by Lyle Brandt
* * *
WHEN GAVIN DIXON spotted Hebron Stark striding across the farmyard, big as life, armed to the teeth, it took him by surprise. He’d taken Stark for someone who would hire his killing done and only show his face when it was time to crow about his latest victory.
Not so, apparently.
That didn’t raise Stark any higher in his estimation—still a damned extortionist who preyed on anyone around him—but at least he scratched “coward” off the list of other insults that applied.
Deke Sullivan, standing beside Dixon, half whispered, “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“The man himself,” Dixon replied.
“A nice, fat target,” Paco Esperanza said, raising his Henry rifle, drawing down on Stark.
Dixon reached out and pushed the Henry’s muzzle down, saying, “Hold up. He’s mine.”
He stepped out of the shadows, Sullivan and Esperanza hanging back to cover him, and called, “Hey, Stark! Looking for me?”
The rancher stopped and turned toward Dixon, putting on a tense smile as he started walking forward.
“That’ll do,” Dixon advised him when he’d come within twenty-odd feet.
“You come to my home raising hell?” Stark said, a question Dixon figured was rhetorical. “Some gall you have, mister.”
Dixon replied, “You play games with my livelihood? I figure turnabout’s fair play.”
“Killing my men?”
“You started that as well. If you don’t know about it, ask your sniper about firing on my camp and killing one of mine.”
“Trespassing!” Stark replied.
“I’m here to settle that right now.”
“I have the marshal here.”
“So, trot him out. This doesn’t look like Cold Comfort to me.”
“Meaning?”
“I have it from his own lips that he’s got no jurisdiction outside town.”
“I guess we’ll have to settle this on your terms, then.”
“Whichever way it goes, you won’t hold up another herd.”
“My land, my rules!”
“Guess you’re a nation all unto yourself, then. We can test that notion now and see how it holds up.”
Around them, firing had slackened off to silence, Stark’s survivors standing by to see what their employer pulled out of his hat.
“Running a herd that size,” Stark said, “it stands to reason you can count.”
“I learned my numbers young. What of it?”
“Look around you, Dixon. Even if you kill me, you’ll still be outnumbered and outgunned.”
Dixon considered that and raised his voice when he responded, made his words audible across the newly silent property.
“We’ll take our chances, Stark,” he said. “For your part, why not tell your men to stand down if you lose. Give some of them a chance to live that might not have one otherwise.”
Stark’s eyes narrowed at that, but finally he gave a jerky little nod and called out to his men, “All of you drawing pay for me, heed this! If I can’t take this fella, you’re released from any obligation to me, freed to go your own ways. Otherwise, wipe out this vermin when I’m finished with the rat in charge.”
“You talk a good fight,” Dixon said. “How do you shoot?”
Instead of answering, Stark half turned to his right, reducing his target profile as he raised his long gun for a killing shot.
Dixon saved time by firing from the hip, pumping the lever action on his Winchester to fire a second shot as Stark recoiled and staggered, lost his rifle, then dropped to his knees. You could have heard a mouse fart as he knelt there, grimacing, then slowly toppled over on his face.
Dixon remained alert for any hostile movement from the other gunman visible around the farmyard, but they made no move against him. Some of them looked stunned, others almost relieved.
“We’re leaving now,” he told them, voice raised to be clear. “I’ve got no further quarrel with any of you, lest you try to follow us and start it up again.”
By then, most of Stark’s men were turning, moving off, some toward the bunkhouses, others making a beeline for the paddock and their mounts. He watched them go, then turned to Sullivan and Esperanza just as Gorch and Bishop showed up, moving in from different directions.
“Nobody hurt?” he asked them all as one.
Headshaking all around, Sullivan adding, “Not a scratch this time. They couldn’t hold a candle to Comanches.”
“All right, then,” said Dixon as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon. “Best get moving, then. We’ve got a herd to move.”
EPILOGUE
EAST ST. LOUIS
Day fifty-three. The stockyards teemed with bustling, lowing cattle, their aroma wafting from the holding pens breeze-borne and drifting beyond the National Stockyards Company complex, spreading its effluvium downtown to business offices, hotels, and restaurants, giving the city’s upper crust a grim reminder of what underlay their fortunes.
