Winchester 1886

by William W. Johnstone

  “Don’t touch my rifle, Tyron,” McNally warned him.

  The Circle C-7 foreman brought his own beer, but no bottle, introduced himself as Ferdig, and pulled up a chair. “Mr. Clements didn’t say nothing to me about hiring a couple wolfers.”

  “Ya got wolves, don’t you?” McNally finished his beer. “I knowed that even jus’ from the string a carcasses we seed ridin’ up here.”

  Mr. Clements had not exactly sent for the two wolfers, but a cowhand who had quit the Circle C-7 and lighted down Tascosa way for the winter, had mentioned the wolf problem on the ranges of western Nebraska.

  When Ferdig did not answer, McNally laughed. “Word come all the way down t’ Tascosa ’bout yer troubles with wolves. ’Em wolves can be a pest. ’Specially when a winter’s bad as this’n.”

  “Might be,” Tyron chimed in, “that when yer steers start birthin’ baby cows, ya won’t have no little cows to round up. They’ll all be breakfast fer a pack of vicious wolves.”

  “Steers don’t birth baby cows,” Ferdig told them.

  “Well, ya gets our meanin’.” McNally flagged the waitress over. “Three more beers, lady. Ain’t that right, Mr. Ferdig?”

  He didn’t like it, but the foreman nodded at the waitress, and finished his own beer.

  “What’s your price?” Ferdig asked.

  “Well,” McNally said, “I hear the bounty is—”

  “No bounties. Tails or pelts. Two years back, we found some wolfers we hired were showing a part to one of the magistrates for payment, then going to the next county and showing another part of the same wolf to collect from that magistrate. Mr. Clements pays per pelt or tail.”

  “I swan,” Tyron sang out, “some wolfers ain’t got no pride, an’ give us honest tradesmen a poor name.”

  “What’s your price?” Ferdig repeated.

  McNally chuckled. “We ain’t greedy. Goin’ rate’s five dollars a pelt an’ ten cents a tail. Don’t want no advance. We’ll take our pay when we brings in our haul first a spring.”

  Ferdig leaned forward. “The going rate is two dollars a pelt and half a cent per tail.”

  Leaning back in his chair, McNally shook his head, then turned to look at his partner. “Ya hear that, Tyron?”

  “I heard. Reckon the markets a-glut since we left Texas.”

  “Reckon so.”

  Ferdig leaned back and let the waitress deliver the three beers. “On my tab, Charlotte.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Ferdig,” Tyron said as he practically lunged for the beer.

  The waitress left. Ferdig did not drink.

  “You use wolfhounds?” Ferdig asked.

  “Nah.” McNally sipped his beer. “Dogs cost money. Eat too much. Rough work, too, ridin’ hard, tryin’ t’ keep up with a pack a wolfhounds.” He laughed and gestured toward his partner. “’Sides, Tyron here, he don’t eat as much as dogs, though he does have just as many fleas.”

  “Shut up, McNally. Ya’s one t’ talk.”

  “Ya best hold yer tongue, Tyron.” He patted the Winchester’s stock.

  Ferdig waited until the two men had sipped more beer, letting the tension pass.

  “Mr. Clements don’t like strychnine,” the foreman told them. “I don’t neither. You can trap the wolves, but come spring, you take your traps with you. And if you use poison, Mr. Clements and me and our boys will ride you down and make you two eat it.”

  “Trappin’s fine,” McNally said. “Tyron an’ me, we don’t cotton to strychnine, neither. Hate the stuff. Ain’t no sport in p’isonin’ no deer or cow carcass. Tyron an’ me, we’s professionals. An’ I got this.” He patted the Winchester’s stock.

  Ferdig merely glanced at the rifle, then pushed himself up from his chair. “I’ll see you come spring.” He strode back to the bar, leaving McNally and Tyron to finish their beer and wait for that bar gal with the poor attitude to return. She never did.

  They set up camp a few miles southeast of town near the two lakes—imaginatively named East Lake and West Lake—that some land developers had connected with a four- to six-feet-deep ditch.

  Camp was a Sibley tent they had stolen when Tyron had deserted from some infantry outfit stationed in Missouri. They picketed their animals near the ditch, breaking the ice so the horses and mule could drink. They laid out their traps, figuring they would find likely spots to distribute them the next morning, cooked a supper of salt pork and beans, and then retired to the tent to finish the bottle of whiskey they had splurged on down in Alliance.

