Dane shook his head. “I’m not going to hang them, but I’m going to turn them over to the U.S. Marshal in Kansas City and charge them with murder and attempted cattle rustling.”
“They should hang,” Carlos said.
“They probably will hang. I want you to give a deposition, Carlos. You and all the other men who were here today.”
“I will give the deposition,” Carlos said.
Blackie spat at Carlos. His eyes burned with hatred. “Ain’t no damned Mex goin’ to—”
“Shut up,” Dane said. “All of you are prisoners. My prisoners. You’ll ride in one of the wagons to Kansas City. If any one of you, or all of you, tries to escape, my men will have my permission to shoot you down like the dogs you are.”
“You can’t scare me, mister,” Frank said. “It’s a long way to Kansas City.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you and your pards are the lowest of the low,” Dane said. “If you have any prayin’ in you, you might make your peace with whoever you pray to because I’m going to see to it that you all hang.”
Whiskey Bill snarled as he cursed Dane and Carlos.
“I got friends in K.C.,” he said. “You just might get a knife in your back before you can make out a deposition, or get your head blowed off with a Greener.”
Dane turned his back on the men. He grabbed Carlos by the arm and led him away. “I’d like to shoot every one of them, Carlos, but we want to do this right.”
“They would not give you quarter, Mr. Kramer.”
“I know. I should shoot them, but that would be something I’d have to live with for the rest of my life.”
“Your kindness will get you killed one day,” Carlos said.
The cowhands buried Concho, Lyle Fisk, Mitch Markham, Logan Heckler, Skip Hewes, and Will Davis in a single grave. It was a hole, really, shoveled out of what might be called a ditch. Wu and Barney added the entrails of the cows they butchered, along with the heads and tails, and the hides. To them, it was a final insult to Concho’s rustlers.
As for the hands who were killed, they were buried in separate graves on the west side of the Caney River, beneath some large cottonwoods. Most of the men wept when Dane said a few words over their graves. He was one of the men who had to wipe his eyes when dirt was shoveled over the bodies of men he worked with and liked.
The captured rustlers rode in Charlie’s supply wagon after he had put all the guns in the other wagon. Their feet were bound as well and they had to lie on the hard wagon bed as the team pulled the wagon over rough ground.
They crossed the meandering river with ease. The water was not high, but the banks were steep.
The herd moved to the Missouri River and turned north to Kansas City.
When they reached Kansas City, Dane and Joe Eagle took several hands with them, along with the captive rustlers, and turned them over to the sheriff. They went before Judge Harlan Evers and swore out affidavits, charging the four outlaws with murder and attempted cattle rustling. The judge called in a deputy U.S. Marshal and had them formally arrested and charged for their crimes.
When Dane and his men, including Joe Eagle, went to the stockyards to pick up the cattle being held for Otto Himmel, Dane paid off the boarding fees and drove nine hundred head of cattle to the west of the city, where they joined his herd.
To his dismay, the cattle Himmel had bought and boarded in Kansas City were all Mexican longhorns. So he had to keep the longhorns separate from his own cattle and trailed after Paddy some two miles in the rear, with Len acting as trail boss.
“Not much meat on them longhorns,” Len observed.
“Himmel paid enough for their feed,” Dane said.
“Didn’t Himmel tell you the breed?”
“No, he did not,” Dane said.
“Would you have taken them on if you had known?”
“Probably. Cattle are cash and that’s what we all need at this point.”
“I wished I could have paid off Throckmorton,” Len said.
“Well, you may get your ranch back, Len. I think I can have Throckmorton sent to prison and maybe the court will give you back your deed.”
“Throckmorton did it all legal,” Len said. “I don’t see how I could get my land back.”
“If I can prove that the bank acted out of greed and foreclosed on a lot of folks without giving them a chance to pay off their loans, the court just might let you buy your land back for pennies on the dollar.”
“You think so?”
