Sheep Limit/Chapter 11
While Tippie did not break a leg in that expedition, he was longer about making the round than he had anticipated. There was considerable camp-moving to be done, on account of it being a dry spring and the grazing poor. In June the sheep would be driven to the Government forest reserve in the mountains, leaving the range grass to grow for winter pasturage. Tippie growled about the Government restrictions and rental for the forest reserve as if he had been owner of the flock, resentful of this invasion, as all sheepmen held it, of their personal rights.
During this time on the range Rawlins had borne an inconsiderable part as Tippie's helper. In a few days, the foreman said, he would put Rawlins with the old Mexican herder, whose understanding of sheep was Mrs. Duke's marvel. He would learn under that master of the craft how to handle dogs and sheep, to prepare himself for taking a band on his own responsibility when they went to the mountains for summer grazing. All of which was quite satisfactory to Rawlins, his desire to become a sheepman in no particular diminished by the solitary lives and morose aspect of the herders, alone with their bands of sheep for weeks at a time.
"They returned to the ranch on an evening eight or nine days after leaving it. Edith came running from the house to welcome them, frisking about altogether too gay and light-footed for a reluctant bride, Rawlins thought. Tippie had the same thing moving in his mind, as his first words revealed.
"I see you ain't married," he said.
"Me? I'm farther from it than ever," she laughed.
"Where's he gone?" Tippie inquired, keeping his seat on the wagon, foot on the brake, looking down at her with such stern face and eye of judgment as if to try her on the charge of making away with Dowell Peck.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," she replied, in words that did not answer him in the least. "Here—look at this."
She handed him a bit of paper, which Tippie unfolded and read, passing it along to Rawlins without a line of his rueful face softening or hardening, no more change in it, indeed, than a picture of H. Clay on a revenue stamp.
It was a childish-looking piece of writing, immature, uncertain. Rawlins read:
I and Mr. Peck have went to Lost Cabin to be married. I and Mr. Peck will be back Monday.
Aunt Lila.
"Well, I'll be ditched!" said Tippie.
Rawlins, standing by the wagon wheel, clung to it and turned loose the charge of laughter that had been accumulating in his chest ever since the arrival of Peck in the sheeplands. The humor of this mail-order romance had grown during their absence until it had burst like a head of cabbage in wet weather. To Tippie it seemed to have no remote relation to comedy. He sat there on the wagon, leaning a little, foot on the brake, looking as glum as if he had been planning for years to marry the widow himself.
Whatever doubt Edith had held in the matter was swept away on the gale of Rawlins' laughter. She joined him, spinning on her heel, bending and weaving like a willow in the wind, happy to be rid of her mail-order suitor even though he had come into the family through another door.
"'I and Mr. Peck,'" Tippie quoted ironically. "She's placed him; she's put him where he'll stand all the rest of his life. Mr. Peck he'll toot a darned weak horn by the side of his wife's loud one. I don't know as I could 'a' wished the feller any worse luck."
"Uncle Dowell!" said Edith, looking from one to the other, eyes bright, face lively in appreciation of this new relationship. "Here's your shavin' mug, Uncle Dowell. Do you want some hot water?"
"It won't be no laughin' matter to have that man warmin' his back at the kitchen stove," Tippie said, conjuring up such a picture by his solemn words as to throw the two young ones off in another spasm of hilarity.
"All the loafin' he'll do!" said Edith, disparaging the chance to nothing.
"He's marryin' her for her money, and she's marryin' him for his hair, as the song used to say. Well, for his moustache, anyhow, I guess—that's all there is to the feller, except feet." Tippie growled it as if his animosity grew with reflection. "I hope he'll git his paws on her dough and burn a streak from here to Boston you could drive a elephant through."
"I see him doin' it, right now," Edith said.
"I'd like to see him follerin' a band of sheep in a pair of them knee pantings," Tippie said, yielding at last to the painful process of a grin.
"And a cute little coating with stripes on the back of it like a chipmunk," Edith suggested.