  “Dead deer on tuther side of that ditch,” McNally said. “Ya see it?”

  Tyron shook his head and blew on his fingers. The little stove he had stolen from a mercantile in St. Francis had yet to heat up the tent. “Expect it froze t’ death.”

  “Afore ya go t’ sleep t’night, ya stick some strychnine in ’im.”

  Tyron lowered his fingers. “Didn’t ya hear what that ramrod tol’ us ’bout p’isonin’ such things?”

  “Yeah. But we gots all that strychnine we taken from that outfit on the Pecos River.”

  Tyron shook his head.

  “Two dollars a pelt and half a penny a tail,” McNally reminded him.

  Tyron grinned. “It’s a blessin’ from the Lord.”

  The way Tyron and McNally decided things over half the bottle of forty-rod liquor that would blind most men, they’d only use a little bit of the strychnine. Unless there came a real hard blizzard or cold front. If they came across a dead carcass, they would just naturally poison it. Make things easy.

  They planned to set traps along the ditch and on the two ponds where they found any wolf tracks or droppings in the snow.

  “We gonna do things like we done down in Texas?” Tyron asked.

  “Certain-shore,” McNally said. “We come ’cross a she-wolf with some pups, we jus’ kill the pups. Let that she-wolf find herself a mate this spring or summer, an’ give us some more business.”

  “Providin’ we stick around here,” Tyron said— which meant providing the good citizens and upstanding ranchers around Hay Springs didn’t run them out of the state.

  Down in Texas, they had laid down a line of strychnine more than a hundred miles north to south, but it was a right smart warmer down in Texas than it was around East Lake and West Lake. And those Texians weren’t so high and mighty when it came to things like strychnine as that Ferdig and Mr. Clements seemed to be.

  So McNally and Tyron used the poison modestly. They did shoot one steer, even saw it branded the Circle C-7, and packed it with strychnine, but not until after they had carved up some beef and removed the hide that revealed the Hereford’s brand. A rich rancher like Mr. Clements could spare one bony steer.

  When the cold front broke, lifting the temperature to thirty degrees, and the sun reappeared, Tyron and McNally left camp. They had managed to poison twelve wolves, but the carcasses were too frozen to skin, so they piled the bodies behind the tent, and covered them with snow.

  A week or so later, they rode to West Lake and followed wolf tracks in the snow, hoping the tracks would lead to a den. There, they could kill any pups, and let the mama live to bring them more business.

  No such luck, though. They found the wolf, a he-wolf, by one of the springs. Upwind of the cur, McNally slid from the saddle and tugged out the big Winchester. He aimed over the saddle—his horse was seasoned to gunfire, and he wasn’t walking anywhere in that snow. He pulled the trigger.

  The wolf fell dead.

  Tyron pulled his fingers from his ears, shaking his head. “That sounds louder than the cannon they used t’ fire at that fort in Missouri.” He whistled, then saw McNally on his knees, rubbing his shoulder. “Ya hurt?”

  McNally’s ears were ringing, and his shoulder throbbed from the Winchester’s savage kick. He cursed the rifle, which lay in the snow in front of him, and looked up at Tyron. “Gun like t’ ’ve tore my arm off at the shoulder.”

  “Ya gots to hold it tight agen yer shoulder, pard. Won’t kick so hard iffe
n you does that.”

  “Ya ain’t tellin’ Rafe McNally how t’ shoot no rifle, you two-bit peckerwood.”

  “Well, ya’s the one a-writhin’ on the ground.”

  “Ain’t writhin’. Gun jes kicks like a mule.”

  “Maybe ya should lets me shoot it. I knows how to handle a rifle.”

  “I’ll give you tuther end of this ’ere gun.” He grimaced, had to bite back the pain, wondering if that .50-caliber cannon had broken his collarbone, but managed to pick the Winchester out of the snow. Still, he had to use the rifle, butting it against the ground, to push himself back to his feet.

  Still on his horse, Tyron cackled.

  “Shuts yer trap!” McNally told him.

  “Ya’s a sight,” Tyron said, still laughing. “Ain’t seen ya hurtin’ so since that barkeep in Abilene broke ya nose with ’is bung starter.”

  “I whupped him, though. Sure as I’ll whup ya.”

  “Yeah. Sure ya did. That’s how come I had to drag yer carcass out of that bucket o’ blood to the livery stable in town.”

