The Sheriff of Badger.

by George B. Pattullo.

CHAPTER I

LAFE JOHNSON ARRIVES AT THE LAZY L RANCH

It may come as a shock to many to learn that we have in cowland a considerable number of full-blooded men who have never made it a practice to step outside the door of a morning and shoot a fellow-citizen before breakfast. This is true; vital statistics and fiction to the contrary, notwithstanding. They are well-grown, two-fisted men, also, and work very hard seven days in the week, and whenever they go to town they get drunk. But in the main they are law-abiding, and steal calves only for their employers.

There was Lafe Johnson. This story has him for its central figure.

"It's right queer about men," Lafe used to say, when in a reflective mood. "A feller will knock in a friend what he'd be like to do himself.

And he'll act mean one day so he's sure ashamed of it the next. Yes, sir; the best of 'em will. It all depends on how a man feels, I reckon, and what shape his stomach's in. No man ain't always going to do the right thing, and I've never met a feller yet who was all bad. What's more, n.o.body thinks he's bad, or I expect he wouldn't be. Don't you reckon? Why, a man'll be plucky one day and the next morning he'd cry if a jackrabbit was to slap him in the face."

Lafe started man's estate as a cowboy. What his antecedents were I don't know and don't care, nor did anybody else in our country. We have so many more important matters to engage us. Punching cattle happened to be his profession. In every other respect Lafe was a normal individual--no better than you or I, and a.s.suredly no worse. Some thought he was worse, and among them a Mrs. Tracey--or she pretended to--who thought that and a few other things besides. That was why Mrs. Floyd, just before Johnson departed the ranch, insisted that he accompany her to the Tracey home in Rowdy Canon.

"I'll tell her to her face what I think," she said.

Lafe tried to pacify her.

"I ain't much of a fighter, ma'am," he said. "You'd better go alone and have it out. Miz Tracey, she's got me scared off the map right now."

"You'll come, too!" Mrs. Floyd a.s.sured him, pulling on her gauntlets.

This is what Mrs. Floyd said, sitting her horse in front of the Tracey gate, her erstwhile friend being on the veranda: "I've heard the stories you've been spreading about me, Tracey!"

"Stories? Gracious, what's got into you, Sally? I never mentioned your name! Do you reckon I've got nothing better to talk about?"

"Don't lie," Mrs. Floyd continued, her voice rising. "You know what I mean. And I've got Mr. Johnson with me to hear it, too. You keep your mouth shut about me--do you hear? If you don't, I'll shut it for you.

I'm right proud and glad to know Lafe Johnson--he's a friend of my husband, too--and--and--"

She had much more to impart, having rehea.r.s.ed it mentally on the way over in order to be effective, but here rage and tears choked speech.

Perhaps it was as well; finical people may even find something to deplore in what Mrs. Floyd did say. Mrs. Tracey answered, tucking her chin into her neck, that she was very, very glad to hear it, but, for herself, she must confess complete inability to discover any grounds for pride in Mr. Johnson's acquaintance. Upon which she slammed the door.

"Now, I wonder if that lady meant something?" Lafe murmured gently.

That was forever the way. People were never indifferent to Johnson. They either swore by him or execrated his name, which ought to be held to his credit. A man's virtues must be negative if he make no enemies.

Here is the story of Lafe's advent in our part of the world--merely the facts, and not the tale Mrs. Tracey spread. No man will blame him, and let those of her s.e.x judge Mrs. Floyd who have never erred a hair's breadth. We will then consider the jury.

The Lazy L outfit was loading a train with cattle--ones and twos, graded stuff and some bulls--when Johnson first appeared. He arrived on a freight, presumably. It is my belief he was heading back for Texas on the b.u.mpers of an eastbound that pa.s.sed. It stopped for water and he dropped off when he perceived us shipping.

Forty yearlings had been manhandled and heaved into a car, and one old bull was added which would eventually visit eastern parts in tins.

