Hickory Jack (Ben Blue Book 1)

by Lou Bradshaw

  I thought that was a great idea and would do it when I returned from my next trip.

  Ten days after my visit with Don Carlos, I was once again in Taos. As they started unloading the wagons, for there were three of us traveling together on that trip, I picked up my horse, and rode out to Senor Domingo’s ranch. I followed the Don’s directions and within an hour and a half I was riding through the gates of the hacienda.

  I found Juan Domingo to be a very pleasant person to spend a few hours with. It was obvious that he was not nearly as wealthy as Don Carlos. It seems that his family had worked for the Don’s family for many generations and had even come from Spain with them. The rancho looked to be in good shape and prosperous. Juan explained that money was not his immediate problem, but a range fire had severely limited the graze in this part of the range, and he didn’t want to make a drive so late in the season. He felt that if he could put about a third of his stock somewhere else for the winter, the new grass in the spring would be fine. He planned to ship that many in the spring anyway.

  He also told me that the cattle I was buying had already been taken to the high valley, and were being held apart from the others. If I was satisfied with the selections, he would have them branded and let them mix. Then he handed me a branding iron reading MB just like I had described to the Don. He said that Don Carlos’s black smith had made it and sent it up. “Don Carlos seems to think a lot of you senor.”

  I told him that I had known Father Paul in Texas and we had become good friends. And I greatly respected the wisdom and friendship of Don Carlos.

  As we walked out to the bunkhouse where we were to meet Enrique, his Segundo, Juan asked if it would be permiso to use one the vacant houses as a line shack for his vaqueros to spend the night in when they were there. I told him it would be just fine. They could use the one farthest to the north. I was planning to use the middle cabin for myself.

  I was able to spend some time on the ranch; I was beginning to think of it as the ranch now. Andy was off on the other end of the range so I didn’t get to see him, but I did get a piece of apple pie and some teasing from Patty.

  When I returned Santa Fe, after what I would call a very successful trip, I was going through my gear and found my old leather pouch. It was the one I carried around wanted posters and receipts and such truck. I hooked it to my belt and headed off to the new US Marshal’s office. I was hoping he would have some manner of getting background on either Barkley or Pickering. Or maybe information on both which could mean that I was chasing my tail.

  The office was on the plaza, and I found it without any problem. When I walked through the door a younger version of the clerk from Fort Smith was sitting behind a counter acting real important and busy. When he finally looked up, he was startled to see me and apologized. So maybe he didn’t come from Fort Smith after all. He smiled and asked if he could help me, and I told him that I’d like to see the marshal.

  He asked my name, and I reached into my pouch to get one of those cards I’d had printed way back when we first came to Santa Fe. He smiled and took the card, and then he disappeared into the back.

  I heard a voice say, “Who is it Peters?” then there was a pause and I heard, “Ben –by God – Blue! Well, I’ll be forever damned, I figured some Texas bad man had his hide staked and tanned somewhere.” Then I could hear a chair scrape and some movement.

  The next thing I heard was, “Why that half grown red haired pup…” as he came through the door, and he looked just like Jasper Stewart. I don’t know which of us was more surprised to see the other. “Well, that ain’t no half grown pup, Peters, that’s a full grown he dog.”

  The next thing I knew, he was gripping my hand like a vice, and I was gripping back as hard as I could. I noted that he had to look up to look into my eyes, he noticed it as well. Then he turned to the clerk and said, “Peters, would you bring us some coffee? And you always want to be friendly to this gentleman, otherwise he’ll take you out in the street and stomp you into a pile of dog poop… I’ll have to explain that later.”

  He showed me into the office, and we both sat down and waited for the coffee. We talked a little about what has happened in the last five years, which was very little until the last month or so. He told me that they finally got tired of looking at him in Fort Smith and sent him here to open a new office.

  I told him about losing the trail here in New Mexico, and then I told him about the two upstanding citizens of Taos County who could possibly be the Judge Poke. And then again neither of them might be him.

