by Lyle Brandt
The last thing anybody needed now was a stampede.
He picked out a group of strangers—half a dozen horsemen, maybe more—preparing to abscond with the remuda, each thief clutching at the reins of eight or nine spare mounts. The horses didn’t fight it, all accustomed to repeated handling by riders at the Circle K. They wouldn’t break away without some help, and Bishop was the lookout closest to them presently.
Someone fired a pistol shot from camp, whether as an alarm or aiming for the rustlers, Bishop couldn’t say, nor did he care. He unsheathed his rifle from its saddle boot and nudged his snowflake Appaloosa into motion toward the theft in progress.
One of the thieves fired off a shot toward camp, another miss, the gunman’s aim spoiled by excitement. Bishop lined up on the weapon’s muzzle flash but didn’t have a chance to fire before the gang put spurs to horseflesh and began to gallop off, their living loot raising a cloud of dust to shield them.
Trusting his mount to hold a steady course, Bishop shouldered his Yellow Boy—already cocked—and sighted down its barrel toward the fleeing rustlers. It was dicey, picking out one of the thieves at random, trying not to kill or wound any of the remuda’s animals, but Bishop managed, picking out a wide-brimmed hat and leading it a yard or so before he fired.
The .44 slug flew downrange at more than one thousand feet per second, found its mark, and spilled the rider from his saddle to the ground, head over heels. It looked like some of the stolen horses trampled over him, which might have seemed poetic justice if Toby had had time to think about it.
As it was, he had his hands full.
Another of the rustlers must have spotted Bishop when he fired. A pistol blazed out of the rising dust, the slug not even coming close. That was the problem with most gunfights. Whether on horseback, racing death, or standing face-to-face, combatants often let excitement spoil their aim and get them killed or maimed.
Bishop didn’t return the pistolero’s fire, not wanting to drop any of the stolen horses accidentally. Instead, while Whitney Melville and Deke Sullivan rode in to join the chase, he sought and found the rustler he’d brought down.
The guy was obviously dead when Bishop reached him. Wan moonlight prevented Toby from examining his wounds, a bullet hole among them, his body lying twisted and broken up in places where the mounts he’d aimed to steal had galloped over him. Another of the thieves had snared them on a ride-by, the remainder of the gang escaping westward, shrouded from his view by darkness as they blazed a trail to who-knew-where.
More shooting in the distance now, but likely all in vain.
As far as he could tell, the five or six surviving thieves had made their getaway.
* * *
* * *
BILL PICKERING WAS on his feet, pistol in hand, within five seconds after Rudy Knapp shouted his warning to the camp. A few feet distant, Gavin Dixon nearly matched his foreman’s speed, clutching his Colt Open Top revolver, free hand wiping sleep out of his eyes.
“Goddammit, Bill! What’s going on?” he rasped, his voice still catching up.
“You know as much as I do,” Pickering replied. “Somebody’s after the remuda.”
Dixon started past him, barefoot, risking injury from stones and stickers.
“Gav, your boots,” said Pickering.
“To hell with ’em,” his boss spat back. “We lose those horses and we’re screwed.”
He had a point. Leaving his own boots where they stood, Pickering caught up with the raging master of the Circle K and fell in step beside him, wincing at the punishment his soles absorbed.
Gunfire was crackling in the night now, and the herd was getting antsy. If they had to suffer much more racket, some of them might start to run, followed by scores or hundreds more in nothing flat.
“Stop shooting, dammit!” Dixon bawled at no one in particular. “You’re risking a stampede!”
A final pistol shot rang out, somewhere westward, then the other drovers who’d been sleeping thronged around their leader and his foreman, some without their pants, only a few with boots on, but all carrying their guns, most of them jabbering.
“Shut your pieholes!” Dixon snapped.
That silenced most of them, but Graham Lott, the nonstop talker, couldn’t help himself. “What’s happened, Mr. Dixon?”
