Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  The last thing Clabe saw just before he fell asleep was Walrus’s fat hand. It stuck out of Walrus’s blanket. On the ring finger burned a big white diamond.

  Mitch

  Sly Mitch smiled to himself as he played around with it in his mind. He would do it. He would pull their leg and at the same time show Jesse he wasn’t afraid of Cain. Jesse once might have hoped that Cain would rejoin him and become his new foreman, but he, Mitch, would show Jesse he wasn’t buffaloed by a Hammett.

  The same morning the raiders left Casper to go north, Mitch left the Derby ranch to go south. Mitch bade his goose of a wife good-bye, and his little boy, and saddled up and rode over the hill. He wore his .45, butt out, under his yellow slicker, and his rifle, butt to the front, under his left leg. He carried the rifle on the left side to have it handy should he have to shoot quick when he got off.

  He rode a dun-gray, a color that blended well with the fresh spring sagebrush. The dun-gray was a big fat snorty boy. Until put into a full run, he ambled along in a half-racking half-shuffling gait. Despite a touch of the weed, which caused him to whistle when he breathed, which sometimes even led to puffing flights of temper, the horse had a very high life. Mitch called him Whistling Bullet.

  Every now and then Mitch climbed a crest and got out the field glasses for a look around. To the west the Big Stonies still gleamed white with winter snows. To the east the Cucumber Hills were turning barren gray. He saw no riders, coming or going. He did see Derby cattle and occasionally threw them to the right toward the mountains where the grazing would be better. A good horseman, he never went faster than a trot. He had a long way to go.

  As he headed along, meadowlarks fifed at him from all sides. Some even whistled at him from overhead. He hardly noted them.

  It was just dusk of the second day, Thursday, when he guided Whistling Bullet across the gurgling Shaken Grass toward Cain’s cabin. Whistling Bullet’s iron shoes chinked loud on the pebble slope. Some snow and rain had fallen and the ground breathed with the sticky fumes of spring. He saw smoke hanging low over the cabin, saw a light in the middle window. He glanced toward the barn. There were no extra horses in sight that he could see.

  He rode up to the door and reined in. “Hello in there. Anybody home?”

  The door opened inward and square carven-faced Cain stood in it. Cain looked up at him.

  Mitch said, slanted eyes smiling, rolling his sloping shoulders under yellow slicker, “I come to pay back your visit of last fall.”

  “Step down. The beans are on. And there’s an extra bunk, I guess.”

  “I don’t need a bunk. I’ve got my bedroll with.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Home alone?”

  “Nope. Harry and Tim are here. Why?”

  “Just wonderin’.”

  “Step down. You can put up your hoss in the barn. Plenty of hay down, I guess.”

  “Thanks.”

  After he had stalled Whistling Bullet, and curried and fed him, Mitch bowlegged it to the cabin. He found Cain and Harry and Timberline around a plank table, hats off and lamplight in their faces, talking low and already eating. They clammed up when he entered.

  Mitch threw his bedroll on the floor in a corner, set his rifle behind the door, laid aside his hat and slicker and coat. He also took off his six-gun and hung it over a chair. He saw that the others around the table were still armed. He smiled.

  Mitch washed up in a basin on a stand. He dried himself on a towel made out of a two-bushel canvas sack. He noticed that the towel was extraordinarily clean for a bachelor’s den. Many and many a time he’d found towels so stale and dirty in line camps he’d had to dry himself on his shirttail.

  Cain set out a plate and pushed a pot of beans and some fried bacon in a black pan and a plate of sourdough biscuits toward him. “Nothing fancy tonight,” Cain said.

  “Looks plenty good to me,” Mitch said, pulling up a hide-bottom chair. “After a long day’s ride beans sometimes looks better than homemade ice cream.”

  “That’s a gut,” big Timberline grunted. The kerosene lantern in the center of the table burned with a weak flickering orange light. It cast a rosy glow over the bald dome of Timberline’s head just above the timberline of his red hair. When Timberline swallowed, muscles tight on his skull moved under the bald spot, making it look as if the brains underneath were troubling around.

