Destiny, Texas

by Brett Cogburn

  “Let them wait for me if they want to,” Gunn said. “I ain’t worried about them.”

  “I wouldn’t be so anxious to cross those hunters. Your father already has them mad enough.”

  “Our line riders keep most of the buffalo run off the ranch, and there’s nothing for the hiders to hunt,” I said, but neither of them seemed to have heard me.

  “It’s our range,” Gunn said.

  “Your range?” Clayton asked.

  “You tend to your town, and we’ll tend to our ranch.”

  “That’s a mighty big swath of country you’re talking about. And you wonder why people like these hide hunters are mad? Why, that’s enough country for lots of folks.”

  “Let it lie.”

  Clayton ignored Gunn’s warning. “How about you show me the deed to this ranch of yours? That country west of the Cross Timbers you’re claiming is open range. State land.”

  “Not as long as we’re there. We don’t claim what we can’t keep.”

  Moon Lowe came through the door before Clayton could say whatever he was about to add. The younger brother, Prince, came in right behind him. Prince was close to my age, maybe seventeen. He was slim like his daddy, a sharp dresser, and nothing like that Moon. The rumor was that Moon had a different mother, but I don’t know that for certain.

  Moon was as stout as an ox, with big meaty fists and stubby arms as big around as my legs. Word was that he had killed at least two men. I didn’t doubt that, for Moon struck me as a mean man.

  It was obvious that he had been hunting buffalo, for he held a Sharps .40-90 in the crook of his left elbow, with a Vollmer telescopic sight mounted on the barrel. I could see that black man that traipsed around with him, Zeke, staring through the front window at us. You would think a Union man like Clayton would let a black man in his store, but it wasn’t so, even if that black man had once worn a badge for him.

  “Look what we have here,” Moon said. “The Dollarhyde boys.”

  “Been hunting buffalo, have you?” I asked, for I knew that whatever Gunn would say would probably start a fight. You could talk to Clayton, as long as you kept in mind he was scheming on how he could get the best of you while he was smiling. But Moon, you simply tried to stay clear of him. Putting him and Gunn in the same room was like dropping a match in a pile of black powder.

  “Yep, got Prince and Zeke skinning,” Moon said.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you three were smart enough to skin a buffalo,” Gunn said under his breath.

  “What’s that?” Moon asked.

  Gunn looked at Clayton. “Are you going to give me my change?”

  Clayton made change from his apron, and Gunn holstered his pistol and we headed for the door.

  “I guess old man Dollarhyde can’t find anybody full grown to work for him,” Moon said to me.

  I’m short and I know it, and wasn’t about to let the likes of him get my goat. “Come on, Gunn.”

  Gunn stopped at the door. Zeke was standing just outside, blocking our way.

  “There are two of our steers penned down there at the end of the street,” Gunn said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Moon?”

  “We’ve been hunting all week.” Prince’s voice was kind of high-pitched.

  “I guess they penned themselves,” Gunn said.

  Clayton came across the room. “Man through here last week sold those steers to our blacksmith. You go find him to talk about it.”

  “I’m talking to you,” Gunn said. “This is your town, ain’t it?”

  “The blacksmith’s a man of short temper and liable to cause us trouble we don’t want.”

  “All I see are two of our steers, and somebody did a damned poor job of trying to burn over our brands.”

  “You’re young and you need to learn to be careful with your talk,” Clayton said. “You make enemies where you don’t have to. Give me time to talk it over with the blacksmith and I’m sure something can be worked out. If he won’t listen, we have a county judge here now that can hear your case.”

  Gunn looked at Zeke in the door. “Are you going to get out of my way, or do I have to move you?”

  Zeke stood there breathing through his mouth until he looked over Gunn’s shoulder and finally moved. I didn’t see it, but I imagine Moon gave him the okay.

  “Rebel scum.” Moon kept his voice quiet when he said it, but we still heard him.

