By the Horns

by Ralph Compton

  “They lured you with the promise of money?” Bartholomew said. “Then held you against your will? How despicable.”

  “Against my will? Mister, when were you hatched? I stayed because Paco promised to make good the money he owed me after he found a buyer for the cattle he stole.”

  “But the rope. The gag.”

  “That’s how Paco liked to do it. He was working up to pleasuring me when you rode up.”

  “My word!” Pitney declared.

  Sweet Sally bestowed a warm smile on him. “Foreigner, aren’t you? Say, you sure do dress peculiar. But you must have money to afford those fancy duds.” She winked slyly. “I like men with money.”

  “Thank God I’m broke,” Lon said, and before she could retort, he asked his employer, “Do you want me to make a tally of the stolen cattle before we head out?”

  “It can wait,” Bartholomew said. “Now that I think about it, we have something else to do first. We can’t ride off and leave these bodies to rot.”

  “Why not?” Lon asked. “Buzzards have to eat.”

  “We shot them, we should plant them. Owen, you two hunt for a shovel. If you can’t find one, use sticks or rocks. Dig shallow graves. No need to wear yourselves out.”

  “Yes, sir,” the foreman said, and with Lon Chalmers in tow, he headed for the barn.

  Bartholomew faced Sweet Sally. “We will keep you company until they are done.” He introduced himself and the man from Britain. “Sorry about your friend Paco, but he rustled some of my stock. I had to make an object lesson of him or pretty soon every rustler south of the border would think he had the God-given right to help himself to my cattle.”

  “No need to apologize, mister. Paco wasn’t a friend or anything. We had a business arrangement, nothing more.” Sally fiddled with her hair. “Pokes don’t come free, although most men wish they did.”

  “How could you?” Pitney asked, horrified at the images his imagination conjured of her and the bandits.

  “A gal doesn’t have a whole lot of choices these days, mister. Maybe it’s different wherever you hail from, but over here there aren’t a lot of good jobs for those of us in dresses. There’s sewing, but my fingers are so big I can’t hardly work a needle and thread. There’s cooking, but I can’t keep my hands off food as it is.”

  “Even so,” Pitney said, “how could you permit men to touch you so intimately for money? Don’t you find it reprehensible?”

  “Hell, I don’t even know what that means.” Sweet Sally undid her rope belt and loosened it slightly, then retied it. “As for the other, back when I was married I used to think my body was special. I was skinny then, believe it or not, and no one ever touched me except my husband.”

  “Your personal life is your own,” Bartholomew interrupted.

  “I don’t mind sharing the details,” Sweet Sally said. “There’s not much more. I was hired on at a high-priced bawdy house in Denver. That’s where I learned the tricks of my trade. How to do it without really doing it. All the ways to hoodwink a man and get it over with sooner. Those sorts of things.”

  “We really don’t need to hear this.”

  “I worked some of the best houses until I put on too much weight for the clients. None of the madams would hire me. I started working in saloons, drifting from place to place, half the time so drunk I didn’t know where I was, and ended up in a dive just over the border. That’s where Paco found me and offered the hundred a month he didn’t have.”

  “How terrible,” Pitney said.

  Sweet Sally smiled and brazenly hooked her arm through his. “I like you, foreigner or no. Want to go for a stroll? I can stand the exercise. And I know a quiet spot where it’s nice and shady.”

  “I would rather not, if you don’t mind,” Pitney said, prying at her hand. “Perhaps some other time.”

  “What’s the matter? You shy, Pitley? Or is it that you’ve never done it with a red-blooded American girl and don’t think you can keep up?”

  “It’s Pitney, not Pitley.” Pitney glanced to the right and the left as if contemplating fleeing. Instead he stammered, “I have never paid for—that is, I am not the—that is, it’s all well and good—that is to say, this is hardly the time and the place.”

  “I suppose not.” Sweet Sally ran a pudgy hand along his forearm. “Tell you what. While you boys are burying the bodies and whatnot, I’ll go take a bath. I usually only do it once a month, but for you, Pitley, honey, I’ll get extra clean.” She flounced off toward the spring.

