Quirt

M. Bower B.

Description

Prolific Western writer Bertha Muzzy Bower penned dozens of novels detailing the difficulty and unique beauty of ranch life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Quirt centers on a struggling ranch of the same name and the travails and triumphs of the extended family that fights to keep it afloat.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775453116
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE QUIRT
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B. M. BOWER
 
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The Quirt First published in 1920 ISBN 978-1-775453-11-6 © 2011 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter One - Little Fish Chapter Two - The Enchantment of Long Distance Chapter Three - Reality is Weighed and Found Wanting Chapter Four - "She's a Good Girl When She Ain't Crazy" Chapter Five - A Death "by Accident" Chapter Six - Lone Advises Silence Chapter Seven - The Man at Whisper Chapter Eight - "It Takes Nerve Just to Hang On" Chapter Nine - The Evil Eye of the Sawtooth Chapter Ten - Another Sawtooth "Accident" Chapter Eleven - Swan Talks with His Thoughts Chapter Twelve - The Quirt Parries the First Blow Chapter Thirteen - Lone Takes His Stand Chapter Fourteen - "Frank's Dead" Chapter Fifteen - Swan Trails a Coyote Chapter Sixteen - The Sawtooth Shows its Hand Chapter Seventeen - Yack Don't Lie Chapter Eighteen - "I Think Al Woodruff's Got Her" Chapter Nineteen - Swan Calls for Help Chapter Twenty - Kidnapped Chapter Twenty-One - "Oh, I Could Kill You!" Chapter Twenty-Two - "Yack, I Lick You Good if You Bark" Chapter Twenty-Three - "I Coulda Loved this Little Girl" Chapter Twenty-Four - Another Story Begins
Chapter One - Little Fish
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Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none toogracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rockystretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channelin the center where what water there was hurried along to the poolsbelow. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in aplatter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed thepools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle, asthe double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.
A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-downherd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so,though the Quirt ranch was older than its lordly neighbors, the SawtoothCattle Company, who numbered their cattle by tens of thousands andwhose riders must have strings of fifteen horses apiece to keep themgoing; older too than many a modest ranch that had flourished awhile andhad finished as line-camps of the Sawtooth when the Sawtooth boughtranch and brand for a lump sum that looked big to the rancher, whoimmediately departed to make himself a new home elsewhere: older thanothers which had somehow gone to pieces when the rancher died or went tothe penitentiary under the stigma of a long sentence as a cattle thief.There were many such, for the Sawtooth, powerful and stern againstoutlawry, tolerated no pilfering from their thousands.
The less you have, the more careful you are of your possessions. Hunterand Johnson owned exactly a section and a half of land, and for a mileand a half Quirt Creek was fenced upon either side. They hired two men,cut what hay they could from a field which they irrigated, fed theircattle through the cold weather, watched them zealously through thesummer, and managed to ship enough beef each fall to pay their grocerybill and their men's wages and have a balance sufficient to buy whatclothes they needed, and perhaps pay a doctor if one of them fell ill.Which frequently happened, since Brit was becoming a prey to rheumatismthat sometimes kept him in bed, and Frank occasionally indulged himselfin a gallon or so of bad whisky and suffered afterwards from a badlyderanged digestion.
Their house was a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier to getthan lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result ofcircumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from the mountain-sidelogs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to cut the long onesany shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a little closer totheir wilderness—as, go where you will, the outside world has a way ofdoing—he had built a lean-to shed against the cabin from what lumberthere was left after building a cowshed against the log barn.
In the early days, Brit had had a wife and two children, but the wifecould not endure the loneliness of the ranch nor the inconvenience ofliving in a two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying overrattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell outand live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, andbecause he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shankedspurs ajingle on his heels and a snakeskin band around his hat, andbecause a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a storyin a book.
Adventure, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognized and appreciatedonly at a distance. Mrs. Hunter lost the perspective of romance andadventure, and shed tears because there was sufficient mineral in thewater to yellow her week's washing, and for various other causes whichshe had never foreseen and to which she refused to resign herself.
Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatumto Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take thechildren and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except thepost-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,—and a barber shop where afellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.Brit could not imagine himself actually living , day after day, in atown. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in arestaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days whenhe had meant to finish his business in one, because there was anawfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there wasgoing to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintancewith her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,and be reasonably certain of a favorable answer.
Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friendand neighbor, who had taken all the land the government would allow oneman to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him. Theyhad planned to run cattle together, had their brand already recorded,and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young cows.Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when the irateMrs. Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardize his right to the land.
Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would bea cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and naggingcomplaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved upand came down to live with him, and the partnership began to wear intopermanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and wrangledtogether like brothers.
For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then shewrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royalwas old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for themas she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honor andprotect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if hedid not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.
Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnlywhile they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing theunearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel thatthey could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of thequestion. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncherfancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnieand enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar banknote. With the two dollars and ahalf which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to a mail-orderhouse for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwards because the coatwas not "wind and water proof" as advertised in the catalogue.
More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a notice thathe was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. He felthurt, because, as he pointed out to Frank, he was perfectly willing tosupport Minnie and the kids if they came back where he could have achance. He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and received no reply.Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself from him, andthat she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.
To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard fromthe children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough towrite. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have anymoney to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed,as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children weregrowing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattlingyoungsters whom Minnie was forever worrying over and who seemed to havebeen always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of hiswagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sagewhile he and their distracted mother searched for them. For a longwhile—how many years Brit could not remember—they had been living inLos Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The girl,Lorraine—Minnie had wanted fancy names for the kids, and Britapologized whenever he spoke of them, which was seldom—Lorraine hadwritten that "Mamma has an apartment house." That had soundedprosperous, even at the beginning. And as the years passed and theiraddress remained the same, Brit became fixed in the belief that the CasaGrande was all that its name implied, and perhaps more. Minnie must begetting rich. She had a picture of t