the Drift Fence (1992) (6 page)

But James liked the pine forest and the gray levels along the road, and the black mountains rising in the distance. And he had a fine view of Jim Traft's ranch home. It was nothing at all like he had pictured. Uncle Jim had been long on cattle deals and short on description, so far as talk was concerned. Across one of the wide grassy flats the long, low white house stood on a pine-timbered knoll, and below it clustered a bewildering array of corrals, barns, and sheds. Cattle dotted the wide valley, and on the fenced meadows horses and colts grazed, too numerous to count.

The road wound along the edge of the timber, from which James had ample opportunity to see the ranch at different angles, and by the time he reached the house was wild with enthusiasm about his future home.

A low-roofed comfortable porch fronted the house. Here James deposited his baggage, and paying the driver, he knocked. Nobody answered, however, so he went around to the back. A wide courtyard led out to the corrals.

He espied men out there and directed his footsteps in that direction.

Soon he came upon three cowboys around a horse, and then his uncle, who stood with another man, watching them.

"Hello, Uncle Jim!" he yelled, and his rapid strides soon fetched him up.

"Howdy, Jim!" replied the rancher, as if he had seen his nephew only yesterday, and extended his hand. "Got your telegram, but forgot to meet you.... By gum! you've sprung up like a weed."

Traft had not changed. His garb, however, was new to Jim, and consisted of high boots, corduroys tucked in them, an old leather belt with an empty gun-sheath on it, gray soft shirt, and a vest that had been new years ago. He was a stalwart figure of a man, nearing seventy, but still erect and rugged, with a lined hard face expressive of his life on the frontier.

"Shake hands with Ring Locke," said Traft, indicating his companion, a tall, lean, sandy-complexioned Westerner whose narrow eyes were almost hidden under an old black sombrero.

Jim was cordial and prompt in his greeting.

"How do!" drawled Locke, whose accent proclaimed him a Texan. "I shore am glad to meet you, sah."

"This is the nephew I told you about, Ring," went on Traft. "He has come West to run the Diamond outfit."

Jim tried to bear well the scrutiny given him by this range boss of his uncle's, a right-hand man who had been with him twenty years.

"Uncle should have said I'll try to run that outfit, Mr. Locke," said Jim, frankly. "I'm not afraid. But I'm an awful tenderfoot."

Perhaps his earnestness favourably impressed Locke, for he smiled and replied, dryly, "Wal, it ain't bad to start when you're a tenderfoot, just so long as you know it."

"You bet I know it," continued Jim, hastening to follow that up. "When Uncle's letter came I was sure up a tree. It sounded wonderful. But I had listened to Uncle Jim's stories about gunmen and bad cowboys, wild steers and bucking bronchos, stampedes and rustling. It wasn't easy to decide... But here I am. And I can take a licking."

"Wal, reckon you're likely to get it," rejoined Locke. "But in this heah country a lickin' ain't nothin', so long's it's not for keeps."

Jim took almost instantly to the lean Texan. But the three cowboys standing by, apparently like hitching-posts, yet with still eyes and faces, gave him an uncomfortable sensation. To be sure, they heard every word. What clean-cut, lithe-limbed young men! The one holding the horse had a gun hanging low from his belt. Jim faced this triangle of judges, for so they seemed, expecting to be introduced. But his uncle apparently neglected or avoided it.

"We'll go back to the house," he said, and led Jim away. "Have a good trip out?"

"You bet. I've got a stiff neck from looking out of the car window," replied Jim, enthusiastically. "No matter what you've read or heard, you can't get any true idea till you see it. I mean the plains, hills, valleys, ranges, and mountains... Uncle, I liked all the whole long ride out. But Arizona best."

"An' how's that?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe the great red walls--the canyons."

"Ahuh... Sorry I didn't meet you at the train. I reckoned I would. How's your mother?"

"Fine and well. Uncle, she was crazy to have me come, but scared stiff."

"Good! An' how's that storekeeper brother of mine, your dad?"

"He hasn't been so well lately, but I guess it's nothing much. He sent a letter and some things which I have for you."

