vanished when hoof-beats pounded by the side of his wagon, and a rider, throwing himself lightly from his horse, dropped beside him in the hay.
“Thought I’d ride with you a spell, Lin. That Pete-horse acts like he was goin’ sore on the off front foot. Chuck at the Y.D. to-night?”
“That’s what Transley says, George, and he knows.”
“Ever et at the Y.D?”
“Nope.”
“Know old Y.D?”
“Only to know his name is good on a cheque, and they say he still throws a good rope.”
George wriggled to a more comfortable position in the hay. He had a feeling that he was approaching a delicate subject with consummate skill. After a considerable silence he continued—
“They say that’s quite a girl old Y.D.‘s got.”
“Oh,” said Linder, slowly. The occasion of the soreness in that Pete-horse’s off front foot was becoming apparent.
“You better stick to Pete,” Linder continued. “Women is most uncertain critters.”
“Don’t I know it?” chuckled George, poking the foreman’s ribs companionably with his elbow. “Don’t I know it?” he repeated, as his mind apparently ran back over some reminiscence that verified Linder’s remark. It was evident from the pleasant grimaces of George’s face that whatever he had suffered from the uncertain sex was forgiven.
“Say, Lin,” he resumed after another pause, and this time in a more confidential tone, “do you s’pose Transley’s got a notion that way?”
“Shouldn’t wonder. Transley always knows what he’s doing, and why. Y.D. must be worth a million or so, and the girl is all he’s got to leave it to. Besides all that, no doubt she’s well worth having on her own account.”
“Well, I’m sorry for the boss,” George replied, with great soberness. “I alus hate to disappoint the boss.”
“Huh!” said Linder. He knew George Drazk too well for further comment. After his unlimited pride in and devotion to his horse, George gave his heart unreservedly to womankind. He suffered from no cramping niceness in his devotions; that would have limited the play of his passion; to him all women were alike—or nearly so. And no number of rebuffs could convince George that he was unpopular with the objects of his democratic affections. Such a conclusion was, to him, too absurd to be entertained, no matter how many experiences might support it. If opportunity offered he doubtless would propose to Y.D.‘s daughter that very night—and get a boxed ear for his pains.
The Y.D. creek had crossed its valley, shouldering close against the base of the foothills to the right. Here the current had created a precipitous cutbank, and to avoid it and the stream the trail wound over the side of the hill. As they crested a corner the silver ribbon of the Y.D. was unravelled before them, and half a dozen miles down its course the ranch buildings lay clustered in a grove of cottonwoods and evergreens. All the great valley lay warm and pulsating in a flood of yellow sunshine; the very earth seemed amorous and content in the embrace of sun and sky. The majesty of the view seized even the unpoetic souls of Linder and Drazk, and because they had no other means of expression they swore vaguely and relapsed into silence.
Hoof-beats again sounded by the wagon side. It was Transley.
“Oh, here you are, Drazk. How long do you reckon it would take you to ride down to the Y.D. on that Pete-horse?” Transley was a leader of men.
Drazk’s eyes sparkled at the subtle compliment to his horse.
“I tell you, Boss,” he said, “if there’s any jackrabbits in the road they’ll get tramped on.”
“I bet they will,” said Transley, genially. “Well, you just slide down and tell Y.D. we’re coming in. She’s going to be later than I figured, but I can’t hurry the work horses. You know that, Drazk.”
“Sure I do, Boss,” said Drazk, springing into his saddle. “Just watch me lose myself in the dust.” Then, to himself, “Here’s where I beat the boss to it.”
The sun had fallen behind the mountains, the valley was filled with shadow, the afterglow, mauve and purple and copper, was playing far up the sky when Transley’s outfit reached the Y.D. corrals. George Drazk had opened the gate and waited beside it.
“Y.D. wants you an’ Linder to eat with him at the house,” he said as Transley halted beside him. “The rest of us eat in the bunk-house.” There was something strangely modest in Drazk’s manner.
“Had yours handed to you already?” Linder managed to banter in a low voice as they swung through the gate.
“Hell!” protested Mr. Drazk. “A fellow that ain’t a boss or a foreman don’t get a look-in. Never even seen her.... Come, you Pete-horse!” It was evident George had gone back to his first love.
The wagons drew up in the yard, and there was a fine jingle of harness as the teamsters quickly unhitched. Y.D. himself approached through the dusk; his large frame and confident bearing were unmistakable even in that group of confident, vigorous men.
“Glad to see you, Transley,” he said cordially. “You done well out there. ‘So, Linder! You made a good job of it. Come up to the house—I reckon the Missus has supper waitin’. We’ll find a room for you up there, too; it’s different from bein’ under canvas.”
So saying, and turning the welfare of the men and the horses over to his foreman, the rancher led Transley and Linder along a path through a grove of cottonwoods, across a footbridge where from underneath came the babble of water, to “the house,” marked by a yellow light which poured through the windows and lost itself in the shadow of the trees.
