The Amarillo Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “Go get ’em, Sandy,” he said to his horse. He eased up on the reins and gave Sandy his head. Soon he was herding cattle back toward the main herd, picking up strays on his way.

  It was hard, grueling work, but Doc loved it. It took his mind off the icy winds that slashed at him with frozen razors of bristling air hurtling down at twenty to thirty miles an hour. He heard the men shouting to each other, and the wheeze of horses blowing mist from their nostrils as they worked the cattle back to the main herd. He ran in twelve head and shouted to Randy, who was returning with twice that number.

  “Let’s get a tally before we hit the river,” he called.

  Randy nodded and left Dale to keep the cattle in line. He rode to the head of the herd and started counting as he rode back to the rear.

  After nearly an hour, Doc saw no more cattle out on the long, flat plain. He breathed hard and drew up at the rear of the herd, his chest burning as if he had inhaled fire.

  “I counted two hundred and sixty-two head, Doc,” Randy said. “Might have missed a few.”

  “Close enough. Likely any that we missed will turn up at another ranch or make their way back to the Slash B. I ain’t gonna worry about it.”

  Roy rode up with three more head.

  “Them boys weren’t out to rustle cattle,” he told Doc. “They was just tryin’ to bust up the herd. But one of them boys shot two head before he lit a shuck back to Amarillo.”

  “Too bad we haven’t got a chuck wagon with us,” Doc said.

  “I’d like to tack them two Gallegos brothers to a barn and set the barn on fire,” Roy grumbled. “Bastards.”

  “Let’s keep ’em movin’,” Doc said.

  Doc knew the river would be icy cold, but he knew Jules would prod the herd to cross it fast. He looked up at the sky and saw that the sun had cleared the horizon. Surely, he thought, the wind would abate and the sun would warm their chilled bones after they crossed the Canadian.

  They forded the river at a shallow bend where it widened and felt the temperature rise as they headed for Jared’s ranch south of Perryton.

  The sun sent streamers of light and warmth across the trail, and the wind dropped off to feeble gusts that swirled around the men and the herd like mildly annoying breezes that had lost their feel of a late-winter gale.

  When they rode onto Jared’s land, late that same day, Doc told Jules and the others to bunch up the herd.

  “Bed ’em down,” he said. “I don’t want them mixing in with Jared’s cattle.”

  “Where?” Jules asked.

  “Find a water hole,” Doc said. “Turn ’em into a bunched-up circle with no place to go.”

  “You sound like you can read a cow’s mind,” Roy said with a grin.

  “Them cattle don’t have a mind to read. They’ll follow any cow that will lead them.”

  “You got that right,” Jules said. “We’ll bed ’em down on some good grass near a tank.”

  “I’ll ride on to the house and tell Jared my plans.”

  “Good luck,” Jules said. “I just hope he’s in a good mood.”

  “You let me worry about that, Jules,” Doc said, and rode wide of the herd, which Jules had slowed to a crawl. Randy and Dale helped to bunch them up, with Roy closing the gap as drag rider. They hadn’t lost a cow at the river crossing and Doc gave credit to Jules and Roy for that. A few cows had slid off the sandbars and gotten grabbed by the current, but Roy had chased them in the right direction and they had made the shore, cold and wet, but none the worse for their dunking.

  One of Jared’s riders spotted Doc and waved to him.

  The two rode up on each other.

  “You lookin’ for Jared?” Bernie James asked Doc.

  “Well, yes, Bernie, I am. He up at the house?”

  “Not likely. He’s with the vet up at the Sonoma section. Got him a case of pinkeye and he don’t want it to spread.”

  “Shit,” Doc said.

  “Exactly. Jared’s real worried. What’s up anyway?”

  “I’ll let Jared tell you. But where’s the main herd?”

  “There’s about two thousand head down by Rincon Creek. Rest of ’em’s scattered all over creation.”

