Devil's Brand

by Len Levinson

  “Mr. Truscott,” she said, “this is my ranch, not my husband’s. I paid for it with my own money, and I can prove it. I gave you an order this evening, and I expect you to carry it out as we discussed.”

  Truscott looked back and forth between them, scratched his head, and said, “Mebbe both of you should see a lawyer and get this thing straightened out, because I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well said!” Whiteside replied, puffing out his chest. “Let the courts decide!” He knew it would take months and maybe even years before the courts would settle the matter, and by then he’d be long gone with Rosalie and the money.

  Cassandra knew the same thing, and she had to get the herd moving. “There isn’t time for the courts. We’ll settle everything after I sell the herd in Abilene, but if we don’t get the herd moving, there won’t be anything to settle.”

  She saw that Truscott was baffled, and the only thing to do was appeal to the men themselves. She turned and faced them, trying to fight back the tears, but one silvery orb rolled down her alabaster cheek.

  “My husband is trying to ruin me,” she said in a quavering voice. “I don’t know why, but I believe it has something to do with a woman he’s keeping in town. I’ll be wiped out if he gets away with it, and I’m asking you to please do the right thing and help me.”

  Before she got the last word out of her mouth, she felt herself being flung across the room. She tripped, lost her footing, spun around, and crashed into the wall.

  Gideon Whiteside stood before her, his shadow elongated by the light of the lantern.

  “I told you,” he said in a threatening voice, “to go back to your room!”

  She picked herself up off the floor. “This is my home!” She replied. “And if you don’t like what goes on here, then you leave!”

  “Why you goddamn …”

  He charged toward her, grabbed her hair, and whipped her around, sending her flying toward the door. Her back crashed against it, and he rushed at her, raising his fist, because he couldn’t let a woman talk to him that way.

  He brought his hand forward, to smack her as she’d never been smacked before, when a grip like iron caught his wrist and flung him aside.

  Now he was the one struggling for balance, but he couldn’t quite make it, dropping onto his rear end, but as soon as he landed, he jumped to his feet.

  He spun around and saw John Stone, barefoot, wearing jeans and guns.

  “Well,” Whiteside said indignantly, “I guess you must feel proud of yourself, pushing around a man nearly twice your age, who gave his arm in the war!”

  “Get on your horse,” Stone replied, “and don’t stop riding until you’re off this range.”

  “Now just a minute,” Whiteside replied. “You can’t—”

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” Stone interrupted. “Get going, while you can walk.”

  Whiteside looked around, and saw the array of cowboys before him. For a moment he didn’t understand, but then it came to him. They’d seen him strike a woman, and the fools naturally took her side. He realized he shouldn’t have beaten her in front of them, because ignorant people misunderstand things.

  But Whiteside always believed he had tremendous acting ability. Hadn’t he fooled the world with his war hero act? Perhaps, like Marc Antony, he could turn the fickle crowd around.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, striking a noble pose, “You’ve all been around long enough to know what women are like. They lie, they cheat, and all they want to do is put their hands into a man’s pockets. That’s what this one is doing to me, and I’m afraid it’s got me a little worked up. Now I know what you’re thinking right now, that she’s sweet and nice, and it can’t be true, but underneath those blond curls and angelic features lives a little devil trying to steal everything I own, so she can give it to”—he pointed to John Stone—“this man here, who wears a Confederate cavalry officer’s hat, but unless I miss my guess was a deserter!”

  Everybody looked at Stone, and Whiteside was surprised to see the maze of crisscrossed scratches on Stone’s back.

  “This man is a crook!” Stone said. “We ought to run him out of here!”

  Truscott raised his hand. “Now just a minute! Don’t get yer balls in an uproar! If this ranch belongs to this man, and we run him off, we’ll have the Texas Rangers on our asses, and I, for one, am not lookin’ to take on the Texas Rangers!”

  The cowboys argued among themselves, as Cassandra climbed to her feet. A trickle of blood showed at the corner of her mouth, and her robe and gown were torn, revealing half her left breast, but the worst pain was deep in her heart, and it kept getting worse.

