The Drifter

by J. T. Edson

  That was when the ranch crew saw how fast Waco could move when needed. The young Texan went over the table in a rolling dive, scooping up the rifle as he went. He hit the floor and the rifle bellowed, the heavy bullet smashing the revolver from under Hatch’s hand.

  In the same move Waco rolled to one knee, the rifle lever blurred and the muzzle lined on Hatch’s chest. ‘Freeze hard, you lousy rat,’ he snapped.

  The bunkhouse door was flung open hard enough to almost jar it from its hinges and Beth came in. She tried to get through the bunch of cowhands and her body felt suddenly cold as she heard Braden say:

  ‘You lousy rat, Hatch. The boy wasn’t wearing a gun.’

  ‘Surely got hisseif one fast enough though,’ whooped Angus delightedly. ‘And ole Jacky there’s been telling us he was fast.’ Waco ignored all this, laying his rifle on the table and clenching his fists. ‘You all wanting to carry on with it?’

  Slowly Hatch came to his feet, rubbing the blood from his face and tried to meet the angry blue eyes. He knew that here was a master with fists or with any kind of weapon.

  Before he could say anything, there came a violent interruption. Beth was in front of him, her eyes glowing with fury. The cowhands stared, they’d never seen the girl so angry.

  ‘You get off this ranch right now, Jack Hatch!’ she snapped, the combined fury and loathing in her voice making him take a pace back. ‘You dirty bully, attacking a sick man.’

  Darkie gave a whooping laugh. ‘Ole Texas hits that way sick, I’m not fixing to tangle with him when he’s well again.’

  ‘Darkie boy,’ agreed Johnny. ‘You’re right for the first time in your young and wuthless life.’

  Hatch looked around, seeing the derision and dislike on every face. His eyes went to the tall young Texan and he snarled, ‘The next time we meet I’m shooting.’

  ‘You just now tried,’ replied Waco grimly. ‘Why wait until next time?’

  ‘Let up, Texas,’ growled Braden. ‘You got half an hour to get off this place, Hatch. See you’ve gone.’

  Beth looked at the tall Texan and asked how he was. There were grins from members of the ranch crew at the girl’s concern, but none of them made a comment about it. The tension was still in the air and stayed until Hatch gathered his gear and left, heading for the corral.

  Waco remained ready for trouble until the other man left, then he relaxed and was ready to become friendly with the others. Darkie White stepped up, watching the door close behind Beth, for the girl rarely came into the bunkhouse. That was the home of the cowhands and not a place for a woman.

  ‘Texas, come and get acquainted with this ‘ere bunch. Ain’t one of them wuth a cuss dead or alive, but you’ll have to put up with ‘em.’

  ‘Sure, but I’m lucky.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Darkie.

  ‘I’ve only got to put up with them, they’ve got to put up with me—and you.’

  So Waco took on yet another name; he became Texas to the crew. In the days which followed, while Bix Smith tried and failed to follow his tracks, Waco stayed on at the BM house. He quickly became very popular with the others and was Beth’s favourite, although he never played on it, nor, after the first day, received any special treatment.

  His wound was not serious or troublesome and he was the first out to work every morning. He proved that he was a cowhand of the first water and could handle any horse in the remuda, although Beth would have strenuously objected had she known.

  Braden watched the tall young man, wondering about him. That he was a tophand went without saying. Braden was willing to concede that Waco was as skilled with cattle as the foreman himself. They’d seen how he could use that rifle and handle his fists. They’d also seen how fast he could act when it was called for. Yet, for a man who showed signs of wearing two guns, he showed little skill when he borrowed a gunbelt and tried fast draw and shoot. That was easily explained. The cowhands did not wear double holstered belts, nor were their holsters worked on to give that extra ease of grip which a fast gunman needed. There was another thing, although Braden could not know this, that Waco’s matched guns were of the five-and-a-half-inch-barrelled Artillery Peacemaker model. The ranch crew all owned Colt Peacemakers, but of the more usual seven-and-a-half-inch Cavalry or four-and-three-quarter-inch Civilian model. So the guns Waco was loaned did not balance in his hands; he could hit his mark, but not with the speed or accuracy he could attain with his own guns.

