By the Horns

by Ralph Compton

  “You killed two men and you were only twelve?”

  “The old pistol jammed. I thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger but it wouldn’t shoot, and when I looked up, there was the third Reb, mad as hell and smilin’ as he took aim. I thought I was a gone goslin’, but there was a shot, and the third Reb had a new hole next to his nose. My younger brother had picked up a revolver one of the Rebs had dropped. He saved my life.”

  “Was that the end of it?”

  “Not quite. The Reb who had wanted to spare us came into the bedroom, sayin’ as how he was sorry about my folks, and was there anything he could do for us? And I picked up another revolver from the floor and shot him.”

  Sweet Sally’s pudgy hand flew to the folds of her throat. “You didn’t!”

  “Three times. Then I went around to each of those Rebs and shot them in the head, to be sure.” Luke looked at her. “Now you know about the chip,” he said coldly.

  “You’ve been soured on life ever since?”

  “Not soured so much as mad. Mad at the Almighty for lettin’ it happen. Mad at life for it bein’ as cruel as it is. Mad at jackasses like you who think the world is a garden and we’re all flowers.”

  “What happened to you was horrible. I won’t deny that,” Sweet Sally said. “But you’re not the only one who has had something awful happen to them.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No. I’m just saying that you can’t go around with a chip on your shoulder forever,” Sweet Sally said.

  “You think you understand but you don’t.”

  Suddenly Grutt let out a holler. “Riders comin’!”

  They were threading through heavy brush country, bottomland thick with vegetation, insects, and wildlife. Ahead, winding toward them, appeared two men on horseback. Cowboys, by their attire, both of them young. They smiled and lifted their hands in greeting. One had enough freckles to fill a coffeepot, and the other had downy peach fuzz on his chin.

  “Howdy,” said the freckle-faced stripling as he drew rein on a buckskin. “We didn’t expect to run into anyone out here in the middle of nowhere.” He wore a wide-brimmed Stetson, a bright blue bandanna, and a new Smith and Wesson on his right hip.

  “Sure didn’t,” said the other. Everything about him looked new—his clothes, his chaps, his gun belt, his saddle.

  Grutt and Bronk reined up on either side of Luke Deal and Sweet Sally, and it was Grutt who smiled at the cowboys and asked, “You boys ridin’ with an outfit, are you?”

  “No, sir,” said Freckle-face. “Me and my partner, here, are out to start us a ranch of our own.”

  “We’re huntin’ for longhorns,” said Peach Fuzz. “You haven’t happened to have seen any, have you?”

  “Not since sunup,” Grutt said. “We spotted a few a ways off but they skedaddled like their tails were on fire.”

  “The wild ones do that.” The young man with the freckles touched his chest. “I’m Tommy Sanders and this is Cletus Jones. We came all the way from Dallas.”

  “We’ve heard tell this is the best country for longhorns,” Cletus said.

  “How many head have you gathered so far?” Grutt asked.

  “Not a one,” Tommy Sanders ruefully admitted. “They’re harder to catch than fleas on a bluetick hound. Every time we get close, they run.”

  Sweet Sally flashed her most dazzling smile. “Maybe you boys would do better if you found someone who could teach you how to go about it.”

  “Our thinkin’ exactly, ma’am,” Cletus said. “Say, would any of you know the tricks of the trade?”

  “The only tricks I know,” Grutt said, “are with cards.”

  “I know a few,” Luke Deal told them.

  “You do?” Tommy Sanders straightened. “Can you show them to us, mister? We’d be obliged.”

  “Sure,” Luke said, and just like that, his Remington was in his hand. He twirled it forward, he twirled it backward, he moved his arm high while twirling, then moved his arm low, still twirling. With the bright sun gleaming off the metal, the effect was dazzling. He gave a last twirl and the Remington neatly slid into its holster. “Those are some of the tricks I know.”

  “Oh. I thought you meant cows,” Tommy said, disappointed.