  “Do you really think Amos Poke and his cousin might be in the Taos area?” he asked. “If they are, I’d sure like to find out and put them away for good…real good.”

  I told him that there was a better than even chance that they were in this part of the country or had been in the last five years. I went on to tell him how we followed them to San Antonio and the scheme that Braziel had cooked up. Then I told him how the two men we were following had killed and robbed Braziel. We had known that Braziel was planning a land grab in the Taos area, and he had been stealing money from his legal clients to fund it.

  “How’d you happen to get this information about where Poke and Gentry, if they were Poke and Gentry and not some other yay hoos?” He asked.

  “It came as a death bed confession by Bill Frasier. Or at least he thought he was dying at that moment. Let’s put it this way, he was a tough man who had a real fear of the rope.”

  I went on to tell him how there was a passel of land grabbers up in Taos who were looking to snatch up some of those old land grants, but the law in Santa Fe had put a kybosh on things when they cleared all the grants.

  “So those gentlemen just folded their tents and moved on. But some of them, the ones with better financing, bought some of the land they had hoped to steal and settled in. According to the Chief of Police in San Antone, Poke and Gentry got off with quite a bit of money.”

  “The way I see it, they changed names, dressed up, and became respectable ranchers.”

  “Well, Ben, once again, you boys amaze me with what you’ve been able to find out and get done. Give me those names and any information you can on the two ranchers, and I’ll write some letters back to where they were supposed to have come from. I want to get Poke and Gentry as bad as you do, and if we can… we will.”

  We talked for a while longer, and I brought him up to date on what was happening with both Andy and myself. I told him about the ranch and how Andy was punching cows and living a normal life with little or no trouble. I also told him that we left Hickory Jack back in Texas and no one here connected him to Andy.

  He looked at me kinda funny like for a few seconds, then something clicked in and he said, “Holy Moses! You don’t mean Andy was Hickory Jack Moore? I had all kinds of rumors about a Texas gunfighter who was going to be the next Wild Bill. But then he just sort of disappeared. I just figured he met someone faster.”

  “We figured when we came here that it would be best to leave that part of us back there in Texas.”

  Chapter 26

  A couple of months ago, I was working my way along the river bluffs on my way to Taos. It seemed that it was going to be after dark by the time I reached Espanola, and I had no love for driving those roads in the dark, so I just found me a nice little spot to make camp in. It was just a little cove with rock walls and a small mouth. My animals were picketed in that little cove where they could get some grass but couldn’t go skyhootin around and get themselves lost or eaten by a bear or cougar. I had seen quite a few bear tracks headin for the river. I figured they knew what they were doing and where they were going so I didn’t try to work it out – just watched out. I put the wagon across opening of that cut and strung some rope to finish the makeshift corral. I threw my bedroll under the wagon and took that express gun to keep me company. That little bit of rope wouldn’t keep a determined mule in or a hungry bear out, but it would wake me if anything happened. I left the fire burn where it was between th
e wagon and the mules, and I went to sleep.

  I slept like a log until around ten o’clock, when them mules started stirrin around. Opening my eyes and taking a few seconds to get my bearings. I looked all around the immediate area but didn’t see a thing. Then I heard a voice near the fire; it sounded like someone said, “There… over there.” The next thing I heard was three shots and a lot of mule noise. I came out on the dark side of that wagon, with it between me and the fire and them that was shootin’.

  I could make out two men on the other side of the fire, both were holding guns and one of them was squattin down real low with his pistol out in front of him. It looked like he was trying to shoot the legs off my mules. I eared back one of those shotgun hammers and they both twitched, so I cocked the other one and them boys were frozen where they were.

  I said, “I sure hope you fellas haven’t shot any of those mule critters because they belong to the Rio Grande Freight Company, and the company pays for my ammunition. All I gotta do is bring in a receipt or a pair of ears.”