  Mitch noted that Harry wore his customary flashy clothes: pink shirt, checkered vest, yellow bandanna, blue trousers, studded belt, and the inevitable red silk sash. A wary smile seemed to be lurking in Harry’s eyes. Mitch felt more at ease with Harry than he did with the others. Cain in his blacks was too solemn for him. Timberline with his great red beard was too big and wild for him.

  A fire burned in the fieldstone hearth. Three Winchesters leaned against one side of it while a violin stood against the other. All four walls of the log cabin had been carefully chinked with sticky gumbo and then whitewashed. Even the floor had a scrubbed look, while the table and chairs gleamed hand-clean. Clothes, leather straps, belts hung neatly in rows from pegs along the outer wall.

  Harry caught Mitch’s roving eye. “You can thank Cain for having the place all red up. He’s something of a woman that way. Drinks too much wild mare’s milk.”

  Cain’s lips held steady under his heavy mustache.

  “Wild stallion milk, you mean,” Timberline said.

  Harry laughed. “Well, I guess a stallion is neater than a mare at that.”

  After the meal, Mitch and Cain and Harry shoved back and rolled themselves smokes. Timberline took a chew. Cain put another dry cottonwood log on the fire. Presently the chinking in the wall crinkled from the rising heat. Rain pittered on the dirt-covered pole roof overhead. Some water worked through occasionally and once a drop fell exactly in the center of the table.

  They watched the fire. They sat, wary. They moved slow, smoking, chewing, scratching.

  Mitch said, “I’m on my way to Irv Hornsby’s. He’s putting on a party there.”

  Harry’s bright gray eyes laughed at him. “Think there’ll be much of a crowd there?”

  The question startled Mitch and he showed it. “That I wouldn’t know. I hope so. The more the merrier, you know.”

  Mitch noticed that Cain kept stroking a long braid of black horsehair lying across his lap. It was one of the longest quirts he’d ever seen. Cain stroked it over and over, softly, as if both in reverie and in loving memory. Mitch remembered the time Cain quirted him in the presence of Jesse high on the Red Fork.

  Slyly, perverse, Mitch thought to rib him about it a little. “See you got yourself a new quirt, Cain.”

  “What? Oh. Yeh.”

  “Just braided, I see.”

  “Yeh.”

  “Long black hair. That come from your fancy riding horse Lonesome?”

  “Yeh.”

  “That from his mane or his tail?”

  “Parts of both.”

  “Got any left for sale?”

  “No.”

  “You fancied Lonesome.”

  “I did.”

  “What happened?”

  “Rode him too hard too long.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeh.” Cain’s eyes shone. “He was a dandy. Could run all day. Good for a hundred miles and still be ready for the next day. Wish I had a picture of him.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Let’s change the subject. It’s too sad to think about.”

  Timberline grunted to himself, then roused up and asked, pig eyes rolling at Cain, “How’s your new ridin’ hoss workin’ out?”

  “Who? Whitefoot?”

  “Him.”

  “Not too good.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He acts ground shy. Like he’s afraid the grass might tickle his feet.”

  “Maybe it’s them white hoofs of his’n. I’ve heard say they don’t wear like black ones.”

  “Could be.”

 
Mitch asked, “How is he otherwise?”

  “Who?”

  “Whitefoot!”

  “Oh, him. Oh, he tries.”

  Silence.

  Mitch wished he hadn’t asked about the new black quirt. He sought around in his mind for something else to talk about.

  Harry seemed to have caught his unease. Harry sat smiling like a possum eating yellowjackets. He put both hands around his own neck, and gestured.

  Mitch blanched. He let his slope shoulders slide.

  Harry said, “You Derby boys planning to join our early roundup next month? In May?” Harry’s eyes glittered with mocking laughter.

  It was a good shot and it hit home. Mitch shivered. What a bold devil that Harry was. There was no shame in him whatever.

  Timberline picked up a mail-order catalogue and began paging through it. He stopped at the women’s corset section. He looked wonderingly at the women’s underwear. He stared at the women’s hosiery.

  After a while Timberline broke out of his rapt gazing. “Yep. There’s some born shorthorn, and some born longhorn, and even some bighorn. That’s the luck of the draw. Me, I’m beginning to be glad I’m getting plain old.”

  Harry laughed.

  Presently Mitch got up and spread out his bedroll and slid into his suggans.

