Destiny, Texas

by Brett Cogburn

  “Good night, Mr. President,” I said.

  He looked put out that I didn’t seem more impressed with his oration, and he asked, “I know you are a man of action, but did you ever command men in battle?”

  “I’ve been to war,” I said.

  “So you understand what I speak of.”

  “I don’t have your way with words.”

  “Memories were made that day on the hill.”

  “Soldiers call them nightmares.”

  “What’s that? I could not hear you.”

  “Fine words, Mr. President.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The Oklahoma wolf hunt really turned out to be a coyote hunt. There was a time when there were plenty of lobo wolves left over from the days when the buffalo were around, but the state put a bounty on them back in the ’80s. That bounty got up to fifty dollars a wolf. All you had to do was show a pelt or a wolf scalp with both ears still on it. The cowboys and wolf hunters in Texas and the Territory had made short work of the wolves, and seeing one was a rarity.

  I had assumed that the hunt would have consisted of a bunch of political types and city folks, and the sort that would tag along with a president trying to get his ear, but most of the crowd that showed up saddled and ready at daylight were cowboys and ranchers. The majority of the cowboys worked for Burk Burnett over in the Texas Panhandle. The governor and a couple of other sorts were the only dudes going with us.

  We were still in front of the hotel when the President introduced me to the cowboy leading the hunt. He was a young man of average to middle height, with nothing exceptional-looking about him other than he seemed strong and knew how to look you in the eyes. The President was enamored with him.

  “Mr. Dollarhyde, I want you to meet Jack Abernathy, wolf hunter extraordinaire.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dollarhyde.”

  I shook Abernathy’s hand.

  “Jack here has the most unique way of catching wolves,” the President said.

  I studied the pack of dogs trailing from the leashes of several of the mounted cowboys. They were long, rangy mutts and no two of them looked alike. Some showed traces of greyhound and other breeds that I could not name. Some were slick haired and some were grizzled or shaggy. The one thing that they had in common was that they all looked built to run and every one of them was so excited that they were twisting and dancing on the ends of their leashes.

  “I’ve seen wolves hunted with dogs before,” I said. “Although that’s an impressive string of dogs.”

  “Fine dogs, I assure you,” the President said. “But it’s Jack’s way of catching a wolf that is of interest, and not so much how his dogs run them down.”

  The cowboy only smiled and nodded at the President. He seemed uncomfortable at the praise, but was bearing with it.

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “He catches them with his bare hands.”

  I remembered hearing about such a man, but expected him to be older. I immediately glanced at the cowboy’s hands, but could see no scars on them.

  A lobo wolf, or a buffalo wolf as some call them, could weigh as much as a man. Teeth like a steel trap. Even a forty-pound coyote wasn’t something that I wanted to be bitten by. Most with good sense either poisoned wolves they wanted rid of, or shot them. An occasional cowboy risked running his horse to death to rope one.

  “I’m sure you’re going to enjoy the sport today,” the President said. “I have the feeling it’s going to be a bully hunt.”

  I had been interested to see what kind of man might have talked Joseph into joining the Rough Riders, but my interest in the President was wearing thin. I don’t even know what I thought the President might tell me. The odds were he didn’t even know Joseph.

  The biggest Indian you ever saw rode through the crowd and stopped his horse by Burk Burnett. He was dressed like most of the cowboys, in tall-topped cowboy boots and a hat, but he wore his hair in two braids hanging down either side of his chest. Those braids were wrapped in some kind of fur.

  He looked at me and I looked at him. I remembered him, even if it had been better than thirty-five years or so since I had seen him last. I didn’t think he would remember me, but he did. I could tell it by the way he was looking at me.

  He was riding a gray horse, but the last time I had seen him he was riding a black. I think it was him that had shot my horse Shiloh out from under me. Three times that day those Kiowa and Comanche tried to overrun me, and every time he was at the front of them.

  “You are Dollarhyde. I remember you,” he said.

  “And I remember you.”

