He rolled his cigar in his teeth and looked around the plaza. Finally he took the cigar from his mouth. “Have you any more money?”
“Just a few hundred dollars.”
“You want to buy more cattle?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at the end of his cigar. “All right, Tyler.”
He reached in his pocket and took out a small sack.
“There’s a thousand dollars in that. Buy cattle for me, too. We want to leave here by the fifth.”
As I started to swing my horse, he spoke again, only just loud enough for me to hear. “You the man who killed Rice Wheeler?”
For a moment I sat very still in the saddle. Then looking around at him, I nodded.
“Knew him,” Bennett spoke abruptly. “He killed my saddle partner at Red River Crossing four years ago.”
Riding out of town, I felt the weight of that sack of gold. It was the first time anyone had ever trusted me with money, and he had merely turned and tossed it to me. Yet it was more than trust of money. He was trusting my judgment to buy well. It gave me a good feeling.
A week later I had bought few cattle. The areas close to San Antonio had been swept clean, and all I had been able to send in were thirty head, all good stock but nothing like what we wanted for the drive. So I pushed on, hoping for better luck.
The country was wild and lonely, occasional chaparral , but mostly open country, broken and rugged. Ranches were scattered, and some of the small ones were merely rawhide outfits without enough cows to bother with.
The air changed and it began to look like rain.
By nightfall the clouds were hanging low and they were spitting a little rain, so I started the gray to moving along and dug my slicker out of my bedroll. I’d taken to wearing both guns, but only one in its holster. The other I tucked behind my waistband, the butt out of sight under the edge of my coat. It was added insurance, because I was carrying another man’s money and was never one for trusting to luck. I’d helped bury a few men who did.
This was rough country in more ways than one. During any day’s ride a man would come up to several horsemen, mighty hard-looking men. Most of them, by the look of them, had been up the creek and over the mountain.
The wind was blowing, splattering rain ahead of it, and I was thinking of something to crawl into when I heard cattle. Just the restlessness of a good-sized bunch, and some lowing from cows. Then I saw the hard outline of a roof gable, and just off the road loomed a large house.
In a flash of lightning it showed itself square and solid, built of sawed lumber.
To one side there were corrals and a lean-to, and beyond, in an open place that was walled on three sides by bluffs was the herd. Catching glimpses by the heat lightning, I saw the steers were big and rangy, and they looked like young stock. It was a herd that might run to six hundred head.
And then the rain hit. She swept in with a roar, the solid sheets of water striking like blows on a shoulder , and I raced the gray to the lean-to and swung down.
Here, partly out of the storm, it was quieter except for the roar of rain drumming on the roof. The lean-to was partly faced, and there was shelter for several horses. I found a place and tied the gray, and then I slopped, head down against the rain, to the house.
There was a light gleaming faintly behind a shutter, so I banged on the door.
Nothing happened.
I was standing in the rain, as there was no porch, only a slab of rock for a doorstep. Dropping my hand to the latch, I pressed it and stepped in, closing the door. I was about to call out when I heard voices. I heard a man saying, “You pay us now or we take the herd.”
“You’ve no right!” It was a woman’s voice, protesting.
“You were to be paid when the herd was delivered and sold.”
Outside rain drummed on the roof. I hesitated, feeling guilty and uncertain of what to do, but the conversation held my attention. It was also my business. This was cow talk and I was looking for cows.
“We done changed our minds.”
In the tone of the man’s voice there was something hard, faintly sneering. It was a voice I did not like, and quite obviously the voice of a man talking to a woman with no man standing by.
“Then I’ll simply get someone else to handle the herd. After they’re sold, you’ll be paid.”
“We ain’t gonna wait.” The man’s voice was confident, amused. “Anyway, who would you get? Ain’t nobody gonna handle them cows if we say they ain’t.”
I felt mighty like a fool, standing there. But this woman had a herd to sell, and it looked mighty like I’d be doing her a favor to buy it right now. But it was not going to make me any friends among those men.
“Anybody to home?” I called it out loud and there was silence afterward, so I walked through the door into the lighted room.
There were two women there. One I guessed it was the one who had been doing the talking was standing.
She was young, and, in a plain sort of way, an attractive woman. The other woman was older. She looked frightened and worried.
There were three men, a rough-looking outfit, unshaved and dirty. All of them were looking at me.
“You didn’t hear me knock,” I said, taking off my hat with my left hand, “so I took the liberty of coming in out of the rain.”
“Of course… . Won’t you sit down?” The young woman’s worry wasn’t making her forget her hospitality. “We haven’t much, but “
“He won’t be stayin’,” the big man said abruptly. “We got business to talk. Nothin’ for strangers to hear.”
Before she could speak up, I took the issue by the quickest handle. “Heard some talk of selling cattle,” I said. “I’m buying. How many and how much?”
The big man had heavy shoulders and a blunt, powerful jaw. There was a cross-eyed man and one m a gray shirt. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like me.
“You heard wrong.” The big man did the talking. “We’re selling in San Antone.”