“Rustlers raided the remuda,” Dixon answered. “What I see from here, they got all but the two from the chuck wagon and the ones on watch.”
“Speaking of those on watch,” said Pickering, “here come Melville and Sullivan.”
He couldn’t tell if the two mounted drovers looked more furious, guilty, dejected, or a mixture of all three. As they drew closer, he asked them both, “Where’s Bishop, then?”
“Back there,” Deke answered for the two of them, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the dark. “He dropped one of them others.”
“Dead?” asked Dixon.
“Yes, sir. Well, I’m pretty sure.”
“Mel, fetch a couple lanterns,” Dixon told their cook, who rushed off to obey. Then, to the rest, “Get your boots and trousers on. Be quick about it!”
“We might as well do likewise, Mr. D,” said Pickering.
“All right. I want to see this stiff, though. Time’s a-wasting.”
Both were shod, with more drovers joining them as they set off on foot toward where they’d spotted Toby Bishop, still astride his mount and peering at a body on the ground. Mel Varney ran to catch up with them, carrying two lanterns, while his Little Mary trailed him with a third swinging beside him, casting freakish shadows on the ground.
* * *
* * *
WHEN THEY HAD put the best part of a mile between themselves and the longhorns, Finch reined his grulla to a halt and waited for the five other survivors of the gang he’d started out with to form up around him, with the animals they’d stolen from the drovers’ camp.
Before he had a chance to tell them what his plans were, Mariano de la Cruz was whining at him, “They kilt Jaime, ese. We should go back right now and wipe ’em out.”
“Do that your own self if you wanna,” Mullins answered him. “Me, I don’t plan on joining your amigo.”
“¡Maldito cobarde!” Mariano sneered at Earl, and spat into the tallgrass.
“What’s that mean?” Mullins demanded. Then, addressing all of them, “What did he say?”
“I said—”
Finch shot him before Mariano could translate the insult, one slug from his Schofield clearing de la Cruz’s saddle while his mount shied for a heartbeat, then stood still again. Reed Dyer grabbed the reins of the half a dozen horses Mariano had released when he went down.
“All right now, listen up,” Amos commanded, gun still smoking in his hand. “We’re two men down and we’ve still got a job to do. Who else is in a hurry to check out?”
Finch didn’t have to check on Gretzler. Shelby knew enough to draw his Frontier Bulldog double-action .44 without being instructed to, not pointing it at anybody yet but ready, just in case.
When no one answered him or made a move to slap leather, Amos relaxed a bit but didn’t let his guard down one iota. “Now we’ve cleared up that misunderstanding, anybody miss Jaime or Mariano? Answer up now, if you do. We can work something out.”
“Not likely,” Fitzer said.
Dyer chimed in quickly, saying, “Hell, I never liked ’em anyhow.”
“More for the rest of us, looks like,” said Mullins, making it unanimous.
“You read my mind,” Finch said. “I’ve got a town picked out for selling off these animals. It’s nine or ten miles west of here. With any luck, we should be getting there around sunrise.”
“And what about them drovers?” Mullins asked.
“That’s another thing,” Finch said. “We left behind two horses from the wagon team, plus three the l
ookouts had. You all know they’ll be coming after us, but we’ve got two advantages.”
“Which are?” asked Dyer,
“First, unless they’ve got an Injun with ’em, they can’t track us in the dark,” Finch said. “And second, none of ’em knows where we’re going. If we do our business quick enough, we can be in and out before they start sniffing along our trail. They get to town and find their animals, that puts them in a pickle when they try to get ’em back. They’ll have to haggle for ’em and they may not even manage it.”
“Which puts us free and clear,” Gretzler chimed in.
“Or if we feel like resting up,” Finch said, “why not? There won’t be any marshal where we’re headed. If we want to, shouldn’t be too hard to meet the drovers and be done with ’em for good.”
“Use the town like it’s our fort, you mean?” asked Fitzer.
