Chapter XV: Founding 'bull Pine' Firm

I must ask my readers to skip nine months or so, during which time Snap's hands were full of the varied work and sport of ranche life. It was just before the autumn round-up, and he and Nares were riding round the home ranche together. For a moment or two Nares pulled up on a bluff from which you could see far afield, and, looking out over his lands, sighed.

'I shall be sorry to leave it all,' he said, 'but I must, Snap! You did not know that I had sold the ranche?'

'Sold the ranche! No, indeed! But do you mean it?' replied Snap.

'Yes. This will be my last round-up, and I suppose I ought not to grumble. I've got to go home and look after the brewery at home. My brother's health has broken down, and I am the only other man fit for the work in the family. You know I learnt the game before I took to ranching, and, as I've made ranching pay, and sold the place and part of the herd well, I, as I said before, ought not to grumble. But,' he added after a while, 'I do. I shall leave my heart at Rosebud.'

Then they touched their horses and rode on for a while.

'Do the boys know?' asked Snap.

'No. I've told old Dick. He has known all along. I shall tell the boys, all of them, before the round-up, and of course I've made arrangements for them to stay on with the new boss if they like,' replied Nares.

'What is Dick going to do?' was the next question.

'Dick!' replied the cattle-baron; 'oh, Dick's an old fool. He says he has had one boss, but he doesn't mean to have another. He goes when I do. I think if he had any capital he would set up in a small way for himself. You see, if he takes his pay in cows, as he very likely will do, he could start from here with a little band of nearly fifty. And you, Snap, will stop on, of course?'

'I don't know. I don't think so,' replied the boy. 'I wonder----'

'Wonder! What do you wonder? What is the conundrum?' asked Nares.

'Well, just this: if Dick goes, would he take me along as a cowboy or junior partner, and would he want two more boys who would be glad to work for their grub?'

'Two more boys!' cried Nares; 'why, where are they coming from? Are you and Dick going to take all the boys off the ranche?'

'No,' answered Snap; 'but I was just going to show you this letter when you began about the sale of the ranche,' and as he said so the boy drew a very bulky packet from his pocket. 'This,' he went on, 'I got yesterday from the two Winthrops, the fellows, you know, who came out with me and stopped at Wapiti.'

'I remember,' replied Nares; 'stopped with a premium-snatcher, didn't they? Well, I suppose they have got pretty well skinned?'

'Pretty well,' replied his companion; 'but listen. I'll not read their letter, but skim it for you. Frank writes--he, you know, was the big one. He begins by "climbing down," says I was right about not paying a premium, and all that sort of thing; then he goes on to tell his story, says that Jonathan Brown's ranche was only 360 acres, all told, and his men--"foreman, cowboys, helps, labourers, &c."--all lived under one skin, and that a black one. One nigger did everything until the Winthrops came, and when they came they were expected to share the nigger's work, food, and bed.'

'Oh, come!' cried the boss, 'I call that playing the game pretty low down! Did the Winthrops stand that?'

'Well, you see, Brown had the dollars, so what could they do?' replied Snap. 'Of course they slept on the floor by themselves, but they had to do the work. They learned to split rails and make a fence, because Brown wanted his land enclosed. They learned to "do chores" because there was no one else to do them; they helped to cut the corn, and were kept at work at hay harvest until 9.30 P.M. more than once. All this they bore unmurmuringly; but it seems old Brown tells everyone that they are his "newies," that he has got them there out of charity to his sister, whose ne'er-do-weel children they are, and they don't like that; the old blackguard is always drunk, and they don't like that. There is no ranching or farming in a large way for them to learn, and they don't like that; and finally, though he has had 200_l._ premium and a year's labour out of them, he won't even now give them as much as he gives the nigger, and you bet they don't like that. So they are coming out here to look for work,' concluded Snap.

'The deuce, they are! Have they any money?' asked Nares.

'Not much, I should think; for, you see, they have thrown away their premium.'

'Well, I'll tell you what you had better do, if they are agreeable. Get old Dick to take you in as working partners. The old boy is very fond of you, and if you and the Winthrops could club together four or five hundred pounds from home, now that you have had some experience, and put it into a small lot of cattle, it might suit old Dick; and if it suited him, and this range of which he talks really exists, it would be a first-rate chance for you and your friends. I'll let you have the cattle cheap,' Nares concluded.

Snap had been looking very anxious during this conversation. Now his keen young face brightened. He saw a chance for himself and his friends.

'But don't you think such an arrangement would be rather unfair to Wharton?' he asked.

'No, not a bit,' answered Nares stoutly. 'You are a really good man about a ranche now, and those two boys looked really likely lads, especially that big, fair-haired fellow; and then, too, Wharton has no capital worth speaking of.'

'I'll sound him anyhow, that can do no harm,' was Snap's comment; 'the boys will be here in a day or two.'

'Very well, if they are here when the round-up is going on they can lend a hand about the camp and make themselves useful, and after that you and Wharton can go with them to find this ranche.'