  “Shuts yer trap.” McNally brought the Winchester up, even though bracing that hard crescent-shaped butt against his shoulder pained him something fierce, and jacked a round into the chamber. “Ya gets to that wolf I jus’ kilt—or I’ll be stuffin’ yer carcass with p’ison for ’em wolves t’ feed on.”

  “Ya oughten not to talk t’ me like that, McNally.” Tyron practically pouted. “We’s pards. Been pards for quite a spell now.”

  “I’m gettin’ a mind to dissolve this ’ere partnership.”

  Tyron swung down from the saddle, his boots crunching the snow. “That there rifle’s changed ya, McNally.”

  “Jus’ fetch that wolf. Ain’t as cold as it’s been. Might be able to skin ’im.”

  Drawing the curve-bladed knife from his sheath, Tyron smiled a broken-teeth grin. “Might not be jus’ a wolf I skin this day.”

  McNally laughed, keeping the rifle trained on his partner. “Skinnin’ knife ag’in’ this ’ere Winchester. Who ya reckon’d win that fight?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Deadwood, South Dakota

  He had a Winchester ’86 in .45-70 caliber, a Colt revolver that fired .44-40s, $128.32 left, and a job.

  Not much of a job, especially for a deputy U.S. marshal, but working in the mines got him three squares to eat, a bunk to sleep in, and the room he rented at the hotel was warm. Winter had been cold, hard, and miserable.

  Jimmy Mann had found the trail of Danny Waco in Chadron, Nebraska. Seems that sometime in November, four men had robbed the bank there of $1,320 in script.

  “Four men?” Jimmy had asked the county sheriff. “Not two?”

  “I think the cashier knows how to count,” the sheriff had said, and Jimmy had to laugh at that one.

  “Two wore masks. Grain sacks over their head. Figured them to be local boys. The other two didn’t care who saw them. Slim fellow with crazy eyes, and a tall hombre with a Smith & Wesson.”

  “That would be Danny Waco and Gil Millican.”

  The lawman had shrugged. “Possible. They didn’t introduce themselves. We lit out after them, but they crossed into the Pine Ridge Reservation, and that was as far as my badge carries me.” He had leaned over to spit tobacco juice into a spittoon. “Maybe the Sioux scalped them.”

  No such luck. Jimmy had crossed the White River and moved into South Dakota, into the Black Hills, warming himself and his bones in Hot Springs, then up to Hill City. He had seriously considered riding to Sturgis to see if he might run into Shirley Sweet, but he thought that he was too close to catching up with Danny Waco. Knowing Waco, Jimmy figured the outlaw would have gone to Deadwood.

  If he had, he wasn’t there anymore. No one remembered seeing him, but people in Deadwood had short memories. Waco might have been here, probably had, but Deadwood wasn’t as wild as it had been back in the ’70s when Jack McCall had sent Wild Bill Hickok to his Maker or even the’80s. Men and women in mining towns had never been overtly friendly to lawmen, especially deputy marshals practically a thousand miles out of their jurisdiction.

  Besides, nobody wanted to get on Danny Waco’s bad side, if in case he did show up in Deadwood.

  So where would Waco be? Belle Fourche? Even farther north into one of the ranching towns in North Dakota? Or Canada? Montana, maybe? Miles City or points east? And were those two local boys he had pulled in to rob the Chadron bank still with him? Those were all questions Jimmy had asked himself.

  He had considered heading out for the cattle town of Belle Fourche, but then the first blizzard hit. Deadwood, nestled in the Black Hills, was pretty much protected from the rough winters that could turn the Northern Plains of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana into a white, freezing hell. Maybe Danny Waco would get caught in a snowstorm in Montana and freeze to death.

  Jimmy hoped not. He wanted to be the one that ended Waco’s life.

  So Jimmy decided to wait out the winter in Deadwood. Earn some money. He had hated accepting that handout from Shirley. But not the rifle. He loved the Winchester ’86, once he managed to push those lousy memories out of his mind, and it shot true. His nephew would love handling the weapon. Yet taking money from a woman galled him. But he needed cash.

  So he earned it. Twelve hours a day in a pit. He didn’t drink. Didn’t gamble. Hardly ate. The work was grueling, but Jimmy liked it. He added muscle. Stamina. Even resolve. And his wounded hands got tougher, stronger. Yeah, he would be ready for Danny Waco come spring.

  Few of the miners talked to him, and he never sought out conversation. He retired to his room with newspapers, scanning the print for any mention of the outlaw or any murder, bank robbery, train robbery, anything.

