However, we taken to scouting the country. We’d been doing that, but now we were even more careful. We skirted our area about a hundred yards around, checking for tracks, then a circle about three hundred yards out, and then out to a quarter of a mile.
And then I saw the wolf.
I had killed a deer and cut it up to take back to camp, when I saw that wolf, so I taken a piece of the fresh meat and tossed it to him. He disappeared, but a moment later when I glanced back the meat was gone.
There was something peculiar about that wolf. Why had he left the others and taken to following me? Did I have the smell of death on me?
When I was almost back to camp I happened to turn in my saddle and caught just a glimpse of the wolf as he dodged into the brush, so I fished another chunk of meat from the hide where I carried it and dropped it into the road. Why I did so I’ve no idea. Maybe I figured it was better deer meat than me meat.
Galloway had moved our camp about a hundred yards back into the brush. He was making sourdough bread when I came in and he had a pot of beans setting in the outer coals. “I don’t like it, Flagan. Our boys should be showing up by now. I don’t like it at all.”
“Come daylight I’ll cut across the hills. I’ll study the trail.”
“You ride wary. Trouble’s shaping up. I can feel it in my bones.”
The sun wasn’t up when I mounted the grulla and taken to the hills. The old Dance & Park six-shooter was shoved down in its scabbard, but I carried my Winchester in my hands. It was not yet light, so I rode right back into the trees, riding up through the timber until I struck an old bear walk.
This was no regular trail, but even so I didn’t hold to it long, suddenly starting up the hill on an angle, and so it was that I glimpsed something down below in the brush. It was that wolf, and he was keeping ahead of me. Of a sudden he brought up short. He lifted one foot, then ducked into the brush like a shot.
My feet kicked free of the stirrups and I went off that horse like I’d been shot, and I almost was. As my feet hit dirt I heard the boom of a shot and I threw myself forward in the brush, then scrambled up and ran in a short dash to where an outcropping thrust up from the mountain. I was just in time to see a man legging it for his horse and I could see the horse, so I threw up my rifle and shot at the tree it was tied to. I made a wild guess as to where the reins would be tied, and either cut one or the horse broke it with his lunge when fragments of bark stung its face. Anyway the horse broke loose and when the man lunged into view again I put a bullet where he should have been but he dove into the brush.
Taking a running jump I hit the saddle as the mustang took off and we went down that slope just a hellin’. Another shot cut close to me and I let drive with two, firing my rifle off my hip into the brush and when that mustang hit the brush it went right on through. Out in the open beyond a man was legging it down the slope. He stopped, whirled around and came up with a rifle, and I let go at him again and he spun around and dropped.
When I came up on him he was sitting there, holding his side, an ugly look in his eyes. “You played hell,” he said. “They’ll kill you for this.”
“That’s what you tried to do to me,” I replied “Are you Vern Huddy?”
“Me? No, I ain’t. Lucky for you, I ain’t. He ain’t here yet. If I’d been Vern Huddy you’d be dead. I’m Jobe Dunn, if you want to know, cousin to Curly.”
His rifle dropped when my bullet hit him, but he was still wearing a six-shooter. Either he’d forgotten it or he was hoping I had. “Take it out,” I said, “with two fingers. Throw it just as far out as you can. And don’t try anything funny unless you want to feed the buzzards right from where you’re at.”
He drew that pistol and dropped it, and I swung down and gathered up his pistol and his rifle.
“Now you get on your feet and start for home, and don’t stop this side of there.”
“Hell, that’s a good eight miles.”
“It must be,” I agreed. “Make a nice walk for you. Better not pass out along the way or you might die before somebody gets to you.”
“You just ain’t a kindly man,” he protested.
“Nope. No more kindly than I’d be if I was lyin’ up there on that slope dead from your bullet. I guess you figured you’d kill me your ownself and then go back and brag how you’d done it. How you’d beaten Vern to the punch.”
