Destiny, Texas

by Brett Cogburn

  “You were lucky,” Mackenzie said. “We found that Ranger’s skull in one of those canyon camps. You heard about that, didn’t you? Lone Wolf’s boys cut off that Ranger’s head after the Lost Valley fight. Would have killed the whole Ranger company if the 10th Cavalry hadn’t showed up and saved them.”

  “Negros make poor soldiers, if you ask me.”

  “I’ve commanded them and found them to be steady men if given sound leadership and proper training,” Mackenzie said.

  I think that’s why Papa liked talking to him. Mackenzie was one of the few men who would argue with him.

  Papa straightened his achy leg in front of him and readjusted himself in his chair. “Well, I didn’t have anybody to save me. Not even buffalo soldiers. Didn’t have anything but my Sharps breechloader and a Colt revolving rifle I borrowed from one of my vaqueros. Those Indians had killed my horse, so I forted up behind him and did my best.”

  “Like I said, you were lucky.”

  “Damned fool is what I was.”

  “When I first came out here everyone told me how you took on a whole Kiowa camp after they killed your wife and shot off your boy’s arm,” Mackenzie said. “It’s getting dark and that’s a story I wouldn’t mind hearing.”

  Papa downed another glass and stared grim-faced at the colonel. Juanita came out on the porch and announced that supper was on the table. The colonel was hungry after coming so many miles, but I don’t think Papa would have answered him, even if Juanita hadn’t interrupted them with her good cooking.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  1876

  The brown gelding had about quit bucking when Gunn came out of the bunkhouse and walked over and hung his arm over the top rail of the corral. He wouldn’t sleep in the big house.

  He and his trail crew had ridden in late the night before. He was three hours late getting up, and from the look of him, the weeks’ ride back from Dodge City hadn’t totally cured him of the Kansas hangover he was nursing.

  Gunn squinted at me. “You about got the rough rode off of him?”

  The brown came to a stop, still quivering a little with fear and trying to watch me out of the backs of its eyes. I leaned forward slightly and rubbed its neck with my free hand, cautious and wary, should it explode again. “This one isn’t so bad. I think he’ll make a good horse.”

  “How can you tell? Looks like he’s still of a mind to buck you off.”

  Everyone has a rightful place. You know, that place where you fit; where the world is perfect and all things balance and you know you belong. I can’t explain all I understood about a horse, or how I came to that understanding. I couldn’t explain it to Gunn, and didn’t try.

  “I take it your trip went well?” I asked.

  “We got them delivered, and that’s about all the good I can say,” Gunn said. “Worst trip I’ve taken. That trader Papa bought those steers off of must have spent a year to find so many soured, crazy critters. I think the whole damned herd was made up of bunch-quitters and outlaws. I knew it when I first saw where a couple of them had raw eyelids and the rope scars where they had been hobbled.”

  Before cattle were worth anything in Texas, older, outlaw cattle down in the brush country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande were able to avoid captivity. Nobody wanted to fool with them when there were younger, better beeves that could be handled with a lot less trouble. But as prices rose and every Tom, Dick, and Harry in Texas wanted to get in on the business, they began to comb the brush for anything with horns and hooves they could put together for a herd.

  Many of those outlaws were past veterans of other attempts to gather them, and holding them with a herd was next to impossible. A tactic that some of those brush country boys had developed was to rope and throw those brutes and sew their eyelids shut with twine. Blind, the animal’s only comfort was the sense of others of its kind around it, and in that manner it would cling to the herd. Eventually, the stitches would be removed when the cowboys thought the animal was trail broke.

  Another technique was to yoke a wild steer to a gentle ox, or to hobble a front leg to its own neck. After a time of tugging and fighting to no avail, the steer might give up the fighting spirit and decide it was content to go where it was pointed.

  But no matter how you handled such cattle, they were never going to be gentle. It was like trying to herd mountain lions.

  Nobody who knew anything wanted any part of handling such a herd, but the market was better that year, and Papa wanted to drive more to market than we had the numbers for. That meant he was buying steers wherever he could get them and counting on turning a profit in Kansas.

  Gunn went south to take charge of one of the herds, and I stayed at the ranch to take delivery of the new breeding stock Papa had bought. By then, according to our books, we were running twenty thousand head of cattle on our range. Papa said that in another year or two we would produce enough beef to avoid having to middleman other people’s stock, and could put four herds of our own up the trail every year. He spent half the spring riding from San Antonio to the border looking for bargains and trying to put trail herds together.

  Gunn scraped at the stubble of whiskers on his chin. “It stormed the first two weeks on the trail, and the damned things ran on us the first and the second night. And it all went downhill from there. By then, they had the habit and were looking for something to spook at. You couldn’t hold them for anything when they were of a mind to run. Had a big run up north of the Cimarron. There were five herds waiting for the river to go down so they could cross, and when our bunch stampeded that night it took all the others with it, mixing them together something awful. We spent three days sorting and trying to put our herds right again.”

  I didn’t hear what else he had to say, for something spooked the gelding I was sitting on. It clamped its tail and bolted three running strides before it broke into pitching again. Its first jump was a big one.