  She had to save the herd, but didn’t know what to say to the men. They were accustomed to taking orders from Truscott, and now she regretted being aloof from them, because she hardly knew any of them personally, and for all they knew she was just another bitch trying to steal a man’s money.

  Then one of the men, the tall string bean who played the guitar, raised his hand. “I got somethin’ to say!”

  Everybody looked at him, because he so seldom said anything. Mostly he strummed his guitar, lost in old tunes of trails and cows and men who ended up in Boot Hill.

  He stepped forward nervously, in long dirty white underwear, and he too had strapped on his iron and wore his battered hat.

  “I was in town today,” he said. “I know I wasn’t supposed to go, and I should’ve been lookin’ for strays on the range north of here, but I went anyways, because I needed me a drink of whiskey, and I thought I’d have me a woman, because I—”

  Truscott interrupted him. “What’s yer goddamned point, you asshole!”

  “I passed out on a bench near City Hall, and was woke up by some drunk cowboys from the Diamond D talkin’ about us, the crew here at the Triangle Spur, say in’ we was no good, and dumb, and we don’t know nothin’ ‘bout cattle, but Mrs. Whiteside was there, and she stuck up for us. Now understand me, these cowboys were armed, but she didn’t care, and she told ’em ‘we was as fine a bunch of cowboys as ever rode the range’ ” He paused. “That’s what she said, and I thought you all might want to know, because for my part, I agree with John Stone here, and I say we ought to run this bigmouthed son of a bitch out of here! Any man who hits a woman, in my opinion, is a goddamned coward!”

  There was silence for a few moments. The cowboys looked at Whiteside, then at Cassandra, then back to Whiteside. Stone decided the tide had turned in Cassandra’s favor, and he had to act before the men changed their minds.

  He drew his guns and aimed them at Whiteside. “Get going.”

  “Young man,” Whiteside replied, “you keep on that way, and you’ll end up with a rope around your neck.”

  Stone pulled the trigger of one of his Colts, and the floorboards exploded at Whiteside’s feet, making him jump backward.

  “I said get moving.”

  “Now see here!”

  Stone pulled both triggers, and splinters flew into the air around the old ham, who assumed his formal actor’s posture once more, although his hand was trembling. “You’re going to pay for that!” He hollered.

  Stone walked toward him, aiming both guns at Whiteside’s head, and the bunkhouse crowd followed him, guns in their hands. Whiteside realized he hadn’t swayed them, and maybe he wasn’t such a great actor after all. Stone came to a halt in front of him, and pointed his guns at his eyes.

  “You’re the scum of the earth,” Stone said to him. “Get off this property, and if you come back with the Rangers, I’m sure Mrs. Whiteside will have a lot to tell them.”

  A bright flash of hatred passed between them, and Whiteside could see he was outgunned and outmanned. There was nothing to do but leave with his head held high, like the great hero he believed he was, because Whiteside wasn’t sure what was real anymore, and sometimes thought he really had commanded a battalion in the old Stonewall Brigade.

  Like a proud warrior, he turned and marched toward the door, glaring hate
fully at Cassandra as he passed.

  It was silent in the bunkhouse as they listened to his footsteps receding into the distance, then Stone looked at Cassandra, his eyes roving over her pulped lips, which looked like rosebuds in the light of the lantern.

  She stepped toward the men standing in a phalanx before her, half-dressed, guns in their hands. “I want to thank you for your help,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I know I haven’t been very nice in the past, but I was afraid of you, yet I watched and admired you from a distance, and hoped you’d like me. When I was in town today, and said you were fine men, I suppose I didn’t know what I was talking about, but now that I’ve seen you close up, I can say with all my heart that you truly are the finest men to ever ride the range, and the finest men I’ve ever met in my life!”

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the bunkhouse, and even the segundo’s low cur was melancholy, his ears lying back on his head, a sad whine emitting from his strangled vocal chords.

  Truscott extended his arm. “I’ll walk you back to yer house, ma’am, and I think I’d better leave a few of the men there with you, in case that son of a bitch husband of yours decides to come back.” He turned toward the men. “I want three volunteers.”