Ignoring him, I looked at the young woman. Her eyes were wary, but hopeful. “I take it you’re the owner. I’ll buy the cattle here and save you the drive. I’m buying for Bennett, and he’s the only one buying in San Antone now.”
From an easy steal it was beginning to look to the three men like a total loss. The big man was getting red around the gills and the others were showing their anger. So I took the play right away from them.
“Ma’am, coming in like I did, I couldn’t help overhearing some of the talk. Seems you hired these men to round up the cattle, to pay them when the cows were sold. That right?”
“It is. “
“Now you look here!” The big man stepped toward me, his lips thinned down.
“I’ll buy your cattle,” I said to the young woman. “I’ll buy them as they stand according to your tally. I’ll pay cash.”
“I’ll sell.”
I swung one foot just enough to face all three of them.
“The cattle are sold to me,” I said. “You’re fired.”
“You-”
“Shut up!” I took an easy step toward the big man.
“I’m paying you off right now. You worked for wages, and I’m paying your wages. Want to make something out of that?”
It had them flat-footed. I was no defenseless woman, and while I might look young, that gun on my hip was as old as his.
“We got no argument with you. You didn’t hire us, you can’t fire us.”
My eyes stayed right where they were, on him. But I spoke to her. “Ma’am, will you sell me those cows?”
“You just bought them,” she said quietly.
“The price,” I said, “will be mutually agreeable.”
The man in the gray shirt was inching his hand down.
Some signal seemed to pass between them and the big man started to move. So I shucked my gun and laid the barrel across the side of his jaw. He went down as if he’d been hit with an ax, and my gun muzzle dropped on the other tw
o.
“The fewer there are,” I said, “the fewer I have to pay.”
They wanted to try me. They wanted it so bad they could taste it. Maybe if they both tried, they might take me, but somebody had to make a move-and nobody was anxious to die. And there is something about a man who knows what he intends to do, who knows what he can do. Burdette had seen it in me, and Logan Pollard had seen it long ago. These men could see it now, and they hesitated.
The man on the floor groaned. Slowly the gray-shirted man let his hand relax.
“Pick him up,” I said, “and get out.”
The man in the gray shirt hesitated. “What about our money?” he asked.
“They were to get thirty a month,” the young woman said. “They worked about three weeks.”
With my free hand I counted out twenty-five dollars per man. “Pick it up, and if one of you feels lucky, start something.”
They could see I was young, but this was John Wesley Hardin’s country, and he had killed twenty men by the time he was my age. They didn’t like it, but I was too ready, so they picked up their money and got out.
I followed them to the door and watched them get their horses.
“Don’t get any ideas about those cattle,” I said. “If anything happens to them, or to any part of them, I���ll hunt down all three of you and kill you where I find you.”
Waiting in the doorway, I listened to them move down the road, then went back inside.
The two women were putting food on the table. The young woman turned on me. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks very much.”
It embarrassed me, the way they were looking at me, so I said “Seven dollars a head?”
“All right.” She pushed the tally sheet across the table.
It was for 637 head. “How will you get them to San Antone?”
“Hire riders.”
“There’s nobody. Those were the Tetlow boys. Nobody wants trouble with them.”
“Rona, we might get Johnny,” the older woman suggested, “and we can both ride.”
“All right, Mom.” Rona turned to me. “I’ve been riding since I was six. We can both help.”
So it was like that, and I took the herd into San Antone with two women and a boy of fourteen helping me. Bu t I had an old mossy-horn steer leading and he liked to travel. He was worth a half-dozen riders.
Bennett paid Rona himself, glancing at me from time to time. When he had paid her off, the two of them turned t o go.
Rona held out her hand to me. “Thanks,” she said.
“They were all we had.”
One of Bennett’s hands came in. “Tyler,” he said, “you want those cows-”
Something stopped him. I guess it was the way everybody looked. Everybody but me, that is. Bennett’s face went kind of white, and both the women turned back again to look at me. We stood there like that, and I was wondering what was wrong.
And then Rona said, “Your name is Tyler?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Not Ryan Tyler?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked at me again, and then she said quietly , “Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Tyler.” And then both women walked out.
Bennett took his cigar from his teeth and swore softly, bitterly. Then he put the cigar back in his mouth and he looked at me. “You know who they were?”
“Who?”
“That was Rice Wheeler’s widow … and his mother.”
Chapter 9
WE, POINTED THEM north across the dry prairie grass, three thousand head of them, big longhorns led by my tough old brindle steer. We pointed them north and took the trail, and it was a good feeling to be heading north and to know that I owned part of the drive; that at last I had a stake in something.
After the first week the cattle settled down to the pattern of the drive. Every morning at daybreak that old mossy-horn was on his feet and ready, and the first time a cow hand started out from the chuck wagon he turned his head north and started the herd.
It was a hard, tough life, and it took hard men to live it. From daylight to dark in the saddle, eating dust, fighting ornery cow stock, driving through occasional rainstorms and fording rivers that ran bank-full with tumbling water. But we kept them going.