  “Dear God,” Alfred Pitney said.

  “I reckon she’s taken a shine to you,” Bartholomew said. “It must be your dashin’ foreign air.”

  “That’s not even remotely humorous. The mere thought of bedding that creature makes me queasy. It’s ludicrous.”

  “Not to her. Could be she’ll move on you tonight,” Bartholomew cautioned. “To a woman like her, you’re quite a catch. She might already see herself as Mrs. Pitley.”

  “Preposterous,” Pitney said in disgust. His gaze drifted toward the bulk in the blanket, and fear blossomed. “She wouldn’t think that, would she? That I would take her as my wife?”

  “There’s no tellin’ with females. My Proctor is as sensible as they come and she still does things that make me want to beat my head against a tree. Doves are even more fickle.”

  “But she just met me!”

  “Ever hear of love at first sight?” Bartholomew grinned. “I’ll do what I can to help but once a woman sets her sights on a man, he’s as good as branded.”

  Within the hour the bodies were underground. Sweet Sally came back with her wet hair plastered to her head and beads of water dripping from her stout arms and legs. “Smell me now,” she urged Pitney, tilting her neck in invitation. “I’m clean enough to eat off of.”

  Owen and Lon rounded up the bandits’ horses. The largest was offered to Sally, who had to be boosted into the saddle. It required both cowboys; she was too heavy for just one.

  Bartholomew rode point, Pitney hovering close. He visibly cringed when Sweet Sally brought her mount up next to theirs and beamed happily at him.

  “Let’s get acquainted. I want to learn all there is about you. Where you are from, why you talk so funny, whether you have any land and your own house, that sort of stuff.”

  “We have something else to talk over first,” Bartholomew interrupted. “Where do you want us to leave you? This side of the border or north of it?”

  Sweet Sally did not hide her disappointment. “I’d rather go wherever you’re going. Pitley and me are just getting acquainted.”

  “We are bound for my ranch, and I am afraid my wife would take exception to your presence.” Bartholomew winked at Pitney. “So where will it be? We pass near Laredo. Or I can have one of my hands take you as far as San Antonio.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go there. A friend of mine—we call her Gimpy on account of she was born with one leg shorter than the other—she told me that the men there like their womenfolk on the heavy side. I’d be in clover.”

  Alfred Pitney had a better idea. “Why don’t we stop at the first town we come to and I will foot the bill for a new dress? I might even be persuaded to buy you a stage ticket to San Antonio.”

  “You would do that for me?” Sweet Sally’s hand fluttered to the fleshy folds of her neck.

  “It would be my distinct pleasure.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Bartholomew said. “First, though, I have a cook to collect.” He yelled to Owen and the foreman trotted up from the flank. “I’m goin’ to fetch Benedito. Be lookin’ for us about noon tomorrow.”

  Pitney quickly piped up, “I would like to go with you, if you don’t mind. I am eager to meet Mr. Chavez.”

  “You are?” Owen said.

  Sweet Sally put a hand on the Britisher’s arm. “You’re leaving? I was looking forward to spending the night together.”

  “Business before pleasure, I am afraid,” Pitney intoned, and kneed his horse
over next to his host’s. “Ready when you are.”

  They left the herd raising dust in their wake and rode north until Carro’s adobe dwellings sprouted from the baked plain. Bartholomew reined due east. Presently the character of the land changed. Spots of green appeared, small plots worked by farmers who barely eked enough bounty from the soil to feed their inevitably large families.

  “I’ve never seen such poverty,” Pitney commented.

  Their garments were simple cotton, like those of the villagers, only plainer. Many went barefoot. Sandals were a luxury they could not afford. The women dressed in simple shifts or loose blouses and wide skirts as plain as the clothes of their men. The well-to-do among them owned a burro. Horses were another luxury, and only one farm in twenty had one.