  They said that Quanah Parker had built a big house with stars painted on the roof of it, and was running cattle like the rich cattlemen his tribe leased land to. I remembered him differently, and when he wasn’t so civilized. I never was sure whether it was Kiowa or Comanche who had raided my ranch. They often ran together in those days. Whether he was one of them or not, he was with Lone Wolf the day I fought them up on the Chisolm Trail, and he was that kind. Renegade and man burner.

  “Easy, Papa,” Gunn said.

  Gunn didn’t know who Quanah was, past the part that everybody in Texas knew about Quanah being the half-breed son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white woman captured in a Comanche raid. Gunn knew more than Hamish did about how things were better left in the past, but he didn’t know anything about what I had done when I had rode off and left those boys with the trail herd to go after Indians. And he didn’t know Quanah could have been one of them that hit the ranch.

  Burk Burnett must have seen how I was looking at his prize Indian. “Dollarhyde, today’s a good day to let old things stay in the past.”

  I ignored Burnett and kept my eyes on the Comanche. “Maybe one day you and I will meet on the road somewhere and get a chance to talk about the old days.”

  The Comanche had eyes like brown flint. “I remember things, too, Dollarhyde. Maybe it would be good for us to meet alone and talk, as you say. We once started something that we never finished.”

  “I should have shot you then, but you were too hard to hit.”

  “Gentlemen,” the President said, “I will have no trouble here.”

  “It was a good fight,” Quanah Parker said. “If you hadn’t had so many repeaters and that horse to hide behind, maybe it was you that would have gotten shot.”

  “Dollarhyde,” the President said, “Chief Parker is an invited guest and a venerated member of the Comanche Nation. I would appreciate you showing him the courtesy you show the rest of these men.”

  The big Comanche waved a hand in front of him to dismiss the President’s words. “No trouble here. Dollarhyde and I go way back. I understand him.”

  I rode out of town at a long trot at the back of the group, headed northwest for the Big Pasture. The President rode at the head of the procession with the wolf hunter and Burk Burnett. Quanah Parker rode at the front with them, and he never looked back at me.

  As I had thought, the first wolf the dogs ran down was nothing but a young coyote. The technique was to turn a few dogs loose to trail up or jump a coyote. They would either run it down, or if they tired and failed, a set of fresh dogs would be turned loose to give chase. A little coyote doesn’t look fast, but the first one we jumped outran the dogs.

  This coyote wasn’t so lucky. Gunn and I were riding at the end of the long line of men trying to flush a coyote or wolf from the grass when a shout went up. By the time we rode over, Jack Abernathy was already off his horse and had his hands on the coyote.

  I should have said he had his hand in the coyote. He walked proudly out of the cluster of barking, darting dogs with the coyote bit down on his right hand. The animal was still alive and clamped on him like a turtle. His other hand was gripping the coyote’s upper jaw.

  It didn’t take long to see his trick. He had jammed his right hand so far in the coyote’s mouth that it was behind the animal’s back molars. Still, it took a nervy man with fast hands to stick his hand in t
here. One wrong move and you were liable to find yourself missing some fingers.

  I was a little impressed, but not as much as the rest of the men. Once the coyote’s legs were bound with string and his mouth tied shut, they all began to pat Abernathy on the back and question him about his technique.

  “That’s nervy enough, but I’ve got sense enough not to risk my fingers,” Gunn said to me. “I guess he’s got to show out to keep the President’s business.”

  Gunn must have spoken too loudly, for everyone went quiet and gave us hard looks.

  “It’s not hard when you know what you’re doing,” Abernathy said. “I’ve never had but one bite me bad, and that was a big old loafer wolf.”

  “No offense intended,” Gunn said.

  “I sell them alive. Zoos and scientists and such. The only thing hard about it is that you can’t go at it halfway. Lose your nerve and put your hand in there too timid or too slow and it won’t work. Get your hand mangled is what you’ll do.”

  “I imagine,” Gunn said.

  “Most men aren’t fast enough or don’t have the nerve.”

