“You killed him,” Cade said.
“You seen what happened. He was goin’ for his gun, we didn’t have no choice. Harris, get your cows, and let’s get out of here.”
“You can’t do that!” Jeter said. “You can’t just come in here ‘n take our cattle like that.”
“It’s like I told you,” the sheriff said. “Seein’ as how you didn’t file that brand with the county and Harris did, they’re his cows.” He held up a piece of paper. “I’ve got a court order from Judge Briggs, saying that. I’m sorry, boys. There’s nothing I can do.”
Cade and Jeter stood to one side as Harris, and the men he brought with him, drove the cows out of the pasture and across the plain. Flies were beginning to buzz around Lattigo’s body.
18
COLONEL LINUS PUCKETT had a sixty thousand acre ranch that was bordered by the Navidad River to the east, and the Lavaca River to the west. He was a slender man with a receding hairline and bushy, white eyebrows, and he was called Colonel, because of his storied Texas history. During the war for Texas Independence he had been with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto. During the Mexican War he was with Zachary Taylor at the Battle of Buena Vista, and during the Civil War he had served as a Colonel with General John B. Hood from the Texas Brigade, all the way to the Army of Tennessee.
He had been at the Battle of Franklin.
“Who were you boys with?” Puckett asked when he learned that both Cade and Jeter had been at the same battle.
“General Stewart’s Corps, General Cleburne’s Division, Colonel Hill’s Regiment, and Captain Hanner’s company,” Cade replied.
“Cade was a sergeant,” Jeter added.
“Wars are won by the sergeants, not by the generals,” Puckett said. “So, you two boys are looking to join the drive to Abilene, are you?”
“Yes, sir,” Cade said.
“Any particular reason why you want to go? I ask this because I need to be one hundred percent confident in the loyalty of my riders to the brand.”
“You’ll have our loyalty, Colonel. Especially to the cows wearing the IIIX brand,” Cade said.
Colonel Puckett’ eyes narrowed. “The IIIX brand? Are you talking about the cows I bought from Eb Harris?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have a particular interest in them?”
Cade and Jeter told Colonel Puckett about rounding up the maverick cattle, branding them, and holding them in the corral they had repaired.
“We planned to start north as soon as we got seven hundred and fifty head,” Cade said.
“Then Eb Harris stole our herd,” Jeter said.
“Look here, boys, I . . .” Colonel Puckett started to say, but Cade held up his hand to stop him.
“Colonel, we’ve got no beef with you. What you did was perfectly legal. What Harris did was within the law as well. Legalized larceny, you might call it. It was our fault for not getting our brand registered.”
“We wound up losing our herd, and Johnny Lattigo wound up gettin’ hisself kilt,” Jeter said.
“I’m sorry to hear that boys,” Colonel Puckett said. “I knew nothing about all that. Harris told me that he and a couple of his friends had rounded up the cattle, and he showed me the certificate of brand registration to establish his ownership of the herd.”
“It’s like Cade said, Colonel, we ain’t neither one of us blamin’ you. Only now we’re a’ needin’ work, ‘n if you’ll hire us, we’d like to go on the drive with you.”
Colonel Puckett stroked his chin for a moment as he studied the two men who had come to ask for employment.
“I’ll tell you what I will do. The IIIX cattle still have a little wild in them. As we make the drive north, I’d like to keep them somewhat separated from the rest of the herd because I don’t want any of that wild rubbin’ off onto my tame cows. If you two men will be personally responsible for them, I’ll pay you two dollars and fifty cents a head for every IIIX cow we are able to get to market.
“I know that’s a long way from the thirty dollars a head you were counting on.”
Cade and Jeter glanced at each other and smiled.
“Colonel, you’ve got yourself a deal,” Cade said, extending his hand. Jeter shook hands as well, and with that the two men became riders for the brand. In the broader sense they were riding for the LP brand, but now, specifically, they were riding for the IIIX.
