Boswell's Luck

by G. Clifton Wisler

  BOSWELL’S LUCK

  BOSWELL’S LUCK

  G. CLIFTON WISLER

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1989 by G. Clifton Wisler

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  Wisler, G. Clifton.

  Boswell’s Luck / G. Clifton Wisler.

  p. cm.—(An Evans novel of the West)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3573.1877B67 1989

  813’.54—dc20

  ISBN: 978-0-87131-611-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-262-1 (electronic)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-261-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For R. Ellwood Jones, Jr.

  mentor and friend

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Day broke slowly over the mesquite-studded hills that spread out beyond the Brazos River. The faint golden glow crept wearily over the distant horizon, its warming rays seemingly kept at bay by cruel phantom fingers that perpetuated the midnight bite of a razor-sharp north wind. Springtime in Texas was an unreliable season, like as not to freeze or burn a man as it chose. Or so it seemed to the solitary figure leading his horse through the rocks above the river.

  Another man might have found the going hard, even impossible. The Brazos hills had only recently been wrested from the Comanches and reclaimed from the buffalo. Big-boned longhorns and spotted mustangs shared the ravines and rock slides with rattlesnakes and wolves. Oh, a few foolhardy men tried to make a go of it growing corn or running beeves, but even they waited for daylight before tackling the treacherous hills. Many a cowboy had lost his pound of hide to mesquite thorns or suffered from the sharp needles of pencil cactus.

  Erastus Hadley paid such perils little mind. He’d taken his first steps on that very hillside, and even before that he’d ridden behind his father’s broad back atop a shaggy pinto, scaring up range ponies or collecting stray calves at roundup. And if a mesquite limb battered a cheek or shoulder, what of it? Pain was an old acquaintance, after all.

  “We’re here, boy,” he whispered as he dropped the horse’s reins, leaving the animal to graze idly while he continued climbing the rocky slope. Even a mule would be pressed to reach the crest without snapping a tendon or cracking a bone. Loose rock soon had Erastus crawling on hands and knees up the steepest section. A river of dislodged sandstone rocks cascaded below, sending a pair of deer scampering for cover. The hillside was reached quite easily from the north, for the ruts of the old Overland Stage route came down from Ft. Belknap that way. Erastus wasn’t looking for easy paths, though. No, he’d come the old way, as he had with the nimble-footed legs of youth.

  Then, as now, he’d come to spy the tree, the giant. The biggest white oak to be found for maybe a hundred miles. It was a ghost tree, some said, possessed of spirits and haunted by night. In the faint predawn light the old tree appeared more than ever enchanted, for its eerie ivory branches waved in the wind most frightfully, casting dark shadows across the chalky hillside. The moaning of the wind had been enough to send Erastus running twenty years ago. Now, though, the tree held a different sort of power over Erastus Hadley. As he leaned on a large boulder and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, he gazed at that enormous oak and sighed. Spring hadn’t brought any green sprouts this year. The old ghost tree was dying—was dead already most likely.

  “Just as well,” Erastus grumbled. It seemed appropriate. For more than anything else on that rock-hard stretch of earth, the white oak represented folly—the kind of misplaced trust and hope that brought a man to bury his dreams—and his friends, too.

  It hadn’t always been that way, though. A decade before, Erastus Hadley had ridden to the white oak as a wild-eyed, snaggle-toothed boy of fourteen. With hair bleached white by a summer sun and a shrill voice that betrayed approaching manhood, Rat Hadley was pure terror on horseback.

  “Hard to tell where the horse stops and the boy begins,” old Orville Hanks had remarked to J. C. Hadley.

  Hearing the gruff rancher’s pronouncement, Erastus had tipped his hat and charged out down the trail.

  “Boy’s got his pa’s way with the horses,” Payne Oakley, the ranch foreman, said that same evening. “Be a good hand. He’s got a nose for findin’ mustangs, and he don’t scare ’em away.”

  “Oh, they think he’s one o’ them,” a cowboy remarked. “Kind o’ takes on their smell, don’t you think? Not that I’m high on bathin’, mark you, but a fellow has a hard time o’ it ridin’ by Rat there when the wind turns his way.”

  “You could use a scrub, you know,” Mitch Morris had added in a whisper. “Maybe we ought to sneak on down to the river and have a swim. Be good to shed some o’ this blamed Texas dust.”

  “Dust?” Erastus cried, slapping his hat at Mitch so that a sandy cloud descended on the other youngster. “Can’t call this dust. You been in town too much lately, Mitch. This is just a saltin’ o’ sorts. Real dust comes, and you change colors twice at least.”

  “Well, you want to swim or not?”

  “Wouldn’t mind,” Erastus confessed, grinning at his friend. “Race you down there?”

  “If you can catch me,” Mitch replied, darting around a juniper and dashing toward the Brazos a quarter mile beyond.

  It wasn’t much of a contest, actually. Mitchell Morris spent too much time in town, where his folks ran the mercantile. Whole days he passed on the center bench at Mr. Barley’s schoolhouse, reading and doing ciphers. Mitch was winded halfway, and Rat raced past spouting taunts and flinging off dusty clothes on his way to the rocky pool where the hands swam away the dust and fatigue that came with hunting mustangs.