  Jared had named most sections of his large spread for easy identification. He used Spanish names because his foreman was an experienced Mexican cattleman named Francisco Villareal, whom they called Paco, because he didn’t like the name “Cisco.” Jared had enticed Paco away from the King Ranch down in the Rio Grande Valley by offering a higher wage and a percentage of profits. He had heard that Paco was a very savvy man with cattle, and his faith in the man had been proven out in the three years since he had hired Paco on as foreman of the Lazy J.

  Jared was clinging to a corral fence when Doc rode up, a blind steer raking its horns at a spot where his son had been. Paco was yelling at the cow to draw it away from Jared while the veterinarian, holding his black medical bag, was on the outside of the pole corral looking in. Two more hands sat on the top rail, waiting to be called down to help bulldog the steer with the sightless pink eyes.

  “Hi, Pop,” Jared said, climbing to the top rail. “A little out of your territory, ain’t you? Ma with you?”

  “No, she’s back to home. I got a business proposition for you.”

  “Light down and I’ll give it a listen once we get some medicine in this damned cow’s eyes.”

  “That the only one with the pinkeye?” Doc asked, as he ground-tied Sandy to a scrub of a bush near the corral.

  “That’s one too many,” Jared said as Paco ran from the steer, which was hooking the air a couple of feet from Paco’s butt. It tossed its head and snorted, pawed the ground, and then halted, its ears shaped into cones, twisting to pick up any sound from its imagined enemy.

  Paco danced away on tiptoe and looked up at the two hands sitting on the top rail.

  “Well, come on, boys,” Paco said. “Get your thumbs out of your butts and hog-tie that steer before I lose my britches.”

  The two men, Al Corning and Chester Loomis, scrambled down into the small arena with dally ropes and approached the steer from behind on either side.

  “Tackle him, Al,” Chet said. “Grab his hind legs. I’ll bulldog him.”

  “He’s got shit all over his hind legs,” Al said.

  “Just lick it off once you get him down.”

  The steer turned on the two men. Chet grabbed the steer by the neck just behind its boss and wrestled with it. The steer kicked out at Al, who was trying to grab a hind leg, his little string of rope between his teeth.

  The steer had diarrhea and was spewing urine and coffee-colored fecal matter from its hindquarters, splashing the smelly mixture onto Al’s face and chest as he dived for the legs.

  Chet wrestled the heavy steer to the ground. Al pounced on the hind legs and snapped the ankles together with one hand, while he wrapped the dally around both of them, knotted the rope, and pulled it tight. Chet grabbed the steer’s horns and drove one into the ground and put his weight on the animal’s neck to pin him to the ground.

  “Okay, Doc,” Jared said. “You can put that ointment in its eyes now.”

  The veterinarian, Abner Blassingame, set his bag on the ground, opened it, and took out a tube of medication. He unscrewed the cap as he climbed through the fence and stuck it in his pocket. He crabbed to the head of the steer and spoke to Chet.

  “You got to hold him down real hard,” he said.

  “Do it quick, Doc,” Chet said, and grunted as he put more pressure on the steer’s head.

  Blassingame grabbed an eyelid and squirted the thick yellow ointment into the steer’s eyes. Then he opened the other eye and squeezed more of the tincture into its eye. The steer struggled to rise and Chet began to lose his grip.

  “That should do it,” the vet said. “Keep this one penned up and he should be okay in a few days.”

  He hurried out of the corral and recapped his tube of medicine and dropped it into his bag.

  �
�That’ll be six bits, Jared,” he said.

  Jared jumped down and dug into his pocket. He paid the vet and walked around to where his father was waiting.

  Blassingame walked to his horse, tucked his bag into a saddle pouch, and rode off without a wave.

  “Turn the steer loose,” Jared said to Chet and Al, “then run like hell.”

  “Let’s hope that’s the only cow you got ailin’,” Doc said to Jared.

  “So far. What’s this proposition you got?”

  “I brought in about two hundred and sixty head from the Slash B,” Doc said. “I want you to drive a thousand of yours to Salina, along with mine.”

  “That ad you put in the paper back there worked?”

  “Like a charm. We get twelve bucks a head, a dollar more if you make it to the yards before June first.”