  Every man raised his hand and stepped forward, and Cassandra couldn’t suppress a smile.

  “First time anyone ever volunteered for any thin’ around here,” said Truscott. “Guess I’ll have to pick three. Unless you want to, ma’am.”

  “I’d trust your judgment, Mr. Truscott.”

  “Thorpe, Slipchuck, John Stone. Take Mrs. Whiteside home, and if you see that one-armed son of a bitch …”

  Slipchuck waved his six-gun. “We’ll take care of him, Ramrod.”

  The three cowboys dressed while the others drifted back toward their bunks. Cassandra looked at a chair, and it was covered with stains of questionable provenance, but she was tired, and sat upon it.

  She still was dazed, not by the power of Gideon’s punches, but by the fact that he’d struck her at all. The gleam in his eyes had been vicious, and if the cowboys hadn’t been there, he probably would’ve beaten her quite badly.

  No longer could she have delusions about Whiteside. The man obviously was pure malevolent evil, lying to her from the first day. And she’d swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. How could I’ve been so stupid?

  Now, for the first time, she could see what a pompous fool he was, but there was a touch of the demonic in him too, and maybe it was more than just a touch.

  There was no time to worry about mistakes of the past. They had to move the herd out.

  Meanwhile, toward the back of the bunkhouse, Stone reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a clean shirt, but something fell out along with it.

  It was the picture of Marie, and he held it in the light. He hadn’t thought about her for a while, but now here she was again. A peculiar chill went through him as he looked from the picture to Cassandra Whiteside sitting in the squalor of the bunkhouse. He stuffed the picture deep into the cavernous saddlebag, put on his hat, and walked toward the front of the bunkhouse, passing the men in their bunks staring respectfully, and maybe a little lustfully, at Cassandra Whiteside.

  Stone came to a stop in front of her, and she looked up at him. “I can’t believe what he’s done to me,” she said, a lost note in her voice.

  “The man’s full of bullshit, Cassandra. What did you expect?”

  “He didn’t seem full of bullshit to me. Why was I so blind?”

  “You didn’t know any better, but now you do, and you’ll never do it again.”

  It gave her comfort to know he was right, she’d never trust another man like Whiteside, but it was too early to think of other men, because first, and most importantly, she had to get that herd moving.

  She turned to John Stone and looked at his profile as he peered out the window. His hat was low over his eyes, and his muscles strained at his clothing. She recalled that he was the first one to speak out for her, when she and Whiteside had been fighting for the allegiance of the men, and that had been the major turning point in the struggle.

  She recalled the night she and Gideon had supper with Stone, and she’d thought Stone had been a charming nonentity compared to Gideon, but now, with her new perspective, she realized that Gideon had been a buffoon, while Stone was a true gentleman, and evidently saw through her husband like a pane of glass.

  She gazed at Stone with renewed interest, as Slipchuck and Thorpe moved toward the front of the bunkhouse. Rising from her chair, she faced the cowboys and said, “Good night, men, and thank you again for your help.”

  She blew out the lantern and walked toward the door, followed by Slipchuck, Thorpe, and John Stone.

  The horses were restless in the corral, snorting and shaking their heads as they watched the woman and three men walk from the bunkhouse to the main house.

  They’d heard the shots and sounds of fighting, and hadn’t known what to expect. Every horse in the corral had suffered due to the antics of cowboys. Some had been caught in fires set by drunken cowboys, and barely escaped with their lives. Others had been in the middle of pitched gunfights. A few had belonged to outlaws and spent literally years running from the law. Nearly half had been stolen at least once in their lives, and many had received cruel treatment from owners.

  Every horse in the corral had been awakened from a deep sleep in the middle of the night and forced to run somewhere at top speed. Tonight?

  The woman and three men entered the main house, and lanterns went on. It was silent, and the horses hoped the rest of the night would be peaceful, but everything could change suddenly, you could never tell.

  The lights went out, and the only illumination came from the moon and stars. Tomahawk stood near the rail, looking at the house, aware that John Stone was there.

