Where Stillwater Runs Deep

He was an Irishman and a West Pointer and liked to fight. But he was also Patrick R. O’Neill, ranger of the Yellowstone National Forest, and his mission in Bad Cañon was one of peace. And peace it was, but two-fisted!

CHAPTER I. READY FOR BUSINESS.

At the moment, Ed Murray, supervisor of the Absarokee Division of the Yellowstone National Forest, was peeved. “Read that!” he snorted, shoving a letter from his particular higher-ups in Washington into the hands of his stolid secretary who, by the way, comprised the entire office force of the Absarokee Division.

The secretary obediently began reading in a slightly singsong tone:

“Under separate cover we are mailing you blank township maps. As a measure of economy you are instructed to have some member of your office force sketch in the necessary data, using the inclosed legends which have been made official for all forest-service maps. We——”

“That’s all—never mind the official trimmings,” Murray curtly interrupted. “Point is this: You’re the office force. What’re you going to do about it? Think you can fill in the maps?”

While the secretary calmly ruminated upon the subject of map making, Murray watched her with a twinkle of amusement, though that did not in the least degree soften his resentment against Washington.

“I could do anything on the typewriter if it would fit in the machine,” Christine at length decided. “If they are big maps, I could fold them lengthwise without carbon, but they might slip on the roller, which is too slick. If it is figures, I do not mind so much, but if it is those funny signs for surveying I must copy them with a pen, and that is no joke if I am in a hurry. I think if it is much work, Mr. Murray, I should get more wages.”

“Huh! Well, as you say, making maps on a typewriter is no joke, and I guess you’d earn your money all right!” Her employer noted the clearing of Christine’s placid blue eyes, gave another inarticulate snort and returned to his own problem, knowing that Christine was unlikely to repeat his words.

“Seems like I’ve got troubles enough in this district, fighting every cowman, sheepman, timberman and nester in the State. I’m always short-handed, always got a row on my hands with some one who thinks I ought to turn the reserve over to him just because we used to punch cows together! When I don’t, they think I’m trying to ride them on account of some little argument over brands that might have come up when I was stock inspector.

“Some member of the office force!” he growled, remembering the letter. “Huh! They must think I’m runnin’ two wagons and a regular round-up crew in this office! Far as that goes, I could take my rangers and work the reserve quicker than these darned cow outfits—picked ’em off the range myself, most of them. But when it comes to making maps—— They’re like you, Christine. You could do it on the typewriter, you think; they might tackle it with a branding iron! Some member of my office force! My gosh! Take this letter, Christine. I’ll tell them poker-faced politicians in Washington what——”

“Do you want that in the letter?” Christine lifted her plump white hand to pluck the pencil from her silky blond hair.

“Lord, no! Dog-gone that June 11th Act and its maps and pamphlets and systems and all that bunk! What I’m going to need is a crew of civil engineers and an addition on this office. Washington must think all forest rangers are merely desk men! Why——”

“Should that be incorporated in the body of the letter, Mr. Murray?” Christine was patiently waiting with pencil point on her pad. “I could make a note and beg to inform them in a polite way that you have no office force and your secretary works until six o’clock sometimes——”

“No!” shouted Murray. “What does Washington care how long my secretary works? Take this—verbatim. None of your business-college trimmings—I want it typed the way I say it! I’ll tell them——”

The office door opened, admitting six feet of husky young manhood who saluted Murray and snapped into attention while he took in the entire office force with flicking glances of blue eyes that twinkled habitually. It may go on record that the entire office force instinctively patted its blond hair and modestly cast down its eyes of blue—with sundry furtive inspections when it thought the military visitor was not looking.

“Are you the forest supervisor, sir?” Somehow the habitual twinkle in the stranger’s eyes seemed to match a certain rollicky Irish tone of his voice, as if he had a joke on the tip of his tongue and needed scant encouragement to tell it.

“I am. What can I do for you?”

“You might read these letters of Recommendation, sir, and if they suit you, then you might give me a job.” He grinned as he handed Murray two letters and stepped back.

The first letter came from the national forest service and was signed by the chief. It stated that the bearer, Patrick R. O’Neill, had at his own request been transferred from Arizona to Montana, and was competent to perform all duties pertaining to the forest service. The other was from the supervisor of the Black Mesa National Forest, Arizona, and spoke in highest terms of the qualifications of this same Patrick O’Neill. Murray read both with care before he so much as glanced again at the man. When he did, he saw Patrick O’Neill still standing at attention, still with the twinkle in his eyes.