  “That was some show,” Cletus admired. “You must be a gun hand.”

  “I have my moments,” Luke replied, and leaned on his saddle horn. “There’s another one I’ll show you in a bit.”

  Something in the manner he said it caused Sweet Sally to worriedly say, “Don’t you dare.” To the cowboys she said, “Nice meetin’ you. Good luck findin’ cows.” She raised the bay’s reins to ride on but Luke Deal, Grutt, and Bronk made no move to go.

  “I’d love to learn to do what you just did,” Tommy Sanders said to Deal. “I’m not much good with a revolver.”

  “Me neither,” Cletus Jones chimed in. “Oh, I’ve shot a few snakes and such, but I can’t hit much past ten feet.”

  “Me either,” Bronk said, “which is why I like to get in close so I can’t miss.”

  “You’ve killed before?”

  “We all have,” Grutt said. “More than once.”

  Tommy Sanders licked his lips and glanced at Cletus Jones. The two of them visibly tensed.

  “Well, nice talkin’ to you folks.” Cletus was about to ride off.

  “I have an idea,” Luke Deal said mildly. “Why don’t you let us help you round up some longhorns? Five riders can cover a lot more territory than two.”

  “You would do that for us?” Tommy brightened.

  “How damn dumb are you?”

  Confused, Tommy Sanders cocked his head. “But you just said you would lend us a hand.”

  “Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to cowboy.” Luke radiated contempt. “It’s miserable work, almost as miserable as farmin’. The hours are long and the pay is low. You spend all damn day in the saddle nursemaidin’ a bunch of stupid smelly cattle. I’d rather do anything but punch cows.”

  “Well, we like the idea,” Cletus said. “Five years from now we’ll have a ranch of our own and be runnin’ five hundred head or more.”

  “It’s our dream,” Tommy Sanders said.

  “Not in five years,” Luke said. “Not in ten. Not ever.”

  “How’s that again, mister?” Tommy had gone pale.

  So had Sweet Sally. “You wouldn’t. You can’t. They haven’t done you any harm. Let them be.”

  “Stay out of this if you know what is good for you.”

  “Mister, we don’t want no trouble,” Cletus said.

  Luke grinned at the two young cowboys. “Whenever you are ready to dance, light the wick.”

  “Mister, you’re loco. We don’t want no grief.” Tommy nodded at Cletus and the two of them gigged their horses to go around.

  “Be seein’ you,” Cletus said to Sweet Sally.

  “In hell,” Luke Deal responded, and his hand blurred. The Remington boomed twice. His first shot caught Tommy Sanders in the face and flipped him from the buckskin. His second shot struck Cletus Jones high in the chest, twisting him half around. Cletus’s mount bolted, and after a dozen yards Cletus pitched to the earth.

  Sweet Sally was thunderstruck. “You killed them! You just up and killed those sweet boys for no reason!”

  Luke Deal slid a cartridge from a belt loop and began replacing the two he had spent. “You’re for-gettin’ that chip on my shoulder.”

  14

  Red Men

  Few things spooked cowboys like Indians did. Word was spread to the others, and for the rest of the day they rode alertly, hands on their revolvers or with their rifles in their hands. Where there was one Indian there were bound to be more, and in their minds Indians spelled trouble with a large T.

  Ever since the first whites arrived in the country that would later become Texas, there had been constant clashes between the white man and the red man. The red man had been there first, and many tribes did not take kind
ly to the brash, arrogant intruders who claimed the land for their own.

  Bloodshed was inevitable. Race was not the catalyst, although there were many on both sides who hated the other merely because of the color of their skin. It was a clash of cultures, a difference so vast in the basic way the two sides regarded themselves and the world around them that the chasm could not be bridged short of eliminating those who were so different.

  Other factors were involved. On the red side, warrior cultures dictated that they regard the whites as enemies. Raids and counting coup and stealing horses were ingrained in the fabric of their existence; they did it to other red men, they had done it to the Spanish, they saw no reason not to do it to the new invaders.