  “Lord, I wonder sometimes if you aren’t half pony yourself, Rat,” Mitch said when he finally arrived at the river. “Nobody ever outran you anywheres.”

  “Don’t see why some try.”

  “It’s the stubborn streak Ma says I get from Pa,” Mitch declared as he undressed. “And there’s the odd chance you’ll run into a beehive or a nest o’ nettle.”
>
  “Yeah, there’s that,” Rat confessed.

  And there was that other, unspoken truth. As the eldest son of a restless cowboy, Erastus Hadley had few calls to take bows. He was short on size, and his pinched-in face and long, thin nose were as responsible for his nickname as the similarity to his actual name. Mitch, who was taller and already thought handsome by some of the town girls, could look down the trail to a fine future. He was quick with figures, and his winning smile drew folks to him like honey. As to Rat Hadley, well, the road would have been rough anyway. It seemed that fate singled out the Hadleys for special trials.

  Just then, though, Rat was splashing in the river as he might have with his little brothers, a yellow-haired wisp with a hide tanned leather tough by sun and circumstance. Mitch, by comparison, seemed almost civilized. His sandy-blond hair was trimmed neatly, and his flesh had yet to take on its nutmeg summer tint.

  “Two more weeks chasin’ range ponies’s sure to remedy that,” Rat suggested between splash battles. “Make you seem a regular sort o’ fellow ’stead o’ some starchified schoolboy.”

  “Ain’t my notion passin’ time in a schoolhouse,” Mitch barked.

  “Beats plantin’ corn or mindin’ brothers,” Rat grumbled. “Anyway, we got half the spring and all summer to run down mustangs or help with roundup. And next year Mr. Hanks is sure to want me along for the drive to Kansas. Maybe he’d take you, too.”

  “Good help’s hard to come by,” Mitch added.

  “Is when you won’t pay a wage,” Rat said, sighing. “But it does give a boy or two the chance to sign on. I hear some high tales ’bout Dodge City, Mitch.”

  “Sinful town, Ma says. Keep us busy the rest o’ the year askin’ forgiveness. But I ’spect it’d be worth it.”

  Rat grinned shyly, then motioned toward a log floating near the far bank of the river. In an instant the boys took off through the water. But Mitch’s long arms and steady strokes were of no use. Rat plowed up the river as he thrashed his way to the log.

  “Here I thought you could swim, Mitch!” Rat cried gleefully.

  “I’ll show you what I can do,” Mitch answered, grabbing Rat and pulling him along to the muddy bank. The youngsters wrestled for a good ten minutes before Rat wriggled free. He then rinsed off the mud and began collecting his clothes.

  “Best we get along to the line camp,” Rat called. “Pa’s not one to wait dinner on anybody, ’specially not with Mr. Hanks and Payne along. Mornin’s a long time comin’ on an empty belly.”

  “Sure is,” Mitch agreed. And so they returned.

  That night after supper Rat sat with his back to a boulder and listened to his father strumming chords on a battered Mexican guitar. Soon the horse hunters gathered for a bit of singing. The youngsters among the crew joined in for a bit before rolling out their blankets and shutting their eyes. The solemn music blended with the chill wind, and Rat threw a second blanket over Mitch before doing the same for himself.

  “Cold night,” Mitch observed.

  “Look at the sky,” young Eduardo Mota added. “Is the devil’s moon up there. A bad omen, amigos.”

  “Just a full moon’s all,” Mitch argued. “No devil to it.”

  “No, you wait and see,” Eduardo insisted. “Bad luck. See the clouds go by? My sister Isabella die on a night just like this. Bad luck always follows the devil’s moon.”

  “Go to sleep, Eduardo,” Rat said, laughing. “Make sure you check yer cinch tomorrow. Many’s the cowboy fell off his horse when the devil’s moon came a-huntin’.”

  Mitch imitated a coyote’s howl, and a pair of the regular cowboys took it up.

  “Is bad luck to make fun o’ the spirits,” Eduardo complained. “Very bad luck.”

  Perhaps it was, Rat thought later. But just then he was fourteen and full of beans and vinegar, as his mother liked to say. He loosened Eduardo’s cinch personally, and the young wrangler took an early tumble. Soon, though, Rat spotted the tracks of a dozen or so unshod ponies. In no time the whole outfit was galloping after a small herd of range ponies, intent on driving them down a nearby wash and along into a box canyon.

  “Cut ’em off, Rastus!” J. C. Hadley yelled to his son. “The big white! He’s the leader!”

  Rat slapped his horse’s rump and sliced his way through the flank ponies until he could glimpse the big white. It was a marvelous horse, a world of muscle and fiery independence determined to retain its freedom. As Rat broke past a brown mare, he balanced himself carefully, tied the free end of his lariat to his saddle horn, and raised a loop with his right hand. Racing close, he threw the loop high, and it fell cleanly over the nose and head of the stallion. In seconds the rope went taut, burning Rat’s fingers as it tore away from his grasp. The boy slowed his mount and waited.