“Vern? You’re crazy! I wouldn’t cross Vern for all the tea in China. He’s meaner than you are, and a whole sight better with a gun.”
“Maybe.”
When he set off a-walking I went back up through the trees and found my trail.
And it surely wasn’t intentional that when nightfall was coming on I saw the lights of the Rossiter place. Took me all of a minute to decide to ride down there and share potluck with them. There was a chance that I’d run into Curly, but a good chance that I’d not, and a few good home-cooked vittles wouldn’t go at all bad … or seeing Miss Meg, either.
However, before I decided to settle in for the night I’d just make sure Curly wasn’t there. No use stirring up trouble on their doorstep. It was bad enough that I had shooting to think of without worrying mem.
Rossiter was just unsaddling a gray gelding when I came into the yard. “How are you, boy? Light an’ set.”
“Don’t mind if I do, only there’s been shooting trouble and there’ll be more, so I’d better ask. Are you expecting Curly Dunn?”
“No.”
“All right then. I’ll stop and gladly.”
“Now just a minute. I said I wasn’t expecting him, and I am not, but that doesn’t mean he might not show up. He’s coming over here every few days.”
Nevertheless, the warmth and comfort of a woman-kept house was too much for me to turn down, so I stripped the gear from the mustang and turned it into the corral.
We walked side by each up to the house and he spoke of the shooting trouble. “I knew there were hard feelings, but I didn’t know it had come to that.” So I told him about Jobe taking a shot at me.
“Was he hurt bad?”
“I didn’t examine him. Looked to me like a burn along the ribs, and he may lose a good deal of blood. Maybe I nicked the inside of his arm, too. He was holding it mighty odd.”
We went in the door and Meg was there and she said, “Pa, supper’s ready. Who’re you talking to?” And then she seen me.
“Oh … you?” she said disdainfully. “I was hoping it was Curly.”
“If he’s got over his beating,” I said, “I’ll bet he wasn’t able to kiss you for a week, with those mashed-up lips of his.”
“That’s probably why you hit him there,” she accused.
“Are you funnin’? I never gave it no thought. Why should I care who he kisses?
Anyway, we weren’t fighting over you. We were fighting because he had an awfully big opinion of himself and he figured to teach me something.”
“I don’t care why you fought,” she said irritably. “You were like two animals!
Now sit down and eat.”
So I sat down. And she could really fix grub. I told her so. “Ma’am, for a woman with a harpy’s tongue you can surely put vittles together. I declare, it’s a wonder some man hasn’t sweet-talked you into marrying him.”
“I’ve never heard any sweet-talk from you!”
“No, ma’am, I was never given to it. I reckon I’d just have to bundle a girl up in my arms and kiss her real good. I wouldn’t be much for talking.”
“Why pick her up?” she demanded. “That’s no way to do.”
“Well, now. If she was as short as you—”
She stepped right up to me. “I’m not all that short!”
“Maighdlin!” Rossiter said sharply. “Put the supper on the table.”
She finished putting supper on the table and she had no more to say all through it, but while Rossiter and me talked of cattle and beef prices and how a herd might increase, I kept a-thinking that maybe she wasn’t that short. Especia
lly if she stood on tiptoe.
Chapter XII
It didn’t do me any good to stall around the next morning, although I never taken so long to saddle a horse in all my born days. Nor so long over breakfast, either. I was hoping Meg would show up but she didn’t and after awhile I swung into the saddle and rode off up the trail.
When I was maybe a mile off and away higher up I glanced back in time to see a small figure come running from the ranch house and stop there in the yard, and I lifted my arm and waved, but surely she could not see me at the distance and against the mountain.
Two days of riding it needed before I came up with the herd. I saw their dust long before I rode up to it, but when I came near I swung off to one side so’s not to turn them. Whoever was riding point had gone off somewhere, but that big old brindle steer in the lead needed no help.