  On the white side, there was the inexorable westward tide, the urge to expand, to keep pushing west until every square foot of the continent had been claimed and put under the plow or turned into a settlement or a town or a city.

  To the Indians, the land was a nurturer. It gave them that which they needed to live, and in return they treated it with reverence.

  To the whites, the land was property. Yet another commodity, to be bartered and bought and sold and claimed as private. The NO TRESPASSING signs the whites put up were not meant for Indians alone. White men regarded that which was theirs as their private domain, and woe to anyone who violated it.

  It was inevitable that there were skirmishes between different tribes and the cowboys who made their living by herding cattle across the land the Indians once so freely roamed. The Comanches were the most feared, although in recent years their depredations had been largely contained. But they were not the only tribe. There were the Lipan Apaches, the Kitsai, the Tonkawas, the Quapaws, the Wichitas, the Osage, the Kiowa Apaches, the Kiowas, and more. Many more. Along the coast were tribes so small and so remote that the white man deemed them hardly worthy of notice.

  As evening neared, the Bar 40 punchers became more anxious. They had good cause. They were worried about the longhorns more than their scalps. In recent years, Indians had taken to stealing cows. That there was a correlation between the rise in missing cows and the slaughter of the buffaloes the Indians depended on for their very existence did not go unnoticed, but that did not mean cowboys condoned the taking of the animals they relied on for their own.

  Owen chose a clearing beside a creek for their camp. The creek was to the east, to the west grew dense woods, to the north and south thick brush. He had Chavez park the chuck wagon on the creek bank so they had a clear view of the rest of the clearing. A rope was strung to keep Big Blue and the cows from straying. The horses were picketed. He gave instructions that the fire was to be kept small and that no one was to go off alone for any reason. Lastly, they would take turns keeping watch throughout the night in pairs, not singly.

  Only when everything that could be done had been done did the foreman sit by the fire, propped on his saddle, and accept a piping-hot cup of black coffee from Benedito. Lon relaxed across from him. Slim and Cleveland were standing guard on either side of the clearing.

  Alfred Pitney sipped tea while staring into the darkening depths of the woods. “I say, do you truly think hostiles will cause us trouble? We only saw the one footprint, after all.”

  “Better safe than dead, or our cows stolen,” Owen said.

  Lon patted his Colt. “I’d like to see them try. It’s been a few years since I’ve killed a redskin.”

  “That’s rather mean-spirited, wouldn’t you agree?” Pitney asked.

  “Mister, the Comanches killed six of my kin,” Lon said bitterly. “The Kiowas killed two more. Call it mean if you want, but I’d as soon there wasn’t one Indian left in all of Texas.”

  “I take it you don’t subscribe to the idea of the noble savage so prevalent in the newspapers?” Pitney said to make conversation.

  “Noble, hell. There’s not none that way. Indians are people, just like us. There are good ones and there are bad ones, and it’s always the bad ones who spoil things for the rest.”

  “On which side do you place the blame for the spilling of blood?”

  “Both sides have done their share,” Lon said. “It’s a waste of time to point fingers. All I care about is me and mine and those I ride with and work for. So long as the Indians leave us be, I’ll leave them be.”

  “An aunt of mine was taken by the Comanches,” Owen revealed. “It took my uncle three years to find the band that had her. He offered to buy her back and the Comanches were willin’ but she refused to come home. She said she had grown used to Indian ways and she liked them better than white ways.”

  “I’ve heard of folks like that,” Lon said. “Addlepated, if you ask me.”

  “In Wyoming some of the tribes have been tamed, as you Yanks call it,” Pitney mentioned. “They wear white clothes and live as whites and send their children to white schools. But they are not happy about having a new way of life forced on them.”

  “Who would be?” Lon said. “But either they change or they die. That might sound too mean for you, comin’ from a country where you don’t have any Indians, but for those of us here, it helps us sleep better at night.”

