The Flying U's Last Stand [54]
Irish was hot-headed and impulsive to a degree. He was given to occasional tumultuous sprees, during which he was to be handled with extreme care--or, better still, left entirely alone until the spell was over. He looked almost exactly like Weary, and yet he was almost his opposite in disposition. Weary was optimistic, peace-loving, steady as the sun above him except for a little surface-bubbling of fun that kept him sunny through storm and calm. You could walk all over Weary-- figuratively speaking--before he would show resentment. You could not step very close to Irish without running the risk of consequences. That he should, under all that, have a streak of calculating, hard-headed business sense, did not occur to them.
They rode on, discussing the present situation and how best to meet it; the contingencies of the future, and how best to circumvent the active antagonism of Florence Grace Hallman and the colony for which she stood sponsor. They did not dream that Irish was giving his whole mind to solving the problem of raising money to build that fence, but that is exactly what he was doing.
Some of you at least are going to object to his method. Some of you--those of you who live west of the big river--are going to understand his point of view, and you will recognize his method as being perfectly logical, simple, and altogether natural to a man of his temperament and manner of life. It is for you that I am going to relate his experiences. Sheltered readers, readers who have never faced life in the raw, readers who sit down on Sunday mornings with a mind purged of worldly thoughts and commit to memory a "golden text" which they forget before another Sunday morning, should skip the rest of this chapter for the good of their morals. The rest is for you men who have kicked up alkali dust and afterwards washed out the memory in town; who have gone broke between starlight and sun; who know the ways of punchers the West over, and can at least sympathize with Irish in what he meant to do that night.
Irish had been easing down a corner of the last shack, with his back turned toward three men who stood looking on with the detached interest which proved they did not own this particular shack. One was H. J. Owens--I don't think you have met the others. Irish had not. He had overheard this scrap of conversation while he worked:
"Going to town tonight?"
"Guess so--I sure ain't going to hang out on this prairie any more than I have to. You going?"
"Ye-es--~I think I will. I hear there's been some pretty swift games going, the last night or two. A fellow in that last bunch Florence rounded up made quite a clean up last night."
"That so. let's go on in. This claim-holding gets my goat anyway. I don't see where--"
That was all Irish heard, but that was enough.
Had he turned in time to catch the wink that one speaker gave to the other, and the sardonic grin that answered the lowered eyelid, he would have had the scrap of conversation properly focused in his mind, and would not have swallowed the bait as greedily as he did. But we all make mistakes. Irish made the mistake of underestimating the cunning of his enemies.
So here he was, kicking up the dust on the town trail just as those three intended that he should do. But that he rode alone instead of in the midst of his fellows was not what the three had intended; and that he rode with the interest of his friends foremost in his mind was also an unforeseen element in the scheme.
Irish did not see H. J. Owens anywhere in town--nor did he see either of the two men who had stood behind him. But there was a poker game running in Rusty Brown's back room, and Irish immediately sat in without further investigation. Bert Rogers was standing behind one of the players, and gave Irish a nod and a wink which may have had many meanings. Irish interpreted it as encouragement to sail in and clean up the bunch.
There was money enough in sight to build that fence when he sat down. Irish pulled his hat farther over his eyebrows, rolled and lighted a cigarette while