by Gene Shelton
The knee wasn’t broken, just badly sprained. His whole body was an impressive collection of bruises and scrapes that ached and stung. It seemed to Jim that he wore more bandages than skin at the moment. But he was still alive. He could stand a little pain, considering how it could have worked out.
Jim’s only complaint now was that the small adobe house was too crowded for comfort. And the crowd was drinking up a month’s supply of his coffee. That stuff is expensive , Jim grumbled to himself. Figured cup against shot glass it cost more than good whiskey.
Sheriff Cape Willingham lounged against one wall. Constable Henry Brown sat at the table, polishing off the last piece of Hattie’s dried-apple deep dish pie. LX foreman Bill Moore fidgeted in a hard chair across from Brown. Lem Woodruff, the lean young cowboy whose dark eyes twinkled with mischief and an almost constant grin that flashed stark white against sun-browned skin, sat on the fireplace hearth. He cradled a coffee cup in both hands and smiled at Jim.
Hattie darted from one visitor to the other, refilling mugs. Jim noticed the frown crease her brow as she served Henry Brown. Hattie disliked Brown as much as he did, but it was part of her nature to feed everybody who came calling at the East adobe. It seemed to Jim that every animal from stray pups to out-of-work cowboys stopped at the East place. None went away hungry.
“How you feeling, Jim?” Willingham asked. There was genuine concern in his tone.
“Like I’ve been dragged by a horse,” Jim said. The cuts inside his mouth tasted like copper and his swollen lips had trouble forming the words. “But I reckon I’ll make it. I’ve got a good nurse.”
Willingham smiled at Hattie. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
Moore finished his coffee and reached for his hat. “Jim, Bates and Beales have agreed to keep you on the payroll until you’ve healed enough to ride again. They’ll pay you top hand rates.”
“Tell them I said thanks.” He watched the foreman leave. He welcomed the news Moore had brought. Not many of the big ranch owners would keep paying a bunged-up cowboy when he couldn’t work. But Jim wasn’t especially unhappy to see Moore walk out the door. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Bill Moore would rather have seen him dragged to death.
Lem Woodruff stretched and yawned.
“Guess I better get back to cowboying. Sitting around listening to Jim East try to grow skin isn’t near as much fun as chousing stock.” He turned to Hattie. “Thanks for the coffee and hospitality. Missus East. Take care of that broken-down saddle tramp over there. I sure would miss having him around. Keeps life on the drift wagon exciting.”
Woodruff started for the door.
“Lem, did I say thanks?” Jim asked.
Lem shrugged. “De nada. Do me a favor sometime and we’ll call it even.” Woodruff lifted a hand in salute and strode from the cool adobe into the blazing sun.
The sheriff pushed away from the wall and handed his cup to Hattie with a nod of thanks. “By the way, Jim,” he said as he reached into his shirt pocket and produced a sheath of bills, “I finally got a definite identification on that rustler you killed. It was Bud Cochran. Real hard case. Killed three men in Nebraska besides the store clerk in Kansas. There was a two-hundred-dollar bounty on him. It’s yours.”
Jim shrugged and immediately winced. The bruised shoulder let him know that wasn’t a good idea. “Give it to Hattie. She’ll put it in the house kitty.”
Hattie took the money with a nod of thanks. “Part of this is going into a fund to try to get a doctor to come to Tascosa,” she said. “Lord knows we need one, with kids getting sick and breaking bones and cowboys who keep getting into one mess after another.”
Willingham turned to his deputy. “Better start your rounds, Henry,” he said. “Time to check out the goings-on in Hogtown. Saturday night, you know. I’ll be along shortly.”
Brown grunted, pushed back his chair and left without a word, not even thanking Hattie for the pie and coffee. The sheriff waited until the door closed behind the deputy, then turned back to Jim.
“Thought you might be interested to know Billy the Kid’s dead, Jim. Just got word in from New Mexico this morning. Pat Garrett caught up with him last week—night of the fourteenth—at Pete Maxwell’s place in Fort Sumner. Shot him twice. Billy died almost as soon as the slugs hit him. Also, Dave Rudabaugh broke out of jail. Rumor is he headed for Mexico.”