  The brown sunfished twice, twisting at the hips in midair and rolling his belly and kicking out with both hind legs. The braided grass hackamore reins bit into my hand as he fought to bury his head between his front legs. But I was right in the middle. Like I said, there’s a balance to all things, and even in such a storm, I had found the middle of my saddle, and nothing that brown could do was going to put me off-kilter. I wish all things were as easy. Some things don’t seem to have a middle.

  The brown stopped in a cloud of dust with his head jammed against the fence, and Gunn laughed. He had a good laugh.

  “I thought they rarely bucked with you,” he said. “You’re always fussing about how we rough break a colt.”

  “There are some horses that you can do everything wrong with and it’s all still easy, and some that you can do everything right with and they have to learn things the hard way. If they ever learn.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re talking only about horses,” Gunn said. “Spit out what you’ve got to say. Don’t beat around the bush.”

  “Never mind. Papa’s coming.”

  Gunn twisted his neck to look in the direction of the big house. “He’s probably coming down here to tell you how to handle that colt.”

  The brown had freed up a little and I moved him around the corral, letting him go where he would, and only gently taking a little pull on one rein or the other, here and there, to show him the beginnings of how to give to the pull of the hackamore bosal resting on his nose.

  Papa was leaning on the fence not far from Gunn by the time I called my session with the brown to an end and dismounted and slipped my cinch. By then, Papa and Gunn were already arguing.

  “Where were you this morning?” Papa asked. “I could have used you. This ranch doesn’t run itself.”

  Gunn never looked at Papa, and kept squinting in my direction, studying the brown as if he had never seen a horse unsaddled. After a long wait, he ducked his head and spat between the fence rails. “I didn’t ride in until midnight. Figured I was due a late getup.”

  Papa grun
ted. “I didn’t get here until late myself. Rode all the way in from San Antonio in three days. You didn’t see me sleeping in when there is work to be done.”

  “I ain’t you.”

  “Where’s your tally book?” Papa asked.

  Gunn reached into his vest pocket and produced a tattered little notebook that he sailed at Papa with a flick of his wrist.

  Papa caught it and spent several minutes poring over it. Papa was a stickler about his trail bosses keeping accurate head counts on their herds, recording any losses, and making a log entry of every day’s events on the trail. Most of his men complained that they hired on to handle cattle and not write books.

  “You lost fifteen head?” Papa asked with a scowl.

  “And three more crippled that didn’t bring more than the price of their hides,” Gunn said.

  “Why is it that you lost twice what the other two men I sent up the trail with herds did?”

  “Maybe because you didn’t send them with the junk you sent me with.”

  “You’ve got all kinds of excuses, don’t you? I asked you if you could handle that herd, and you told me you could.”

  Gunn reached into his pocket again and pulled out a scrap of yellow paper. He held it up so that Papa could see it. “Your money’s in the bank, and here’s the draft. You made seven dollars a head on those steers, so I don’t know what all this complaining is about.”

  “Money doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? At a glance, I’d say your wagon expenses were half again what the other men incurred.”

  “That herd made money, and there isn’t a son of a bitch that would work for you that could have brought them through any better. I feed my men well and don’t scrimp when it comes to groceries. You treat a man right and he’ll do what you ask him without complaint.”

  “I hear you had whiskey in camp. You know I don’t allow that.”

  “You can hear anything.”

  “Why did you stay so long in Dodge? You should have been back here to help Joseph two weeks ago.”

  “Took me a while to find a buyer for the saddle horses. You’re the one who told me to make sure I sold them if I could. You don’t snap your fingers and find a buyer for sixty head of horses.”

  “How many head have we taken north this year? Last year?” Papa’s face was turning red like it did when he was getting worked up. “What’s our loss on the trail for this year? What’s it costing me to pay the men? Ranch improvements? Total expenses?”

  Gunn adjusted his hat on his head and stared at the brown some more.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Papa asked. “What about the grass this year? Are you worried that we’ve had half the rain we normally get? Thought about where we need to move our stock to make sure they get through the year like they should?”

  “I’m sure you’ve got opinions about all of that.”

  “Son, I can hire all the cowboys I want. They’re a dime a dozen.”

  “You don’t make a dime unless some damn cowboys take a herd up the trail for you.”

  “Yes, but that’s all a cowboy does. I’m asking you to be a cowman. Be a businessman. Get your head in the game and take a hold. Quit thinking about Kansas whores and how you can throw away your pay at a card table once you hit town like every other fool that works for me.”

  “We’ve made a fortune.”

  “A fortune? How much money have we got in the bank? How much? I lost twenty thousand last year on the three herds we trailed north.”

  “You should have held those herds until the spring and waited for the market to pick back up. Others did.”

  “Oh, now you’re telling me about the market? And what paid the bills while I waited?”

  “You sent me to deliver a herd, and I delivered it.”

  “If you would spend half the time learning the business side of things as you do riding off every evening to find yourself a good time I wouldn’t have so many worries,” Papa said. “I didn’t build this ranch to lose it.”

  “Whose ranch, Papa?” Gunn said. “Whose? Yours? I’ve been right here every step of the way.”