  Their meals, as Bartholomew related to his guest, consisted largely of frijoles, or beans, boiled and mashed and fried in lard, and cornmeal tortillas, a thin bread common to tacos, enchiladas, and tostadas. Rice was another staple.

  “It sounds most unappetizing.”

  Bartholomew gave him a sharp glance. “Thank God you said that to me and not a Mexican. They’re liable to stab you. And just so you know, I find Mexican food as tasty as any other.” He rose in the stirrups to better view a farm ahead. “You’ll change your mind before you reach Wyoming.”

  “I will believe it when that happens,” Pitney said.

  The farm they were approaching was no different from the others except that there was a certain neatness and order. The straw on the roof was fresh, the walls had been swept clean of dust, and the windowsill and jambs had been painted a bright yellow. In a small corral stood a burro. Nearby, on a hammock slung between two trees, lay a man with a big belly in a serape, a sombrero pulled low over his face.

  Bartholomew alighted, handed the reins to Pitney, and ambled over to the hammock. “Buenos tardes. Would you be Señor Chavez? Benedito Chavez?”

  “And if I am?” came a muffled reply from under the sombrero.

  “Then you should be expectin’ me. I’m James Bartholomew. Your brother, Pedro, is the cook at my ranch. You sent him word about a certain bandit who had cattle of mine. I’m in your debt.”

  “Paco Ramirez is a pig.”

  “Paco Ramirez was a pig,” Bartholomew said. “But he is not the main reason I am here. Your brother told you, did he not, about the position I have open?”

  “Sí, Señor Bartholomew. He sent word asking me to go with some of your cowboys to a place far to the north. A place with a strange name. Why-ome-ing. I sent word I was not interested.”

  “What?” Bartholomew blurted. “The way Pedro talked, I took it for granted you had agreed.”

  “Perhaps the man I sent did not reach him.”

  “I ask you to reconsider. I need a good cook, and Pedro says you are as good as he is.”

  “I am better, señor,” Benedito stated.

  “All the more reason for me to hire you. Why did you decline, if I may ask?”

  The hammock moved to the shrug of the man’s shoulders. “It is a long way, this Why-ome-ing. I will be gone from my home many weeks. You ask me to give up my casa for how much money?”

  “Forty dollars a month,” Bartholomew said. “The same as I pay most of my punchers.”

  “But these punchers, they do not cook, sí? They cannot make tostadas that would have your mouth water? Or enchiladas to make your stomach growl?” Benedito raised his hat brim a fraction. “It seems to me, señor, someone who can do all that is worth a little more than the same as most of your punchers.”

  “Fifty dollars a month, then, with three months guaranteed whether it takes that long or not,” Bartholomew offered.

  “That is something to think about,” Benedito said. “It is also good to think about the many rivers that must be crossed. Rivers in which a man can drown. And since it is summer, the days will be as hot as my oven. Most uncomfortable, sí?”

  “What is it you want? Sixty a month?”

  “I only want what is fair, señor,” Benedito said. “How much would be fair to pay you to endure the rivers and the heat?”

  Without hesitation Bartholomew said, “Sixty it is, then. Is that acceptable?”

  “It helps me accept the rivers and the heat. But then there are the Indians. The Sioux, I hear, like to take hair that belongs to others. White hair, Mexican hair, is all the same to them.”

  “Sixty-five dollars.”

  “That is most generous, señor. But my hair is worth more than five dollars to me. Is your hair not worth more than five dollars to you?”

  “Seventy dollars,” Bartholomew said. “And that’s as high as I can go.”

  “You surprise me, señor. You have a big ranch, one of the biggest in all of Texas. You have many cattle, one of the biggest herds north of the Rio Grande. Yet you can only pay seventy-five dollars to the man who will keep your punchers well fed?”

  “Enough tomfoolery,” Bartholomew said. “How much do you really want?”

  “One hundred dollars a month. Plus expenses, of course.”

  Bartholomew stared at the sombrero. “I can’t decide whether to laugh or leave. I’ve never paid a cook that much. Not even your brother.”

  “Would you pay eighty dollars for my services as a cook? Keeping always in mind the rivers and the heat and the Indians who like to take hair.”