  One of them started to say something, but I didn’t let him get more than a couple of blah blahs out before I cut him off with, “Just shut up and drop those guns, and then turn around. Now don’t get that backwards, and turn around before you shed those weapons because if you do I’m pulling these triggers.” They seemed to hesitate long enough for some stupid thinking to creep into their heads, so I kinda prodded ‘em a little.

  I said, “You, on the ground. You’ll go first cause you don’t stand a chance with your legs all cramped up and stiff. All bunched up like that, you wouldn’t even use up all the shot from the first barrel …drop it NOW!” He did, and it wasn’t a half second before the other gent got rid of his pistol.

  “Now, let’s just have a look at you mule shooters. Turn around and do it real slow with your hands away from your bodies.” They were very very careful about turning around. I never saw anyone move quite so slow and deliberate. They were both cowhands by the look of them, and the one that had been squattin looked to be in his mid twenties the other a bit older and meaner.

  “You gentlemen want to tell me just what the hell you think your doin’ out here the middle of the night shootin’ at my mules?”

  “We wasn’t shootin’ at your damned mules.” The older meaner one said. ”We was shootin’ at a cow rustler.”

  “Well, did he look like a mule…big ears, long legs, and smelly farts?” I asked, and then added, “You boys are gonna have to do better than that.”

  “No. Really.” The younger one said. “We come on him this afternoon, in the hills and he had one of our cows. He was leadin her off to butcher her. We come after him and he took off through the brush. We been trackin him ever since. We was really close about dark an we could hear him movin ahead of us. An then we saw him by your fire light. He was scootin in with them mules. We was just tryin’ to shoot his legs under the mules.” That younger one was like an old ladies little dog, always yappin and jumpin about. I was afraid he was gonna come over and try to pee on my leg or something. It occurred to me that I might have to smack the snot out of him just to shut him up.

  I asked, “Is he still back there?” The younger one said that he reckoned that he had to be. So I just called out to the darkness. “Hey in there. You come on out, and let’s have a look at you.”

  A voice came back saying that he didn’t want to come out because those men wanted to “keel” him.

  I yelled back and said, “This is Ben Blue with the Rio Grande Freight Company out of Santa Fe, and these fellas ain’t gonna keel anybody. So you just come up to the fire and let me see what a cow rustler looks like.

  Then the voice called back saying, “Aye, Madre Dios. Ees that really you, Benito? Ees me, Miguel. I’m coming out.” And young Miguel Lopez, one of our part time freight loadin boys, came crawling out from between mule legs.

  Miguel was a skinny youngster and a good worker. He worked in the freight shed in Espnaola, when there was work for him. I said, “Miguel, were you stealing a cow off their range?”

  “No, on my mother’s life, no, Benito. I was bringing my mother’s milk cow in from our pasture and these men came at me shouting and shooting. So I run. And then I run some more.”

  “If I should go over to your house right now, would I find that milk cow in your barn?”

  “Si.” He said, “She would have found her way to the barn by now. When her bag is full, she comes home.”

  I told Miguel that I believed him, and that these fellas should apologize for their honest mistake, but the older meaner one said, “Apologize, hell! He’s a greaser ain’t he? If that was his milkin cow that don’t mean nothin’. He’s a Mexican, and that means he’s took other cows for sure.”

  That younger one piped in with, “Yeah he’s a Mestican, so he steals cows, they all does.” I really was going to have smack the snot out of that boy.

  Now I was some perplexed as to what I was gonna do with this lynch mob, so to stall a little, I told Miguel to pick up their guns and go bring in their horses. He gave me their guns and in a few minutes he located and led their horses into camp. I told him to get his own horse and bring it in also.

  “But, Benito, I have no horse. I never have a horse. He told me.

  I looked at that poor excuse for a lynch mob and said, “Now, that’s the first time I ever heard of a cattle rustler who rustled cows on foot. The more I see of you two, the more I believe that we’ve got an outbreak of stupid startin up in this part of New Mexico.” They didn’t care much for that remark and the older meaner one surged forward a might, but he restrained himself, which showed that there was hope for him yet.