Mullins answered before Finch had a chance. “As long as that fort ain’t the Alamo,” he quipped.
That made the others laugh and Amos went along with it. His ears were ringing from the shot that finished Mariano off, but he was used to that. Sharing their mood for now, he said, “I reckon we can go one better than them boys with Colonel Travis.” When their laughter over that trailed off, he asked them, “Any other questions?”
None came back at him, so Amos turned his grulla west and said, “Alrighty, then. Let’s ride.”
* * *
* * *
HE’S DEAD ALL right,” Bill Pickering observed.
“A Mexican,” said Estes Courtwright.
Several pairs of eyes shifted toward Paco Esperanza, who pretended not to notice. Toby Bishop kept his focus on their trail boss and his foreman, both men peering up at him.
“You finished this one?” Dixon asked.
“With help from the remuda’s horses,” Bishop said. “Can’t tell you if my .44 beefed him or they finished him off.”
“Works either way,” said Pickering. “His mama wouldn’t know him now.”
“When are we going after them?” asked Graham Lott, clearing his throat to mask a tremor in his tone.
“No point to that before daylight,” Dixon announced. “Dark as it is, we’d lose ’em in the tallgrass.” Looking up at Bishop on his Appaloosa then: “You see which way they went, Toby?”
“Due west to start,” Bishop replied. “No telling if they changed directions after I lost sight of them.”
“Supposing they split up?” asked Curly Odom.
Abel Floyd answered that one. “Not how it works, most of the time. A gang steals horses, they don’t want to sell ’em off in little bunches, three or four apiece. Makes better sense to lump ’em all together, get a better price, then divvy up the cash.”
“We can rule out a local farmer buying them,” said Dixon. “Nobody around here would have that kind of money lying idle. Figure on a town that has a livery or livestock dealer.”
“You expect to find a town out here, boss?” Isaac Thorne inquired, not quite a challenge.
“I could almost point to it,” Dixon replied. “A place called Willow Grove, unless they’ve changed the name since last year.”
“I been through there,” Odom said. “There ain’t much to it, as I recollect. A dry goods store, saloon, and whorehouse, plus a blacksmith and a livery. Say ninety to a hundred people, if you don’t count the outlying farms.”
“No law, then,” Courtwright said, not asking.
“No lawmen anywhere,” said Dixon. “Lest a U.S. marshal happens by, running some errand from Fort Smith.”
“We’re on our own to get the horses back,” said Pickering, “and settle with the maggots who run off with ’em.”
“I’d put the horses first,” Dixon amended. “I can’t see a way to get along without ’em. As to punishment . . . well, let’s just wait and see what happens after that.”
Bishop was fine with the come-what-may approach. He’d added one more stiff in red ink to his ledger, and while running up a higher score wasn’t his goal, he wouldn’t shy away from it either.
Not if it meant wasting his time, drawing no pay.
And damned sure not if it meant getting killed himself.
“How long till sunup, then?” asked Odom. “Anybody know?”
Pickering checked his pocket watch by lamplight. Said, “Four hours and a quarter yet.”
“First thing,” said Mr. D, “we need to check the herd for any strays and bring ’em back to join the herd. With saddles left behind and the chuck wagon horses, we can field five men. Mel, get an early breakfast done so everyone can finish up by sunrise. Once we’ve got the light we need to track these sonsabitches, I don’t want to waste it.”
Everyone pitched in from there, collecting gear and stowing it, Varney and Rudy Knapp lighting their stove and getting busy on the food, Dixon and Pickering mounting the two chuck wagon horses to assist in scouring the night for strays. As far as sleep went, none among the trail hands could have managed any now.
Four hours and a bit, before those still with horses hit the trail, loaded for bear.
Bishop never considered lending anybody else his Appaloosa. He’d already drawn first blood against their enemies and he would see it through.
No matter what the end might be.
* * *
* * *
THE HELL IS Willow Grove, a bunch of trees?” Earl Mullins asked.
