The Omaha Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “I’m paying on my mortgage, Mr. Throckmorton.”

  “How much?”

  “Three hundred. That leaves another thousand and three hundred due in September.”

  “I don’t recollect rightly. Sit down, sit down.”

  Dane pulled some folded bills from his pocket and laid them on Throckmorton’s desk.

  Throckmorton reached over and picked up the bills. He counted them and his lips moved as he murmured the denominations to himself. “Yes, that’s three hundred all right.”

  “I want a receipt,” Dane said.

  “Of course, of course. I’ll have Miss Watson give you one before you leave.”

  “I’d be obliged,” Dane said.

  “Now, will you be able to meet your obligation by September?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “And how will you do that, Mr. Kramer? I’ve carried you before a time or two.”

  “I think you know damned well how I intend to pay off my debt to you, Mr. Throckmorton. I think you hired Randy Bowman to spy on me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kramer.”

  Dane noticed there was no “mister” this time when Throckmorton used his name.

  “It’s not important,” he said. “What’s done is done. But I’ll give you fair warning, Throckmorton. If you interfere with my cattle drive in any way, if you send Indians after me or gunmen, I’ll find out. And when I do, I’ll come back all right and pay you in hot lead.”

  “Is that a threat, Kramer?”

  “Take it any way you like, Throckmorton. Warning or threat.”

  “You’re mighty uppity for a sodbuster, Kramer.”

  “I ain’t no sodbuster, Throckmorton. I’m a cattleman and if you had any brains, you’d realize that cattle is the real wealth of this world.”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken, Kramer. Land is the basis of all wealth.”

  “Well, the two go together in this country. Someday we’ll rival Texas with the beef we raise in these parts.”

  “You’re a dreamer, Kramer. Cattle must be tended. They must be fed and driven to market. Then they must be butchered and packed and sold to restaurants in the East. You’re just one small part of a very long chain. And the chain is anchored in the lands. That’s where real wealth resides.”

  “I’ll have that receipt now,” Dane said.

  Throckmorton tapped a small bell on his desk. The door opened and Miss Watson peered in.

  “Yes, Mr. Throckmorton?” she said.

  “Please give Mr. Kramer a receipt for three hundred dollars and see that his payment is entered in the ledger.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Kramer, I’ll write out a receipt.”

  Dane looked up before he left Throckmorton’s office. He saw the sign, which he had never noticed before. But Throckmorton had been eyeing it during their talk.

  LAND IS THE BASIS OF ALL WEALTH, it read.

  He turned before he left the office.

  “Land may be the basis of all wealth, Throckmorton, but in my book, cattle is king. And one day, we’ll run all over you and your damned bank.”

  Throckmorton snorted but did not retort. Dane slammed the door on him and walked to Miss Watson’s desk.

  “How can you work for a man like that?” he asked.

  “Mr. Kramer, please.”

  “He’s a greedy tyrant,” Dane said.

  She sat down and took a book of receipts with carbon paper from her desk drawer. She wrote hurriedly, bearing down on the pen so that the carbon would leave its impressions.

  “There you are, Mr. Kramer,” she said as she handed him his receipt. “I hope you find our services satisfactory.”

  “You must go home at night and throw plates at the wall, Miss Watson,” he said.

  Linda Watson did not reply, but she bit her lip and bowed her head.

  Dane got the impression that she was holding a lot of anger inside and might be afraid of losing her job.

  He walked out of the bank with the folded receipt consigned to a shirt pocket.

  When he looked over at Christianson’s store, he saw Randy sweeping the dirt in front of the store. Randy looked up and saw him.

  Then the young man turned away and showed Dane his back.

  How far, Dane wondered, does Throckmorton’s hand reach? No telling.

  He mounted up and rode out of the little village, headed for Len Crowell’s spread. He was filled with a sadness that a tyrant like Throckmorton would take away a man’s livelihood without any consideration or understanding. He had seen others divested of their lands because they were short of money or had fallen on bad times.