Toby Bishop reckoned that he’d never seen so many cattle in one place before, and never might again.
As each new herd arrived, its drovers were directed to another set of holding pens where auctioneers awaited buyers, gearing up to praise the animals they’d never seen before and seek top dollar with a decent rake-off for themselves in the process. Buyers shouted bids or brandished cards with numbers inked upon them, sparing aggravation to their vocal cords. It seemed chaotic, but there appeared to be no arguments among them, no one feeling slighted, even if their bids fell short and they were disappointed.
One way or another, all the bidders would acquire the beef they needed, processed in the slaughterhouses ranged around the stockyards, uniformly drab and menacing, as you’d expect from citadels of wholesale death.
Bishop paid no attention to the prices being bandied back and forth. They made no difference to the payment he had coming after seven and a half weeks on the trail. There’d be no bonus paid for fighting rustlers, hostiles, or a would-be dictator like Hebron Stark, since none was mentioned in the contract he had inked when signing up to join the drive.
And just as well, he figured, since financial compensation for the killing might have made him feel like he was back in Texas, doing gun work.
He didn’t wait around to see the Dixon herd sold off and routed into one or more of the smoke-belching abattoirs. That wasn’t Bishop turning squeamish in the face of death or giving up on beefsteak, simply shrugging off the blood he’d spilled during the drive and not desiring any more of it.
He was about to leave the stockyard proper when a voice somewhere behind him stopped him short, speaking his name. Nobody but the other drovers from the Circle K knew he was in St. Louis, much just pinning down precisely where, and this voice struck him as familiar.
“Mr. Dixon,” Toby said, before he turned around.
“None other,” Dixon said. “You lighting out, young man?”
“Just going for a drink or three. I would invite you, but . . .”
“I’ve still got business here,” Dixon allowed. “Could take another couple hours, maybe three.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then, sir.”
“Where can I find you when I’ve got your pay?”
“I’m booked at a hotel, the Eden Arms. No garden I can see, which makes them liars for a start, but it’s all right.”
“I’ll find it,” Dixon said.
“Or I could meet you somewhere else tomorrow if you’d estimate a time and place.”
“Back here all right with you? Say noon?”
“I’ll be here,” Bishop said.
“Before you go, Toby, I want to thank you for a job well done from start to finish. If it weren’t for you, I’m pretty sure we would’ve lost more steers, and likely men besides.”
“Don’t give me to
o much credit, sir.”
“Only what’s due. And you can drop the ‘sir.’ That is, unless . . .”
“Unless what, Mr. D?”
“You’d care to spend the next six months helping around the Circle K and getting ready for another drive come spring?”
Bishop considered that, picking a point in space above Dixon’s left shoulder, staring at it just a tad too long.
“No problem, son. I understand your feelings after all we went through.”
“I’m not sure I understand them all that well myself,” Bishop replied.
“I meant after your trouble back in Mason County. We heard of the Hoodoo War on our patch, too. No names, of course, and I’d be leery trusting all the details in Atoka’s paper, but word gets around.”
“You had to be there in it, Mr. D. To see it, even smell it when the breeze died down.”
“I know that smell, from wartime and since then. It never altogether goes away.”
“No, sir. It doesn’t.”
“Anyway, just think about it if your mind ain’t dead set to the contrary. I know you’d be an asset to the Circle K. For what it’s worth, Bill Pickering agrees.”
“Tell you tomorrow, one way or another?”
“Sounds all right to me.”
“And thank Bill—Mr. Pickering, that is. I do appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“Until tomorrow, then,” Dixon concluded. “Have a drink for me while you’re about it.”
“I might do that very thing.”
They shook hands, parting for a day at least, or who knew how long after that. Bishop might never see the man again, much less Atoka or the rest of Indian country.
But he wondered, walking back toward a saloon he’d spotted earlier, if staying put for just a while and drawing steady pay would be the worst idea he’d ever had.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Rider series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
Lyle Brandt is a Spur Award-winning author and the recipient of the Life Achievement Peacemaker Award from Western Fictioneers, in addition to many other awards. He is the author of The Lawman series, including White Lightning, Reckoning, Blood Trails, and Avenging Angels.
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