'Thanks,' replied Snap, and the man and boy bent from their saddles and shook hands warmly.

If Nares was going to leave the Rosebud, Snap was not going to stay. That at any rate was clear to our hero's mind. More than that--if old Wharton would only take him into his venture there was nothing that he would like better. This, too, was clear to Snap's mind.

At the first opportunity the boy sounded old Wharton on the subject. He had not to beat about the bush long.

'Why, lad,' the old fellow cried, 'that is just what I was wanting to say to you, only I thought that the life might be a bit too hard, and the profits come mighty slowly; for you know,' he added, 'we must keep putting the income into the herd for a good many years before we draw anything out for ourselves.'

'Never mind that, Dick,' replied Snap; 'can you do with my two friends?'

'Well,' the old man answered, with anything but a cheerful face, 'I don't go much on tender-feet myself, and I don't go for to say that I make a specialty of home-reared aristocrats; but you say as they'll work and have the dollars--I guess we mout as well try 'em.'

And so that was settled. At last, after over a year, Snap wrote home a request that 200_l._ (half of all he possessed in this world) might be put to his credit at a Chicago bank, and advised the Winthrops to do the same.

Although strongly prejudiced against tender-feet as a class, Snap's friends were lucky enough to make a very favourable impression at Rosebud from the first, for, instead of driving over in a buggy from the railway depot, Frank and Towzer trudged in on foot, brown as berries, all their earthly goods in two small bundles which they carried on their backs, and ten dollars apiece in their pockets, earned by driving cattle up from the South, earning money by coming over two or three States on foot, instead of paying money to come on the cars.

When they first landed in America, not much more than a year before, the three lads who now stood, shaking hands and laughing, at Rosebud were fair-skinned, soft-handed lads, full of pluck, but looking to others for advice. Now they were men--hard and brown, with a quiet tone of decision in their voices, knowing how hard a dollar is to earn, and having some idea of the necessity of holding on to it when earned.

Wharton confessed that he liked the look of them, and the four set about making arrangements for their journey at once.

It seemed that years ago, when hunting in a range of mountains to the west of Rosebud, Wharton had been snowed up and obliged to winter in a certain valley which he christened Bull Pine Park, because it was surrounded by a number of Scotch firs, called 'bull pines' by the Yankees. Here, it seems, he noticed that hundreds and thousands of deer came in to winter, finding ample food and shelter in what was a sheltered basin of enormous extent, full of sweet, sun-dried, yellow grass, and protected by the shape of the land and the timber. To the old man's eye it was a type of what a range should be--a small range, that is to say--and he had kept his own counsel and waited until he had capital enough to stock his park and start on his own account. His only doubt was as to the Indians. True, he had seen none when there, or he might never have come back; but the valley was a long way from the frontier ranches, was very full of game, and on the stream which watered it he had noticed signs of what looked like a large annual fishing-camp. It was Wharton's intention, after the round-up, to revisit his valley with his three partners, to carefully reconnoitre the feeding-grounds, build a shanty, and, if possible, put up a corral, make certain about the nature and disposition of his red-skinned neighbours, and then, if all was satisfactory, return to Rosebud and drive in his cattle in the early spring.

Nares had given his old foreman leave to run his cattle and half-a-dozen of Snap's with the Rosebud herd until the spring, when the Bull Pine Firm, as Snap proudly called it, would come over to Rosebud and drive off about one hundred and twenty beasts as the nucleus of their future herd.

During the round-up the two young Winthrops won the good opinion of everyone by their reckless riding, and still more by the songs they sang over the camp fire at night. Towzer even had a banjo, the parting present of Jumbo, Jonathan Brown's black factotum, and with this he was kept uncommonly busy all night, being excused all share in the cooking arrangements in return for his music.

'Towzer, give us old Jumbo's own song,' said Frank one night, when all the old favourites had been sung more than once.

'Which?' asked Towzer, 'Jumbo had such a varied _répertoire_.'

'Oh, the one for Saturday night, when Brown came back drunk from the depot. You know,' he added, turning to the rest, 'this old nigger used to amuse himself by ridiculing his "boss" in nigger melodies. Play up, Towzer.'

So adjured, Towzer twisted his face into a suitable grin, and sang:

Oh, massa! him feel sickly,
Oh, massa 'gwine to die.
Him feel so awful empty,
Him feel so awful dry.

Oh, den he take to whisky,
To whisky made from rye,
It make him feel so frisky,
It make him feel so spry.

Oh, den he chuckle fit to bust,
An' next he almoss' cry.
Dat's how de whisky's in his nose,
De water in his eye.

'Poor old Jumbo!' added Towzer, 'unless Brown gets some more pups soon, I'm afraid he will have no time for cultivating the Muses.'

'Oh, never fear for Jumbo,' replied Nares; 'as long as there are papers to advertise in, and no way of scourging these premium-snatchers for obtaining money under false pretences, your friend Mr. Jonathan Brown will have plenty of farm-pups, and Jumbo plenty of unpaid 'helps.'