Jim sighed. “Billy was right, then. He told me when the shackle rivet popped that he would die and Rudabaugh would go free. Billy also told me he would never hang.”
“Just as well it worked out that way for the Kid and everybody concerned,” Willingham said with a frown of disgust. “Saved New Mexico the expense of a hanging. Jim, I’ll never understand people. They’ve already started to make some kind of hero out of Billy. Like he was something more than a small-time bandit turned killer. Makes no sense to me. I guess you knew Billy about as well as anybody besides Garrett.”
“I knew him well enough,” Jim said. “Billy was a likeable sort, but I don’t think I’ll waste much time mourning over him.”
“Anyhow, he’s buried alongside Charlie Bowdre and Tom O’Folliard at Fort Sumner. Good riddance, as I see it.” Willingham reached for his hat. “Jim, if you need anything, just let me know,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee, Hattie. I’d better get back on duty.”
When Willingham had gone Jim shifted his backside in the overstuffed chair and groaned aloud. Any movement at all seemed to rekindle the fire in the knee and put a fresh edge on the axe in his chest.
Hattie came to him and traced a finger along a patch of unbandaged stubble on his jaw. “Are you comfortable, Jim? Is there anything I can do?”
Jim patted her hand. “I’m all right. I just need a little time to get the pieces back together.”
Hattie squeezed his hand in reply, then set about washing the dishes. A soothing silence fell on the adobe house. Jim was glad to finally be away from the center of attention. It made him uncomfortable.
After several minutes Hattie looked over her shoulder, her forearms buried in dishwater. “That does it, Jim East,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Uh-oh. Am I in trouble again?”
“Except for darn near getting yourself killed again, no. I was just thinking. If you’re going to insist on chasing outlaws, getting shot at and crippled up anyway, you might as well get paid more for it. I had some doubts before but I didn’t voice them. Now there’s no question in my mind. You’ll make a good sheriff, Jim.”
Jim grunted. “Well, at least I’ll have some time to study on it. Looks like it’ll be a spell before I get horseback again.”
Tascosa
September 1881
Jim East limped along Main Street, savoring the cool of the morning. It was his favorite time of year, this brief bridge between the fading days of summer and the onset of autumn. A few cottonwood leaves already showed the first tinges of yellow that would turn them into splashes of burnished gold before the first strong north wind stripped them to the bones of winter.
The knee still pained a bit when he turned it a certain way, but it was almost back to full strength. Jim had gone through a bout of moving around on crutches, then to a stout cane, and finally was able to walk without any help from man-made legs. The bruised shoulder was only a memory now. The cracked rib had healed except for an occasional twinge and most of the skin he had left on the Coldwater had grown back. Nothing like nearly getting dead to make a man appreciate life , Jim thought.
His daily walks served a double purpose. They strengthened the knee and kept him in touch with the town’s supply of local gossip. He was pleased with the way the leg was healing. He wasn’t quite so happy with the turn Hogtown had taken.
Tascosa proper had never been exactly tame, but it hadn’t been all that wild. Not like Dodge City or Ogallala at trail’s end in the old days. Upper Tascosa occasionally had its share of brawls in the three saloons now in operation, and sometimes a cowboy grew a little too much whiskey hair and t
ried to tree the town.
Hogtown was a boar from a different litter.
While Upper Tascosa grew, Hogtown boomed. There were at least three whorehouses in operation now, not counting the one-girl or two-girl stables that worked the smaller saloons or ran their own business from their homes.
Ranger Captain Arrington’s cleanup of Mobeetie had contributed the most to the growth of Hogtown. Gamblers, swindlers, and drifters who had no visible means of support other than somebody else’s livestock or pocketbook had doubled Hogtown’s population in the last few months. The women who made their livings on their backs followed. They went by names such as Frog Lip Sadie, Gizzard Annie, Rowdy Kate, Midnight Rose and Box Car Jane, among others. Throw a mixture like that in with a bunch of off-duty cowboys who had a month’s wages burning holes in their pockets and most anything could happen these days in Hogtown.