  Five days passed. Waco settled down to his new life and worked hard. He was at the house for dinner most nights and was often seen taking walks with Beth in the moonlight. There were significant glances among the other men at this for the young Texan was a true cowhand and averse to walking any more than was necessary.

  All in all, the hands approved of Waco as being nearly worthy of their boss-lady. Angus said a word about it as they gathered by the corral ready to go out to work some cattle after lunch on the fifth day.

  ‘I like Texas,’ he said profoundly. ‘He stands full seventeen hands high and he’s making a hand. But he’s got to prove he’s worth it afore he marries our gal.’

  ‘Plays him a mean hand of poker,’ Johnny remarked casually.

  Angus grunted. He was the authority on the noble art of filling the inside straight but in Waco met his match. It was a friendly game and Angus tried to make an alteration in the run of the cards by holding out a couple of aces ready for use. He got his chance to use them on Waco’s next deal, when, after an apparently harmless riffle, and the deck being cut, Waco dealt Angus a pair of aces. These, with his held-out pair, gave Angus a hand which might be expected to clean out the board. It was a good thought but failed, due to Waco producing a small straight flush. The young Texan then proceeded to show the others a whole lot about crooked gambling that they’d never seen nor heard of before.

  ‘He can handle his ole paint hoss as well,’ said Angus snuffily.

  Johnny grinned wryly, his hand going to the battered old hat he wore. On the morning after their return from town he tried to take a short cut through the corral which housed Waco’s paint and found the huge stallion charging at him. To escape, Johnny threw his hat into the horse’s face and lit out for the corral rails. His hat was stamped to dollrags but he was fairly philosophical about it. The hat was brand new but all he said was:

  ‘Could have been wuss. My head might have been in it.’

  Braden settled back, listening to the comments. He glanced at Darkie who wore a new shirt, having been forced to scrub all his other clothes after riding the East line in an unusually hard patch of cattle getting into the mud. The dark cowhand saw Waco and Beth approaching so began to whistle the Wedding March.

  Beth listened for a moment, there was a mild expression on her face and she cooed like a dove as she remarked, ‘Isn’t it about Darkie’s turn to ride the East line again, Seth?’

  Darkie raised his hands. ‘I’ll be good,’ he promised. ‘You just go and pick on one of the others for a change.’

  ‘I’ll surely do that,’ she promised, eyeing the grinning cowhands grimly. ‘Especially if I find out who put the stinkweed outside my door and left a nice lil note fastened to it.’

  ‘Note?’ asked the culprit, Johnny. ‘War there a note—and some stinkweed?’

  ‘There was,’ said Beth grimly. ‘And it wasn’t Angus, he can’t write. Darkie always spells love with a “u”, two “v’s” and no “e”. I saw a letter he wrote to Dolly Weller in town once.’

  Waco knew who’d left the bunch of stinkweed, with the charming little note reading, ‘From Texas with luv.’ He did not say anything, but that night, when Johnny jumped into bed, he found it filled with the foul-smelling weed.

  ‘Hoss coming in fast,’ Darkie said, before Beth could continue trying to discover who left the stinkweed. ‘Looks like Windy, but he don’t ride that fast less’n there’s food at the end of it.’

  The girl turned and looked to where a rider was riding towards the ranch house. She recognised th
e approaching man but did not speak. The cowhand came up fast, bringing his horse sliding to a halt before the ranch foreman.

  ‘Seth, they’ve been slow-elking.’

  ‘How many?’ growled Braden grimly. Slow-elking was killing stock, butchering some other man’s cattle, and treated in the same way as rustling.

  ‘I found six.’

  ‘Six head?’ Beth snapped angrily. She did not mind a passing stranger killing one steer if driven to it by hunger, but this was wholesale butchery. ‘Get your horses, Seth. Texas, Darkie, Angus, Johnny. Windy, take another horse from our string and come with us.’

