The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound.

by Harold Bindloss.

CHAPTER I

FRANK GOES WEST

It was the middle of an afternoon in May. An old side-wheeler was steaming south toward Puget Sound across the land-locked waters that lie between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington. A little astern on one hand Mount Baker lifted its heights of eternal snow. On the other, and a little ahead, the Olympians rose white and majestic; and between, vast, dim forests rolled down to the ruffled, blue water. It seemed to Frank Whitney, sitting on the steamer's upper deck in the lee of her smokestack, that it was a wild and wonderfully beautiful country he had reached at last; for since leaving Vancouver, British Columbia, they had steamed past endless rocks and woods, while island after island faded into the smoke trail down the seething wake and great white mountains opened out, changed their shapes, and closed in on one another as the steamer went by. He had, however, not come there to admire the scenery, and as he watched the wonderful panorama unroll itself he looked back upon the troubles that had befallen him since he set out from Boston a little less than a year ago.

When he left that city he was but sixteen, and was, as he had cause to realize during the following twelve months, merely an average American boy, with a certain amount of alertness, self-reliance and common sense; though he might, perhaps, have had more of these desirable qualities, had he not been a trifle spoiled by his widowed mother before he went to Gorton school. He had, quite apart from his lessons, learned a few useful things there which probably he would never have learned at home, but he had been suddenly recalled, and his mother had informed him that it was now impossible for him to enter the profession for which he had been intended. Frank did not understand all the reasons for this, but he knew that they were connected with the fall in value of some railroad stock and the failure of a manufacturing company in which his mother held shares. She had, as she pointed out, his two younger sisters to provide for, and he must earn his living at once.

Frank found this much harder than he had expected. The subjects in which he excelled did not seem to be of the least use to business men, and the fact that he could play several games moderately well did not seem to count at all. There were people who were ready to give him a trial, but they seemed singularly unwilling to pay him enough to live in a way that he considered fitting; and this somewhat astonished as well as troubled him. In the end, a relative, who said that a young man with any grit and snap had better chances in the West, found him a position with a big milling company in Minneapolis. Frank accepted the position, but soon found it not much to his liking. The people he met were not like his Boston friends. They were mostly Germans and Scandinavians, and their ways were not those to which he had been accustomed. What was worse, they hustled him in the milling company's offices, and instead of teaching him the business kept him busy licking stamps, copying letters and answering telephones, which did not seem to him a fitting occupation for an intellectual lad.

He bore it, nevertheless, because he had to, until one day there came a climax, when a clerk who had bullied him all along a.s.signed to him a particularly disagreeable task which was really outside his duties. In return, in a fit of very foolish anger, Frank screwed the clerk's new hat down tight in a copying-press, and it happened that the secretary came upon the scene during the trouble that followed. The secretary had an unpleasant temper, and when he walked out of the general office Frank sat down at his desk boiling with indignation and almost stupefied.

There was, however, not the least doubt that he was fired.

He spent a very dismal evening afterward, for one thing, at least, was clear--he could not go home to Boston and become a burden on his mother.

But the flour trade was bad in Minneapolis just then, and business in St. Paul did not seem much better, so eventually he found employment in the offices of a milling company in Winnipeg. He suffered from the extreme cold during the winter there. The cold of Ma.s.sachusetts, as he discovered, is very different from the iron frost which shuts down on the Canadian prairie and never slackens its grip for months together.

The clothing he had brought from Boston was not warm enough, and his small earnings would only provide him with shelter in the cheapest quarters. Still, he held on until trade grew slack in the early spring and he was turned adrift again. This time he felt that he had had enough of business. He had heard and read of men who burrowed for treasure in the snow-clad ranges, broke wild horses, and cleared the forests, out in the farthest West. There was a romance in that life surpa.s.sing anything that seemed likely to be got out of the addition of flour invoices or the licking of stamps, and he wrote a letter to an old friend of his dead father, who lived on a ranch near Puget Sound. It was some time before he got an answer telling him rather tersely to come along.

Frank started the day after he received it, and was now, he supposed, within a short distance of his journey's end. He had never seen his father's friend, and knew nothing of what he would be required to do at the ranch, though he fancied that all that was necessary could readily be learned by an intelligent lad. In this, however, he was wrong.

Suddenly the steamer's whistle hurled a great blast out across the waters, and, looking around, Frank saw, not far ahead, a long point strewn with rocks and streaked with wisps of pines. There was, however, no sign of life on it, and he turned to a deck-hand who strode by.

"Can that be Bannington's?" he asked.

"Yes," the man informed him. "I guess that's just what it is."

"But there's n.o.body about," objected Frank.

The deck-hand grinned.

"Did you expect it was like Seattle or Port Townsend? There's a store to the place, and they've got a post-office back among the rocks. We lay off and whistle, and if there's no sign of a sh.o.r.e boat she goes on again."

He went forward with a jump as a man came out of the pilot house with a pair of gla.s.ses in his hand.

"Run up slow," he ordered. "There's nothing coming yet."

The big side-wheels beat more slowly and the whistle called again, but there was still only the ruffled blue water with white flecks on it and the rapidly rising pines. Frank watched them anxiously, for he had only about two dollars in his pocket, and it seemed quite possible that he might be carried on to Seattle, in which case he had not the faintest notion as to how he was to get back. It was quite certain that he could not pay any more steamboat fares.

