‘How come you never went back for her?’
He shrugged. ‘Time passed. And now? I’ve hanged or killed a number of men. Deserving or not, I don’t feel worthy of a gal as innocent and virtuous as her. That’s what I’m saying about Marie – I wouldn’t be all that picky about my wife’s history, not if she loves me.’
‘Yeah, I see.’ Shane grinned. ‘You’ve got a temper too. I don’t remember the last time I cussed anyone out.’
‘I believe it was the day that one new-hire took a rope to swat at Beauty, ’cause he didn’t like her tossing his hat!’
Shane chuckled. ‘You’re right. I was ready to light into him about that.’ He shrugged. ‘I should have warned him about the mare’s playful antics.’
‘You and that horse put on a good show for the folks’ anniversary. Won’t ever hear me argue about how much memory a horse has. Beauty was just as good as the time you had her perform at Brimstone.’
‘Wonderful animal,’ Shane praised. ‘It’s a shame she’s getting along in years. I’ll bet I could make a lot of money traveling around and doing a show with her.’
‘Well, enough of this pining and daydreaming.’ Jared turned to the business at hand. ‘Let’s get our slickers on. We need to keep on the trail of those cattle.’
‘The rain has already washed away most of the tracks. What if this storm destroys what little tracks we have to follow?’ Shane uttered a groan. ‘Besides which, if the rustlers have already crossed the river it’s gonna be too high for us to ford with all of this rain.’
‘Animals always leave a trail,’ Jared replied confidently. ‘It might be a track or two under the shelter of a sagebrush, or a cow patty that doesn’t quite wash away. No, sir. We’ll follow them until they reach their destination – no matter how long it takes!’
Singeon Pegg counted out the remainder of the money he had promised Mantee. The man stuck the wad of bills into his jacket and showed a wide grin.
‘This is gonna keep us in high style for a few weeks. How long before you can use another fifty head?’
‘If you grab that many again, you’ll have to keep them at the ranch to graze for a spell. It will be at least a month before I can move so much meat and catch up with the rendering from the last bunch. It takes time to process so many head at one time. And I told you, if I end up shipping product to another city, I end up working for nothing.’
‘Too bad,’ Mantee said. ‘That Barrett ranch had at least fifty more steers ready to send to market. With a couple of the boys knowing the ins and outs of the place, we could hit them a second time and pick up the rest of the herd.’
Pegg’s brow wrinkled in thought. ‘Barrett?’ he repeated the name. ‘That’s where these beef came from?’
‘Yeah. You remember – used to be run by a snotty-nosed kid, Robby Gowan, and his mother. They didn’t know which way was up when it came to ranching.’ He guffawed. ‘Boy-howdy, that there Robbie and a couple of men used to round up a few head and sell them real cheap. I used to buy ten or twenty head on the sly for less than half of what they were worth, just ’cause he wanted some spending money. Rex and Dekay earned more working for him than the ranch work paid them.’ He shrugged. ‘When the Barrett gal got her place back, Rex and Dekay were fired. They joined up with us right after that.’
‘Barrett you say?’ Pegg scowled in thought. ‘I remember reading something about the Barrett situation in the Denver paper.’ A sudden chill rushed up his spine. ‘That was Trina Barrett’s place – the gal Robbie and his mother tried to have stuck in that crooked lunatic asylum!’
Mantee grunted. ‘Yep, that’s the one.’
Pegg’s eyes bugged. He unexpectedly leapt forward and grabbed two fistfuls of Mantee’s jacket front. ‘Are you out of your mind!’ he wailed, shaking him violently. ‘Holy hell, Mantee! Do you know what you’ve done?’
The rustler stumbled backward from the sudden assault. ‘What?’ he cried. ‘What!’
‘Trina Barrett married a Valeron a couple months back. One of the Valerons!’
Mantee’s complexion blanched. ‘The Valerons,’ he muttered their name almost reverently. ‘Ah, for the love of . . .’ He slowly shook his head back and forth. ‘I didn’t know, Pegg! I didn’t know!’