  After I shucked the cartridges out of their guns, I went to put them in their saddle bags, and heard a clink. When I reached in that saddle bag I came out with an almost empty bottle of Old Skull Buster. Well, it may have been the middle of the night, but the light of day was shining, and I could see clearly as to what the problem was.

  About that time the devil came over me, and I was gettin some pretty evil thoughts. I had Miguel fetch some rawhide string from under the wagon seat and cut me off two pieces about four feet long. Then I had him tie each man’s hands in front really snug and double or triple knot ‘em. He did that, and once he had em’ good and snug, I gave him my hand gun and told him to watch em while I got a piece of tablet paper, some wire, my old crushed sombrero, and a ratty old blanket from the wagon.

  Cut a slit in the middle of that blanket and put it over that meaner hombre’s head, and then I took his nice felt hat and jammed that sombrero on his head. I told him, “So, you don’t like Mexicans? Well, you’re gonna get to see how it feels to be one. Then I took a charred stick and wrote a message on that tablet paper, which I fastened to the back of that blanket with a little wire. Next I wired the neck of that bottle up real tight and hooked it into the back of that blanket, and had them both mount up. I wasn’t through yet.

  When I had them all comfortable in their saddles, I took the bits and bridles off their horses. I said, “You boys better hang on tight cause I’m about to slap those horses butts. You can pick up your bridles at the freight office in Taos. Then I smacked ‘em, and off they went.

  Those critters would carry on for a while before they settled down, and with no one to guide them they would eventually head back home. I suppose, they’d have some explaining to do when they reached the barn, especially that one dressed in the sombrero, serape, and a bottle hanging down his back.

  Miguel asked me what I had written on the note that I pinned to that fella’s back. I told him that it said, “I was led into sinful stupid ways by likker.” He thought that was real funny. I did too.

  I figured that Miguel had been running all afternoon and evening, so he’d be getting a little on the hungry side of things. We tossed another log on the fire and dug into the food locker… I was always ready for a snack. We spread out some blankets and called it a day.

  The next morning, we rolled into Espanola,
and I asked Miguel if he’d like to learn to drive one of those wagons. I told him that I was just about his age when I started driving, and if I could learn it, I reckoned that anyone could. He thought that was a grand idea, so I told him, I’d talk to Mr. Gomez about taking him on as an apprentice.

  And now, here I was on my last trip for the Rio Grande Freight Company and Senor Gomez. Miguel was on the seat handling the mules like he had been born to it. I wasn’t the least bit worried about him or the company. When we got to the freight office and had the wagon unloaded, I’d pick up my pay and turn over my whip.

  Most of my possessions had been moved out to the MB headquarters, which had been Willum Clements’ old cabin… the best of the three. It had better source of water and the layout of the buildings was better. I’d cannibalized the other barns and enlarged the main one, built a nice big corral, and done some work on the house itself.

  Ben Blue, rancher. It really had a nice sound to it. I was still having trouble getting used to the idea. Even though I had had the place for some time now, I hadn’t actually moved in. When I was here during my layovers, I mostly just slept out and cooked in the open, but now I was ready to move in. By that, I meant to put my bedroll inside. Oh, the Clements boys had left odds and ends like a table or a chair or little this or that, but no real furniture. That would come with time.

  So I just threw my saddle on that horse of mine, loaded my meager pile of what-nots into a neat pack behind me, went in to shake hands with the freight agent and Miguel, and rode out of town.

  Riding out that afternoon across the valley, I said to my horse, “You know, Horse, you and me have seen a site of trails, dust, hills, and rocks. You realize that in those… let me see now… six… no eight years we been together, I never gave you a name. I think I’ll call you Bob. It’s a good name and I can spell it… frontwards or backwards.” Bob twitched his ears, so I guessed that was a name he was partial to.