“Huh! Seen army service, too, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Two years and a half at West Point.”

“Holy mackerel! Two years and a half—you learned how to make maps, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lock the door, Christine! Quick, before he gets away! Damn it, man, you’re needed in this office! Sit down and let’s talk. Christine, can’t you tell a joke unless it’s labeled? Unlock that door!”

“I was taught obedience to my employer by the business college. You say I am to lock the door and I lock it. I should not read your mind or some day I lose my job.” Christine unlocked the door which she had obediently locked, sat down at her desk and began wiping the speckless old typewriter before her, while she still patiently waited for the letter her boss was going to write.

“Tell me first why you quit West Point,” Murray was saying. “I’d have given my left arm for such a chance when I was a young man.”

“Technically speaking, I quit, Mr. Murray, but it was merely a strategic move on my part. I’d rather walk out than be kicked out.”

“Huh?”

“Insubordination, sir. We had a major—an old woman he was, Mr. Murray. Always putting us through our paces in civil engineering. One day he called on me in class to explain just how I would go about raising a hundred-and-fifty-foot flagpole. I said, ‘I would call a sergeant, sir, and I would say to the sergeant, “Sergeant, take a detail of men and raise that hundred-and-fifty-foot flagpole which you see lying there.”’

“The major lost his temper, sir. He accused me of being facetious. I replied that no one ever heard of an officer of the United States army so violating the traditions of his rank as to perform the menial task of raising flagpoles, and that I had clearly stated the method by which I would go about it, just as he had requested me to do. The major further forgot himself, sir. He called me an impudent young puppy. I thereupon saluted and walked out of the classroom. My sojourn at West Point ended shortly thereafter, sir.” Grin and twinkle combined to give Patrick O’Neill a look of personified good humor.

Murray roared with laughter; a circumstance unusual in that office where worry perched like a raven on his file case.

“How about making forest-service maps? Would you call upon the office force and tell them to fill in the blank township maps with the proper data—using a typewriter?”

Patrick O’Neill laughed. “No, I think I’d prefer to make the maps myself. It would be child’s play after the map making at West Point, and help me to familiarize myself with forest boundaries before you assign me to a district. If I can get hold of a couple of surfaced boards and a two-by-four, Mr. Murray, I’ll just knock together a table and set it beside that north window and go to work, sir.”

“Huh! Christine, phone the lumber yard and tell them to let Pat O’Neill have whatever material he wants to pick out, and send it up here immediately. Say it’s for the forest service.”

So this is how Patrick O’Neill, some time of West Point and lately of Black Mesa, Arizona, came into the service of the Yellowstone National Forest.

CHAPTER II. TOO MUCH MISERY.

“Ed, I’m through!” Ranger Cushman tossed his hat onto the pine table where Pat O’Neill had whistled softly over the making of his maps, and where he whistled no more now that the job was beautifully finished. O’Neill was now waiting around the office with an expectant, eager look in his eyes which Murray had studiously ignored while he pondered the problem of keeping the happy Irishman busy.

“Huh! What’s the trouble now? Cushman, I want you to meet Pat O’Neill; been making maps; part of the office force now. Well, what’s wrong with the Stillwater District this time?”

“Ain’t this time, Ed. It’s all the time, and I’m darned good and tired of it. Man was not born to stand the grief I’ve stood with them wild cats. I’m goin’ back to the peaceful life of roughin’ broncs for a livin’. Why, them coyotes over on the Stillwater are so poison mean they won’t even speak to each other, except when they call a convention to devise ways and means of dealin’ me misery, and old Boyce is chairman of the committee.

“They’ve cut the wires on my pasture fence every night for a month, so every time I want a horse I got to wrangle him afoot. They steal my grub. I ride day an’ night, hazin’ cattle off the reserve, and they drive ’em on faster than I can drive ’em off. Why, even the sheepmen are gettin’ gay! Found two bands of sheep on the reserve, last week, over Trout Creek way. Killed a few sheep and took a shot at the herder, but that won’t stop ’em. They’ll keep a-comin’, now they’ve started.