  I looked back behind us without turning around and saw that both the Lowe brothers and Zeke had followed us as far as the porch steps. Zeke already had one of his Remingtons halfway out of its holster and Moon had that buffalo gun cocked and propped on his hip. Only Prince didn’t have a gun ready, but he scared me most. He had crazy eyes.

  I was the only one who didn’t have a gun. Sometimes, I kept one of those ’66 Winchester carbines in a saddle boot, the one with that pretty brass receiver, but it got in the way when I needed to use my rope. It made Papa mad that I didn’t carry a gun and he rarely forgot to remind me that some Indian was going to catch me one day and lift my hair. But he never said anything about how dangerous it might be to ride around with Gunn without proper armament.

  “They’ve got us set up,” I said to Gunn.

  “You ride up the street and turn those steers loose,” he said. “I don’t care who tells you to stop, you go ahead and do it.”

  “You ain’t turning those steers loose,” Moon said. “You don’t ride the high and mighty here.”

  Gunn turned around to face him; faced all three of them without flinching or acting like he gave a damn. “You go on, Joseph. Do like I said.”

  I got on my horse and started down the street, expecting to be shot at any second. Those hiders and freighters stopped what they were doing and watched me ride past them, and none of them looking friendly. And I saw other townsfolk peering out their windows or doorways.

  The steers in question were penned in a three-rail corral, and the gate was tied shut with wire, top and bottom. I was going to have to get off my horse to undo it, and the thought of losing my one means of rapid escape didn’t set well with my breakfast—if I had eaten any breakfast. I stopped short of the corral and looked back up the street. Gunn wasn’t looking at me and was keeping his attention on the three on the store porch. From a distance and the way he was standing, it looked like he had them treed instead of it being the other way around. Gunn didn’t back up for anybody, especially not when the whiskey had him.

  “Don’t open that gate,” someone said beside me.

  I had stopped in front of a lumber-framed house. It was also the only thing with any paint on it other than some of the wagons lining the street. Its yellow clapboard and white window trimming seemed too bright and tidy for such a rough settlement.

  “Did you hear me?” The girl was standing in an open window looking at me.

  “You startled me some,” I said, and then regained my composure. “Those are our cows.”

  She was a pretty thing. “That won’t matter. They’re going to shoot you the instant you lay hand to that gate. Shoot your brother, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard them talking about it when they saw you riding in.” She had freckles on her nose and the prettiest blue eyes you ever saw. Did you ever notice that all the girls in those songs they sing have blue eyes?

  “Hey, cowboy,” a man called out to me from under the awning of the blacksmith shed. “I’ve got a bill of sale for those steers.”

  “I’d like to see that,” I said.

  The man stepped to the edge of the roof and far enough into the sunlight that I could see him better. He was shirtless and hairy where his leather apron didn’t cover him, and patting a shop hammer in the palm of his hand. He was bigger and sweatier than any man I’d ever seen. The blacksmith, I assumed.

  “Here’s your bill of sale.” He hefted the hammer to make sure I saw it.

  Several of the other men around laughed at that. Those that didn’t look like t
hey were on his side were at least hanging around to see what was going to happen—see some fool, runt cowboy get knocked out of the saddle by a hammer or a bullet.

  “Moon sold him those steers,” the girl said. She seemed as nervous as I was and kept looking back up the street at the store.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I ought to. He’s my brother.”

  I should have known the house belonged to Clayton.

  “You listen to me,” she said. “Leave them and don’t come back. You’re too cute to get shot over some old cows.”

  I wished it were that easy. Whether I opened that gate or not, I was still in a pickle. Gunn wasn’t going to leave it be. Not him. You have to stick with your brother, but sometimes Gunn made that a hard proposition. At times, being his enemy might have been as easy as being his friend.

  I started my horse forward.

  “I didn’t think you would listen,” she said. “Pa said you Dollarhydes were stubborn.”

