by Jory Sherman
NINE
Horace Weatherall cocked his pistol, a Colt .45, jammed the snout behind the horse’s ear, and squeezed the trigger.
The explosion shattered the silence of the afternoon. The horse’s head jerked as the bullet entered its brain and churned it to pulp. The hind legs spasmed and the horse stopped moving.
Smoke spewed from the barrel of Horace’s pistol and the acrid sting crept into his hairy nostrils.
The two men with him nodded as the horse stopped moving.
“That was only a scratch on his leg, boss,” one of the men said. “It might have healed up, given time and some salve.”
“The horse was lame, Jimmy,” Horace said to James Rowan, the man who had spoken. “I won’t have cripples on the 2Bar2. Man or beast.”
Jimmy hung his head. There was a sheepish cast to his face.
Horace holstered his pistol.
“That’s the last of the blue roans,” Corwin said.
Horace removed his hat and smoothed his heavily pomaded hair at both temples. He worried his lower lip as he looked at the corpse of the roan.
“And I wanted to breed that mare,” Horace said. “Dumb as she was.”
The men around him exchanged glances. None of them really understood Horace. He had several horse breeds on his ranch, but he seemed to want more variety. The man had inherited money, but most of the men who worked for him thought he was some kind of eccentric fool.
His pastures were full of colorful horses: Appaloosas, duns, sorrels, bays, pintos. He was always crossbreeding, but most of his experiments were failures. If he didn’t like a foal’s appearance, he was apt to destroy it before it reached yearling status.
And he sent men to far-flung ranches in Colorado and Wyoming to steal horses whenever he was dissatisfied with the breeds and horseflesh offered at local auctions.
There was something just not right with Horace, according to men who had been with him for four or five years. He seemed to be obsessed with something, but none of them could figure out what his obsession was, exactly.
“Rider comin’,” Jimmy said as he looked off toward the distant gate of the 2Bar2 spread.
“Visitors?” Horace said as he put his hat back over his glistening hair.
“Just one,” Jimmy said. “And he looks like he’s been rid hard and put away wet.”
The approaching rider’s horse was lathered with sweat rolls that were yellowish and puffy. Streamers of the lather flew off the horse like buttery tassels.
“Don’t recognize either horse or rider,” Horace said.
“Me, neither,” Jimmy said, his eyes squinted to narrow slits.
“Watch him real close, Jimmy,” Horace whispered from the side of his mouth.
The rider slowed his horse and stared down at the two men.
“You Horace?” the rider asked.
“One of us is,” Horace said. “Who’s askin’?”
“My name is Jessup. Bart Jessup, and I’m in a heap of trouble.”
“We don’t have no aid station here,” Horace said. “Little sympathy, neither.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve rid all the way from Joplin, Missouri, to give you a message. But I got a man on my tail what’s been tryin’ to shoot me outen the saddle.”
“Joplin? A fur piece,” Horace said.
“I got a message from your brother, Abner. It’s real important.”
“Light down, son,” Horace said. “I ain’t seen my brother in two or three years.”
Jessup slid out of the saddle and landed off-balance. His legs were wobbly and his shirt and trousers were stained with sweat. He gasped for a full breath and blinked red-rimmed eyes.
He was a short-statured man and his face was stippled with at least three days’ worth of beard stubble. There was a wild-eyed look about him that was tinged with fear.
“Abner, he’s a-comin’ with thirty head of prime Missouri Trotters. He stole ’em from some old man in Missouri, name of Wild.”
“Wild, you say?” Horace asked, suddenly on full alert to the stranger’s message.
“Yep. Lucas Wild, whose boy is hot on my track, far as I know.”
“There’s a man named Wild here in Wyoming,” Horace said. “I think his Christian handle is Cordwainer.”
“Kin to the boy who’s hell-bent on snuffin’ out my candle,” Jessup said. “Boy’s name is Earl Wild and he’s plumb crazy.”