“We’ll make a common camp at night,” Colonel Puckett said. “But during the day, keep your bunch about a quarter of a mile behind us. I want you close enough so we can keep in touch with each other, but far enough apart that the cows don’t intermix. I’ll give you Old Rudy as a lead steer. He’s made this drive three or four times, he knows what to do, and the other cows will follow him. And, I’ll give you one more rider, that’ll give you one on each flank, and one to ride drag.”
Getting the herd underway would require as much organization as mobilizing an army regiment. Colonel Puckett was quite comfortable with that, because command sat easily upon his shoulders. Counting Cade and Jeter, there would be eighteen drovers making the drive. He also had a chuck wagon and hoodlum wagon. The hoodlum wagon carried bedrolls, firewood, extra gear, and provided the cook with space to carry more food.
The cook’s name was Rufus Slade. There was nothing about the cook’s appearance that made him any different from anyone else until one looked in his eyes. His eyes were deep and cryptic, as if hiding a past he didn’t want anyone to know about. Unlike many ranch and camp cooks, Rufus Slade didn’t talk much, and when he did talk he used as few words as necessary.
The driver of the hoodlum wagon was Ian Campbell. Ian, who was sixty years old, had come to America when he was in his mid-twenties. Some said it was to find a better life, some said it was because he had been jilted by a woman, and a few even suggested that Ian, who even in his sixties was still a big and powerful man, had killed someone with his bare hands.
The horse wrangler was Van Beecher. Van was only fourteen, too young to handle cattle, though he could manage the small herd of horses. Van was also the cook’s assistant; he washed the dishes, took care of the camp gear, and gathered the wood for the evening fire when the entourage stopped for their noon meal. Van showed up at the LP Ranch when he was twelve years old, offering to work for food. He had run away from an orphanage, and though Colonel Puckett’s first thought had been to take him back, he let the boy move into the bunkhouse with the other hands and his willingness to do anything asked of him made him a favorite of the cowboys. This was his second cattle drive.
Most of the horses Van looked after belonged to the brand, but Cade and Jeter had brought their own horses to the drive. After Lattigo was killed, Cade and Jeter had taken his horses, sold one and kept the other two. That gave them a personal string of four horses each, which were kept in the remuda with the others.
The LP herd, including the five hundred and seventy-five cows the colonel had bought from Harris, numbered just over four thousand, and on the day they were to begin the drive, Rufus had prepared an enormous breakfast for them: bacon, biscuits, gravy, scrambled eggs, and grits.
“Damn, Rufus, you goin’ to feed us this good for the whole drive?” Boo Rollins asked. Rollins was the drover who would be with Cade and Jeter, working the IIIX cows.
“Better eat a lot,” Lou Porter said. “I’ve been on a lot of these drives, ‘n when the cook starts out with a breakfast like this, why we don’t normally get nothin’ else to eat for near a week.”
“Porter you are as full of shit as a Christmas goose,” one of the other drovers said, his comment met with good-natured laughter.
As soon as breakfast was over, the chuck wagon, hoodlum wagon, and the herd of horses started out. They would go ahead about seven or eight miles and find a good place for the nooning.
Although most cattle ranchers didn’t do so, Colonel Puckett would be acting as his own trail boss, and with all the cattle in place, he stood in his stirrups and shouted the order.
“All right! Head ‘em up, and move ‘em out!”
Cade, Jeter, and Boo had already put some separation between the cows they would be moving and the rest of the herd, so they waited for about fifteen minutes before they started after the others.
For the first several days they pushed the cattle fairly hard to get them away from their customary ranges, and to make them too tired to run at night. After the first week the cattle settled down so that everything fell in place. The cattle started moving each morning, bawling and mooing in protest of leaving their comfortable ground, but quickly falling into the same relative position they had held in the herd on the day before. Cade recalled his time in the army, and he couldn’t help but think of this operation, not as cows being prodded along, but as a division of infantry, each in his own place, following the orders of Colonel Puckett and the officers and non-commissioned officers over them.
The one thing Cade hadn’t considered was what it would be like to sit a saddle for several hours per day. About ten days into the drive, they were making camp one night when Jeter noticed Cade limping around.
