Part 7

“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.”

“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.”