Not too fast, for the grass was rich and we wanted them to take on weight. Sometimes for days at a time they just grazed north, moving the way the buffalo moved, taking a mouthful of grass here, another there, but moving.
Two hundred and fifty head of that stock were mine, wearing no special brand. Depending on prices, I could hit the other end of the trail with between five and seven thousand dollars, and that was a lot of money. And it was real money, not gambling money.
New grass was turning the prairies gray-green, and there were bluebonnets massed for miles along the way the cattle walked, with here and there streaks of yellow mustard.
The grazing was good, and the stock was taking on weight.
If we got through without too much trouble, we would both make money.
Nothing was ever said about Rice Wheeler. Sometimes I wondered what they thought when they heard my name called and knew who I was. Bennett ventured the only comment, about two days out.
I’d cut out to head off a young steer who was getting ornery and trying to break from the herd. Bennett helped me turn him back, then turned in alongside me.
“Don’t think about Wheeler,” he said abruptly. “He was no good. Best thing ever happened to Rona, when he took off and never come back.”
“Leave of his own accord?”
“No. Folks caught him with some fresh-worked brands in his herd. He killed a man and left ahead of the posse.”
It was a good crew we had. The oldest of the lot, not speaking of the boss or the cook, was twenty-six. Two of the hands had just turned sixteen. And we had fourteen cow hands in all, seventeen with Bennett, the cook, and me.
We crossed the Red at Red River Station and pushed on into the Indian Territory, heading for Wichita.
Twice groups of Indians came down and each time we gave them a beef. Each time they wanted more, but they settled without argument.
After crossing the North Canadian we lost a hand in a stampede. We buried him there, high on a hill where he could listen to the coyotes and hear the night singing of the herders. He was seventeen the day he was killed.
The Osage drums were beating, and we held the herd . Close. We weren’t looking for trouble, but we knew it could come. Nighttime we slept away from the fire, and we kept two men on watch near camp. We missed a lot of sleep, them days. But we were getting on toward the Kansas line, and things looked good.
When the first cows were coming up to the Cimarron we were attacked by a party of Osages. They came sweeping down on us from a wide-mouthed draw, a bunch of young bucks with more nerve than sense. And they hit us at the wrong time.
Me, the boss, and a tough hand called Mustang Robert s were riding drag. As though by command, we swung around, dropped to the ground, knelt, and took steady aim. Then we waited.
They came on fast, very fast, riding low down on their horses’ sides. On signal, we fired.
An Indian fell, his horse catching him in the head wit h a hoof as he went over him. A horse went down, throwing his rider wide where a bullet from Kid Beaton’s Sharps nailed him.
They lost three men and two horses in a matter of seconds, and drew off, deciding they’d had it.
Two days later Mustang went out after antelope and didn’t come in. I was in the saddle, so I swung around and picked up his trail. When I’d followed him maybe five miles I heard the boom of a rifle.
It was far off in a bottom somewhere. Taking it fast, I headed toward the sound with that fine new Winchester of mine ready for action.
There were six of them, all Kiowas, and they had Mustang pinned down in a buffalo wallow with his horse dead and a bullet through his leg.
There was no chance for surprise. They would have heard my horse’s hoofs drumming on the s
od, and they would be ready for me. So I went in fast, the reins looped on the pommel and shooting as I came. I wasn’t hitting anything, but I was dusting them some, and they didn’t like it.
Maybe I did burn one of them, because he jumped and yelled. Then I went down into that buffalo wallow, riding fast, Mustang covering me. He nailed one of them just as I swung down to the wallow, and then he came up and I slid an arm around his waist as he put a boot in my stirrup.
Surprising thing was, we got away with it. We got clean out of there, with Mustang shooting back at them. Five of us came back later and picked up his saddle. We scouted some, and found a lot of blood on the grass at one point , a little at a couple of others.
“Killed one,” Kid Beaton said. “Killed one sure.”
And then there were days of dust and driving, and the grass thinning out a little. So we swung wide, taking a longer route, ducking the main trail, finding richer grass to keep the stock up. Twice we stopped and let them loaf and graze two days at a time. Bennett knew cattle, and he knew the markets.
We moved on. Crossing the Kansas line we found a long, shallow valley with good grass and a creek. We moved the herd into the valley and made camp near the creek, upstream from the herd in a bunch of willows and some cottonwoods, big old trees.
We were just finishing chuck when we heard the beat of horses’ hoofs and four men rode up.
Mustang put his plate down and glanced over at me.
“Watch yourself,” he said.
Three of them got down. The leader was a small man with a thin face and quick, shifty eyes. The two backing him were tough, dirty men, one of them a breed.
“My name’s Leet Bowers,” the leader said. “Come daylight we’re cutting your herd.”
” ‘Fraid you might have picked up some of our cattle … by mistake,” another man said, grinning.
Bennett was quiet. He was standing there with his feet apart, holding his coffee cup. “Nobody cuts my herd,” he said flatly.
L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06 Page 7