“Got a sore ass, do you?” Jeter teased.
“I have to confess that it has felt better.”
“You just ain’t spent that much time on a hurricane deck is all.”
Cade laughed. “I know you’re talking about a saddle, but to someone who has sailored a bit, the term hurricane deck has a different meaning. You’re right though, I’ve never spent this much time in the saddle.”
“Don’t worry about it, sailor man,” Porter said. “Before we get to Abilene, you’ll have so many callouses on your ass that a mule could kick you ‘n you’d just laugh at ‘im.”
“Like the man said, Porter, you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose,” Cade teased.
The drive proceeded day in and day out without incident, progressing an average of fifteen miles per day.
“One thing we got to always be on the lookout for is a run,” Jeter cautioned, continuing his self-imposed mission of “learnin’” Cade the cowboy business.
“A run?”
“Yeah, a stampede,” Jeter said. “They’s damn near anythin’ that can set ‘em a’ runnin, a man’s hat blowin’ off, or somebody a’ sneezin’, or just any old thing. I oncet seen a stampede get started ‘cause someone dropped his coffee cup. ‘N it can happen with any herd, too. Cows that don’t get upset by lightenin’ ‘n thunder on Monday, might start a’ runnin’ on Tuesday just on account of they don’t like the song some drover is a’ singin’.”
Less than a week after Jeter had told Cade about stampedes, and just after the two herds were merged for the night, something, and nobody was sure what it was, spooked the cows and the stampede was on.
“Stampede! Stampede!” someone shouted, but the call wasn’t necessary, the thunder of the cattle’s hooves was all the alarm needed. The horses had been turned into the remuda for the night but saddles were quickly thrown on and every man mounted. The riders carried blankets, coats, shirts, towels, anything that could be waived, and so armed, they galloped out beyond the fleeing animals.
Cade felt his heart pounding in his chest, whether from fear or excitement, he didn’t know. Riding at full gallop at night meant the horse could hit a hole, break his leg, and throw his rider. Not since the storm on board the Fremad had he been so on edge to the attendant danger.
Although Jeter had talked about stampedes, he hadn’t been clear on how they were to be handled, so Cade just followed the others and did as they did, getting ahead of the running cows. He knew they wouldn’t be able to stop a herd of four thousand at full gallop, but he saw quickly that they weren’t trying to stop the herd, they were just trying to turn them.
Gradually the front of this column began to react to the urging of the horsemen, and the herd was turned back onto itself by whooping and hollering cowboys who were firing pistols into the air.
This started the cattle into a large, circle of bellowing cows, surrounded by a cloud of choking dust that hung in the air, made somewhat iridescent by the bright, full moon. The milling was kept up until finally the cattle quit from exhaustion. Then, no longer running, they moved about, only to resume their self-appointed positions within the herd, which meant that the IIIX cows separated themselves from the others. When the herd was exactly where it started, they stood quietly as if nothing had happened.
After it was over a nose-count was taken, and they came up one man short.
“Where’s Porter?” Colonel Puckett asked.
“Maybe he just ain’t come back in yet,” another answered.
“Yeah,” another said. “He’ll be back in soon.”
Cade and the others, exhausted from their ordeal, crawled into their blankets for a welcome sleep.
Cade learned about Porter’s fate at breakfast the next morning. The last relief of the nighthawks, who were in the saddle when the sun rose, saw him, or what was left of him. He had been thrown, knocked off, or had fallen from his horse during the stampede and the cattle, which had been forced to mill, had run over him time, and time again.
“What makes me feel bad,” Boo said, “is that we done that to him. We just kept them cows a turnin’, ‘n all that time Porter was layin’ on the ground under ‘em, gettin’ hisself runned over.”
“We didn’t know he was in there, ‘n even if we had knowd, why there warn’t nothin’ we could ‘a done about it,” Jeter said. “We couldn’t ‘a rode in through all them cows when they was a’ circlin’ like that.”
