do you mean by the New West?” asked the girl.
“Well, the work you’ve been doing here this morning is a part of it,” answered Redfield. “It’s a kind of housecleaning. The Old West was picturesque and, in a way, manly and fine – certain phases of it were heroic – and I hate to see it all pass, but some of us began to realize that it was not all poetry. The plain truth is my companions for over twenty years were lawless ruffians, and the cattle business as we practiced it in those days was founded on selfishness and defended at the mouth of the pistol. We were all pensioners on Uncle Sam, and fighting to keep the other fellow off from having a share of his bounty. It was all wasteful, half-savage. We didn’t want settlement, we didn’t want law, we didn’t want a State. We wanted free range. We were a line of pirates from beginning to end, and we’re not wholly, reformed yet.”
He was talking to the whole table now, for all were listening. No other man on the range could say these things with the same authority, for Hugh Redfield was known all over the State as a man who had been one of the best riders and ropers in his outfit – one who had started in as a common hand at herding, and who had been entirely through “the war.”
Lee Virginia listened with a stirring of the blood. Her recollections of the range were all of the heroic. She recalled the few times when she was permitted to go on the round-up, and to witness the breaking of new horses, and the swiftness, grace, and reckless bravery of the riders, the moan and surge of herds, the sweep of horsemen, came back and filled her mind with large and free and splendid pictures. And now it was passing – or past!
Some one at the table accused Redfield of being more of a town-site boomer than a cattle-man.
He was quite unmoved by this charge. “The town-site boomer at least believes in progress. He does not go so far as to shut out settlement. If a neat and tidy village or a well-ordered farmstead is not considered superior to a cattle-ranch littered with bones and tin cans, or better than even a cow-town whose main industry is whiskey-selling, then all civilized progress is a delusion. When I was a youngster these considerations didn’t trouble me. I liked the cowboy life and the careless method of the plains, but I’ve some girls growing up now, and I begin to see the whole business in a new light. I don’t care to have my children live the life I’ve lived. Besides, what right have we to stand in the way of a community’s growth? Suppose the new life is less picturesque than the old? We don’t like to leave behind us the pleasures and sports of boyhood; but we grow up, nevertheless. I’m far more loyal to the State as Forest Supervisor than I was when I was riding with the cattle-men to scare up the nester.”
He uttered all this quite calmly, but his ease of manner, his absolute disregard of consequences, joined with his wealth and culture, gave his words great weight and power. No one was ready with an answer but Lize, who called out, with mocking accent: “Reddy, you’re too good for the Forest Service, you’d ought ’o be our next Governor.”
This was a centre shot. Redfield flushed, and Cavanagh laughed. “Mr. Supervisor, you are discovered!”
Redfield recovered himself. “I should like to be Governor of this State for about four years, but I’m likelier to be lynched for being in command of twenty ‘Cossacks.’”
At this moment Sam Gregg entered the room, followed by a young man in an English riding-suit. Seeing that “the star-boarder table” offered a couple of seats, they pointed that way. Sam was plainly in war-like frame of mind, and slammed his sombrero on its nail with the action of a man beating an adversary.
“That is Sam Gregg and his son Joe – used to be ranch cattle-man, now one of our biggest sheepmen,” Cavanagh explained. “He’s bucking the cattle-men now.”
Lee Virginia studied young Gregg with interest, for his dress was that of a man to whom money came easy, and his face was handsome, though rather fat and sullen. In truth, he had been brought into the room by his father to see “Lize Wetherford’s girl,” and his eyes at once sought and found her. A look of surprise and pleasure at once lit his face.
Gregg was sullen because of his interview with Cavanagh, which had been in the nature of a grapple; and in the light of what Redfield had said, Lee Virginia was able to perceive in these two men a struggle for supremacy. Gregg was the greedy West checked and restrained by the law.
Every man in the room knew that Gregg was a bitter opponent of the Forest Service, and that he “had it in” for the ranger; and some of them knew that he was throwing more sheep into the forest than his permits allowed, and that a clash with Redfield was sure to come. It was just like the burly old Irishman to go straight to the table where his adversary sat.
Virginia’s eyes fell before the gaze of these two men, for they had none of the shyness or nothing of the indirection of the ruder men she had met. They expressed something which angered her, though she could not have told precisely why.
Redfield did not soften his words on Gregg’s account; on the contrary he made them still more cutting and to the line.
“The mere fact that I live near the open range or a national forest does not give me any rights in the range or forest,” he was saying, as Gregg took his seat. “I enjoy the privilege of these Government grazing grounds, and I ought to be perfectly willing to pay the fee. These forests are the property of the whole nation; they are public lands, and should yield a revenue to the whole nation. It is silly to expect the Government to go on enriching a few of us stockmen at the expense of others. I see this, and I accept the change.”
“After you’ve got rich at it,” said Gregg.
“Well, haven’t you?” retorted Redfield. “Are you so greedy that nothing will stop you?”
Lize threw in a wise word. “The sporting-houses of Kansas City and Chicago keep old Sam poor.”
A roar of laughter followed this remark, and Gregg was stumped for a moment; but the son grinned appreciatively. “Now be good!”
Cavanagh turned to Virginia in haste to shield her from all that lay behind and beneath this sally of the older and deeply experienced woman. “The Supervisor is willing to yield a point – he knows what the New West will bring.”
Gregg growled out: “I’m not letting any of my rights slip.”
The girl was troubled by the war-light which she saw in the faces of the men about her, and vague memories of the words and stories she had overchanced to hear in her childhood came back to her mind – hints of the drunken orgies of the cowboys who went to the city with cattle, and the terrifying suggestion of their attitude toward all womankind. She set Cavanagh and his chief quite apart from all the others in the room, and at first felt that in young Gregg was another man of education and right living – but in this she was misled.
Lize had confidence enough in the ranger to throw in another malicious word. “Ross, old Bullfrog came down here to chase you up a tree – so he said. Did he do it?”
Gregg looked ugly. “I’m not done with this business.”
She turned to Ross. “Don’t let him scare you – his beller is a whole lot worse than his bite.”
This provoked another laugh, and Gregg was furious – all the more so that his son joined in. “I’ll have your head, Mr. Supervisor; I’ll carry my fight to the Secretary.”
“Very well,” returned Redfield, “carry it to the President if you wish. I simply repeat that your sheep must correspond to your permit, and if you don’t send up and remove the extra number I will do it myself. I don’t make the rules of the department. My job is to carry them out.”
By this time every person in the room was tense with interest. They all knew Gregg and his imperious methods. He was famous for saying once (when in his cup): “I always thought sheepmen were blankety blank sons of guns, and now I’m one of ’em I know they are.” Some of the cattle-men in the room had suffered from his greed, and while they were not partisans of the Supervisor they were glad to see him face his opponent fearlessly.
Lize delivered a parting blow. “Bullfrog, you and me are old-timers. We’re on the losing side.