  Throckmorton, he decided, was a big fat spider sitting on a web that stretched in a wide circle around his bank. The minute there was something stuck to one of the strands, he pounced.

  It was an ugly image, but he knew it was an accurate one.

  He knew that from that moment on, he had to be on guard.

  Throckmorton was just waiting to pounce.

  Chapter 12

  Leonard Crowell carried a pile of wool blankets out of the house and dropped them into a small wagon that stood next to the water pump. He looked up to see a rider pass under the archway he had built to indicate the entrance to his ranch. The rustic Lazy L seemed to droop in sadness as he saw the rider look up at what used to be the emblem of his ranch.

  Nearby was Chang Wu Ling, the Chinese cook he had hired out of Muskogee before he made the fall drive the year before.

  “Somebody come,” Wu said as he finished oiling a wheel on the chuck wagon.

  “I see him.”

  “Bank man?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Len said. “Horse looks familiar.” Len leaned against the sideboard of his wagon and waited. The horse was a sorrel gelding with one white stocking on his left foreleg and was approaching at a fox-trot, which showed good breeding or diligent training.

  “I know that horse,” Len murmured with a sudden flash of recognition lighting up his mind. “That’s Reno, one of Dane Kramer’s favorites.”

  Wu said nothing. He put down the oil can and stood by the wagon wheel wiping his hands on his duck trousers to remove the oil sheen on his bony fingers.

  A light breeze stirred the wrought-iron weather vane atop the roof of the house. Instead of a rooster sitting on the arrow, there was a silhouette of a crow and the device squeaked as it turned in a slow circular arc. Wu looked up at it. Beneath one of the crow’s feet dangled the letter L. It was made out of tin and glittered in the sun as the vane turned to catch every whiff of wind. Len had made it represent his name, Crow L. And now it was a relic he would never see or need again.

  “I should oil crow,” he said.

  Len chuckled. Wu was a hard worker and did a lot more than cook. Len was saddened that he would have to send Wu packing without any pay for his last year of service. There was just nothing left of a dream he’d harbored for several years since his father and mother had staked a claim on the land and he had bought adjoining acreage for twenty-five cents an acre. Now both of them were dead and all he had left were a few head of cattle that he no longer owned.

  The rider came up and slowed Reno to a walk.

  “Howdy, Len,” Dane said. “I just heard about your troubles from Fred at the general store.”

  “Yep, I’m packin’ up. Light down, Dane, and join the funeral procession.”

  Dane swung out of the saddle and walked toward his friend. The two men shook hands.

  “Sorry to hear that you’re wiped out,” Dane said.

  “You can thank Throckmorton for that. The man wouldn’t listen to reason. I told him I could get caught up if he let me stay and rebuild my herd.”

  Dane looked out and saw a few head of cattle grazing on the new grass. It made him sick to think of how many head Len had lost in that tragic drive. His house looked deserted, like a remnant of a ghost town. Empty and silent. He looked over the things in the wag
on and felt his stomach wrench at the pathetically few belongings Len had packed.

  Len wore faded denim overalls over what Dane would have called a pea green shirt that had seen better days, and a straw hat that covered thinning brown hair. His eyes were brown and close-set, bordering a straight nose that was slightly hooked at the tip. He had a three-day beard and looked haggard as the sunlight flickered over his sallow features.

  “Where you headed, Len?” Dane asked.

  “I don’t know. Thought I might go over to Missouri and see if I could find work, maybe some cheap land down in Arkansas where I could get a fresh start. Lydia left me, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Dane said. “When?”

  “Last week after we got the foreclosure papers from Throckmorton.”

  “Damn.”

  “Went on back to Ohio, I reckon. Said she couldn’t take this bleak life no more.”

  Len looked over to the side of the house. There was a garden there, with neat rows all lined up in a rectangle of composted earth. Green things were beginning to poke up through the loamy earth.

  “That was her garden,” Len said. “Rabbits can have it now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dane said. “You got more than your share of troubles, Len.”