"Or a skunk," said Tippie. His grin spread. It appeared to hurt him outrageously, but provocation was too great; it could not be suppressed.
"Monday. That's to-day," Rawlins said, eager in his anticipation of the return home.
"I've been expectin' them all the afternoon," Edith said, the laughter fading out of her eyes. "They sneaked off Saturday night and left that note."
"It's going to be kind of awkward for you as the jilted lady, isn't it?" Rawlins asked, turning to her vivaciously.
He was sorry for the break next moment. The humor of such a situation was not apparent to Edith. She was grave and thoughtful; her face betrayed some anxiety over her position in the house under that new arrangement.
"I hope the old snipe won't try to boss me around," she said.
"If he does, bust him wide open," Tippie advised.
"Well, hurry on in to supper," she said, briskly. "I was expectin' somebody, and two of one kind can eat as much as two of another, I guess. It's all ready."
She ran into the house, Tippie looking after her thoughtfully.
"If she's got half as much spunk as I think she has, she'll pack up her duds and scoot," he said.
Bride and groom arrived, in the family buckboard with a sack of oats tied on behind, before supper was over. It was early dusk, the homecoming was proclaimed well in advance by the wheels among the stones at the creek crossing, and witnessed by two who went to the window to see. Tippie was not moved by any curiosity at all. He remained at the table, feasting on canned green beans.
Mrs. Peck turned the team over to her new mate, snatched the suitcase that was wedged in between the sack of oats and the back of the seat, and came hobbling toward the kitchen door, cramped in the legs from her thirty-five miles' ride. Rawlins and Edith hurried back to the table, where they were decorously seated when the mistress of the manse opened the door.
Mrs. Peck burst in on them, in a manner, as if she wanted to come so suddenly that the conventional things which people say, and do not always mean, on such occasions would have no time to pop out at her. To make doubly sure, she began to talk as soon as her red face struck the lamplight.
"Well, you beat me home, after all," she said, addressing Tippie, no word of greeting for her niece, not any coyness or bashfulness about her such as might be expected of even a well-seasoned bride.
"Um-m-m," said Tippie, his mouth full of beans.
Which made no difference in his form of expression at all. It would have been the same from an empty mouth. He was not interested in these goings off and getting married, his indifferent attitude seemed to say. He was not impressed.
Edith was grinning nervously, a little too white for a joyous occasion, all on edge to say something, but lacking the words. Rawlins rose respectfully, greeting Mrs. Peck with a little nodding bow, which she passed like a signal unseen. The bride dropped her suitcase, pushed it snugly against the wall with her foot, shook her skirts, making a dust which spread around her in the lamplight like an aura. She took off her hat, sighing with such intense satisfaction that it was almost a grunt, her manner and expression saying as plainly as words: "Now, that's over with."
"It's awful dry; I don't know when I've seen the range this dry," she said. "How's the sheep lookin', Elmer?"
"Middlin'."
Not a word about the husband, not a word about the wedding, not a hint of her changed status before society and the law. Edith got up, with a pretence at briskness and welcome home, bustling around, taking her aunt's things, running with her hat to put it on the bed, which could be seen through an open door, dashing back to pour hot water in a basin and tone it down to the comfort of Mrs. Peck's red face. All these little attentions the red-necked bride accepted without a nod or smile, only talking to Elmer, or rather at him, about sheep, pulling the tight sleeves up from her large-boned wrists preparatory to ablution.
"It's goin' to make short wool if this dry weather keeps up," she predicted; "it's goin' to he hard on the lambs. How's that lawyer feller, Riley, gettin' along?"
"He's no good," said Elmer. "He ain't got as much sense as your—pair of shears."
Mrs. Peck laughed, not seeing the implied slur on the intelligence of her long-forked partner. She went to the door, towel to her face, where she stood listening, peering toward the barn.
"Dowell! hurry on to your supper," she called.
There was no reply. She completed her ablutions, gave her front hair a quick raking before the kitchen glass, and joined the others at the table, filling her accustomed place. Rawlins passed the ham and beans. She did not wait the coming of her new encumbrance.