  “I reckon I can go to eighty, yes.” Bartholomew held out his hand. “If we have a deal, let’s shake.”

  “In a moment, señor. First, how much would you pay for the services of a doctor? Fifty? Sixty? Perhaps another eighty?”

  “You’re proddin’ too hard.”

  “Not at all, señor. Or hasn’t my brother told you? I am not without some small skill as a healer. And because it is a small skill, I will not ask for more than twenty dollars more. One hundred dollars is fair to pay for the services of a cook and a healer, yes?”

  “For both, yes.” Bartholomew capitulated, but he was grinning. “Now how long will it take you to pack whatever you want to take along?”

  Benedito Chavez pushed his sombrero back, revealing friendly brown eyes and a sincere smile. “I hope you will not think badly of me, señor, but I have been packed since my brother sent word you would like me to work for you.”

  “Damn,” James Bartholomew said.

  “One more thing, señor. Please do not tell Pedro how much you are paying me. He will be very mad.”

  “He’s not the only one,” the rancher grumbled.

  The two men laughed.

  10

  Why-ome-ing or Bust

  They left the Bar 40 at the crack of dawn. The night before, Benedito Chavez had checked and rechecked the chuck wagon and all it contained, ensuring that he had everything he would need for their arduous trek of eleven hundred miles. His brother, Pedro, helped.

  It had been decided that Owen would take two extra horses for each hand. On a normal trail drive each puncher had a remuda of anywhere from six to ten, depending on the size of the herd. Since they were taking only Big Blue and five cows, two extra horses were considered more than enough. They tied the animals to the rear of the chuck wagon.

  The punchers were excited. None of them had ever been to Wyoming Territory. Lon Chalmers had come close when he visited Denver back during the days of his wild and violent youth.

  “I don’t need to remind you,” Bartholomew said to them the evening before, “how much is at stake.” He had invited them all up to the house for supper. “Not only for the Bar 40 but for the BLC. Big Blue is an important investment for them. I have given my word you will get him to their ranch, and I trust you will carry it out as if I were with you.”

  “He wants to go,” Proctor mentioned. “He wants to go so much. It’s just not possible. He’s needed here.”

  Owen cleared his throat. “You have my range word we’ll get the job done, boss. The four of us are as loyal to the brand as they come.”

  “I know that,” Bartholomew responded with deep emotion.
“I would trust the four of you with my life.”

  The cowboys shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Slim actually blushed. Cleveland developed an interest in the flowers in a vase.

  Alfred Pitney picked that moment to say, “I won’t hold it against any of you if something goes wrong. I have been most impressed with your meticulous preparations. You have anticipated everything that can happen.”

  “We have tried,” the rancher said, “but on the trail there are a thousand and one things that can go wrong. Luck plays as much a part as plannin’. Maybe more.”

  “Don’t forget Providence,” Proctor said. “The Good Lord will watch over them and preserve them.”

  “That reminds me,” Bartholomew said. “Have all of you packed extra ammunition?”

  “We could hold off the whole Sioux nation,” Owen said.

  Their employer smiled. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.” Then he went around the table, from puncher to puncher, silently shaking their hands. He shook Owen’s last. “Make it back alive. All of you. The bull is important but your lives matter more.”

  So there they were, the next morning, about to depart. A golden crown rimmed the world. The rooster crowed out by the coop. A male wren warbled from his perch on the birdhouse that hung from a tree near the ranch house. High atop the stable a flock of pigeons cooed.

  Punchers filed from the bunkhouse to see them off. Most had been on trail drives and had experienced the many perils.

  Slim opened the corral gate and rode in. A coiled rope in hand, he swung his arm and said, “Rise and shine! You’re goin’ for a walk.”

  Big Blue came out of the shadows. He was so immense he seemed to dwarf Slim’s horse. Slowly, almost regally, he walked out the gate. Fortunately he was higher than the top rail and his horns could make it through. He allowed himself to be guided to a position ahead of the chuck wagon.