  “That’s pushing it some.”

  “It shouldn’t be hard. Could open up them Eastern markets for us.”

  “What about Miles?”

  “Forget about Miles. This is between you and me, Jared.”

  Jared, who resembled his mother more than his father, with his sharp pinched face, thin lips, and stern, hawklike nose, stared at his father with coal black eyes narrowed to slits.

  “I could maybe drive twice that number of good beeves to Salina,” he said, suspicion clouding his eyes.

  “That’s all the man wants right now.”

  Jared wasn’t stupid, Doc knew. If he suspected that Miles was also going to Salina, he would never agree to the drive. Doc tried to look as innocent and guileless as possible as his son scrutinized him with those dark eyes of his.

  He felt like a man standing in the dock at court, waiting for Judge Jared to pass down his sentence.

  Chapter 9

  Jared Blaine walked to the nearby hitching post and unwrapped his reins. He led the creamcolored gelding he called Puddin’ back to where his father still stood.

  “Let’s take a look at the stock you brought, Pa,” he said. He glanced over at his father’s horse. “I see Sandy don’t look the worse for wear.”

  “He’s just thawing out,” Doc said. “We woke up to a blue norther this mornin’.”

  “It was fair and calm up here.” Jared climbed into the saddle and waited for his father to mount Sandy.

  Jared spoke to his men as he turned Puddin’ in a circle.

  “Make sure that steer don’t get out,” he said.

  “You want us to stay here with it?” Chet asked.

  “Draw straws,” Jared said, and rode off to catch up with his father, who had already started to ride to the south where his herd was bedded down.

  “So, you just want me to drive a thousand head to Salina along with your small bunch, eh, Pa?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Funny you didn’t ask Miles. He’s got more cattle than I do, I hear.”

  “Don’t you worry about Miles none, Jared. Later on, maybe he’ll make a drive.”

  “You always favored Miles.”

  “Not so, son.”

  “You sided with him with Caroline, when I wanted to marry her.”

  “I didn’t side with him, Jared. It was plain to me and your ma that Caroline had made her mind up to marry Miles. Me and Ma just helped out with the wedding is all.”

  “She should have married me.”

  “Well, she didn’t and that’s that. You should be over that by now anyway.”

  “I ain’t over it,” Jared said, “and I ain’t never goin’ to be over it. One day, that woman will run off and leave Miles flat. She’ll run right up to my ranch and we’ll pick up where we left off. For good.”

  Doc didn’t say anything. He could see that Jared’s feelings ran deep and he was still carrying a burned-out torch for Caroline. If he only knew that Caroline wasn’t the woman he thought she was, he might give up on that old worn-out dream. But he wasn’t going to feed Jared’s imagination by telling him that he suspected she was fooling around with one of Miles’s hands behind his back. He might just ride down there to Dumas and try to get Caroline to run off with him. It was too damned bad that this woman had come between his two sons, for he cared for them both very dearly.

  “You got a fine-lookin’ bunch of cattle, Pa,” Jared said as he looked over the herd. They were all bunched up, but not bedded down. They were gobbling grass like rabbits in the cabbage patch.

  “It’s about all I can rake up for this drive, but next year I ought to be able to put together a sizable herd.”

  “To drive to Salina?”

  “If that market opens up to us.”

  “You’re goin’ to fill me in on the details, I reckon. Who the buyer is and all.”

  “Yes, but I’m going to meet you in Salina.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. I haven’t met the buyer yet myself. I want to look over the situation and see if we can’t make regular drives to the railhead every spring.”

  “I could do that for you, Pa.”

  “You could, sure. But I got the buyer. I want to meet him face-to-face. Now I’m sending one of my men along with you. You have a choice.”

  “I could use an extra hand,” Jared admitted. “I know a couple of these boys.”

  “You can have Jules or Roy. Take your pick.”

  Jared looked at the men who were circling the herd at various places, all walking their horses slow.

  “Just one?” he asked.

  “Just one, Jared.”

  “I reckon Roy, then. He’s got a mite more experience than Jules. But they’re both top-notch hands.”