  “I reckon there’s more to come. Somewhere.”

  Wu walked over and Len introduced him to Dane. The two shook hands.

  “What brings you out here, Dane? Not just to offer me condolences, I reckon.”

  “No, Len. Matter of fact, I wanted to talk to you about buying your check wagon and to see if Wu might want to come to work for me, to gather a drive up to Omaha. Three thousand head to start and pickin’ up another nine hundred in Kansas City on the way.”

  Len blew a low whistle.

  “Long ways,” he said.

  “I could use another hand too, if you’re interested.”

  Wu’s eyes lit up and his mouth twisted into a semigrin. Len worried his tongue around inside his mouth for a moment.

  “What’s your offer, Dane?” Len asked.

  “Thirty a month and found for each of you. Plus a bonus when we get paid in Omaha.”

  “How much of a bonus?”

  “A half month’s pay for each man who finishes the drive.”

  Len hesitated only for a fraction of a second.

  “Count me in,” he said.

  Dane turned to Wu. “How about you? Would you like to cook for my hands?”

  “Sure,” Wu said. “I a pretty good cook, you betcha.”

  Dane laughed. “All right, it’s settled, then. Len, you know where my ranch is. Just set up in the bunkhouse, get Wu settled, and we’ll go to work tomorrow.”

  “I got food in wagon,” Wu said. “Beans, flour, coffee, salt, sugar.”

  “I’ll pay you for it,” Dane said.

  “Pay Mr. Len, you betcha.”

  “I ain’t takin’ no pay for what’s in the wagon, but if you want to buy it, I’m listening.”

  “Thirty dollars,” Dane said.

  “I figure it’s worth fifty,” Len said.

  Dane reached into his pants pocket and drew out some bills. He counted out five ten-dollar bills and handed them to Len.

  “Thanks, Dane. Now I don’t feel so dadgummed poor.”

  “You may not have a lot of money, Len, but a man like you is never poor. You’ll get back on your feet again.”

  “I tell you one thing, Dane. I’d never sell my soul to that devil Throckmorton again. No matter what.”

  “Len, I’ll tell you something,” Dane said. “With this drive I expect to pay off my debt to Throckmorton’s bank and never darken his door again.”

  “He got a mortgage on your place?”

  “He has and he’s breathing down my neck about it. Come September, I’ll be free and clear.”

  Len’s face brightened.

  “Good for you,” he said. “There ain’t an ounce of kindness in Throckmorton’s kit, that’s for danged sure.”

  “You betcha,” Wu said, and Dane wondered if he knew much about Len’s and his financial dealings with Throckmorton’s bank. He doubted it.

  “See you at the Circle K,” Dane said as he climbed back into the saddle.

  “We’ll be there, Dane. You ride easy.”

  “So long,” Dane said, and turned Reno to head back into town.

  He didn’t look back, but he could feel Wu’s and Len’s eyes on him. He was glad that Len had accepted his offer and that he had bought another chuck wagon and hired on an additional cook. He was beginning to feel better about the upcoming drive. He was still figuring the logistics of the route, but now that he had two more men, he was sure he could make it work.

  He was loading up the wagon behind the store when Joe Eagle rode up. With him were two Mexicans whom Dane did not know.

  “Carlos, him not come,” Joe said to Dane as the three of them dismounted.

  “I am Rufio Chavez,” the taller of the two men said as he held out his hand. He was wearing a .45 Colt on his belt and Dane noticed that both men had rifles attached to their saddles. “And this is my friend Alfredo Alicante.”

  Alfredo stepped forward to also shake Dane’s hand.

  He looked the two men over. They both had hard chiseled faces and dark skin with just a touch of vermilion in their cheekbones, a sign of their Indian heritage. They both had shiny black hair that dripped to their shoulders. Chavez had a yellow-speckled bandanna wrapped around his head and showing beneath his battered hat. Alicante wore a similar one under his hat, except that it was red with speckled floral designs.