Perhaps the range monarch had some suspicion of this, for he turned round to walk out. They yelled, and prodded at his neck and ribs with poles, but the bull shook his head in settled determination and started down the chute. If he gained the crowding pen, where more yearlings and another bull waited, there would be a fight and a lot of mussing and long delay. The boss danced up and down, swearing like a moss-trooper.

"Bar the chute! Bar the chute!" he yelled from the top of the corral fence.

Ere the poles could be thrust in, a seedy individual stepped down directly in front of the giant Hereford and began to lash him furiously over the face with a rope.

"Come out of there! You'll get killed. Come out!" cried the boss.

The bull bellowed with rage, but the sting of the blows forced his head up. Blood trickled down his nose, and there were livid wales above the eyes. One lurch forward and this man would be crushed, but the rope cut fiercely and without pause, and the bull began to back. The stranger did not let up, but drove him into the car with savage recklessness.

"What the Sam Hill are you, anyhow?" said the boss, straddling the fence. "A circus or a town cowboy?"

Now, a "town cowboy" is a term of reproach among us, signifying a young man who never did range work, but wears the clothes and does trick roping for the delectation of visitors. Ultimately he joins a Wild West show and instructs the rising generation.

"I reckon you're cleverer than me," Johnson said, "but you ain't awake to me yet. Turn over. You're on your back."

Without concerning himself further about the boss, he clambered out on to the platform and threw the borrowed rope to Reb. We saw that he was tall and big of bone, and his shoulders had an indolent droop. Although he could not have been over twenty-five, his hair was plentifully flecked with gray.

Presently Buffalo Jim, who was keeping tally of the cattle going through the chute, lost count and admitted frankly that he could not say whether there were thirty-seven or forty in the car. He tried to appear grave in confessing this, but was unable to repress a sn.i.g.g.e.r. Everything would have gone smoothly, he contended, had he not chanced to recall a story Uncle Hi Millet had told him the previous night.

"If that feller could count up to fifty," said Johnson, in an aside to the buyer, "he would be back in Texas still, a-teaching school."

"h.e.l.lo, Lafe!" the other exclaimed. "Where did you drop from? Want a job? Seventy a month?"

"Eighty."

"No, sir; seventy."

"Eighty. I got a lot of unfinished business down the line unless."

"Have it your own way. Eighty it is. Fly at it."

Johnson replaced Buffalo Jim and sat on a board between two posts, dangling his legs, staring at everything but the plunging steers. Yet he never once failed to tally.

The boss's wife rode up to the corrals. With her was Mrs. Tracey.

"Who's them there ladies?" Lafe whispered to a cowboy who wielded a prodpole.

"That pretty one's Miz Floyd. I cain't rightly see the other. Oh, yes.

Sh.o.r.e. She's a widow woman--owns a flock of mines way up in them mountains."

"The pretty one's the one I meant," said Lafe.

We sealed the door of the last car, and a brakeman waved to the engineer to pull forward. The buyer grabbed Lafe by the shoulder and jabbered instructions into his ear. Then he caught the caboose rail as it sped by, and Johnson informed the amazed Floyd that he had been commissioned to receive the other herds when gathered.

"And he don't even know your name? Oh, he does? All the same, that's sure rushing it. Glad to do business with you, anyhow. I want you to be acquainted with my wife. Shake hands with Mr. Johnson, Sally."

Mrs. Floyd came down the platform, striding like a man. She was wearing a divided skirt, very useful-looking spurs on her high-heeled boots, and a man's felt hat. All the cowboys stopped work to eye her. She was only twenty-two and had an amazingly trim figure. With that meaningless smile of polite welcome with which a woman greets her husband's friends, Mrs.

Floyd drew off a glove to give Johnson her hand.

"Lafe Johnson! Lafe!" she squealed. And with that she was pumping the big fellow's arm up and down, her cheeks red with excitement.

"Why, it's li'l Sally!"