Peck made his appearance presently, looking somewhat fanned. He pushed the door open doubtfully, or perhaps he was restrained by more modesty than anybody present gave him credit for from presenting himself too suddenly before the company's eyes. He first introduced his head, which he turned and tooled on his long neck with a curious, inquisitive grin.
It seemed that it was Edith he was concerned about, not the others. It was probable the fellow believed she thought herself flouted by this unexpected turn of affairs, and might rush at him and grab his ears. He jerked his moustache with a sneer of triumphant superiority when he saw Tippie and Rawlins at the table, pushed the door wide and entered, assuming a pose of dignity and hauteur that was no more felt than it belonged to him by right.
"Looks like we've got a blow-out goin' on," he remarked lightly, but with a leer in his voice and edged face that seemed to say inferiors soon would be put in their places around that house.
"How much oats did you give them horses?" Mrs. Peck inquired, with a distrusting uplifting of the eyes.
"I give each one of 'em a big double-handful," Peck replied, presenting the measure, speaking proudly of himself, as if he took great credit for a generous deed.
"Double-handful your granny!" his wife said, derisive, disparaging, in her sharp tone. "Punkinhead! don't you know half a peck's a feed for a horse? Go on back and give it to 'em—that little wooden measure you'll see in the bin."
Peck went on the chore, a little taken down. He came back presently, whistling, making out that he hadn't felt the rebuke, which perhaps was the case. As he washed his hands he hummed lightly the tuneof "After the Ball."
"What am I supposed to know about a horse, anyhow?" he asked, simpering as he turned his glassy crawfish eyes on Edith. "I don't hardly know which end you feed him at."
"You're in a good place to learn," his wife assured him, with deep significance, disapprobation of his refined humor in her broad red face.
"I'll git me a style-book on colts; I'll figger 'em down to a fare-you-well," Peck said facetiously. "Well, Edith, old sport, how're they comin'?"
This little friendly sally, as Peck parted the tails of his Prince Albert coat and took blind aim at a chair, did not win him any recognition from Edith. Mrs. Peck rolled her eyes, looking across her nose in reproof at the new asset of her ranch. It was lost on Peck, whose vivaciousness was rising in him like a fever. He passed up his cup toward Edith, smirking familiarly as he held it out. Edith ignored the appeal for refreshment. She brought the coffee-pot from the stove and stood it in its accustomed place on the tray at Mrs. Peck's hand, and retreated.
"I put one over on you, didn't I?" Peck turned to's hoot after her as she left the room. "Ain't you goin' to come and kiss your unkey-punky, tweet?"
"Oh, shut up!" Mrs. Peck ordered, altogether displeased with this attempt to play up his shrewdness in his dealings with the marriageable women of that ranch.
"Comin'," the humorous, irrepressible Mr. Peck returned. He presented his big coffee cup to his wife, giving her the smile that used to knock them over back in St. Joe.
Rawlins excused himself; Tippie pushed back without a word, his pipe already out of his pocket, the other hand fishing around for his sack of tobacco.
"Well, Tippie, did you pay off them guys?" Peck inquired briskly, looking as much like a proprietor as his doubtful standing allowed.
Tippie grubbed around for matches, the little sack of bran in his hand, its yellow strings dangling between his blunt, calloused fingers. He might have been a mile away from any voice of interrogation, assuming from the expression of his face.
"Of course he did, Dowey," the new wife replied for her glum foreman, pleased, and very plainly pleased, to see her husband taking interest in such an essential feature of the business.
"Where's the change?" Peck demanded, leaning toward Tippie across the table, his frog eyes starting as if he had a potato in his gullet.
Tippie got up with a bored, pained air, went to the stove, scratched a match, lit his pipe. It was all a pantomime of the utmost disdain, the most lofty contempt. He said nothing; he did not even waste a glance at Peck, who held his waiting pose of demand, long neck stretched across the table as far as it would go, which was no inconsiderable distance. Tippie started for the door, trailing smoke, Rawlins following.