Halfway down the herd I came up to Parmalee, looking like a dude. He pulled in and thrust out his hand, and dude he might be but he had power in that grip. I had a feeling those flatland Sacketts had much to be said for them other than money, for they were all well off. Nick Shadow rode up from the drag and allowed he was glad to see me. It had been a hard drive.
“You’re coming into good range now,” I said, “but nothing like what your headed for along the La Plata.”
“Well need some hands,” Parmalee said. “Most of these just joined up for the drive.”
“You got anything against Indians?”
“No … why?”
“I’ve just taken on a whole set of them. Tough old warrior and some followers of his. He came to me hunting advice, and looking for a place to light.”
“So you took them on,” Shadow said. “Good for you.”
He looked at my face, which still carried a few scars. “You’ve had trouble, then?”
“I had a difficulty with Curly Dunn. I was in no shape for it, but I whopped him. A couple of days back I had a run in with Jobe. I scratched him with a bullet, but don’t take them lightly, old Bull Dunn is a tough man.”
“Old?”
“Aw, you know! He ain’t that old. Maybe forty, but he must weight about two hundred and fifty pounds and I don’t think any of it is fat.”
We rode along together, the three of us, talking things over and reminding ourselves of other days, other cattle, other drives. Time to time I kept looking back into my mind for pictures of Meg, knowing I was a damned fool all the time I was doing it. She was like every other girl that age who likes to flirt and think about love and such. Curly had the inside track there, and I knew it, but that couldn’t keep a body from dreaming, and dreamable girls were almighty scarce in this country.
It was on that drive that I learned that Shadow was one of the best hands with a rope I’d ever come across. He used the rawhide rope, the la reata that Americans have cut down to lariat. He’d learned it from the Californios, and he worked with a rope sixty feet long. He could really make that rope stand up and perform. He never tied fast, though. A man who ties fast with a rawhide rope is in trouble. When a big steer, say a thousand pounds give or take a few, hits the end of that rope something’s got to give. A hemp rope will stand the gaff better, but Shadow liked rawhide and he stuck with it, and I never saw anybody who could rope any better.
He was a good hand with stock and he never shied from doing his fair share of the work. They had brought eighteen hundred head of mixed stuff, and a few of them were Texas longhorns, big, rangy beasts who could walk the legs off any other kind of cow crittur and most horses. They’d brought the herd along carefully and they didn’t seem to have lost much weight on the trail.
Aside from Parmalee and Shadow there were just four hands and the cook, which was nowhere near enough even after the herd was trail broke. Seven hands were all right as long as there was no trouble. Now that I had come along there were eight and that extra man meant all the difference.
“I can’t figure it,” I said that night at the fire. “Bull Dunn told everybody he was going to run us out. He’s made his brags, now he’s got to make good, so why hasn’t he done something?”
“Maybe he was waiting until Galloway was alone,” Parmalee suggested.
“He’s waiting for the cattle,” Shadow said. “What does he gain by running you out? He keeps the country to himself, but is that enough? If he runs you out after you have your cattle brought in then those cattle are going to run loose on the range, and after a respectable time he’ll just start slapping his brand on them all. And who’s to stop him?”
“If that’s the case,” Parmalee suggested, “he’ll stampede our cattle as soon as we’re close to his range … or sooner.”
Morning came bright and clear, and the cattle started off well. Maybe it was the smell of fresh water, maybe it was the grass, but the cattle wanted to go. We had the towering wall of Mesa Verde on the east and Ute Park on the west, and soon we would start bearing east to strike the trail to the ranch.
Suddenly one of the cowhands rode up. “Sackett,” he said, “we’re being watched.”
He pointed toward the distant ridge. “Indians!”
Sure enough, there were several Indians watching us from the ridge, and as we moved along they kept pace with us, watching our every move.
The Dunn ranch house was long, low and built of logs. Cornered against it and forming a right angle was the bunkhouse, where there were bunks for twenty men, and thirty yards away, forming another side to the loose square, was a barn or shed, also low-roofed and built of logs. The fourth side of the square was the corral.