  “He’s my brother.” I stopped in front of the gate and dismounted.

  “You’re treading on thin ice, cowboy.” The blacksmith was already coming for me.

  I had my hand on the gate and the blacksmith had that hammer reared back when I heard a horse running down the street. It was Gunn coming hell-bent for leather. That blacksmith was big, but the horse didn’t even slow down when it hit him. Gunn pulled up hard and rolled his pony back the way he had come and ran over the blacksmith again at a trot. When he was finished, the blacksmith was lying on the ground moaning and cursing, and likely had some broken bones.

  All that running back and forth had Gunn’s horse stirred up, and he spun it around in a circle to hold it in place, glaring at everyone watching him. “These are Dollarhyde steers and we’re taking them. Next time we find stolen cattle here we’ll burn this whole town down!”

  I couldn’t believe somebody hadn’t shot us yet. The gate fought me some, and it took me entirely too long to open it. I bailed on my horse and dove him in the corral and drove those steers out of town at a fast clip, while Gunn hung back to get us clear. I pulled up once I thought I was out of rifle range, but I’d heard too many tales about how some of those hide hunters could shoot. I could still see Gunn, and that meant somebody could be looking at me through one of those telescopic sights.

  Gunn backed his horse for the first fifty yards out of town, unwilling to turn his back on any of them. When he finally did turn around I thought he would dig his spurs into his horse and run like he was going to a fire. But not Gunn. Oh, no. He wasn’t about to let any of them think they worried him. He came on toward me at a leisurely walk, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  When we were finally out of sight of that place we pulled up. Riding out of there felt like it took a hundred times as long as it did going in.

  “You’re either crazy, or the coolest man I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Or are you that drunk?”

  “That bunch ain’t anything to worry about.” He started making a cigarette.

  I noticed that his hand was shaking and I pointed to it. “Not a worry in the world, huh?”

  He grinned at me and licked his cigarette paper. “I admit, they had my attention there for a bit.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Indians called him Bad Hand, probably because he had a couple of his fingers shot off in the Civil War. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was the only Yankee Papa ever had much use for and the only officer in the entire U.S. Army that knew the first thing about fighting Indians (again, Papa’s opinion).

  The colonel would stop at the ranch from time to time during one of his patrols or expeditions during the Indian Wars. All in all, he spent about seven years fighting Indians in Texas for General William Tecumseh Sherman, the same Yankee that Papa said burned half of Georgia during the war. Papa may have been fond of Colonel Mackenzie, but he would spit on the ground any time he said General Sherman’s name.

  Sherman didn’t put on any airs about how he thought the Indians ought to be handled. You killed their buffalo to make their bellies empty and kept troops in the field to never give them a minute’s rest. And those that wouldn’t give it up and go to the reservation, you found in their winter camps and either destroyed their supplies or put them to sword and pistol.

  Sword and fire. Bad Hand Mackenzie was General Sherman’s sword and the troops they kept in the field were his matches. All in the name of progress and civilization.

  White farmers wanted to homestead that country, and cattlemen like us wanted the grass. Buffalo and the Indians were the only things standing in the way, but Sharps buffalo guns and soldiers like Mackenzie were working on that. There wasn’t anything pretty about it, but that’s the way it was—bloody war, plain and simple.

  I don’t know who started hating who first, the white man hating the Indians or the Indians hating the white man. Some say those Plains tribes made a living of war, but I never saw that my own were any less warlike. Raw deals all the way around, no matter what color your skin was.

  I was only a button when I lost my first parents, but they gave me a start in the Good Book. Says in there that Jesus will forgive any kind of sin, but we’ve got a lot to be forgiven for. And that goes for red man and white man alike. So much killing when we should have been busy living.

  Like I said, Papa and Colonel Mackenzie got along like old friends. The colonel would soothe Papa by telling him how many Indians his soldiers had killed, and Papa would commend him and report any Indian movements that our cowboys had observed. After that, they would enjoy a little brandy on the porch and tell stories.

