The Ranch at the Wolverine   By: B. M. Bower (1874-1940)

THE RANCH AT

THE WOLVERINE

By B. M. BOWER

Author of "The Lonesome Land," Etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

114 120 East Twenty third Street New York

Published by Arrangement with Little, Brown and Company

Copyright, 1914,

BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. LET US START AT THE BEGINNING II. A STORM AND A STRANGER III. A BOOK, A BANNOCK, AND A BED IV. "OLD DAME FORTUNE'S USED ME FOR A FOOTBALL" V. MARTHY BURIES HER DEAD AND GREETS HER NEPHEW VI. A MATTER OF TWELVE MONTHS OR SO VII. WARD HUNTS WOLVES VIII. HELP FOR THE COW BUSINESS IX. WHEN EMOTIONS ARE BOTTLED X. THIS PAL BUSINESS XI. WAS IT THE DOG? XII. THE LITTLE DEVILS OF DOUBT XIII. THE CORRAL IN THE CANYON XIV. EACH IN HIS OWN TRAIL XV. "YOU WON'T GET ME AGAIN" XVI. "I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU OUT AND HANG YOU" XVII. "SO LONG, BUCK!" XVIII. FORTUNE KICKS AGAIN XIX. THE BRAVE BUCKAROO XX. "WE BEEN SORRY FOR YOU" XXI. SEVEN LEAN KINE XXII. THE BILLY OF HER XXIII. BILLY LOUISE GETS A SURPRISE XXIV. THE HOOKIN' COUGH MAN XXV. THE WOLF JOKE XXVI. "HM MM!" XXVII. MARTHY XXVIII. ALL RIGHT AND COMFY

The Ranch at the Wolverine

CHAPTER I

LET US START AT THE BEGINNING

Four trail worn oxen, their necks bowed to the yoke of patient servitude, should really begin this story. But to follow the trail they made would take several chapters which you certainly would skip unless you like to hear the tale of how the wilderness was tamed and can thrill at the stern history of those who did the taming while they fought to keep their stomachs fairly well filled with food and their hard muscled bodies fit for the fray.

There was a woman, low browed, uncombed, harsh of voice and speech and nature, who drove the four oxen forward over lava rock and rough prairie and the scanty sage. I might tell you a great deal about Marthy, who plodded stolidly across the desert and the low lying hills along the Blackfoot; and of her weak souled, shiftless husband whom she called Jase, when she did not call him worse.

They were the pioneers whose lurching wagon first forded the singing Wolverine stream just where it greens the tiny valley and then slips between huge lava rock ledges to join the larger stream. Jase would have stopped there and called home the sheltered little green spot in the gray barrenness. But Marthy went on, up the farther hill and across the upland, another full day's journey with the sweating oxen.

They camped that night on another little, singing stream, in another little valley, which was not so level or so green or so wholly pleasing to the eye. And that night two of the oxen, impelled by a surer instinct than their human owners, strayed away down a narrow, winding gorge and so discovered the Cove and feasted upon its rich grasses. It was Marthy who went after them and who recognized the little, hidden Eden as the place of her dreams supposing she ever had dreams. So Marthy and Jase and the four oxen took possession, and with much labor and many hard years for the woman, and with the same number of years and as little labor as he could manage on the man's part, they tamed the Cove and made it a beauty spot in that wild land. A beauty spot, though their lives held nothing but treadmill toil and harsh words and a mental horizon narrowed almost to the limits of the grim, gray, rock wall that surrounded them.