Instead of pointing out that there were countless things Mullins had never heard of, soap likely among them, Finch replied, “People who live there claim that it’s a town. I’d say a village is more like it.”
“What’s the difference?” Reed Dyer asked.
Bert Fitzer answered back: “Are they redskins? Do white folks live in villages?”
Finch let that go, saying, “The census takers differentiate by size. I couldn’t tell you what the cutoff is, but a town is bigger than a village, and a city’s bigger than a town.”
“Still just a bunch of stores and houses, right?” said Mullins, seeking clarity.
“Not many of ’em, though,” Shel Gretzler said.
“The only one we care about will be the livery,” Finch said, hoping to put a lid on it.
It seemed to work, with Dyer asking him, “How much you think we’ll pocket altogether?”
“With any luck, between one-fifty and two hundred dollars each.”
Reed made a show of counting on his fingers, screwing up his face while multiplying in his head. “About five thousand, is it?”
Amos didn’t bother to correct him. “Pretty close, I’d say,” he answered.
“So, about a thousand each, then?”
“You’re forgetting my end, which is two-thirds,” Finch reminded him.
“Oh, yeah.” A sullen tone that time, less optimistic. “So about nine hundred each, then.”
Fitzer snorted. “Reed, how far you get in school?”
“What school?” Dyer replied. “I learned my numbers playing cards.”
“You win much?” Mullins ragged him.
“Bet your ass I do!”
“Next time you want a game, make sure to deal me in.”
More laughter, mostly at Dyer’s expense. Finch interrupted that, telling them, “Listen up. I need to fill you in on Willow Grove, mostly what you should do and not do, once we get there.”
When he had their full attention, Finch went on. “We know they’ve got no lawman, but that doesn’t mean they’re helpless. Most of ’em that live there keep their guns close, just in case of trouble. Absolutely do not stir up any needless trouble, mixing with the locals, and ignore their women, whether they be wives, daughters, or grandmas. What we wanna do is sell these horses, not touch off a fight that gets us killed.”
“By sodbusters?” The question came from Mullins.
“Sodbusters
, shopkeepers, or whatever,” Finch replied. “Expect a fight if you go looking for it and remember that we’ll be outnumbered thirty-odd to one, not counting kids.”
“So, we’re just riding in and out?” asked Dyer. “How about a decent meal, maybe paint our tonsils some or catch hold of a hooker?”
“They’ve got a saloon with women there, but they likely make their own pop skull and I won’t vouch for it. As for the painted cats . . . well, let’s say you’ll have good odds of catching clap.”
“Can’t even stop and get a decent steak, I guess?” Bert Fitzer groused.
“I’d focus on the money first,” Gretzler chipped in, “and worry about chow or booze once we unload these animals.”
“Shouldn’t take long, a town that small,” Earl Mullins said. “Hell, everybody needs a decent horse out here.”
“Let’s wait and see,” Finch cautioned. “Take it one step at a time.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE HUNTING PARTY had five members. Mr. Dixon rode one of the chuck wagon’s two horses, a rose gray, with Isaac Thorne aboard the other one, a tobiano. Toby Bishop rode his snowflake Appaloosa, with Whitney Melville on a pinto mare, Deke Sullivan riding a yellow dun.
Bill Pickering had argued that he should tag along, but Dixon shut him down, insisting that his foreman stay behind to mind the herd and double-check for any steers that might have strayed due to the gunfire overnight. The foreman didn’t like it, but he was a man who followed orders, ranking duty over happiness.
Bishop had wondered if the rustlers meant to lay a false trail, riding west when they were harried out of camp, then settling on a new direction once they’d put some ground between themselves and hot pursuit. It wasn’t all that hot, of course, four hours and a smidgen wasted while the Circle K team waited on sunrise.
In that amount of time, Bishop supposed the rustlers could have traveled ten miles easily, escaping to the north or south, as well as west.