“There is a strong chance that the court will bend over backwardss to right a wrong. To right a bunch of wrongs.”
Dane didn’t know if he could get the courts to look at Throckmorton’s banking practices, but there was a good chance that they would. If they became outraged at how Throckmorton had hired killers to murder his men and steal his cattle, the judge or judges just might side with the landowners and return all the lands Throckmorton had grabbed just to teach other unscrupulous lenders a lesson.
The longhorns were no trouble. They were trail-savvy animals, big and rangy, with large frames.
“You know something?” Dane said to Paddy and Len one night when they were drinking coffee around the campfire after supper. “If we crossbred our Herefords with longhorns, we might produce a bigger and better beef cow.”
“Ah, it would never work,” Paddy said.
“Why not?” Dane asked.
“Never been done before.”
“Maybe it’s time somebody tried it. I just might go down to Mexico or the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and buy me a couple of seed bulls and give it a try.”
“You know,” Len said, “when I look at them longhorns, I see they got long legs and larger skeletons. You fill ’em out with Hereford meat, you might have a big old cow that would bring top dollar.”
“See, Paddy?” Dane said. “Len agrees with me.”
“All you’d get, Dane,” Paddy said, “would be a whiteface with real long horns.”
They all laughed, but the idea settled in a corner of Dane’s mind. He believed in cattle and with a new crossbreed, he might wind up a wealthy man.
It was a thought he carried with him all the way to Omaha.
Chapter 45
On the last leg of the drive to Omaha, Dane and Joe Eagle rode well ahead of the herd. Paddy and the whitefaces were a couple of miles behind him, with Len and the longhorns less than a mile behind Paddy. The wagons and the remuda followed well to the rear of the longhorns.
He was tired but oddly exhilarated. The miles seemed to drop off him like water off a duck’s back when he saw the distant buildings shining in the sun. It looked like a city out of a fairy tale, a magic kingdom rising out of the pages of a book. His pulsed quickened and he thought he could smell the fragrance of a garden filled with beautiful flowers.
“There it is, Joe,” he said. “There’s Omaha.”
Joe grunted.
As they approached the southern edge of the city on the hard-packed road, they began to see stock pens and smell, not the fragrance of flowers, but the heady, musky scent of cow manure. They rode on, and saw more and more pens that looked like a maze and they heard the bawling of cattle. They saw men on horseback who waved to them.
Within a few minutes they were in the midst of the labyrinth of stock pens and saw men, women, little children lining the road on both sides. They all waved at them as the two men approached.
“It looks like they’re waiting for a parade,” Dane said, amazed and mystified at seeing so many people standing on both sides of the road. The women twirled their parasols, and the kids jumped up and down and shouted greetings to them.
“I wonder why they’re all here,” Dane said.
“They wait to see cattle,” Joe said.
“They didn’t do that in Kansas City,” Dane said.
Beyond the stock pens, Dane saw the outlines of large buildings. They were painted with names he had never heard of: Cudany, Rath, Swift, and many others.
Smoke sp
ewed out of tall chimneys and trailed out over the city in an ashen pall. Dane smelled the smoke and felt the powerful allure of a city with its sleeves rolled up and its hands covered in grime.
There were other smells too. There was the smell of hay and the indefinable aroma of blood and cattle innards.
A man rode out from among the log corrals that formed the pens. He met them and said, “Howdy, gents.”
“Howdy,” Dane said.
“You with the herd from Oklahoma?” the man asked. He pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket and flipped it open to a page. “The Circle K?”
“We are. Herd’s about two miles back.”
“Thanks. I’ll ride out to guide them to the feedlots. You two can turn in at that road just past the pen yonder.” He pointed to railings, and Dane saw a wide thoroughfare that ran in between cow pens.
“Then where do we go?” Dane asked.
“There are some men waiting for you just before you get to that big gray building among the pens. If you’re Kramer, that is.”