  Mitch felt down. His legpull about turnabout hospitality hadn’t come off. It burned him that Harry could always outface him; that Cain acted as if he hardly knew he was around.

  Hunt

  Hunt raged inside.

  It was Friday noon at Irv Hornsby’s ranch. The sky had cleared off. The footing was dry again. And just as plans were being completed for the raiders to make a run for it, hoping to get to Antelope before dawn and catch Sheriff Sine and Judge Traves and all the townsfolk still in bed—just then, that sneak Mitch Slaughter came riding in with his idea.

  “The party ought to make a detour west and nab ringleaders Cain and Harry Hammett and big Timberline on the way in,” Mitch suggested. “The beauty of it will be we can bag ’em all in one grab. Hang them and you’ve got half the war won.”

  It was like throwing a red rag in amongst a bunch of already mad bulls. The whole thing exploded into the open.

  Except for the few men tending horses and supplies in the barn, most of the raiders were gathered around the big square table in Irv Hornsby’s living room. Irv and a group sat on one side, Jesse and his bunch sat on the other, with the glowering Texans sitting in a corner. Hunt himself sat alone by the fire. Most of the men were smoking cigarettes and cigars, and the pole roof ceiling was almost hidden by a fog of smoke. Irv had set out several bottles of whisky and everyone, except a man named Champagne, had a glass of it in hand. Champagne had taken along his own liquor, a bottle of cognac. The country room stank like a saloon.

  Irv was swearing drunk. He said, loud, coarse, “Mitch is right. Let’s saddle up and first put on a party at Shaken Grass. Hck. Right now.”

  Walrus nodded. “I think Mitch’s right too. We can easy nab them on the way in. And with little loss of time.”

  Jesse stomped his bad leg on the floor. He was in severe pain. “Maybe my opinion don’t count. But I think it’s a durn-fool stunt.”

  “Why?” Irv demanded, contorted face rolling forward. “I think it’s great idea. Hck.”

  Jesse reared back his proud head. “I’m for taking over the fountainhead at Antelope first. Make sure of the rustler capitol. As well as the help I got lined up waiting for us there.”

  Irv whacked his short square hand hard on the table. All the bottles and glasses jumped. “And I say the fountainhead is over t’Shaken Grass.”

  Walrus nodded. “Hang those three rascals over at Shaken Grass, Jesse, and you’ve just about broken the back of the Bighorn rebellion.”

  Jesse appealed to Hunt by the fire. “What do you think?”

  Hunt’s lips thinned. The whole thing was obvious to him. His eyes glowed. “Jesse is right. We should march on Antelope first and seize the sheriff and the judge and all the records and install our own men. Then we take our time rounding up the strays.” To emphasize his points Hunt tapped his glass with the stem of his pipe. “And there’s this too. Suppose no matter how careful we are trying to nab Harry and Cain and Tim, suppose one of them somehow got away? Why, we’d be done for. One of them getting away would spread the alarm all the way to Antelope and we’d have a thousand wild men on our necks.”

  Jesse said, “Hunt’s right. And Mitch, you durn fool, I ought to fire you for wanting to make this a personal grudge war. I know you got it in for Cain, special, and in its time that’s all right by me, but right now we want to keep our eye on the main play. We’ve all come this far to wipe out the rustlers the best way we know how, the whole kit and kaboodle of ’em, and we’ll get around to your Cain at the proper time and place.”

  Mitch threw Hunt a vicious look. “Knowing how some of us hate Cain’s guts, 1 only thought it would be handy to nab them on the way in.”

  Hunt stiffened proud in his chair. “Mitch, I guess I don’t have to tell you I think I got better reasons for getting Cain out of the way than you. Yet I still say, march onto Antelope first.”

  Mitch lowered his head and snickered, sly. “That warrant for your arrest comes first then. Not Cain the ringleader of the rebellion.”

  “Shut up, Mitch,” Jesse bellowed.

  Tough young Ike leaned forward on his side of the table. He and his Texans had been listening with increasing restlessness. “I thought we were going after bad men.”

  A sudden chill moved through the big ranch room.

  Ike turned his bland yet deadly gaze on Walrus. “Have you got warrants for the arrest of these so-called rustlers?”

  Silence.