"Did he kick about your comin' out?"

"No. All he kicked about was my making good. He gave me a stiff talk, you bet."

They reached the house, where Jim was conducted to a large light room, with walls and floor of clean yellow pine. A few deerskin rugs, a wood-burning stove, a table with lamp, an old bureau and mirror, and spare blanketed bed, constituted the contents, the simplicity of which pleased Jim.

"Come out on the porch and we'll talk," his uncle had said. And Jim, after securing the letter and parcels he had mentioned, hurried out to deliver them.

"Thanks. I'll look at them later... Wal, Jim, you've growed. You're a pretty husky chap. Too heavy, mebbe, but ridin' the range will soon change that. By the way, have you been ridin' much since I saw you last?

You used to take to hosses."

"Had two years of riding every day. You know I tried farming."

"Yes, your dad mentioned it. How'd you make out?"

"I fell down, Uncle," replied Jim, regretfully. "I just couldn't do it."

"An' why not?" asked Traft, as if he already knew.

"I don't know, unless it was too tame. Every day the same! I thought I'd die. But I stuck for two years. Then dad sold the farm, which was lucky for me.

"What else you been doin' these four years since I seen you?"

"I was still in school for a year after you last visited us. Then the two years on dad's farm. And the last year I tried several jobs, only one of which I was any good at."

"An' what was that?" asked Traft, kindly. "Reckon it wasn't clerkin' in the store?"

"No. I'm almost ashamed to tell you, Uncle. It was on my own hook, though. I got an idea some shade trees would look fine round our place.

So I drove out to the river and dug up cottonwoods and planted them. Dad laughed at me. Then our neighbour hired me to do the same for his place.

Through that I got other jobs, and I was making good money when your letter came."

"Wal, I'll be dog-goned!" ejaculated the rancher. "Plantin' trees, an' cottonwoods at that. Son, it was a darn good idee."

Jim thanked his lucky stars he had confided something he had been afraid his uncle would think trivial.

"Wal, so much for Missouri," went on Traft. "You're here in Arizona now.

Reckon I might have wrote you all about what I want and hope. But it wouldn't have been fair to you or me. Fact is I couldn't have said all I need to in a letter. Your dad would have throwed a fit. I reckoned it'd be better to get face to face an' have it out. Don't you figger that way, too?"

"I certainly do, Uncle, especially if it's as big and hard a job as I imagine. And if it's really true that you have made me your heir."

"Wal, naturally, all I have would go to your dad an' you. But that's not the question."

"It's a serious part of it for me," declared Jim, bravely. "I appreciate your kindness, Uncle Jim, but if I can't make good as a rancher--well, I don't want the property."

"Ahuh, I see. Wal, reckon your dad never guessed that." Jim felt the piercing intensity of eyes like a pale blue gleam, yet not lacking understanding. "However, what becomes of my property ain't the main issue with me. Blood is thicker than water. An' under any circumstances I'd want my only kin to have what I left."

"Then, Uncle, what is the main issue?" queried Jim, anxiously. "Wal, I reckon it's I want you to be as near a son to me as possible."

"That's easy, Uncle, if it depends on sincerity and affection and obedience."

"They'll help, but it depends most on what I said in my letter. Guts!"

"I remember, and that worried me. But I hope I have some."

"Jim, the job I want you to take is the hardest in the West."

"I don't care. The harder the better," declared Jim, answering the stimulation of doubt. "I always told dad that I needed responsibility. He never gave me any. The fact that you will put responsibility on my shoulders is half of the battle right now."

"Son, that's straight talk," returned his uncle, nodding his head thoughtfully. "An' I liked the way you spoke up to Ring Locke. If he took a shine to you it'd help a lot... But, Jim, the hell of it is no rancher who knows' the West ought ever to give a tenderfoot from the East such a job."

"Why not?"

"Wal, I reckon because of natural human feelin's. But I'm just bull-headed enough to want a Traft an' nobody else to take my place."

"If you were a young man, Uncle, could you take care of this job?" asked Jim curiously.

"Yes. An' I reckon I could do it yet."