“Another thing: Them darn timber pirates on Blind Bridger Creek are cuttin’ everything they come to, regardless. Ed, it’d take a hull regiment of rangers with a Gatlin’ gun apiece to keep that country straight! Why, damn it, some of the cowmen even went so far as to hint I was in on the rustlin’ that’s goin’ on over there. If there’s any brand of cussedness they ain’t been up to, they’ll think it up while I’m gone. You can save your breath, Ed. This time you can’t talk me into goin’ back. I’m through! Ab-so-lutely, eternally through!”

“Huh! Guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Cushman. This makes the third time you’ve come in here bellerin’ that you’ve quit the Stillwater.” He whirled his chair around and glared hard at Pat O’Neill, who was making a map case of his own invention. “Now, what’re you lickin’ your chops for, like a dog watchin’ a Christmas dinner? Think there’s a turkey leg comin’ to you outa this?”

“Oh, doctor, but it listens sweet to my fightin’ Irish ears, Mr. Murray!” Pat O’Neill retorted, with the faintest hint of a brogue in his voice.

“Huh! Think I’d give you the best ranger station in the Northwest? Good, three-room log house, good barn, plenty of corrals, thirty acres of alfalfa under ditch and over two hundred acres of good pasture land fenced with a four-wire fence——”

“Cut in two or three places every night,” Ranger Cushman dourly interjected.

“Well, yes, cut occasionally, but a fine pasture for all that. Most important district in the Absarokee Division; settled clear up to the base of the mountains with nesters, cow outfits, sheep ranches, all dead set against the forest service——”

“Puttin’ it mild!” again from Ranger Cushman.

“Well, I admit they’re prejudiced some. Think I’d give that district to a devil-may-care Irishman just because he happened to know how to make up a batch of maps? Huh! What d’you expect me to do, O’Neill? Give you the best and biggest—also the meanest and fightin’est—district I’ve got in my division?”

For answer, Patrick O’Neill with the West Point figure and mien facetiously pantomimed his emotions in a manner that sent the blond secretary into shoulder-heaving convulsions of mirth. That is, he tilted his head to one side, licked his tongue out over one corner of his mouth and waggled a hand behind him like a tail.

Ranger Cushman gave a great snort of laughter. Ed Murray roared and lifted a boot toward the impudent mimic.

“Sick ’em!” he chuckled. “Dog-gone yuh! I was going to send you over to Stillwater to help Cushman whip that district into shape, but now you’ll have to tackle it alone.” He eyed O’Neill thoughtfully, his face gradually settling to a sober look. “I dunno about it, though. Can you ride?”

“Yes, sir.” O’Neill smelled serious business in the air and quit his foolery.

“Huh! That’s what you said when I asked you if you could make maps, but—this is out West, remember. By riding, I mean—well, riding.”

“They ride down in the Black Mesa country, sir.” O’Neill paused, with the twinkle in his eyes. “I mean—they ride.”

“Black Mesa—yeah, that’s right, you’re from that country. Wel-l—you’ll be on your own, so to speak, once you get up there. You heard what Ranger Cushman said about it. On the square, do you think you can handle it?”

“I’d like to try it, Mr. Murray.”

Murray cocked a suspicious eye at him, probably wondering just what lay back of that sudden modesty—coupled with the Irish tone and the twinkle. He glanced at Cushman, caught the pitying smile on his saturnine face and swung back to the desk, perhaps to hide a grin.

“All right, O’Neill, you’ll take over the Stillwater District. You will have charge of the grazing permits and the timber sales, of course. You will find that the stockmen are inclined to resent the grazing fee of thirty-five cents a head for their stock, and if it is possible I should like to see a better feeling between the ranchers and the forest service. The service is really a protection to the stockmen, but as yet they look upon us as oppressors who delight in interfering with their inalienable rights. Boyce, of the Bar B Ranch—which is nearest the Stillwater station—is apparently the bitterest enemy we have.”

“He’s a devil!” growled Cushman.

“He came from Boston, but that don’t make him any the less a cowman. Do the best you can with him and all the rest, and I’ll back you up as far as Washington will let me.”