  Papa didn’t have an answer or he had gotten too mad to argue the matter anymore. He turned his wrath on me.

  “Joseph, you take too long with those horses. I’d prefer you hand the breaking over to the men, but don’t coddle and pamper those animals so much if you’re bound and determined to earn your keep as a bronc buster. There are more important things that you can be doing instead of spending all morning working with a thirty-dollar pony.”

  I knew how Papa thought a horse should be broken. You roped him and snubbed him to a post and fought with him until you could get a saddle on him. Then some thirty-five-dollar-a-month brave fool climbed on his back and did his best to ride him to a standstill. If you were lucky, after a month’s rides you ended up with a half-wild horse that would only try to buck you off once a day, would paw you on top of the head on its worst day, and might not kill you if you never let down your guard.

  “We’ve been doing a good business selling our strings, and I think we can get more money out of them if they’re better than usual,” I said. “A horse that’s trained is bound to be worth more than one that only tolerates somebody on his back.”

  “You, too?” Papa put his hands on his hips. “Now you’re telling me about the horse business?”

  “You would listen if you weren’t so stubborn,” Gunn said. “Joseph’s string is the best in the country. I’d give two hundred a head for any one of them, and I ain’t the only one.”

  “And it takes him two years to turn out a broke horse. I can hire men who can turn out twenty horses a month my way and they’ll bring thirty dollars a head. Who makes the most profit?”

  Gunn started back to the bunkhouse.

  “Where are you going?” Papa asked.

  “To lose you some more money.”

  “I’ve got a job for you two.”

  Gunn stopped and turned around.

  “You boys get a couple of hands and ride over to Destiny. I’ve got a little herd waiting there and I want you to bring them in.”

  “Can’t whoever you bought them from bring them in?” Gunn asked.

  “No, his horse kicked him and broke his leg. He’s laid up at the hotel.”

  “No need for good horses, is there?” Gunn looked at me with a bitter smirk on his mouth.

  “Do like I said. I sunk a lot of money in this bunch,” Papa said. “And stay out of the saloon. I want you back here this evening so I can look them over.”

  “We’ll try not to lose any on the way back.” Gunn held his hand out, waiting.

  Papa handed him back his tally book. “Your handwriting is terrible.”

  “I’d buy a new pencil, but I don’t know if we have the money.”

  Papa grabbed me by the arm when I went past him. “You make sure he does like I told him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I don’t know why I said that. Gunn did what he was of a mind to do, just like Papa. The only thing you could do was to pray and try to survive the storm. Neither one of them had any balance.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “What the hell are those?” Gunn asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “They’re Herefords,” the dried-up, little cow trader sitting in the buckboard beside us said. He hawked a wad of phlegm and tobacco juice over the side and then propped his crutch and his splinted leg up on the buggy’s dashboard. “English cattle. Your father paid me two hundred dollars a head for these bulls. Outbid three other buyers for them.”

  Gunn and I studied the short, squatty yearling bulls in front of us. There were ten of them and they all looked almost identical. They were a rich red color with bald or freckled faces and more white hair on their throats, bellies, and their tail switches. They had pale, curved horns no longer than your forearm. To men used to looking at long-legged, rangy longhorns, the yearlings before us looked like some child’s awkward, disproportional drawing
of what a cow looked like.

  Several passersby also stopped to look. Nobody had ever seen cattle like those.

  “I don’t know what that says for Papa,” Gunn said.

  “Look at the beef they carry,” the cow trader said. “No longhorn ever packed that much on his frame. People want to eat tender, fat meat, and a longhorn is little better than a stringy jackrabbit on the hoof.”

  “The fat little things’ legs are too short to go anywhere,” Gunn said. “How do you think we could get one of those up the trail to Kansas?”

  “Won’t be any trail drives before long. They’re already talking about bringing the railroad to Destiny,” the man said. “You’re looking at the future.”

  “The future?” Gunn asked.

  “Herefords will fatten and be ready for butchering in two years. Nobody back East wants to eat tough longhorn beef when they can eat one of these. No more waiting for the times when there’s a beef shortage and a longhorn might sell for a profit. No more handling four- and five-year-old steers that are more horn and hoof and meanness than anything.”

  “You’ve got a lot of big ideas,” Gunn said. “No wonder you and Papa get along.”

  The cow trader squinted one eye to fight the sun in his face. “You listen to your father, and you might even listen to me. I was following longhorns up the trail when you were still on the tit. Times are changing and a man had best be in on the ground floor.”

  “There aren’t but ten of them. What’s he going to do with them?” I asked.

  The little man turned to me. “He’ll turn out these bulls and let them cross with your longhorns. Given time, they’ll improve your herd.”

  Gunn laughed. “Hey, Joseph, can you imagine one of these fatties taking on one of our bulls for the rights to the ladies?”

  I couldn’t help but giggle, and I hoped I didn’t offend the seller. “Folks have tried roan Durhams for years, but they don’t do well turned out on open range. Don’t milk well when it turns hot and dry, and the wolves play hell with their calves. They’re farmer cows that need to be shut up in a pen and the corn shook out for them every day.”