  By that time, Papa had built what people in our country called the “big house.” He had the lumber hauled in all the way from Gainesville, and a crew of carpenters from there built him the prettiest white two-story house you ever saw. It didn’t have big porch pillars like the home he told about in Alabama, but it did have a porch all the way across the front of it. That porch was where Papa and the colonel liked to sit and drink their brandy and talk.

  The colonel was leading two companies of cavalry troopers back to Fort Richardson when he rode up that day. Their horses looked like death warmed over and the troops didn’t look much better themselves. A few of them were wearing bandages, and the majority of them had a swollen cheekbone from the kick of those old straight-stocked Springfield needle guns they carried.

  “You look like you found a fight,” Papa said to the colonel.

  “We got them this time,” was all Mackenzie said until someone took his horse and he and Papa went up to the porch.

  Juanita brought them a bottle of brandy and then disappeared inside the house. She was a friendly woman, but had little interest in their talk of war.

  Mackenzie was carrying something and he handed it to Papa when he took his chair. “That’s for you.”

  “Where did you get this?” Papa asked.

  “One of my men cut it out of a Kiowa shield,” Mackenzie said. “I understand that they sometimes stuff them between the bull hide for more protection.”

  It was nothing but a little book that Papa held on his knee, but I saw that his eyes watered up. He finally thumbed the book open and looked at something inside the front cover. I looked over his shoulder and saw an inscription written in a neat and decidedly feminine hand.

  My dearest Argyle,

  I hope these poems will comfort you in the lonely hours. May God keep you safe from harm in this time of war. Thinking of you and longing for the day you return to me.

  Love,

  Sarah

  June 15, 1863

  I didn’t know the first Mrs. Dollarhyde long, but the sight of that handwriting gave me a warm feeling—faint memories of tender hands and a soft smile. I could tell the book gave Papa memories, too.

  Mackenzie worked on his brandy, allowing Papa time to gather himself. I took a chair at the far end of the porch, giving them some room but wanting to be close enough to hear what was said.

  “I captu
red a Mexican trader this time. Comanchero that said he could show me the big canyon where the hostiles make winter camp,” Mackenzie said.

  Papa looked up at him. “And?”

  “Two days into those river breaks, he got too scared to guide me any farther. Was afraid of what the Indians would do to him if they ever caught him out on the plains again and knew he gave away their secret,” Mackenzie swirled his brandy around in his glass.

  “Those Comancheros are worse than the Indians,” Papa said. “Trading whiskey and beads and guns for stolen horses and cattle and white women.”

  Mackenzie nodded and gave a cold chuckle. “I had the men hang that old thief from a wagon tongue until he decided to talk again. Sent the Tonkawas scouting the way he said and they found that canyon. We hit those hostiles hard. Caught them sleeping.”

  “Who did you catch?”

  “Don’t know for sure. It was a big canyon with little camps scattered at the head of it. Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa. According the Tonkawa and some of the captives, Quanah, Red War Bonnet, Poor Buffalo, other big medicine types were there.”

  “Lone Wolf?”

  “The old one or the young one? There are two that go by that name.”

  “The older one. Did you get him?” Papa asked.

  “He was there, but we didn’t get him. He’s too cagey and retreated up the canyon walls on the other side and made it hot for us from there,” Mackenzie said. “We didn’t get many of them at all, but we ran them out of that canyon and burned their lodges and winter supplies. Captured their horses, too.”

  “Quanah, you said? Big Comanche?”

  “That’s him—half-breed son of that Parker woman the Rangers took back years ago. We didn’t get him, either.”

  “I think I saw him once,” Papa said. “He and Lone Wolf were together. Crazy brave and the best rider I ever saw. Cornered me in a buffalo wallow on the Washita.”

  I leaned closer to make sure I heard Papa.