Inside the house, seated at the table, was Bull Dunn. A huge man with bulging muscles, he slouched at the table with a pot of black coffee and a jug of whiskey, staring at Curly with narrowed eyes.
“You listen, and you listen damn well,” he said—then his eyes swept the room—“and this goes for you all. I seen countries change. I ain’t so young as you, and I seen them grow up. Well, when they do those folks who hold land are the ones in power, they run things. Those who don’t have nothin’ are shoved out.
“This here’s the end of it. We’re going to latch onto a big chunk of this country and we’re going to hold it. We’re through bein’ movers. Here’s where we make our stand.
“The Sacketts are bringing in a herd. That’s fine, because we’ll need stock.
There’s two of them and this Nick Shadow. I happen to know the cowhands comin’ in with the herd won’t stay. Anyway, there’s only four of them.
“We’re goin’ to hit that herd of a night, and we’re goin’ to scatter it to hell an’ gone into the breaks of the canyons, and we’re going to kill the Sacketts and Shadow. If one of them goes down from a fall or is hurt in the stampede, just leave him lay. We want this to look as right as it can be … not that there’s much chance of anybody nosin’ around up here.
“Curly, you been sparkin’ that Rossiter gal long enough. Marry her, with old Rossiter’s let-be or not. You latch onto her, then you be the nice lad and you go over there and work for her papa, and you work hard. I want Rossiter to tell folks what an all-out fine son-in-law he’s got. Then if anything happens to Rossiter nobody will ever think you had a hand in it.
“Then I want ever’ last one of you to file on claims, grazing land or mingmg claims, just so you claim title to it.
“We been wanderin’ around the country long enough, and the land is fillin’ up back east and we might as well have ours while we can. This is closed-off country, and if we move right it’ll be our country and sooner or later we can freeze out anybody who moves in.”
Ollie Hammer rolled a cigarette, touched the paper with his tongue and folded it over. “Maybe you’re cuttin’ a wide swath, Bull. These Sacketts have the name of bein’ rough.”
“So are we. On’y we’re rougher and meaner. I got Vern comin’ in and when he gets here he’ll take to the hills and clean up anything we left over. … As for the stampede, we blame it on the Utes.”
He downed his whiskey and refilled the glass to the halfw
ay mark, then took a gulp of the black coffee.
“We done this before, and you all know what to do. I want nobody seen. And get this into your thick heads. We ain’t outlaws no more … we ain’t renygades … so when you go into Shalako or any other town, you act like gents. If you can’t hold your liquor, don’t drink.
“Get this—” Bull Dunn pointed with a stiff middle finger, “some folks are goin’ to complain … let ‘em. But if we mind our p’s an’ q’s we’ll end up with a good many folks on our side.
“Now they can’t have more than three men on the night ridin’ job, and three ain’t goin’ to stop any herd of near two thousand head. If we can stampede those cattle right over their camp, so much the better … we might just take out a Sackett in the process.
“But remember this. I want nobody seen! An’ Curly, as soon as ever this is over, you ride hell bent for election back here, get you a fresh horse and go on over to Rossiters’ place. Tell ‘em your horse spooked a couple of times, and you think there’s Indians about. Rossiter will likely get up, but you offer to set up with a rifle.
“Above all, if one of them Sacketts should show up over there, you be friendly.
You put yourself out to do it. And you act the gent, see?”
When all had scattered, Bull Dunn drained his glass, gulped another cup of black coffee, then stretched out on his bed. He was not worried. His outfit had scattered or rustled herds across seven states in the past dozen years and nobody had ever caught up with them yet. Of course, there was a lot of places where they could not return, but they had no idea of going back, anyway.
This place he liked, and here he was going to stay. He chuckled in his beard.
More than one old-time cattleman had rustled a few head and then put on the coat of respectability, and so could he … and he would enjoy it, chuckling all the time at how he had fooled them.
Galloway (1970) Page 9