“I am,” Dane said.
“They’re waitin’ for you. We knew there was a big herd comin.”
“Why are all those people waiting along the main road?” Dane asked.
The man laughed. “Oh, they heard about the big herd of cattle comin’ into town too. They’re here to welcome you and your boys. My name’s Claude, by the way. Claude Lomax.”
Claude and Dane shook hands.
“See you by and by,” Claude said, and rode off down the road. The people alongside waved at him and cheered.
Dane and Joe rode past pens that held hogs, and others with cattle. There seemed to be no end to them. They saw a couple of trails leading from chutes. The trails were enclosed with cement walls on both sides. It appeared to Dane that these trails led directly to the slaughterhouses.
They approached the gray building Claude had told them about and as they rode up to a hitch rail out front, the door to the building opened.
Three men stepped out.
The tallest one, in the middle, was Otto Himmel. He wore a smile on his face. He was dressed in a business suit and wore a gray derby.
He raised his arms in greeting.
“That you, Dane?” he said.
“Sure is, Otto.”
“Did you make the drive all right?”
Dane nodded and swung his right leg over the saddle and touched the ground. Joe dismounted as well. They wrapped their reins around the hitch rail, and both stepped over to where the three men stood.
“Dane, this is Hank Strimple, my office manager, and let me introduce you to Vic Padios, my accountant.”
Dane shook the hands of both men.
“This is my friend, Joe Eagle,” Dane said. Both men shook Joe’s hand. Vic carried a fat satchel that looked heavy. The tan leather was shiny. Hank carried a clipboard. Both men wore ties. Only Otto wore a vest, but they all had on white shirts that bespoke neatness and precision. Dane took an instant liking to both men. They both had open, honest faces and neatly trimmed hair. Both wore small hats that looked like fedoras.
“Claude will guide the herd to the pens and I have two men waiting to tally them as they pass through the gate. Your trail boss can keep a tally too,” Himmel said.
“Oh, they will, Otto. I have two trail bosses.”
“Then you picked up the cattle I had waiting in Kansas City?”
“Yeah. The longhorns. You neglected to tell me the breed.”
“Oh, did I? So sorry, Dane. Were they any trouble?”
“No. The only trouble we had was after we crossed over the Kansas border. We were jumped by a gang of rustlers.”
“Oh, I am sorry.”
“We killed several and captured four of them alive. They’re cooling their heels in the Kansas City Jail if they haven’t already been hanged.”
“Do you mean to tell me that rustlers tried to steal three thousand head of cattle?” Himmel said.
“Yep. They was hired by Throckmorton, the banker in Shawnee Mission.”
“Why, that’s outrageous,” Padios said.
“The nerve of some folks,” Strimple said. Both men seemed genuinely surprised.
“Throckmorton, eh?” Himmel said. “I didn’t much care for the man when I met him at the bank.”
“I don’t think he’ll be sitting at his desk long,” Dane said. “When I get back, I’m charging him with murder and attempted cattle rustling. I’ve got proof to back me up.”
“Good for you, Dane. Shall we go over to the pens and see what the herd looks like?”
“Sure. We had good grass and plenty of water on the trail,” Dane said.
“This is going to be a big boost to Omaha’s economy,” Otto said.
“It probably won’t hurt your wallet none either,” Dane said.
The three men laughed.
Himmel led them to a large corral with gates and chutes to other surrounding pens.
They all heard the people cheering along the road, and after the five men perched themselves on a top rail, they could see Claude and Paddy leading cattle down the road to the cattle pens.
Two men wearing cowhand boots and denims, dressed in chambray shirts, one blue, one red, sat on a top rail a couple of pens away from them. Another man on the ground swung open the gate.
“I’d better go over there,” Strimple said. “Your trail boss, or bosses, might want to use this clipboard.”
Hank slid down off the fence.
“Yes, Hank, show the Circle K men every consideration.”