Pegg placed a hand on his forehead, trembling with a sudden and uncontrollable panic. ‘We’ve got to work fast,’ he rasped. ‘This is bad! Very bad!’
‘Rex and Dekay didn’t say nothing about the gal hitching her wagon to . . .’
Pegg waved the man to silence. ‘It’s too late for laying blame – we’ve got to act!’
Mantee showed a cowed expression. ‘Tell me what you need us to do.’
‘You get your boys over here and lend Everett a hand – we need every one of those beef gone – and I mean right now!’ Mantee bobbed his head eagerly and Pegg continued. ‘Soon as the last steer is skinned, you gather up every last hide and get them all over to the tannery. Tell Hank to process them immediately. We can’t allow a single one of those hides to be seen while the brand is readable. You tell him our lives – and his! – depend on it.’
‘We’ll get it done!’ Mantee promised, licking his lips in trepidation. ‘Me and the boys will do exactly as you say.’
‘Let’s hope we have enough time.’
Mantee bobbed his head a second time. ‘We made a trail halfway to the Western Slope before we crossed the river and come back. Figure at the least, a four- or five-day head start. It means we should be in the clear for at least another two or three days – that’s even if some tracking fool does manage to follow those beef.’
‘Get after it!’ Pegg reiterated. ‘And make damn sure Hank understands the importance of getting those hides processed!’
Mantee rotated to go out the office door, but Pegg stopped him. ‘And one more thing,’ he warned. ‘Soon as those cattle are taken care of, you best pick up a few head of stock, enough to make it look like you have some cattle on hand. If the Valerons start snooping around, you will want to look legitimate.’
‘I hear you,’ he replied. ‘We’ll buy a few head and stick our brand on them.’
Pegg watched the man leave and began to pace the floor. He would have to ask his father to help, along with the Gallegos woman, and work with Larson himself. That was an awful lot of beef to process, and they had very little time to get the job done. He slammed his fist into an open palm.
Of all the fouled-up messes – the Valerons! He stopped long enough to stare at the closed door. Another worry. Mantee said they had killed a couple of cowpunchers when they stole the small herd. If it was only stolen cattle, there was a chance the Valerons would give up the hunt . . . in time. But if Mantee and his boys had killed someone close to the Valerons?
Pegg swore under his breath. He knew, if that were the case, they would never quit. Eventually, him, Mantee, and even Hank Grubber would pay the full price. From everything he’d read or heard about the Valerons, when one of their own was harmed, they didn’t quit until they had extracted full and total retribution.
Don dragged himself through the door, so tired he had nearly fallen asleep on the ride home. It was all he could do to put his horse in the small corral and make sure there was plenty of grain and water. He wasn’t surprised to find Gayle had been dozing on their worn divan. She jumped up at his entering the house and hurried over to put her arms around him.
‘Donny!’ she murmured. ‘I thought you’d never get home!’
‘It’s been a very tough week,’ he said. ‘I never cut and packaged so much beef in my life.’ He hugged her briefly, then moved to the kitchen and collapsed on to a chair.
‘I’ve got some fresh bread and leftover stew warming on the stove,’ his wife told him. ‘I didn’t know when you would get home.’
He heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll try and eat a few bites . . . if I can stay awake.’
‘What is going on?’ his wife lamented, stepping back to study his haggard condition. ‘You go to work at daylight and
don’t get home until ten or eleven at night. You can’t keep this up!’
‘It’ll be easier in a few more days,’ he told her, taking a chair at the table. ‘The locker is the fullest I’ve ever seen – must be sixty sides of beef hanging in there. I didn’t know it would hold that many.’
Gayle began to dish up a generous portion of stew onto Don’s waiting plate. ‘But working on Sunday? Mr Pegg can’t expect you to work these horrific hours for much longer. You’ll be down sick from lack of rest and sleep!’