Upper Tascosa’s growth was watered from more respectable streams of commerce. New merchants moved in to share the gold spent by the big ranches. Freight wagons lumbered in almost daily from Dodge City to the north, Fort Worth to the southeast, and Mobeetie downriver. Others rumbled west toward New Mexico. Cattle buyers crowded the hotels and boarding houses, and there was an almost constant flow of salesmen of all lines of goods into and through Tascosa.
Mexican craftsmen and laborers sweated and prospered. Six days a week they built new adobe homes, businesses, corrals, even pig pens and chicken coops. On Sundays they stopped work to attend Catholic services in Casimiro Romero’s sprawling double-adobe home on the hill north of Hogtown.
The civic leaders of Tascosa proper were still trying to lure a doctor to the community. There was still talk of building a church and a school. Jim had no reason to believe they wouldn’t succeed. Tascosa’s civic pride ran high and optimistic. Almost to a man the town leaders were convinced that soon the railroad would come. After all, they reasoned, there was no better crossing of the river than at Tascosa. The gentle slope of valleys to the north and south meant a shallower grade for the rails to follow, without the expense of cutting through sheer bluffs that stretched up and down the river.
Tascosa seemed destined to become a metropolis on the grassy plains. There was even talk of an opera house. But so far, Jim reminded himself, it was still a small adobe village dependent on the cattle trade. And it still had its share of poverty.
Jim paused outside the North Star Restaurant on Main Street as the door swung open and Cape Willingham emerged, a toothpick jutting from beneath his thick mustache. Might as well get it done, Jim thought. He returned the sheriff’s nod of greeting. “Got time for a private talk, Cape?”
Willingham grinned. “Sure. Haven’t had a single bit of trouble yet and it’s already past seven o’clock in the morning.” He waved to a bench beside the door. The narrow sidewalk was stained a brownish black with the residue left from the daily meetings of the local spit-and-whittle club. “Take the weight off the knee, Jim. Doing better?”
Jim sat and stretched the injured leg out before him. “Better every day. I’ll be back in the saddle in a week or so. Maybe sooner if Hattie picks up a butcher knife and runs me out of the house.”
Willingham chuckled. “Does get a might tiresome just sitting around listening to your whiskers grow. What’s on your mind?”
Jim took a deep breath. “Cape, I’ve been asked to run against you next election. I thought I’d tell you in person before word started to get around on the street. That’s not to say I think you haven’t been a good sheriff. It’s just that—well, some of the cowboys have asked. Nothing personal between you and me.”
“Hell, Jim, I know that,” Willingham said. He plucked the toothpick from his mouth, flipped it into the street and reached for his battered pipe. “Doesn’t take any real genius to see trouble’s coming between the cowboys and the big men. Everybody knows the association ranchers back me. Makes sense the punchers would want somebody in office who savvies their side. If I was chasing cows I’d want the same thing. “ He paused to light the pipe and puff it into serious action. “Don’t reckon there’s any need to ask you to keep the campaign clean?”
Jim shook his head. “I hadn’t planned on letting it get nasty. Didn’t figure you would either, Cape. No need to badmouth each other. That would mean I’d have to lie about you and the job you’ve done. If I’ve got to lie to get a job I don’t want the damn thing. Thought we might just put out the word that we’re both candidates and let the voters pick.”
Willingham sucked at the pipe and nodded. “Sounds fair.” He grinned around the pipe stem. “What the hell. It’s a long time to election day. Both of us could get killed before then.”
EIGHT
Texas Caprock
August 1882
Jim pulled the big buckskin to a stop on the high bluff overlooking the Valley of Tears.
The broad stretch of rugged, brush-studded country below had gotten its name in the days when Comanches ruled the Texas High Plains. It was here that captive families were separated among different bands to make escape attempts less likely, or were traded for goods offered by Comancheros.
Jim swung from the saddle to rest his knee and let the horse blow before the steep descent from the crest of the Caprock.
The knee still ached after several hours in the saddle. Jim had resigned himself to the notion it would give him trouble for a long time to come. His concern now wasn’t the dull pain in the knee. It was the long, winding trail of dark shapes in the distance.