A minute or two later the man with the gla.s.ses raised his hand as a sail crept out around the point, and the big wheels stopped. The strip of canvas grew into a gaff mainsail and a jib; the hull beneath it emerged at intervals from the little tumbling seas; and it became apparent to Frank for the first time that it was blowing rather hard. The sail seemed to be dripping and he could see the spray flying about the shapeless figure at the helm. Then the steamboat officer motioned to him.

"Are you getting off here?" he asked.

Frank answered rather dubiously that this was his intention.

"Then you'd better get down on to the wheel-case bracings with your grip. I don't know how they're going to take you off, but I guess they'll shoot her up head to wind and you'll have to jump."

Frank got out on the guard-framing on the after side of the wheel and watched the boat drive by, swung up on a little sea some distance away.

Half of her hull seemed to be under water, though the fore part of it was hove up streaming into the air. She rolled wildly with her big mainsail squared right out and the jib, which hung slack, dripping water. Then she came round and headed for the steamer, lying down all slanted to one side, while the water sluiced along her lee deck, and Frank made out a boy crouching under the sail with a rope in his hand.

It seemed to him that the boat must inevitably ram the steamer and smash in her bows. Then a hail reached him.

"h.e.l.lo, pilot house! Shove her astern soon as we're clear of you!"

Somebody shouted an answer, and the steamer swung out, lifting a row of wet plates out of the water and burying them again with a gurgling splash. A glance around showed Frank a deck-hand standing behind him with a long, spiked pole and a crowd of pa.s.sengers leaning over the rails of the deck above. How he was to get into the boat he did not know, for the thing was beginning to look difficult. Then there was another shout from the figure at her helm:

"That you, Whitney?"

Frank waved his hand in answer, hastily grabbing up the small bag which contained his few possessions. The wheel-casing sank again into a ridge of frothing brine which swirled about his feet, and he felt that it would be a good deal wiser to climb back to the deck above and go on to Seattle. This, however, was out of the question, even if there had not been so many pa.s.sengers looking on, and it was comforting to remember that he could swim a little. The next moment the deck-hand touched his arm.

"I'll sling your grip aboard her as she shoots," he said. "Then jump, and stick to anything you get your hands on."

The boat was now only seven or eight yards away, nearer the steamer's stern, but as Frank gazed at her she suddenly swayed upright with a frantic thrashing of canvas, and shot forward head to wind beneath the vessel's side. The next moment his bag went hurtling through the air, and he heard the deck-hand shout something in his ear. Then he set his lips and jumped.

He struck something hard with his knees, and was conscious of a sudden chill as the brine washed over one leg, but he had his hands clenched tight on a strip of wet wood, and somebody seized him by the shoulder.

Making a determined effort he dragged himself up on the narrow side deck, and fell in a heap into the bottom of the boat. When he scrambled to his feet again the big side-wheel was splashing amidst a welter of churned-up foam as the steamer pushed away from them, and, in the boat, the boy he had already noticed was tugging desperately at a rope.

"Get hold and heave!" he cried.

Frank did as the boy directed. Then the helmsman waved his hand.

"Not too flat! Belay at that! Get down here aft, both of you!"

Frank staggered aft a pace or two, and sitting down breathless and dripping gazed about him. The boat looked a good deal bigger than she had appeared from the steamer, and, as a matter of fact, she was a half-decked sloop of about twenty-four feet in length. Just then she was slanted well down on one side, with the water foaming along her depressed deck and showers of spray beating into her over her weather bow, while the jib above her bowsprit every now and then plunged into the short, white-topped seas. There seemed to be some water inside her, for it washed up above the floorings at every heave. In a few moments Frank had recovered his breath sufficiently to look around at his companions. One was a boy of about his own age who smiled at him. He had a bronzed skin and a kindly expression, and looked lean and wiry.

"You're Frank Whitney?" asked the boy.

Frank acknowledged that this was his name, and the other proceeded to introduce himself and his companion.

"I'm Harry Oliver, and, as you're going to stay with us, we've got to hit it off together."

Then he turned and indicated the ruddy-faced, red-haired man who held the helm.

"This is Jake, one of the smartest choppers and trailers on the Pacific Slope. There aren't many of the boys who could have picked you off that steamboat in a breeze of wind as he did."

"Oh, pshaw!" said the helmsman with a grin.

Neither of them had said anything striking in the way of welcome, but Frank felt quickly at ease with them. As a rule, the new acquaintances he had made in business farther east seemed to expect him to recognize their superiority, or, at least, to understand that it was a privilege to be admitted into their society. His present companions, however, somehow made it plain that as long as he was willing to be commonly civil there was no reason why they should not get on well together, for which he was thankful, though he felt that any attempt to put on airs with them would probably lead to trouble.

"How far is it to your father's ranch?" he asked presently.

"Twelve miles," responded Harry. "With a head wind like this one, it means from eighteen to twenty-four miles' sailing. It depends, for one thing, on Jake's steering."

"Thirty, sure," broke in the helmsman, "if you had the tiller."

"How's that?" asked Frank.