Don took a bite and began to chew. ‘Like I said, it’s real strange. Both Pegg and his father, along with Mrs Gallegos, worked with me to cut and package the meat most of the day again. We don’t even have orders for most of the stuff. Three extra guys lent Everett a hand, plus his usual helper. Ingram has both of his cousins working for him and Louie hauled a ton of meat into town to try and get rid of it at a discount price. That’s not the way Pegg operates.’ He grunted. ‘He only cuts his prices to run somebody out of business – like he did us!’
‘I haven’t heard of any new meat markets opening,’ Gayle said.
‘No . . . this is something else. Everett mentioned that Pegg told him he wanted to get rid of the beef in the holding corral as fast as he could. When I asked him if he knew why, he said there must have been a special demand from the tannery. He finished off the last of the cattle today, and one of the men who usually works at the Big M ranch left with a wagon full of hides for Hank’s tannery, and it was already dark. I mean, this makes no sense at all.’
‘Maybe Everett is right. There might be a huge order for hides and the tannery needed to fill it in a hurry.’ His wife remained thoughtful. ‘Or it could be the need for tallow.’
Don sighed. ‘I don’t know. Tallow demand is a possibility, but it takes quite a long time to cure the hides, what with the soaking, removing the hair, and the rest of the process. I have to wonder how many hides they can handle at one time.’
‘Are you going to get paid extra for working Sunday?’
‘Pegg promised both Everett and me two or three days off this coming week and a little bonus as compensation for the extra hours. I don’t know about Ingram.’ Don managed a weary grin. ‘Maybe you can get the kids the new shoes you’ve been wanting to buy.’
‘They can do without new shoes,’ she grumbled, ‘so long as they have a father! I hate seeing you work this hard.’
‘Like I said, honey,’ he soothed her ire, ‘the worst is about over. With the balance of the meat in the locker, we should be back to simply filling the weekly orders in a day or two.’
Gayle offered him her usual supporting smile. ‘I’ll be looking forward to those days off. We might even work in a picnic or fishing trip with the kids.’
‘Sounds great!’
‘Now you finish up and get off to bed. You’re only going to get five or six hours sleep . . . and I don’t want you too tired to enjoy the time off!’
Don finished the last bite from his plate, kissed his wife, then headed for bed. His back ached from bending over the chopping table, his hands were so stiff he couldn’t make a fist, from using the cutting knives and doing packaging, and even his legs complained from the long hours of standing.
He collapsed on to the bed, thinking he would be asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. But the nagging concerns remained. What did it mean, all the drive and haste concerning this last batch of cattle? Something surely wasn’t right.
Chapter Five
The two Valeron men left their horses and crept forward on foot. After studying the place for a short time, Jared grunted his disappointment.
‘We missed our chance. The cattle were only at the ranch west of here overnight – no more than a day or two, before they ended up here.’
‘The pasture next to that old ranch house still had grass and all of the cow chips were fresh,’ Shane agreed. ‘It’s for certain the steers weren’t kept there very long.’
‘It’s the end of the trail.’ Jared remarked, pointing to the empty holding corral behind two buildings. ‘That’s where the Double B cattle met their end.’
‘Looks like a fair-sized slaughterhouse,’ Shane said. ‘What about that blocky building on one side? It looks like it’s made out of railroad ties.’
‘Storage house of some kind – probably a meat locker.’
‘I’ve heard of them, but never seen one. Must be like the new railroad cars, the ones that keep meat and fruit cold.’
Jared sighed. ‘Dag-nabit! Not a single steer left.’ He studied the place a bit longer. ‘And the freight wagon bed is empty – not a hide in sight either.’
‘Already shipped to a tanning place?’ Shane wondered. ‘They must have worked awfully fast. We couldn’t be more than three or four days behind them.’
‘Yes, it hurt us, having to wait a half-day for the water to drop enough to cross the river. The cattle thieves got across before the heavy rain.’
‘So what now?’ Shane wanted to know. ‘Do we go in there tomorrow with guns drawn and demand answers?’
‘Tip our hand and we lose what little surprise we have on our side. From the looks of it, this slaughterhouse has been here a long time. That means the owner likely has contacts and support in Denver.’
‘Pa told us how the city was wide open for a good many years,’ Shane recalled the stories. ‘Big business, gambling halls, a few crime bosses running things . . . even after the police department was formed.’