  “I wonder if you all know that some of our grandpappies got their start rustlin’. Right after the Civil War.”

  Walrus looked across at Hunt

  “Or is this a personal grudge war after all, like Jesse here let slip?”

  Walrus’s fat face swelled very red.

  “Have you got those warrants? If you ain’t, count us out.”

  Walrus couldn’t look Ike in the eye. “Hunt, here, he’s got the warrants. Ask him.”

  Ike looked at Hunt. “Have you?”

  Hunt blinked. “I’ve got them in my saddlebags.”

  “Get ’em. We want to see ’em. Now. Pronto. Or we’re pulling out. Pronto.”

  “Here, here,” Jesse said. “Let’s not lose our heads now. We’re among friends.”

  “ ‘Friends’?” Ike echoed.

  Bat broke in, “Hunt, you have got them?” Bat began to look very worried.

  Irv tossed down another full glass of whisky. His face was almost black with rage and alcohol. “T’hell with whether we got warrants or not. The main thing is that we’re out to break up them blackhearted rustlin’ Red Sashers and I say let’s nab ringleader Cain and his boys on the way in.”

  Bat said, white, quiet, “You have got them, Hunt?”

  Hunt sat immobile. He stared down at the fire in the hearth.

  Young Doc Exon broke in next. His pink face was lined with new and sudden anxiety. “You mean there are no warrants?”

  Silence.

  Doc Exon tried to catch Jesse’s eye. “You mean, in some people’s minds there is some doubt that these men are rustlers?”

  Irv swore. “Of course Harry Hammett and Timberline are rustlers. Hells bells, ain’t they the head guys in the Red Sash Gang?”

  “But this Cain Hammett you mentioned. What about him?”

  More silence.

  “Or is he one of these small but honest stockmen we sometimes hear about?”

  Jesse stomped his sore leg on the floor again. “Cain was elected foreman of the illegal roundup he and his bunch are going to hold next month. A full month too early.”

  Doc Exon pressed still more. “ ‘Illegal’? You mean, the roundup they are going to hold is against the laws of the state?”

  “Well, not exac
tly against the state. But it is against the rules of the State Cattleman’s Association.”

  Irv snapped, “It’s the same thing, Jesse.”

  Doc Exon pushed in further. “Well… what makes the rules of the Association more legal than, say, the rules of Cain Hammett’s group?”

  “Enough of this!” Walrus cut in. “If you want my opinion, I’d say we ought to take a vote on it. Those in favor of marching on to Shaken Grass first—”

  “Now wait a minute!” Jesse roared, pushing back his chair. He turned on Walrus as if he were going to draw on him. “You goldurn ass. Take a vote and you’ll split this party wide open.”

  Irv roared out then too. He in turn pushed back his chair and faced Jesse. “You bloody blockheaded bustard! This is my ranch and what I say goes. We’re headin’ for the Shaken Grass first.”

  Walrus turned to Ike. “Well, and what do you say?”

  Ike said, “If you got the warrants, I don’t care where we go first. Just so we get down to business.”

  Jesse snarled, “Irv, you old rumhound you, if you want to make a fight of it, go ahead, draw, and be durned to you.”

  Irv whitened along the edges of his nostrils. He turned slowly in his chair. His hand hung, ready to go for it.

  Walrus jumped to his feet. His pouch belly almost popped with it. “Wait! Wait now!” he roared. He waved smoke away from his face to see the better. “Wait! Let’s have no foolishness now. As long as I’m in command there’ll be no fightin’. If there’s any fightin’ to be done, I’ll do it.”

  “You and whose army?” Ike drawled.

  At that point Doc got to his feet. He was white. His lips trembled. He looked terribly upset.

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Walrus said.

  Doc shook his head, sadly, and stumbled toward the door.

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Walrus called again.

  “Back to Cheyenne.”

  “But why? We may need a doctor come tomorrow.”

  “That’s just it. You fellows are planning a murder. And not the defeat of rebels. The more I listen to you fellows talk, the more I’m convinced that Cain Hammett and his boys have their side too. I don’t doubt that they’ve done wrong. Yes. But yours is going to be the greater wrong. You’ve taken the law into your own hands. You seek to win by force what Cain and his boys already have won by the ballot. No, not for me.” And with that Doc left the room.