"All right, then," returned Jim, feeling his face blanch. "I'll commit myself here. I'll do it."

"Fine! I like your spirit, son," exclaimed Traft, warmly, and a smile transformed his hard lined face. "Now listen. I'm runnin' eight thousand head of cattle, mebbe more. But we can never get a count. That's a lot of stock, Jim. Figger out the value at forty dollars a head, which is a low estimate. Wal, I lose from a thousand head up every year. Most of this loss can be laid to cattle thieves. It has gradually growed worse an' has begun to rile me. I used to laugh at this two-bit rustlin'. But it's no good deceivin' myself any longer. The thing is serious. I've reason to believe Ring Locke knows it's worse than he'll tell me. Anyway, he's the best-posted cowman on the range.--Blodgett runs a big lot of cattle. So does Hep Babbitt. They're all losin' stock, too."

"Uncle Jim, this is bad," declared Jim, in surprise. "It's almost like the rustler stories you told me when I was a kid."

"Son, if I don't miss my guess you'll shore live one of them stories," responded Traft, with a grim laugh.

"You're being robbed, but you don't know where the cattle go?" queried Jim, ignoring the start his uncle's statement gave him.

"Humph! We know darn well where they're gain'."

"Where?"

"South of here, in the brakes under the Diamond. An' the Diamond, I should explain, is high country south of here. On three sides it sheers straight down an' cattle can't get off. But on the west, for forty miles or so, it slopes off into the roughest canyon country in Arizona. Thicker than the Tonto. These canyons head up high in the timber an' run down deep an' rough. All of them have fine grass an' water. Lots of deer, bear an' turkey, too, if you like to hunt. Wal, a good deal of stock, especially cows with unbranded calves, drift into these draws an' work down into the brakes. There the cows are killed an' the calves stolen. It used to be these thieves would take the meat an' bury or burn head an' hide. But lately they kill too many. They just down the cows in a thicket or drag them into one, an' leave them there for the varmints. Locke's last report shore riled me."

"Then, Uncle, this tough job you're giving me has to do with the thieves," asserted Jim.

"Wal, I should sort of smile it does," drawled Traft.

"But why not entrust it to an experienced Westerner, like Locke?"

"Locke can't bother with it, an' wouldn't if he could, at least the way I want to stop it. An' as I told you I want a Traft to do this. Son, it'll be a big thing for the range, if we succeed. I don't want one of these gun-packin' cowboys to have the credit, when I can throw it to you."

"You're very kind, Uncle," said Jim, with a dry humour not lost upon Traft. "Are you sure anyone but a fool tenderfoot would tackle the job?"

Trait laughed. He was growing more at ease with Jim. "Some of my boys are achin' to get the job. Jim, my Diamond outfit is the damnest bunch of cowpunchers in Arizona. An' it's this Diamond outfit you're to take charge of."

"Damnest bunch! Doesn't sound very good, Uncle. Just what do you mean?" returned Jim, dubiously.

"Huh! I'll leave that for you to find out... Now to come out with my plan.

I want a drift fence built from my ranch here clear down across the Diamond to where it jumps off. A hundred-mile fence!"

"What's a drift fence?"

"It's just a fence along which cattle will drift south as far as they can go, then drift back. It'd have several good uses, but the main one is to keep the cows an' calves from driftin' down into the brakes."

"Well, the building of a fence even a hundred miles long oughtn't to be so difficult."

"Shore it won't. But keepin' it up after it's built is where the hell will come in."

Jim grasped subtly that here was the crux of the whole matter.

"There'll be opposition? Down on the Diamond," he rejoined.

"Shore will. An' for that matter all over the range. Even Blodgett is oncertain about fencin' the range. You see, a barbed-wire fence in this country is nothin' short of murder. An' these nesters an' homesteaders an' backwoodsmen will lose by it. An' as for cowboys. Lord! how they hate any kind of a fence! I reckon I used to. But I'm ahead of my day. I can see what is needed an' what is comin'. So, Jim, you can trust me so far as the benefit to ranchers is concerned."