  The men did not wait to talk about things. They darted for the corral and caught their horses while the other hands headed for the bunkhouse to collect weapons and ammunition for the party. One came up with Waco’s rifle and the box of bullets, handing it to the Texan.

  ‘You want to borrow my Colt, Texas?’ he asked.

  ‘Reckon I’d best stick to what I know,’ replied Waco.

  The party rode from the ranch. The girl sat her little dun, a grim look on her face. There was no joking among the hands either, they rode in silence. This butchering was a grim business and not one of them felt like joking.

  Windy led the others at a fast lope across the range and brought his horse to a halt, pointing ahead.

  ‘Down there in them bushes. Saw some buzzards, dropping towards something and come over to take a look. Was a piece of gut they’d thrown out.’

  Beth started her horse forward but Waco stopped her. His instincts were now those of a lawman. ‘Hold hard, boss-lady,’ he said. ‘Suppose we all stops here and just gets down first.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Could likely cut for sign afore this heavy-footed bunch tramples everything flat into the ground.’

  The girl saw the sense in Waco’s suggestion. If there was sign they might be able to read it and discover where the men who did the butchering went. There was only one snag which met her eyes.

  ‘All right. But none of us are much good at reading sign. Nothing to make old Tom Horn worried, anyways.’

  ‘I’ll make a try,’ Braden growled, ‘although I’m not good. Sure wish we’d got Lil Doe’s brother along, he could read sign.’

  ‘How about you giving her a whirl, Texas?’ asked Darkie mildly. ‘You read any sign?’

  ‘Just about follow a dragged log through sand,’ Waco replied, something swirling through his head, some vague memory. It was gone before he could grasp it but he knew he could read sign. ‘If it’s soft sand that is.’

  Braden and the girl exchanged glances. They’d wondered about the things Waco remembered, trying to fix together a picture of him as he was before the shooting. He knew much about guns and about the skills of the crooked gambler, although they doubted if he was the latter. Now he appeared to know something about tracking.

  Beth frowned, the Texas man showed many of the talents of a town-taming lawman. Strangely, she never thought to connect this tall, handsome young Texan with her imaginary picture of the stern, thirty-year-old or more, lawman for whom she voted in the elections. She never connected her Texas with Drifter Smith, sheriff of Two Forks county.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TEXAS READS SIGN

  WACO moved forward, studying the intestine laying on the ground. The buzzards had been at it but there was enough left for him to find it with no difficulty. Then he saw something more, something which brought him to a halt. Slightly away from the length of intestine were the tracks of one man, leading down into a small bushy hollow, where the actual butchering was done, out of sight of any chance passing cowhand.

  The tracks came out and returned and from all the signs the man had carried the piece of intestine out with him, to leave it on the ground. Waco was puzzled by this action. Why would a man take the trouble to carry a piece of offal out of the bushes after taking so much trouble to hide while doing the butchering? It just did not make any sense at all.

  Following the tracks Waco was even more puzzled. The man was not tall, the length of the stride showed that. He was wearing moccasins not cowhand boots, but he was no Indian, he toed out in a way no Indian did when walking. Besides, no Indian would bother to butcher cattle. He would take the horns, hide, meat, bone, tallow and bellow but he would take them alive, on the hoof and save carrying.

  The rest of the BM crew watched as Waco went forward, disappearing into the bushes. He found where the steers were butchered with no trouble. In the centre of the bushes was an open space and there was plenty of sign which showed the butchering was done there.

  Waco went over the ground, noting that all the horses ridden by the butchers were shod, something no Indian pony ever was. He saw six different patches of blood where the cattle were killed. From the way the blood was dried, the horse droppings and other sign, he could guess how long the operation took. The men who killed the cattle were experts, that was plain from the speed they worked at. The bones and offal were cleaned down from the useful meat.