Hank walked over and said something to the man at the gate. Then he climbed up to the top rail and sat near the two men who were going to tally the cattle as they entered the pens. Both had pencils and clipboards as well.
Claude rode up and waved an arm to show Paddy the gate. The two men spoke.
Dane saw Paddy dismount and tether his horse to the bottom rail. He walked over to Hank and took his clipboard and pencil. He looked over at Dane and Joe, then waved. Dane waved back.
“Here they come,” Otto said as the cattle began to stream through the open gate. “They look fine, just fine.”
“Fine and fat,” Vic said. “Otto, you made a good choice when you bought this herd from Mr. Kramer. I’ve never seen finer cattle.”
“Thanks, Vic,” Dane said. “I appreciate it.”
“I meant what I said. We see a lot of cattle in these stockyards, but most of them are puny. Some of them show their bones, they’re so lean.”
“The longhorns are a bit leaner,” Dane said. “But they’ve got bigger frames and probably have good meat on their bones.”
“That was all I could find when I went to south Texas,” Otto said.
“I’d like to know where you got ’em,” Dane said. “I’m thinking of crossbreeding some longhorn bulls with my whitefaces.”
“I’ll give you the name of the rancher and directions to his spread,” Otto said.
Claude saw to it that the cattle came through the gate at a steady pace, four or five wide. He carried a quirt that he used to detain or to urge the cattle through. Dane was impressed with the smoothness of the operation. The two tall men and Paddy were counting heads as they came through.
It was a long and tedious process, but exciting to Dane. He wasn’t counting, but he had allowed for lost cattle, and they might have lost a few strays during the gun battle. But they hadn’t lost any head to drowning or to rustlers.
People began to crowd around the pens as they filled up with Circle K cattle. Small boys pointed out steers and cows that they liked, while their mothers twirled their parasols and tried to keep the youngsters from teasing the animals. Men stood at the fences with their boots resting on the bottom rail, and chewed tobacco or straw, smoked pipes or cigarettes, and commented on the stock.
“This will likely last up to dusk or nightfall,” Otto said. “If you want, Dane, we can go into the cattleman’s building where your horses are tied and have a drink. We have a full bar in that
building.”
“I’d like to see it through, Otto,” Dane said. “And then I’ve got to take care of my hands. You know, find a hotel, a place where they can all eat and such.”
“I’ve taken care of all that, Dane,” Otto said. “When we have the tally, Vic here is going to pay you off in cash. That’s what he’s carrying in that Italian-made satchel he’s carrying.”
“Oh, by the way, I owe you money, Otto,” Dane said. “The bank draft you gave me for the longhorns more than covered the bill at the feedlot in K.C.”
“Well, Vic can figure that all out, when the time comes. I think you’re due a bonus for getting the cattle up here ahead of time.”
“I don’t even know what month it is,” Dane said. “Nor what day of the week it might be.”
Vic and Otto both laughed.
“Well, it’s 1879,” Vic said, “if that helps.”
“And I think it’s June already,” Otto said.
“We left Oklahoma sometime in April, I think,” Dane said.
“Well, you’ll be glad to be back home, I expect,” Otto said. “Be sure and tell your father I said hello.”
“I will,” Dane said.
He missed his father at that moment. He looked over at Joe and saw the impassive expression on his face. Joe had no one to miss or come home to, except him. It made him feel awkward to talk about his father in front of Joe.
When the last of the cattle streamed into the pens, the man at the gate closed it. All of the hands gathered there and lined the fence looking at the Herefords and longhorns they had delivered.
The chuck wagons and the two supply wagons were parked in a separate pen.
“We’ll put armed guards on your wagons,” Otto said to Dane as they climbed down from the fence. “And tell your men to follow us to the cattleman’s building. There’s food and drink for everyone.”
Dane walked over to Paddy and told him to gather all the men and walk over to the gray building.
The Omaha Trail Page 25