‘In a city of any size, there’s always a few corrupt men in positions of power. However, Pa knows Governor Pitkin. That will give us some leverage of our own.’
‘To do what?’
‘Brands have to be registered,’ Jared pointed out. ‘That means we not only have a bunch of murdering rustlers, it would appear we also have a crooked slaughterhouse and maybe a tannery to deal with as well. Can’t go after one without the other.’
‘It’s a big place!’ Shane declared. ‘The corral would easily hold fifty head of cattle!’
‘The tannery is probably a good-sized operation too.’
‘Jer, these people probably do business with every store, shop, market, hotel, work-gang and mining company for miles around!’
‘Yes, they provide a lot of meat, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have competition. Plus, with the governor on our side, the law will have to do their job – whether they are inclined to look the other way or not.’
‘OK, cuz,’ Shane said. ‘You’ve obviously got some kind of plan. I’ll follow your lead.’
‘Soon as someone figures out that we’re involved, they are going to be watching the ranch and keeping an eye peeled for any of us Valerons.’
A light glimmered in Shane’s eyes. ‘Hence the reason for all the hurry to get rid of the beef and hides.’
‘That would be my guess,’ Jared said. ‘I believe it’s best to play this like a game of tag in the dark – if they don’t see or hear you move, the guy who’s watching for you won’t know where you are.’
‘Speaking of dark, we wouldn’t have seen this place if not for the lights. It looks as if someone is still there.’
‘Likely a night watchman. They probably have a full meat locker.’
‘There were a couple guys leaving when we first arrived. How long do we wait? It’s plain to see they’re finished with all of the killing and skinning.’
‘And the hides are already gone.’ Jared rubbed his stubble of beard, the remnant of having not shaved for several days.
‘What now?’ Shane wanted to know.
‘Let’s find the tannery. If this is their main supplier, it will likely be a couple miles down the road.’
It took thirty minutes and was well past midnight by the time Jared and Shane approached the cluster of buildings.
‘That’s it,’ Jared said quietly. ‘You can tell by the smell – it’s the tannery.’
‘What now?’
‘Let’s tie off our horses over in that chaparral,’ Jared directed,
tipping his head at a secluded cove where the animals wouldn’t be seen.’Then we will have us a look-see.’
After a thorough check, they discovered there was a lone night watchman. He had retired to the office and was having coffee. They watched him for a few minutes, until he put his feet up on a desk and began reading the paper. After making a circle to stay out of his sight, Jared and Shane reached the perimeter fence.
‘Not the best of help,’ Shane whispered. ‘Someone could steal the stove out of the same room. He wouldn’t notice till he got cold.’
‘What’s to watch?’ Jared said. ‘Probably hired to keep the wild animals away from the hides. There isn’t much else of value to steal.’
‘The five-foot fence around the perimeter would keep most larger animals out,’ Shane replied. ‘What are we looking for?’
Jared didn’t reply to his question, climbing carefully over the fence. Once his cousin had done the same, he pointed to the beamhouse portion of the structures. ‘Let’s hope they have some hides that aren’t already soaking in the liming solution. Once the hair and excess meat is removed, it will be next to impossible to prove where the hides came from.’
‘Right! If we find some Double B brands. . . !’
The declaration didn’t need completion. The phantom duo crossed the darkest part of the yard and found their way through an open window. The smell was enough it about gagged them. Both pulled their bandannas up over their noses to help fight the stench.
With a lighted match, they went through the building and checked the vats and stacks of hides. It appeared all of the hides had been either cleaned and de-haired or were soaking in the brine solution. Trying to determine the brand was a waste of time. Even so, Jared was certain these were Barrett cattle hides.
‘Now what?’ Shane asked, trying not in inhale. ‘I don’t see any fresh hides waiting to go into a vat. They’ve covered their tracks.’
Jared led the way back outside. It took but a glance to see the watchman was still reading the newspaper. They returned to their waiting horses the way they had come.
The Valerons--Retribution! Page 5