  It was then Waco noticed the hides were missing. He prowled through the bushes trying to find where the skins were buried, but could not and was forced to assume the butchers took the hides with them.

  Returning to the open ground he saw something on the ground, a small black object. Bending down he picked the thing up, rolling it in his fingers and examining it, before slipping it into his pocket. He searched on, picking up four more of those small black objects and pocketing them. Then he walked back out of the bushes to where the others were waiting more or less patiently for him.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘There’s not a lot to see.’

  ‘It took you long enough to see it,’ replied Beth. ‘May we be allowed to ask what you found?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Waco, and mounted his paint.

  Almost a minute ticked by while Beth glared at the imperturbable Texan. She looked ready to explode as she yelled:

  ‘Dangnab it if you’re not getting as bad as the rest of the bunch. All right! All right! What did you find?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  Beth’s face turned red and she told Waco in hide-searing terms just what she thought of him, his findings, the State of Texas, the Confederate States, then wound up with a demand to know all he found out, before she pulled off his arm and beat his fool head in with it.

  ‘Was four of them,’ Waco drawled. ‘Three tallish, one shorter. Short hombre with a tooth missing out the front of his mouth, smokes ceegars most all the time and wears moccasins. I’d allow he was a skin-hunter. Ever run across anybody like him afore, Seth?’

  Braden shook his head, grinning at the surprised looks on the faces of the others. Here was a sign reading that took some beating, if Texas was right.

  ‘Didn’t you ask him his name?’ Darkie inquired. ‘You knowing this here short-growed ceegar-smoker so well.’

  ‘How do you know so much about the small man, Texas?’ inquired Beth.

  ‘That’s what Darkie meant, but he’s too polite to up and ask.’

  Silence came again but Beth’s breathing rose to a pitch. ‘Seth,’ she finally said, ‘I reckon it’s time we got this uppy Johnny Reb on the blister-end of a shovel for a spell.’

  Waco decided that this was a time when discretion would be the better part of valour. Beth meant what she said and he never took kindly to digging.

  ‘He smoked these five cigars while they were doing the skinning,’ he explained, showing the stubs. ‘Like I said there were four men, all skin-hunters from the boots they wore. Four of them wouldn’t take so all-fired long to butcher and dress out six head of cattle. Means he must have darned nigh lit one cigar as soon as he finished the other. Could tell about the missing tooth from the marks on the stubs. The small man was the one doing the smoking. I could tell that from his sign. He was the one who carried that lump of gut out here. What I want to know is why and we’ll likely find that out at the end of the tracks when they pulled out. Reckon we ought
to follow them, boss-lady?’

  ‘How’d you mean, you don’t know why he carried the lump of gut out with him, Texas?’ Beth asked.

  ‘How’d you happen to come across the butchering, Windy?’ said Waco, not answering the girl’s question directly.

  ‘Saw buzzards rising and come over this way to see what was happening.’

  ‘Sure, you saw buzzards dropping,’ Waco agreed.

  ‘That was to the lump of gut that lay out there,’ Darkie interrupted with a grin. ‘Or was you looking so hard at that short hombre that you never saw it?’

  ‘I saw it, saw that the short hombre toted it out there,’ replied Waco, eyeing Darkie as if he was something fresh crawled from under a rotten log. ‘So why’d they bother to hide in the bushes there?’

  ‘Thought even a Texan’d be able to figger that out,’ Angus scoffed. ‘So they wouldn’t get seen. It’d likely be months afore any of us went into them bushes and found they’d been at butchering our stock. If we ever did.’

  ‘That’s smart figgering, real smart. They must have been Scotch,’ drawled Waco, ignoring Angus’s comment that the term was Scot, not Scotch. ‘They goes to all that trouble to hide away some place that nobody’ll find what they been doing. Then they totes a lump of gut out to bring down buzzards.’

  With that he started his horse forward, circling the clump of bushes. The others followed him, clearly all thinking about the peculiar circumstance of the piece of gut. They would probably never have given it a thought had Waco not mentioned it to them.