“You better tell me all you know, Jessup,” Horace said. “I ain’t never heard of either the old man or his son Earl. But the Wild what’s here in Wyoming is a big old thorn in my side.”
Jessup turned his head to look over his back trail. His hands began to shake and more sweat leaked from under his hat brim.
“They call this Cordwainer the Wild Gun,” Jimmy interjected. “He goes after a man, the man ends up dead.”
“I don’t know about him,” Jessup said, “but that kid brother of his is a hothead and come near to putting my lamp out once’t or twice.”
“Why is this kid so bent on killing you, Jessup?” Horace asked.
Jessup took off his hat and wiped the back of his hand across his brow. He blinked as sweat dripped into his eyes and stung them.
“When we went to capture them horses, the old man tried to stop us. Abner got mad as hell and roped him. He drug old man Wild for a good quarter mile, and then Wild’s woman come tearin’ outen the house with a scattergun and let off a load of buckshot that must’ve stung Abner somethin’ fierce ’cause he got even madder. He rode up on the woman and knocked the Greener outen her hands and then plumb put the boots to her right then and there.”
“Abner raped the woman?” Horace asked.
“He started it. Eddie Lomax hopped on her, too, and so did Freddie Calkins. Woman was screamin’ her fool head off and must’ve brung the kid out of the barn. The kid came runnin’ up with a pitchfork in his hand, cussin’ like a dock worker on the Mississip’, and Abner had to waylay him with the butt of that scattergun to shut him up. We all lit a shuck after that and I was ridin’ drag when I seen this Wild kid comin’ after us on horseback, hell-bent for leather.”
Jessup paused and looked over his shoulder again as if expecting Earl Wild to come riding over the horizon.
“Then what happened?” Jimmy blurted out suddenly.
“Abner waved me away and took another trail to keep the kid from getting back any of them horses we stole.”
“And the kid follered you?” Horace asked.
“He sure as hell did and fired off a shot that whistled over my head like an angry hornet. I ducked and put the spurs to my horse and hauled ass as far away from the horse herd as I could get. Lost track of Abner and the others, and the kid started to gain on me.”
“How’d you manage to outdistance him, Jessup?” Horace asked.
“I got into them Oklahoma hills and lost him for a time, but he outfoxed me and caught up by the time I got to the Wyoming border. I tell you, that kid’s plumb determined to put me six feet under.”
“Did he say anything to you?” Horace asked.
“Yeah, he said plenty,” Jessup replied. “He said him and his brother would hunt me down to the ends of the earth and make me die slow and hard. He scared the livin’ hell out of me, I tell ya.”
“Well, we can take care of that boy for you,” Horace said.
Just then, Jimmy looked up and saw a rider coming from the direction of the Weatherall ranch house.
“That’s Harley Davis,” Jimmy said to Horace, “and he looks like bad news.”
Horace cursed under his breath and turned to see what brought Davis out.
Davis rode up, his face drawn and head hanging down as if in shame.
“I got bad news, boss,” he said. “Real bad news.”
“Spill it,” Horace said, a look of annoyance
on his now florid face.
“Aikens and Dolan are dead and they must’ve lost them horses they stole ’cause they come back strapped to their own mounts ’thouten them.”
“What?” Horace exclaimed.
“Both shot dead and stripped of their gun belts. Mighty sad.”
“That’s all?” Horace said. “No sign of who killed my boys?”
“Nope. Them horses just come back home with their bodies tied to their bare backs. Like a message.”
Horace cursed and looked at Jessup as if to blame him for the death of his men.
Jessup swallowed in bewilderment.
“The Wild Gun,” Jimmy murmured.
But Horace heard him and set his jaw as his eyes blazed with the fiery light of hatred. Then he turned to Jessup.
“How far behind you is my brother? And does he still have them horses?”