Mrs. Peck's red face grew a shade redder; her big black eyebrows pinched together, running a crease down her fat nose. She didn't like Tippie's attitude of contempt for the specimen of civilization she had taken to her bosom. Peck was quick to see this; his hauteur increased as his courage came a little farther out of the hole.
"Where's the change, I said?" Peck repeated, beating time to the demand with the flat of his hand on the table.
"I ain't accountable to you," Tippie replied loftily, still making his streak of smoke toward the door.
"That's where you're off!" Peck declared, his severity insolently overbearing. "I'm the lawful and legal head of this fam'ly. I want them figgers, I want to know how much you paid out and where the balance of that money is. That's what I want to know."
Tippie was standing with his hand on the doorknob, Rawlins at his heels. At this insolent challenge to his business methods, if not his honesty and honor, Tippie turned with a start so sudden and threatening that Rawlins caught him by the shoulder and pressed him back against the door.
"Ya-a-a! you can't run none of your sandines on me!" said Peck, leering and goggling in his feeling of security. "You tried to git me shot up, you tried to bluff me out of here, but I turned the trick on you, I punctured your sausage. I've had enough of you—you're fired. And you too, Rawlins. You're both fired. You git to the doodle—you git to—hell out of here!"
"Tut, tut, Mr. Peck; tut, tut!" said Rawlins, with ladylike remonstrance, greatly entertained by Peck's effort to show himself a real rough sort of sheepman with warts on his neck.
"Does that go?" Tippie inquired, turning to Mrs. Peck.
"He's the head of the fam'ly; what he says goes," Mrs. Peck replied, enforcing the decision by a solemn nod.
"All right," said Tippie, "but there's goin' to be a clean-up around here before I go."
He knocked the fiery charge out of his pipe against the palm of his hard hand, spilled the embers on the floor and smothered them with his foot. Mrs. Peck understood the movement as a preliminary to a charge that must end in the overthrow and humiliation of Peck. She grinned, winked, held up a placating hand.
"What he says goes—just so fur," she said. "He's fired you, Elmer, but I've hired you over. I need you. Go ahead with your work the way you always have. But that don't go with Mr. Rawlins," she supplemented, perhaps to save Peck's face. "He's fired. Pay him off and let him go."
"Now, dern you!" said Peck.
The fired man and the hired man went out, going towards the barn.
"Well, he's nearly half boss, anyhow," Rawlins commented. He was not in the least troubled over being the first object upon which the new master of the ranch had exercised his authority and made it stick.
"I'll squnch that feller under my foot like a toad if I ever ketch him five miles away from home," Tippie engaged. "He looks to me like a fishin' worm. He ain't got no more blood in him than one. I'll bet he's as cold as a dog's nose. She cert'nly drawed a picture card, right from the bottom of the deck."
"He's beginning to show executive ability," said Rawlins.
"I'll execute him; I'll rub him out like a chalk-mark on a barrel of kraut if he ever opens his head to me about change agin."
"I wish you all kinds of luck in your good intentions," Rawlins laughed. "I don't suppose he'll pitch me out on my ear if I camp in the hay to-night?"
"If you'd let him, that wouldn't be half what you'd deserve."
"I'll hit the road early in the morning—I don't want to get hurt. He's a bad man, Elmer; he swore. Didn't you hear him swear?"
"It come out of him like coughin' up a tack," said Elmer. "That old woman can give him cards and spades and beat him at that game with her eyes shut. He's got a whole heap to learn he never heard anything about."
Tippie got out the much desired change after he had lit the lantern, and paid Rawlins a month's wages at the current rate for herders, which was forty dollars and found in those days. He added fifteen dollars to take the place of rations, protesting that it was only just, and according to custom. Rawlins did not know about the custom, but he approved Tippie's way of it, right or wrong, and pocketed the money without scruple, feeling that the first chapter of his adventures in the sheeplands had come to no very glorious end.