  “Oho!” said the President. “Do we have a challenge here? Is there any one of us who would like a try at Jack’s technique?”

  One of the cowboys tried when the dogs ran down the next coyote. By the time he got his nerve up the coyote was already mauled and bleeding from the fight with the dogs. It didn’t seem like exactly a fair fight. I couldn’t imagine wrestling a real wolf without the dogs taking some of the starch out of him first.

  The cowboy was apparently too hesitant to stick his hand in the back of the coyote’s jaws, or too slow. Oh, he was bold enough. He waded into the pack of milling, snapping dogs and got ahold of the coyote, but he got his hand severely bitten in the process.

  Abernathy took over and soon had the coyote bound and muzzled, using the same technique as he had before. He acted like it was no big deal, and I wondered how many times he had done that.

  The next coyote we jumped ran better than two miles before the dogs finally caught him and surrounded him. The riders held back to watch the fight between the dogs and the coyote. Most of the dogs darted in when the coyote’s attention was on another dog, and took ahold of it. Several times they flipped it through the air or pulled it to the ground. Smaller than the dogs, maybe, but the coyote was a fighter and limber as a snake. Every time one of those dogs latched on to it, it would double back along itself and take a bite of them, its ears pinned flat to its head and its teeth bared in a grimace.

  The President was positively beaming. He didn’t seem to be overly coordinated or graceful, but I admit he rode pretty well for a city man.

  “Who’s next?” the President asked.

  “Better be quick before they kill that coyote,” Jack Abernathy said. “You have to get in there before they wool him too much.”

  Nobody immediately volunteered, and all of them were looking at Gunn.

  “How about it, cowboy?” the President asked.

  I could see Gunn getting ready to get off his horse, but I beat him to the punch.

  “Oh, the Indian fighter from Texas!” the President said.

  I handed my reins to Gunn and stamped my feet to try and limber my knees.

  “Are you sure about this?” Gunn asked.

  I started for the coyote that was spinning up a dust storm in the middle of the dogs.

  “I know you don’t like to hear this,” Gunn said so that only I could hear him. “But you aren’t as spry as you once were.”

  “Jam that hand in there quick and hard. Don’t hesitate,” Abernathy called to me. “Pull on his top jaw with your other hand to help you adjust. Hurry.”

  I kicked the first dog out of my way. I couldn’t even see the coyote for all the commotion. I was wading my way through the dogs and cussing them when the coyote broke free. He ran only about five yards before one of the dogs ran by him and rolled him in a ball.

  I made a short run to the coyote and stopped just short of it.

  “Get him!” the President shouted.

  Several of the cowboys were hooting and cheering me on. Or maybe they were cheering for the coyote.

  They all went quiet when I pulled my pistol out and shot the coyote between the eyes. None of them said anything when I walked back to my horse.

  “Nothing to it,” I said.

  When Gunn and I rode off Quanah Parker was the last man we passed. His face was still hard as ever, but he nodded at me.

  That says something when the only man left who can understand you is your enemy.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  1906

  Gunn couldn’t take it anymore. I guess he had fought his nature as long as he could, and needed to go see the elephant at least one more time.

  People didn’t make long drives with their cattle much anymore, with railroad tracks laid all over creation, but some ranch or another thought it would be cheaper to trail a small herd of steers from up in No Man’s Land to their other ranch division in Wyoming. There hadn’t been many herds driven far enough to matter in recent years. There was a chance that it would be the last drive. As it was, they were going to wind their way around every fence between there and Wyoming. That was a lot of fences and farmers. But Gunn wasn’t about to miss out.

  I don’t blame Gunn. He was made like he was made, and he had hung around longer than I expected. I felt bad for Carmelita. A man shouldn’t leave his pregnant wife like that, but she didn’t seem worried at all. I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t sure he was coming back.