  Tomahawk had spent all day in the corral, and hoped to get out tomorrow. But now the ranch was still. The people had gone to sleep.

  He turned away, and saw the palomino mare ten feet away, looking at him. He moved toward her, admiring her smooth coat and the sheen of her flanks. They’d been maneuvering around each other all day, and now all the cowboys were asleep.

  Tomahawk gazed at the palomino, and when their eyes met, it was like staring at the sun. Tomahawk flicked his tail and moved toward her.

  Chapter Eight

  Gideon Whiteside spent the night alone on the prairie, near a stream that sang merrily as he tossed and turned on his bedroll, trying to fall asleep.

  The ground was hard, unlike the soft feather bed he’d slept in with Cassandra, and his saddle was no substitute for the plump pillow he’d enjoyed. If it rained, he’d be miserable, but it wouldn’t be the first time. He’d spent many nights sleeping under train trestles, or in alleyways or open fields. He was no stranger to hardship, but his two years with Cassandra had softened him.

  He became furious when he thought of Cassandra. She had humiliated him, and the men had sided with her, because all they saw was her pretty face.

  Men couldn’t think straight around women, who were witches, clouding men’s minds, making them insane. The cowboys would do anything she said, especially when she started crying. What could a man do when a woman cried?

  Whiteside would’ve walloped her again, if he’d had the chance. She needed it if any woman ever did. How dare she defy him? She’d pay for it, and there was only one sum he’d take: her life.

  He was going to kill her, first chance he got. He’d find her alone somewhere and cut her throat. But not too quickly. He’d do it slowly, so she could feel every tear of the knife, so she’d know she’d challenged the wrong man.

  He balled his fists underneath the blanket and grit his teeth. If there’s anything a flimflam man hates, it’s when his mask is torn away, and he stands naked before the crowd.

  If I have to follow her to the end of the earth, I’ll do it. She’ll never escape me.

  Cassandra sat by her open window, gazing out at the wide prairie stretch
ed endlessly beneath the shower of stars.

  Her lips were tender, and a few teeth were loose in her mouth. She had black and blue marks, but otherwise no serious damage except for the deep depression that had overtaken her as soon as she’d returned to her room.

  She felt like a moron for believing in Gideon so completely and reverently. She realized she knew nothing about him except what he’d told her, and she’d always believed him because she’d never dreamed that a man who’d lost his arm in the war could be a villain.

  Now she realized he might not’ve been in the war at all. His arm could’ve been lost by any number of accidents, and it wasn’t his arm that was the problem anyway. It was his soul, or his lack of one. And he’d fooled her completely.

  She had to admit he’d fooled other people too. He’d been highly regarded in New Orleans, although now that she thought of it, many of the better citizens had nothing to do with him. She’d thought it simple snobbery at the time, but now realized they’d seen through him, as John Stone did.

  John Stone. The big cowboy strode into her mind, with his easy gait and wide rolling shoulders. She’d thought him the wreckage of a young man, but he was the first to step forward for her. Maybe he could drive her wagon all the way to Abilene, and they could get to know each other better.

  She realized she was being an idiot again. Every available cowboy would be needed for the drive. She’d have to drive her own wagon to Abilene, and she’d learn on the trail.

  What would she take with her? She realized she’d been gazing out the window at the moon when she should be preparing for the drive. She had to pack, check supplies, close down the house, a million things to do. Why am I sitting here?

  She lit the lamp, and the first decision to make was what to wear. It was going to be an ordeal, so she’d need her most durable clothing. Those were her riding outfits, which essentially were cowboy outfits tailored to her womanly proportions. She opened a drawer and took out a pair of jeans, while in another drawer she found a cotton shirt covered with small red and white checks.

  She dressed in the light of the lamp, then sat on the chair and pulled on her cowboy boots. Standing in front of the mirror, she appraised herself. Would the men take orders from this person? She put on her cowboy hat and adjusted the neck strap. Maybe they’d laugh at her. It wasn’t going to be easy, but somehow they had to get the herd to Abilene.