  Nothing showed up . . . but it was winter. Likely Waco had been forced to hole up somewhere, too.

  Spring would come. Jimmy Mann knew that. Spring would come, and he’d pick up Waco’s trail. That had always been easy.

  He just followed the dead men.

  Hay Springs, Nebraska

  They ate wolf steaks, fried up in wolf grease. Wolf stew, seasoned with wolf grease. McNally always called it “an acquired taste,” but it didn’t cost much. Of course, they knew to eat only the wolves they had caught in traps, or those McNally shot with the .50-caliber Winchester, not the ones they managed to get with strychnine.

  They were careful about the poison. Didn’t want anyone with that big ranch to learn they were using the stuff, and when they found a dead coyote or dog or anything by one of the carcasses they’d stuffed with strychnine, they always carted it back to camp and burned it in the fire. The ground remained frozen too hard to bury anything, and, well, neither McNally nor Tyron really cared much for digging.

  “I gots an idea-er, McNally,” Tyron said one bitterly frigid night in February.

  “Yeah?” McNally alternated between cleaning the Winchester and sipping the jug of whiskey they’d traded a wolf tail for from some passing colored boy that had just mustered out of the Army.

  “Well, we cut offen that wolf tail for that jug ya’s a-hoggin’ . . .”

  McNally cursed and tossed the jug to his pard.

  After downing a couple swallows, Tyron smacked his lips—though the hooch was awful—and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat “Well, I was thinkin’ that maybe we could cut offen the tails of a few more. Tell that segundo at that big ol’ ranch that that wolf, well, she musta jus’ gnawed it off or somethin’ like that. He gots the skin an’ all, an’ I’d ’spect he’d think, that iffen that wasn’t the case, iffen we was a-lyin’ t’ him, well, all we’d get was a half a penny. Ain’t no skin offen his nose.”

  Again, McNally cursed. He set his rifle on the folding desk they’d erected in the tent.

  “Fer a half-penny?” He shook his head. “Toss me that jug.”

  Before he obeyed, Tyron took another long pull on the forty-rod.

  As McNally drank, Tyron said, “No, it ain’t fer jus’ half a penny. See, what we
does is we takes that tail down south.” He shivered. “An’ sooner the better iffen ya was to asks me. Didn’t think it’d get this blasted cold up here. But say we take that wolf tail down to Ogallala or Dodge City or someplace likes that. Where they still gots magistrates payin’ bounties on wolves. We show ’em that tail, and they ain’t that particular. So we get whatever they’s payin’ bounties.”

  The jug came to rest on the table near the rifle. McNally wiped the snot from his nose, mustache, and beard. “An’ what happens if they don’t pay us no bounty?”

  With a shrug, Tyron said, “Then they’d pay us the half-a-cent fer the tail. Don’t ya reckon?”

  McNally replied with a grunt and reached for the jug once more.

  “Half a cent more’n we’d make if we taken the whole skin to that Ferdig gent at the Circle-somethin’ outfit we’s a-workin’ fer.”

  “Half a cent,” McNally said in disgust.

  “Adds up,” Tyron told him.

  “You think that Ferdig’s a fool? How many wolves do ya think ’d gnaw off their own tails?”

  “It ain’t like we’d tear offen all ’em tails. Just a few. Got us, what, thirty-forty wolves already. And ten-twelve coyot’s we’ll pass offen as wolves. Plus ’em three big dogs ya p’isoned.”

  “I ain’t p’isoned ’em dogs. Ya done it!”

  “’Cause ya tol’ me t’ do it.”

  “Didn’t say p’ison no dog.”

  “Well, I didn’t tell that dog to eat that bad meat. None of ’em dogs.”

  “Well, they’s deader ’n dirt, sure-nuff.”

  “Yeah, an’ ’twas yer idea-er to pass ’em off as wolves.”

  “Bes’ hope the owners don’t come a-lookin’ fer ’em.”

  “Mangy as ’em curs was, they was strays is all.”

  “Well . . .” McNally had another drink.

  “’Spect we’ll have us a hunnert or more by spring. Ya taken two-dozen tails. That’s . . . what?”

  It took some studying. Might buy them two draught beers . . . if all they got down south was half a penny. But if they sold those tails for a full bounty, well, that would add up a mite. Of course, McNally would never let Tyron know that idea he’d come up with wasn’t such a bad one after all. Might work.