  And I couldn’t get her to come up to the big house and stay with Juanita and me while Gunn was gone. She and Gunn had rebuilt one of the jacales down in Poquito, no matter how much I protested that the place was a pigsty. She was four months along when Gunn left with the trail herd, and it worried me, her being down there alone. She had some family in the village, but they were too old to do anything if she had trouble with the baby.

  Carmelita was a sweet thing. She worked in Hamish’s new bank in Destiny for a while until her father became sick and she had to move to the village to help mend him. She was shy and quiet, but she had a smile for Gunn as big as a rainbow. She took good care of the boy of hers from her first husband, Pancho he was called, and I didn’t worry about her making a good mother for my next grandson. Juanita said I was silly for not considering Carmelita might have a girl.

  Juanita or I made it a practice to ride down to Poquito and check on her every day or so. I intended to go that morning, but I was running late. Two of my bulls got in a fight in a fence corner and broke over a couple of posts and tore down the wire. It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but I finally had the fence fixed by late afternoon.

  I put my fencing tools up in the shed when I got back and rode down to Poquito, intending to wash up in the windmill tank I had paid to have built at the end of the village. I could see the galvanized metal wind wheel on top of the wooden derrick spinning and the pump rod working slowly up and down. The water flowing into the tank would be cold and clear. A lot of the water on the ranch was “gyppy,” Texas talk for gypsum-laden water, but that well was as sweet and tasty as any I had ever drank.

  Good water or not, the windmill was one of the few reasons I hated to ride down and check on Carmelita. Every time I rode into the village some old woman was thanking me by trying to give me a batch of tamales wrapped in a rag, or her husband was trying to give me a rawhide bridle he had braided or offering to do some work for me. I appreciated their gratitude, but I hadn’t expected anything from them when I built the thing. If they enjoyed it, fine, but one day I intended to fence that section, and a windmill tank would water the stock in that pasture. At least that’s what I told Juanita and Tiffany. I couldn’t have them thinking I had gone soft in my old age.

  Truth was, other than the overly grateful offers, I found that I enjoyed my time in Poquito. Miguel, Carmelita’s father and one of my old hands, was still there, retired and too old for any kind of wor
k, but somebody to swap stories with who remembered the old days.

  I was thinking that I might talk to him as soon as I checked on Carmelita, when I saw there was trouble. Two white men were in front of Carmelita’s jacal. One of them was still mounted and holding their horses, and the other one was beating on Miguel. I spurred my horse and slid him to a stop almost on top of the man on the ground. Their horses shied and the man holding them had his hands full trying to hang on to them.

  Miguel looked up at me, blood trickling from his lip, and dust covering his hatless head. Moon Lowe stood over him, one fist drawn back to hit him again.

  “Stay out of this, Dollarhyde,” Moon said, letting go of Miguel and straightening. “This man was resisting arrest.”

  Moon Lowe stood well over six feet and weighed enough for two men. Miguel was so old and skinny he stood a chance of the wind blowing him away anytime he went outside.

  “Arrest him for what?” I was already down off my horse, and I felt that old mad rising up in me. I hadn’t felt that for a long, long time.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Moon puffed his chest out, as if I couldn’t see the sheriff’s badge pinned on him.

  “When you’re on my ranch you do.”

  The other man, Moon’s deputy, finally had their horses calmed down and he pointed at Miguel. “That old greaser tried to cut us with a knife.”

  I looked at Miguel, waiting. He told me what happened in Spanish. I didn’t speak that language well, but good enough to get the gist of it.

  “We came through here looking for a Mexican that stole a horse up in the north end of the county. Thought he might be hid out here with the rest of your greasers,” Moon said. “Tried looking in this old man’s house and he pulled a knife on me.”

  “He says you tried to molest his daughter.”

  “We never,” the deputy said.

  Carmelita was standing in the door, the waist of her skirt torn so that it sagged down over one hipbone. She held a knife and her eyes were hot. I presumed it was the same knife Miguel had tried to use. I remembered when Miguel was young and carried a knife that you could shave with. He always loved a good blade. If you had taken ten years off him, he would have gutted Moon and never broke a sweat doing it.