“That won’t mean a thing to yuh,” Ranger Cushman told O’Neill, with the emphasis born of his late tribulations. “This absent treatment for protection don’t go; not when you’ve got to fight them wild cats over on the Stillwater. I had Washington and Ed Murray to back me up, too—but my fences was cut just the same, I noticed!”

“All in the day’s work!” O’Neill laughed, happy over the prospect. “I learned to mend reserve fences down on the Black Mesa. They cut them there, too—for a while.”

“Meanin’, I reckon, that you tamed ’em down. But I notice you changed your range just the same—and I’m changin’ mine. I ain’t goin’ to Black Mesa, either.”

CHAPTER III. A BATTLE OF WORDS.

On a still, sunny day in July, Patrick O’Neill rode whistling down the steep trail that led into Lodgepole Basin. From little openings in the pines he could look down over a vast stretch of hills and valleys which formed a part of his district—a peaceful scene which held him silent for a space. The ranger station which would be his home lay farther down in the basin, a tip of its flagpole showing white above a grove of young pines.

“Looks like heaven, after the jack pines and mesquite of Black Mesa,” he observed to his horse that stood switching flies with philosophic calm. “I’ll stand a lot of grief before I’ll quit. We’ll sure make a home of this place, no foolin’. Cushman wasn’t Irish. Takes the Irish to get a real human slant on folks. He’s a sour cuss—probably tried to lord it over the natives, and they wouldn’t stand for it.

“Don’t blame ’em. I wouldn’t let any iron-visaged ranger dictate much to me, if I were a rancher. The human note—no up-stage attitude—just be one of them, friendlylike and peaceful. That’s the ticket. Like gentling a bronc, this thing is going to be. Treat ’em right and they’ll treat you right.”

Whereupon he resumed his whistling and jogged down to the comfortable log house in the grove of lodgepole pines, opened all the windows and went happily to work at what he called policing camp. After that he got out the files and studied the grazing permits, the brands, owners thereof and the territory assigned to each. It took the rest of the day and most of the evening to memorize the stuff he felt he should have ready behind the tip of his tongue, but he enjoyed it all and repeated his cheerful prophecies concerning the work of gentling Stillwater District.

“That Bar B man, Boyce, seems to be the king-pin of this district,” he mused, as he rode abroad over his domain to familiarize himself with the topography of the country, just as he had made himself acquainted with the records. “Next on the program comes the human contact. Think I’ll just ride down and make friends with our Bostonian neighbor at the Bar B. Must be educated and intelligent—we ought to have a good deal in common. I’m educated, far above the average in intelligence—oh, you Pat O’Neill! When you tell him that, he’ll love you for your modesty if for nothing else!”

So he turned his horse’s head toward the Bar B Ranch.

The Honorable Standish Boyce of Boston was leaning over the front gate as O’Neill rode up, whistling under his breath, as was the carefree habit he had. A pair of field glasses dangled from the old man’s right hand, as if he had been making certain of the horseman’s identity, had recognized him as the new forest ranger and was now waiting to welcome him according to precedent and his general opinion of all forest-service men.

Patrick O’Neill flung a limber leg over the cantle of his stock saddle and stepped down with agile grace, smiling his Irish smile as he strode forward with outstretched hand.

“Mr. Boyce? I’m the new ranger in this district. O’Neill is my name—Pat O’Neill.”

“Well, what of it?” Boyce still stood with his arms folded upon the gate, the field glasses swinging gently from their narrow strap. Cold gray eyes had the Honorable Standish Boyce, set deep and close to a high, thin nose. Beneath the nose, a thin, straight mouth, half hidden beneath a growth of thin, white beard, pointed to match his nose. His eyes had the impersonal glare of the bird he so closely resembled—an Uncle Sam on the warpath, O’Neill thought swiftly.

“Oh, nothing much, Mr. Boyce!” he grinned, firm in his purpose. “Nothing, except that I understand you are one of the leading citizens of our little community, as well as the largest user of the National Forest, and I wanted to meet you.”

“Well, you’ve met me. If you’re satisfied, I am. Now get off my ranch and stay off.”

The spirit of a thousand generations of fighting O’Neills rose and looked out through the eyes of young Pat, but he hushed their battle cry and somehow managed to keep his Irish grin.

“You’re a bit hasty, Mr. Boyce. You and I will have a good deal of business to transact together as time goes on. It will be much pleasanter if we are friends, you know.”