  “They are. I think you made a wise choice. Roy knows Kansas and he’s handy with a gun.”

  Jared jerked back in his saddle and stared at his father. “You expectin’ we’ll run into trouble? Gunplay?”

  “Not particularly,” Doc said. “We had some trouble down at the ranch a few days ago, and on the drive up here.”

  “How so?” Jared asked.

  “I had to hang a horse thief,” Doc said. “The man has, or had, three brothers, who want vengeance. They hit us south of here and I had to shoot one of them.”

  “Holy shit,” Jared said. “And what about the other two?”

  “They run off, but I probably haven’t seen the last of them.”

  “You think they’ll try and stop us?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I reckon they’ll stay pretty close to my ranch. They don’t know anything about the drive you’ll be makin’.”

  “A’ course we don’t know what we’ll run up against in Kansas,” Jared said. “We hear all kinds of tales from drovers who’ve been up there.”

  “I know,” Doc said. “Rustlers, highwaymen, toll takers at roads and rivers.”

  “I reckon some of them tales is true,” Jared said.

  “You and your men had better pack plenty of iron, just in case.”

  Jared nodded.

  “We will,” he said.

  Doc called out to Roy, who was coming toward them. Jules was riding in the opposite direction, while Dale and Randy were keeping an eye on cattle that kept straying from the herd and the water hole.

  Roy rode up and touched a finger to the brim of his hat.

  “Howdy, Jared,” he said.

  “How’d you like to go to Salina with Jared, Roy?”

  “Why, I wouldn’t mind. Ain’t been there in a while.”

  “I ain’t never been there,” Jared said. “How are the ladies?”

  “Very kindly, mighty sweet, most of ’em,” Roy said.

  “Good whiskey too?”

  “Good whiskey, and if you like the tables, they’ll take your money same as in Dodge.”

  All three men laughed.

  “We’ll start the gather first thing in the morning,” Jared said. “You know where the bunkhouse is.”

  “Seems like I remember it,” Roy said.

  “What about my cattle?” Doc asked. “Leave’em here?”

  “I’ll get Paco to drive them up to where w
e’ll take off. You and your men can stay the night if you like.”

  “I don’t want to leave the ranch too long with your ma all by herself. We’ll bunk on the trail back.”

  “You got that river to cross, Pa.”

  “I know. It was still wet when we left it a while back.”

  Jared laughed. “You know, Pa,” he said, “you’re still a tough old coot.”

  “I still got black hair on my chest if that’s what you mean.”

  Jared slapped his father on the back. He looked at the western sky. “You say you run into a blue norther this mornin’, Pa?”

  “We turned blue in it,” Roy said. “That’s for sure.”

  “Well, look at that sky. Them winds didn’t just come from nowhere. They’s a storm building up out west sure as shootin’.”

  Roy and Doc saw the bulging elephantine clouds that were forming on the western horizon. They were turning black and the sun was gilding their edges as it sank toward the distant mountains, the Rockies, on its path to the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

  “Will that stop you from leavin’ in the mornin’?” Doc asked.

  “It might. It will sure as hell swoll up the rivers if I read it right. Be a muddy start.”

  “I’d like to get that bonus money on our cattle,” Doc said.

  “Well, this is still April, Pa. We got better’n a month to make it to Salina.”

  “I’m countin’ on it, son.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Roy, you come with me. Pa, I’ll send Paco back with some hands to run your cattle in with mine. You tell Ma I said howdy, will you? I’ll be sure and come down to see her when we get back from Salina.”

  “She’ll be happy to see you, Jared. Good-bye.” Doc paused. “And good luck.”

  “Will I be needin’ it, you think?” Again, Jared’s piercing gaze with just a cloud of suspicion floating in his eyes like those swollen black thunderheads on the far horizon.

  “We can always use a little luck in this life, Jared.”

  Jared’s eyes slitted down tight and he turned away. He and Roy rode off to the north. Jules rode up then.

  “So, Roy’s going to make the drive,” he said.