“I dunno,” Jessup said. “After tryin’ to escape that kid, Earl, I lost a lot of time in Oklahoma. They can’t be more’n a day or so behind me. But they’re drivin’ some thirty head and only got three men to wrangle the herd.”
“Good enough,” Horace said. “I know Abner, and when he makes up his mind to do a thing, he don’t stop till it’s done.”
“What about that kid on my tail?” Jessup asked. He held his hands together to halt the tremors.
“I don’t see no sign of him. He might be callin’ on his brother about now.” Horace looked off into the distant horizon as if looking for dust or a rider.
“That means we’ll have two of them Wilds ’stead of one,” Jimmy said.
“We’ll be ready for ’em by the time Abner gets here,” Horace said.
“Wild is a manhunter, Horace. He don’t just ride up out in the open. He’s sneaky as grease in a fryin’ pan. I doubt Dolan and Aikens even saw him comin’.”
“Oh, they saw Wild, all right,” Horace said. “He was probably the last thing they saw, the dumb bastards. And I was countin’ on gettin’ them horses in my stable.”
“We better keep our eyes peeled real sharp,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” Horace mused as he drew in a heavy breath. “I want that man dead, and I’m going to put a bounty of one hundred dollars on his head for the man who takes him down.”
“What about that brother of his?” Jessup asked.
“Him, too,” Horace said. “Same bounty. We can’t make no headway with any Wild Gun still breathin’.”
“Fair enough,” Jimmy said. “I’ll make sure everybody’s on the lookout for either feller.”
Jessup breathed a long sigh of relief. He had come to the right man. The Wild brothers were as good as dead. Horace was even more formidable than Abner, and that gave Jessup confidence that he would escape death at the hands of Earl Wild.
That look in Horace’s eyes told him all he wanted to know.
TEN
As always, Cord took notice of his surroundings and of the people on the streets in Cheyenne. He felt a weariness that was not born of fatigue, but of some nagging sensation of failure. He had killed two men, and the responsibility of taking their lives weighed heavily on his heart.
Yes, the men had been horse thieves, and yes, they had meant to kill him.
But they were only acting on orders from someone else: Horace Weatherall, a greedy, thieving, and conniving man. He was the one who should have paid the price. Paid with his life.
As Cord rode down Main Street, he looked at the faces of the people he passed. The wan complexions of the chubby-faced women, the gaunt, tired looks on the faces of drifters, and the set jaws of cowhands and wranglers. The merchants looked grim and determined as they looked out their doorways, and the Mexicans driving burro carts looked as if they were on some religious pilgrimage, their brown eyes alight with anticipation and fervor as they sought places to display their goods: clay vessels and hand-woven rugs, trinkets fashioned of silver and turquoise.
Cheyenne was thriving, but Cord could not help thinking of the desperation on the faces of many as they walked to and from their destinations.
He did not linger in town, but rode toward the mountains where he lived, bone-weary and troubled with the weight of the lives he had taken with his gun.
He had meant it when he told Jesse Barnes that he would track no more horse thieves.
“A man makes his own society,” Cord had told him. “And I don’t want to live a life with blood on my hands.”
“But you’re good at what you do, Wild,” Barnes had said. “Nobody but you could have gotten my horses back.”
“The cost is too high,” Cord told him. “Those men I killed were only used as tools, like hammers or branding irons. The man who should have paid the price was Horace Weatherall.”
“So?”
“Unless I catch him red-handed stealing a horse, I couldn’t take him down without breaking the law.”
“The law is clear on that point, Cord.”
“No law is clear, Jesse. They’re all muddied with something. And I don’t wear a badge.”
“No, but I’m thinking we might form some kind of organization that could appoint you as an official regulator or maybe a peacemaker.”
“Peacemaker? Hardly.”
“A regulator, then,” Barnes said.
“You mean a bounty hunter.”
“If you want to call it that. You’d be doing a big service to the other ranchers in the territory.”
“I’m no man to take on the task of chasing after horse thieves.”
“Why not?”