  Dane looked at their hands and saw the calluses and filled-in cracks. These were working men, not barroom drifters. Both wore pistols. Both were wiry and muscular.

  “Know anything about cattle?” Dane asked them.

  “We are vaqueros,” Chavez said. “Now we raise the horses.”

  “But the horse business, she is poor,” Alicante said.

  “The pay is thirty a month and found,” Dane said. “You get paid at the end of the drive in Omaha. That’s five hundred miles from here.”

  “We know,” Alicante said. “We ride from Mexico. We drive the longhorns to Abilene in Texas.”

  “Good men,” Joe said. “Work hard. Me know.”

  “Married?” Dane asked both men.

  They both shook their heads.

  “You speak very good English.”

  “We listen. We learn,” Chavez said.

  “You okay with the pay?”

  “Yes, those are fine wages,” Alicante said. “Like Texas.”

  Dane and Chavez both laughed.

  Joe’s face was a bronze blank.

  “You boys can help me finish loading up this wagon and then we’ll all ride out to the Circle K. There’s plenty of work to do before we start the drive. You need anything special while we’re in town? Tobacco, whiskey?”

  Both men grinned and shook their heads.

  “Then, let’s get this wagon loaded and head for home.”

  The four of them made short work of the loading. Dane paid Christianson for the supplies and told him about Len and Wu.

  “I’m glad you hired them on, Dane,” Christianson said. “Len was nearly a broken man when he lost his ranch. And his wife.”

  “You didn’t tell me about Lydia,” Dane said.

  “There was too much bad news as it was. I knew Len would tell you. Women. There’s no explaining them.”

  “Women want security,” Dane said. “And they want a husband who comes home every night. The wife of a cattle rancher must either be made of iron or get used to playing solitaire.”

  “That’s why I’ve been married for a spell, I reckon. Nigh onto twelve years now.”

  “You and your wife are both lucky, then,” Dane said.

  “How about you, Mr. Kramer? You ever goin’ to get married?”

  “Maybe. Someday. If I find the right woman.”

  “That’s the fly in the ointment,” Christians
on said. “You never know if it’s the right one until you’ve been married a good long time.”

  “That’s why I’m going to wait,” Dane said. “I’ll know the right one when she comes along.”

  Dane left the store and drove the buckboard back to the Circle K, flanked by Chavez and Alicante.

  All he needed now was a few more men and for the grass to grow. He had the cattle and the contract.

  The only unknowns now were the weather and a couple of hard men he did not know, Larabee and Norton.

  He was almost certain he would meet up with them one day.

  He looked up at the sky as he drove and saw the thin streamers of clouds against an almost painfully blue sky. The recent rain should help grow the grass, and the sun would pull the shoots up high with its warm smile. He took tobacco from his pouch and crammed it into his mouth.

  He was feeling better by the minute.

  But, he knew, this was the time to be on guard for anything strange or unusual. He had no idea what was on Throckmorton’s mind, but if two gunmen were working for him, that could not bode well for him or the drive. Randy had been a lesson for him. He had never caught on to him until it was too late.

  He would not make the same mistake again, he vowed, as he chewed his tobacco and tasted the juices welling up in his mouth.

  As they approached the Circle K, he could smell his cattle, and the horses perked up too.

  He slackened up on the reins and let the horse in harness have his head. He slapped the reins across its rump and the horse broke into a fast trot.

  Joe Eagle smiled and the two Mexicans spurred their horses and waved their hats.

  “Adelante,” Chavez yelled.

  And Dane knew what the word meant, and it made a warm spot in his chest.

  “Forward.”

  Chapter 13

  Newly branded cattle crowded around the hay ricks that were scattered over the ninety acres called Sunnyland. They nudged and shoved each other to get at the loose hay that stuck out between the slats. More cattle streamed in and sought grass on lean pickings. But when they caught the scent of alfalfa, they trotted toward the ricks and started to muscle into the cattle already fighting among themselves for fodder.