Jim was taking his turn at what the cowboys now called the “Winchester Quarantine.” The Texas Fever had been especially bad this year and the Panhandle Cattleman’s Association decided to crack down on the movement of trail herds through their own grass. Except for a four-mile-wide corridor from the southern Plains through Tascosa and on to Kansas, all cattle trails through the Texas Panhandle were now closed.
Jim understood the cattlemen’s concern. Texas Fever could wipe out a whole herd in one season. No one knew what it was, but they knew it followed the trail herds north from central and southern Texas. They had no real choice but to stop the herds from crossing their lands—or, at best, confining the drives to the one narrow strip. The only way to do that was by association decree backed up by rifle and handgun.
Jim doubted that the owners cared much about his worries. Nothing to it, he thought. One man, one Winchester , to stop a trail drive of more than a thousand cattle herded by a dozen men armed to the teeth. Just another working day in the life of a Panhandle cowboy. He sighed, flexed the knee once more, and swung back into the saddle. He reined the buckskin toward the narrow trail that snaked down the side of the Caprock to the floor of the valley some six hundred feet below. The horse stopped and snorted, head down and ears pointed toward the steep trail.
“I know, Buck,” Jim said as he patted the horse’s neck. “I’m not real crazy about the idea myself.” He touched spurs to the buckskin’s ribs.
An hour later he pulled the lathered gelding to a stop to let the animal catch his wind. He could feel the horse’s heart thump against the inside of his knees. While he waited for the horse’s breathing to settle, Jim pulled his rifle from its boot, checked the loads, and stared toward the herd in the near distance. He slipped the rifle back into its sheath. Most men got testy if you rode up on them with a gun in your hand. Jim knew from experience that trail bosses were testy enough to begin with. He kneed the buckskin into motion.
He rode at an easy trot toward the herd, making no attempt to conceal his approach. He lifted his fingertips to his hatbrim as he neared the lead rider, a lean and weathered old-timer who rode easy in the saddle. The man’s saddle and chaps were as trail-worn and scarred as the rider himself, Jim noted. Cold blue eyes rode above a skewed nose that appeared to have been broken more than once.
“Howdy,” Jim said.
“Howdy.” The tone was as chilly as the pale blue eyes.
“You the boss of this outfit?”
“I’m him. Name’s Wade Turne
r. I got all the hands I need, you’re looking for work.”
“Wish it was that simple, Mister Turner.” Jim’s voice was calm, but he felt the yips in his gut. One of the point riders rode up, hand on the butt of a Colt at his belt. “Afraid I’ve got some bad news. I’m Jim East of the LX. Rep for the Panhandle Cattleman’s Association.”
Wade Turner twisted his head and spat. The spurt of tobacco juice knocked a tarantula from the side of a rock. “Don’t like bad news, East. Speak your piece.”
Jim glanced at the point rider. The man had eased his pistol from the holster and held the weapon at his side, thumb on the hammer. “The association’s put a quarantine on trail drives through the Panhandle, Mister Turner. There’s one strip set aside. If you agree to keep your herd in that strip, we’ll lend you any extra hands you need as long as you’re on association range. Otherwise, you have to turn your herd back to Doan’s store and trail north through Indian Territory, or go south of the Panhandle to New Mexico and then turn north. Or hold your herd here until first frost.”
Turner glared in silence at Jim. A mixture of anger and disbelief burned in the pale blue eyes. “Now, that’s kind of a high-and-mighty attitude, ain’t it?”
“I suppose it seems like it. But we’ve had a Texas Fever problem up here, Mister Turner. The Panhandle ranchers don’t want to lose any more stock.”
Jim had begun to wonder if the trail boss could stare down an owl before Turner finally blinked. “Suppose I tell you and the association to go to hell?”
Jim shrugged, trying to ignore the man with the pistol. “I do my best to stop you.”
Turner’s jaw muscles twitched. The lines deepened in a face the color of worn saddle leather. “You got some help to do that little chore?”
“No. Just me.”
“Look around, East. I’ve got a dozen hands here, all packin’ iron. Don’t see how one man can stop me.”