The nucleus of the house was the log cabin where Y.D. and his wife had lived in their first married years. With the passage of time additions had been built to every side which offered a point of contact, but the log cabin still remained the family centre, and into it Transley and Linder were immediately admitted. The poplar floor had long since worn thin, save at the knots, and had been covered with edge-grained fir, but otherwise the cabin stood as it had for twenty years, the white-washed logs glowing in the light of two bracket lamps and the reflections from a wood fire which burned merrily in the stove. The skins of a grizzly bear and a timber wolf lay on the floor, and two moose heads looked down from opposite ends of the room. On the walls hung other trophies won by Y.D.‘s rifle, along with hand-made bits of harness, lariats, and other insignia of the ranchman’s trade.
The rancher took his guests’ hats, and motioned each to a seat. “Mother,” he said, directing his voice into an adjoining room, “here’s the boys.”
In a moment “Mother” appeared drying her hands. In her appearance were courage, resourcefulness, energy,—fit mate for the man who had made the Y.D. known in every big cattle market of the country. As Linder’s eye caught her and her husband in the same glance his mind involuntarily leapt to the suggestion of what the offspring of such a pair must be. The men of the cattle country have a proper appreciation of heredity....
“My wife—Mr. Transley, Mr. Linder,” said the rancher, with a courtliness which sat strangely on his otherwise rough-and-ready speech. “I been tellin’ her the fine job you boys has made in the hay fields, an’ I reckon she’s got a bite of supper waitin’ you.”
“Y.D. has been full of your praises,” said the woman. There was a touch of culture in her manner as she received them, which Y.D.‘s hospitality did not disclose.
She led them into another room, where a table was set for five. Linder experienced a tang of happy excitement as he noted the number. Linder allowed himself no foolishness about women, but, as he sometimes sagely remarked to George Drazk, you never can tell what might happen. He shot a quick glance at Transley, but the contractor’s face gave no sign. Even as he looked Linder thought what an able face it was. Transley was not more than twenty-six, but forcefulness, assertion, ability, stood in every line of his clean-cut features. He was such a man as to capture at a blow the heart of old Y.D., perhaps of Y.D.‘s daughter.
“Where’s Zen?” demanded the rancher.
“She’ll be here presently,” his wife replied. “We don’t have Mr. Transley and Mr. Linder every night, you know,” she added, with a smile.
“Dolling up,” thought Linder. “Trust a woman never to miss a bet.”
But at that moment a door opened, and the girl appeared. She did not burst upon them, as Linder had half expected; she slipped quietly and gracefully into their presence. She was dressed in black, in a costume which did not too much conceal the charm of her figure, and the nut-brown lustre of her face and hair played against the sober background of her dress with an effect that was almost dazzling.
“My daughter, Zen,” said Y.D. “Mr. Transley, Mr. Linder.”
She shook hands frankly, first with Transley, then with Linder, as had been the order of the introduction. In her manner was neither the shyness which sometimes marks the women of remote settlements, nor the boldness so readily bred of outdoor life. She gave the impression of one who has herself, and the situation, in hand.
“We’re always glad to have guests at the Y.D.” she was saying. “We live so far from everywhere.”
Linder thought that a strange peg on which to hang their welcome. But she was continuing—
“And you have been so successful, haven’t you? You have made quite a hit with Dad.”
“How about Dad’s daughter?” asked Transley. Transley had a manner of direct and forceful action. These were his first words to her. Linder would not have dared be so precipitate.
“Perhaps,” thought Linder to himself, as he turned the incident over in his mind, “perhaps that is why Transley is boss, and I’m just foreman.” The young woman’s behavior seemed to support that conclusion. She did not answer Transley’s question, but she gave no evidence of displeasure.
“You boys must be hungry,” Y.D. was saying. “Pile in.”
The rancher and his wife sat at the ends of the table; Transley on the side at Y.D.‘s right; Linder at Transley’s right. In the better light Linder noted Y.D.‘s face. It was the face of a man of fifty, possibly sixty. Life in the open plays strange tricks with the appearance. Some men it ages before their time; others seem to tap a spring of perpetual youth. Save for the grey moustache and the puckerings about the eyes Y.D.‘s was still a young man’s face. Then, as the rancher turned his head, Linder noted a long scar, as of a burn, almost grown over in the right cheek.... Across the table from them sat the girl, impartially dividing her position between the two.
A Chinese boy served soup, and the rancher set the example by “piling in” without formality. Eight hours in the open air between meals is a powerful deterrent of table small-talk. Then followed a huge joint of beef, from which Y.D. cut generous slices with swift and dexterous strokes of a great knife, and the Chinese boy added the vegetables from a side table. As the meat disappeared the call of appetite became less insistent.
“She’s been a great summer, ain’t she?” said the rancher, laying down his knife and fork and lifting the carver. “Transley, some more meat? Pshaw, you ain’t et enough for a chicken. Linder? That’s right, pass up your plate. Powerful dry, though. That’s only a small bit; here’s a better slice here. Dry summers gen’rally mean open winters, but you can’t never tell. Zen, how ‘bout you? Old Y.D.‘s been too long on the job to take chances. Mother? How much did you say, Transley? About two thousand tons? Not enough. Don’t care if I do,”—helping himself to another piece of beef.