19
IT WAS JUST AFTER DARK and the moon full and bright. Two night-hawks were out watching over the herd, while the others were back at the camp, chatting quietly. Lou Porter was the subject of the conversation, and those who knew him, were telling stories about him.
“Me ‘n Porter went to San Antone oncet,” Jess Unger said. “Porter said he know’d someone there that could give us a good, easy job where we wouldn’t have to do nothin’ but sit on our ass ‘n keep an eye on hosses that belonged to the stagecoach line. Onliest thing is, his friend warn’t there no more, ‘n we wound up muckin’ out stables, which is about the hardest, ‘n most stinkinest job a feller could get. One day he was fillin’ buckets with hoss shit and passin’ it up to me so’s I could carry it off ‘n get rid of it.
“‘Porter, I thought you said me ‘n you would be gettin’ us a good job here,’ I says to ‘im.
“‘You the one with the bad job. I got a good job here,’ Porter says.
“‘What do you mean you got a good job here?’ I asks. ‘We got the same job.’
“‘No we don’t’ he says. ‘You don’t see me takin’ shit from anyone, do you?’”
The others laughed, and that story about Porter was followed with still more stories about the cowboy they had lost, some funny, some poignant.
“It don’t seem right, just leavin’ ‘im buried out here on the prairie like we’re doin’,” Van said.
“Hell, boy, you got ‘ny idea how many folks there is that’s buried out here like this?” Unger asked. “I wouldn’t’ be surprised if there wasn’t near ‘bout as many buried out on the plains like that, as there is buried in town cemeteries.”
Cade, who had only recently met Porter, had nothing to add to the conversation, so he just sat there listening to the others, staring into the fire. He liked to see the flames nearest the wood just at the point where the blue turned to a flickering orange.
“Cade, is it true you was oncet a sailor?” Boo asked, when the conversation lagged.
Cade glanced toward Jeter.
“Don’t get mad at me now, Cade, I told ‘em, you was a sailor. Hell, I think that’s real interestin’.”
Cade nodded. “Yes, I was a sailor.”
“Did you like sailorin’?” Unger asked.
Cade started to say no, then he thought of Bento, Willoughby, Pops, and Stumpy.
“I made some good friends,” he said, without specifically answering Unger’s question.
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“Aye, ‘twas sailing before the mast that brought me here from Scotland,” Campbell said. “And no better friends can ye find but in the fo’c’sle.”
“In the what?” Van asked.
“The fo’c’sle is where we slept,” Cade said. “When we slept.”
Campbell laughed. “Aye, that’s surely a fact, lad, for an ordinary seaman finds but little time to sleep.”
Rufus Slade had been squatting on his haunches, listening to the conversation without participating. After a few minutes he stood up, walked over to the chuck wagon, then returned, carrying a pan. The pan was filled with cookies, and he passed them out to the others.
“Damn!” Unger said. “Who knew this? Slade, you just like a mama to us poor cowboys.”
“I’m not your mama,” Rufus replied.
A few days later, Colonel Puckett halted the drive just outside of Ft. Worth This would be the last opportunity to restock the dwindling food supplies before going into “The Nations”. Puckett also intended to check, by telegraph, on the current stock prices in Abilene. If it had fallen to less than twenty-five dollars a head, he would turn around and go back to the LP Ranch.
For the drovers, though, Ft. Worth would provide a much needed respite from the long drive. It also gave Cade the opportunity to send a letter to his brother. He had had no contact with him since sending him the money to save the farm. He thought it was about time to do so.
Dear Adam,
I am sure you are about as surprised to get this letter from me as you were when you learned that I was still alive. I am happy to report that I am still alive, and I am getting along fine. I hope you, Melinda, and the baby are doing well.
I have settled in Texas, and as of this writing I am in the employ of Colonel Linus Puckett, who is the owner of the LP Ranch in Jackson County, Texas. In this capacity I am taking part in a cattle drive, which means that I, along with seventeen other drovers are pushing a herd of four thousand cows up to Abilene, Kansas. Abilene is the closest point where we can put the cows on trains to be taken to meat markets in the East.
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Page 15