  “I got you, horse!” Rat screamed as the rope twanged, and the big white rocked to a halt. The fiery-eyed horse turned its head and screamed. Its scarlet eyes turned toward Rat with a hateful gaze as the big horse struggled to work its way free of the confining rope. Rat’s own horse wobbled unsteadily. Then, as the white made a fresh try at freedom, the speckled mustang lost its footing. Crying wildly, Rat grabbed the rope as the knot tore loose from his saddle horn.

  “Let go, boy!” Payne Oakley urged. But it was too late. The white stallion jerked Rat high into the air and then dragged him fifty feet through a nest of rocks, scrub juniper, and prickly pear. Rat yelped in pain as his arms were scraped raw and the bottom was near scraped off his trousers. He managed to fling the rope at a mesquite tree, and the knot obligingly caught in a crook and held fast as the others rode in to take charge of the defiant stallion.

  “Lord, Rat, you went and got yourself a cactus baptism!” Mitch called as he hurried over to his friend. J. C. Hadley wasn’t far behind. Rat gazed at his bloody arms, at the cactus spines peppering his thighs, at the bare skin exposed by his tattered britches, and gazed up with a smile.

  “Got the horse, Pa,” he explained.

  “Near the other way ’round,” J. C. observed. “But I admit you caught him. Now all that’s left is mendin’ you and breakin’ him!”

  Rat nodded. With Mitch’s help, he set about tending to the first task. His father and Payne Oakley turned to the other.

  That same afternoon, standing bare-chested and wearing patched trousers, with daubs of brown herb concoctions marking near every inch of exposed flesh, Rat watched as his father attempted to harness the raw energy of the wild white stallion. If there was a grander horse on earth, Rat couldn’t imagine where it might be. Men for miles around rode out to have a look.

  “I tell you not to mock the spirits,” Eduardo whispered as he joined Rat and Mitch outside a makeshift corral that enclosed the open end of the box canyon. “You don’t believe the devil moon.”

  “I got the horse,” Rat boasted. “Now Pa’s going’ to break him.”

  “Maybe so,” Eduardo said, pointing to the frothing horse. “Maybe not. He has the devil’s eyes.”

  “What’s this?” Mitch cried. “Devil’s moon. Devil’s eyes!”

  But Rat motioned for his friend to be silent. Mitch hadn’t read those fiery eyes. J. C. Hadley was more’n a match for any normal horse. But for the first time Rat began to worry. The big white calmed for a moment, and J. C. threw one leg over the demon beast and settled atop it. Then the big white exploded.

  “Lord, lookee!” Payne shouted as he scurried clear of a flying hoof.

  “Madre Maria,” Eduardo said, crossing himself as he hopped back from the corral.

  J. C. Hadley bounded high in the air, but his powerful hands maintained their grip on the stallion, and he settled back onto the horse. Twice more the horse bucked its would-be conqueror, and again after that. J. C. dug toes into the big stallion’s ribs, and the horse whined and stomped. Then, with a flurry of wild spasms the white raced full speed at the corral.

  “Pa, look out!” Rat cried as the stallion slammed into the gate and staggered back. Shaken, J. C. lost his grip. T
he horse threw itself at the fence now, shattering a foreleg and rolling onto one side. Hadley jumped, but the big horse rolled onto his legs and over his back. Rat heard the crack of bones and yelled to the men scrambling over the walls of the corral. Payne Oakley was already leveling a pistol at the horse’s head, and two rapid shots left the stallion limp and quiet. Meanwhile others dragged the fallen horse off their luckless friend.

  “Let me by!” Rat shouted as arms reached out to hold him back. “Pa?”

  “Rastus, boy, he’s smashed up proper,” Payne argued as he gripped Rat’s sore, battered arms. “You don’t want to … “

  “He’s my pa,” Rat insisted, breaking free. “I seen him as bad as a man can be.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Mr. Hanks said, stepping in front of Rat. “His back’s broke, son. He won’t even know you.”

  “I’ll know him,” Rat said, slipping past the men and making his way to where J. C. Hadley lay coughing out his life. Blood trickled from his mouth, and a world of pain flooded the horse-breaker’s eyes.

  “Rastus?” J. C. muttered.

  Rat nodded, then picked up his father’s limp hand and gave it a squeeze. “Pa?’

  “Mind yer ma, son,” J. C. managed to whimper between moans.

  “Was blind hate, Pa,” Rat said, gazing a second at the fallen horse. “Pure meanness. You had him licked, and all he knew to do was kill himself and hurt you in the bargain.”

  “Hurt you, too. More’n you’ll know for a time.”

  “I’ll mend,” Rat assured his father.

  “Time for crossin’ over now,” J. C. whispered as he formed the first note of a hymn on his lips. He tried to hum it, but he managed only another moan. The assembled wranglers pulled off their hats and took up the melody, and a familiar glow filled J. C.’s eyes. Then it was gone.

  Chapter Two

  All men have sad days if they live very long. If Erastus Hadley lived a thousand years, he’d never know a time to equal the fiery hot April afternoon when he rode alongside the wagon bearing the broken body of his father homeward. Never had a boy felt as alone, as lost.