“I think you’ll find two thousand tons, good hay and good measurement,” said Transley.
“I’m sure of it,” rejoined his host, generously. “I’m carryin’ more steers than usual, and’ll maybe run in a bunch of doggies from Manitoba to boot. I got to have more hay.”
So the meal progressed, the rancher furnishing both the hospitality and the conversation. Transley occasionally broke in to give assent to some remark, but his interruption was quite unnecessary. It was Y.D.‘s practice to take assent for granted. Once or twice the women interjected a lead to a different subject of conversation in which their words would have carried greater authority, but Y.D. instantly swung it back to the all-absorbing topic of hay.
The Chinese boy served a pudding of some sort, and presently the meal was ended.
“She’s been a dry summer—powerful dry,” said the rancher, with a wink at his guests. “Zen, I think there’s a bit of gopher poison in there yet, ain’t there?”
The girl left the room without remark, returning shortly with a jug and glasses, which she placed before her father.
“I suppose you wear a man’s size, Transley,” he said, pouring out a big drink of brown liquor, despite Transley’s deprecating hand. “Linder, how many fingers? Two? Well, we’ll throw in the thumb. Y.D? If you please, just a little snifter. All set?”
The rancher rose to his feet, and the company followed his example.
“Here’s ho!—and more hay,” he said, genially.
“Ho!” said Linder.
“The daughter of the Y.D!” said Transley, looking across the table at the girl. She met his eyes full; then, with a gleam of white teeth, she raised an empty glass and clinked it against his.
The men drained their glasses and re-seated themselves, but the women remained standing.
“Perhaps you will excuse us now,” said the rancher’s wife. “You will wish to talk over business. Y.D. will show you upstairs, and we will expect you to be with us for breakfast.”
With a bow she left the room, followed by her daughter. Linder had a sense of being unsatisfied; it was as though a ravishing meal has been placed before a hungry man, and only its aroma had reached his senses when it had been taken away. Well, it provoked the appetite—
The rancher re-filled the glasses, but Transley left his untouched, and Linder did the same. There were business matters to discuss, and it was no fair contest to discuss business in the course of a drinking bout with an old stager like Y.D.
“I got to have another thousand tons,” the rancher was saying. “Can’t take chances on any less, and I want you boys to put it up for me.”
“Suits me,” said Transley, “if you’ll show me where to get the hay.”
“You know the South Y.D?”
“Never been on it.”
“Well, it’s a branch of the Y.D. which runs south-east from The Forks. Guess it got its name from me, because I built my first cabin at The Forks. That was about the time you was on a milk diet, Transley, and us old-timers had all outdoors to play with. You see, the Y.D. is a cantank’rous stream, like its godfather. At The Forks you’d nat’rally suppose is where two branches joined, an’ jogged on henceforth in double harness. Well, that ain’t it at all. This crick has modern ideas, an’ at The Forks it divides itself into two, an’ she hikes for the Gulf o’ Mexico an’ him for Hudson’s Bay. As I was sayin’, I built my first cabin at The Forks—a sort o’ peek-a-boo cabin it was, where the wolves usta come an’ look in at nights. Well, I usta look out through the same holes. I had the advantage o’ usin’ language, an’ I reckon we was about equal scared. There was no wife or kid in those days.”
The rancher paused, took a long draw on his pipe, and his eyes glowed with the light of old recollections.
“Well, as I was sayin’,” he continued presently, “folks got to callin’ the stream the Y.D., after me. That’s what you get for bein’ first on the ground—a monument for ever an ever. This bein’ the main stream got the name proper, an’ the other branch bein’ smallest an’ running kind o’ south nat’rally got called the South Y.D. I run stock in both valleys when I was at The Forks, but not much since I came down here. Well, there’s maybe a thousand tons o’ hay over in the South Y.D., an’ you boys better trail over there to-morrow an’ pitch into it—that is, if you’re satisfied with the price I’m payin’ you.”
“The price is all right,” said Transley, “and we’ll hit the trail at sun-up. There’ll be no trouble—no confliction of interests, I mean?”
“Whose interests?” demanded the rancher, beligerently. “Ain’t I the father of the Y.D? Ain’t the whole valley named for me? When it comes to interests—”
“Of course,” Transley agreed, “but I just wanted to know how things stood in case we ran up against something. It’s not like the old days, when a rancher would rather lose twenty-five per cent. of his stock over winter than bother putting up hay. Hay land is getting to be worth money, and I just want to know where we stand.”
“Quite proper,” said Y.D., “quite proper. An’ now the matter’s under discussion, I’ll jus’ show you my hand. There’s a fellow named Landson down the valley of the South Y.D. that’s been flirtin’ with that hay meadow for years, but he ain’t got no claim to it. I was first on the ground an’ I cut it whenever I feel like it an’ I’m goin’ to go on cuttin’ it. If anybody comes out raisin’ trouble, you just shoo ‘em off, an’ go on cuttin’ that hay, spite o’ hell an’ high water. Y.D.‘ll stand behind you.”
“Thanks,” said Transley. “That’s what I wanted to know.”
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