“Not in my nature. As I said, a man creates his own society. I don’t want to go into one where I deal only with lawbreakers. If I did, I would run for sheriff.”
“Not a bad idea, but the sheriff in Cheyenne has very limited powers. As a regulator, you’d have free rein to go after horse thieves.”
Cord shook his head.
“Free rein to act as judge and jury. Free rein to take another man’s life without a jury trial or legal judgment.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“That’s the only way, Jesse. Once you take a man’s life, he is gone forever. With no second chance. No chance for redemption or forgiveness.”
“You know what your trouble is, Cord?”
“I’ve told you some of it.”
“You got too much of a conscience. You think too much about what a man might be rather than what a man is.”
“Maybe so. But if I have a conscience, it’s mine to deal with, same as life.”
Cord left town, with its rattling carts, bustle, and grasping commercial hands, and entered the foothills where he followed a dim game path that was barely visible through the rocks and brush that blanketed the fissure he rode through.
Still, he noticed that the ground had been disturbed slightly. There were fresh horseshoe tracks, and when he examined them more closely, he felt an electric tug of recognition.
He knew those tracks, for he had seen them before, in another time and place.
His ride took him up a circuitous path, into the timber, where the scent of pine, spruce, and balsam wafted to his nostrils under a light mountain breeze. His heart quickened as he approached the place where his hidden cabin lay nestled along an old prospector’s creek.
The cabin was sturdy, made of debarked logs by an old prospector named Barney Crumb. Cord had known him and visited him often when he first came into the territory.
Barney froze to death during the previous winter after he injured himself with an axe and could cut no more firewood. At the time, Cord’s younger brother, Earl, had come out from Missouri and was with Cord when they found Barney, frozen to death, in the spring. They buried the man and Cord moved in. Earl stayed with him for a week, then returned home.
Cord had not seen his brother since that time.
Now, as he ro
de up to the cabin, he heard a horse snort.
Earl was sitting on a stump in front of the cabin, slumped over, dozing. His horse was ground-tied to a small juniper bush a few feet away.
Cord rode up, dismounted, walked over to his brother, and placed a hand on his shoulder. He shook the boy awake, and Earl looked up at him with swollen eyes and a grimy face.
“Cord,” Earl said. His voice was weak and Cord sensed the weariness in his voice.
“Hello, little brother,” Cord said and hunkered down next to the boy.
“You look plumb tuckered, Earl,” Cord said. He helped his brother to stand and led him into the cabin. The boy was on shaky legs and Cord had to hold him tight to keep him from collapsing in Cord’s arms.
Inside, it was quiet and there was the smell of ashes in the fireplace, the musty smell of weathered logs, and the faint musk of wood and cooking grease from the small kitchen. They sat on a wooden couch that was padded with bear and elk hide. Earl’s eyes fluttered as he lay back and stared up at his brother.
“You look starved, Earl,” Cord said.
“I am,” Earl said. His lips were dry and cracked. He seemed to have grown some since Cord had last seen him. When he swept away Earl’s hat, he saw a clump of tousled brown hair that was clogged with dust and grit.
“I’ve got plenty of grub. What brings you out here? Everything all right at home?”
Earl crumpled over and buried his head in his hands. He began to cry. His sobs filled the room with anguished bubbles of sound that tore at Cord’s heart.
“He—he’s dead, Cord. Pa’s dead, and he died so horribly.”
Cord felt as if he had been stabbed in the chest and gut. He shook his head in disbelief and denial.
“So, you tracked one of them to Cheyenne?” Cord asked when his brother had finished relating the horrible details of the murder of their father and the rape of their mother.
“Yep. He was the only one a-runnin’, and God knows where the others are. But they got our horses and I figured they were headin’ this away,” Earl said.
“You guessed right, Earl. Abner’s brother has a ranch north of Cheyenne. And he’s cut from the same bolt of cloth as his brother. They’re both horse thieves.”