  “Britain doesn’t have Indians, no, but it has had its share of conflicts. The Celts, the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons, and many more, all have stained British soil with blood. You can count your wars on one hand. Ours have been without number.” Pitney swallowed some more tea. “There are those who say warfare is our natural state. That so long as man exists, there will be wars and rumors of war. There will be the spilling of blood.”

  “A happy notion,” Owen said dryly.

  “Don’t you ever give it any thought?”

  “No. I’m too busy livin’ to fret over what might be. There are always those who think the sky is fallin’ but it’s still up there.”

  “Would that more souls had your attitude,” Alfred Pitney said. “The world would be a friendlier place.”

  Lon snorted. “Friendly has nothin’ to do with life. Friendly is for Bible-thumpers and those who wear blinders. Out here”—Lon gestured at the benighted wilderness—“bein’ too friendly can get a man killed.”

  Suddenly Slim was by the fire, nervously fingering his Winchester and saying, “Owen! I think I heard somethin’. Someone is movin’ about in those trees yonder.”

  They rose and ran to the edge of the woods and listened, but all they heard was the sigh of the wind and the rustle of leaves. In the far distance coyotes yipped, and once a bird screeched.

  “Whatever it was, it must be gone,” Slim offered.

  “Or lyin’ low, waitin’ for us to turn in,” Owen said. “From now on stay ten feet back so they can’t jump you.”

  A mouthwatering aroma filled the clearing, rising from the stove Benedito Chavez was industriously bent over. He would not let the threat of an Indian attack interfere with his duties. Come rain or shine, storm or calm, Indians or outlaws, he would perform his duties.

  Tonight the fare was fit for a prince: juicy slabs of Brownie, smothered in wild onions; potatoes, skinned and sliced, served in a sauce with a cornmeal base and heavy with butter; the inevitable fresh, hot sourdough; and a rich berry pudding that everyone had two helpings of. All washed down with delicious coffee, except in Pitney’s case. He much preferred his treasured tea.

  They ate in shifts. Owen and Lon partook, then they stood guard while Slim and Cleveland ate. Pitney, pricked by guilt, offered to stand guard, too, but Owen would not hear of it. “You’re not one of the hands.”

  “But I’m a member of this party. I should do my fair share of the work. Wouldn’t your employer help if he were here?”

  “Yes, he would,” Owen conceded, “but you are Mr. Bartholomew’s guest, and he gave me special instructions on how you are to be treated.”

  “I resent the special treatment,” Pitney complained.

  “Then look at it another way,” Owen suggested. “If anything were to happen to you, would the BLC still buy Big Blue?”

  Pitne
y had to think about that. “Perhaps not. I conceived the idea, I came to Texas on my own initiative to buy him.”

  “There you have it. We can’t expose you to extra risk or all we’ve done will be for nothin’.”

  Benedito was exempted from standing guard by virtue of being the cook. As he explained it to Pitney when the Brit asked why he never did any of the work the cowboys did, “Because, señor, I am the one who feeds their bellies that they may do the work they do. I am of more value to them than everything in their lives but their horses. I am a step below God, and do you see God punching cows?”

  Pitney laughed and said, “You are exaggerating.”

  “Ask them, señor. They will tell you. The cook never does the work they do. Not at the Bar 40, not anywhere. Cooks are kings, as the gringos say. It is enough that I work hard to feed them.”

  “You don’t appear to be especially exhausted.”

  “Was that humor, señor? You are poking fun at poor Benedito, no? Or have you not noticed I am always up before the cowboys so I can heat the stove and have their coffee ready and start breakfast? Have you not noticed how many hours I spend cooking? How I am always looking for things I can cook? How I make of each meal what you would say is a”—Benedito paused, searching for the right word—“what you call a masterpiece? Have you noticed none of these things?”

  “Now that you mention them, I have,” Pitney said. “I also noticed that you do not wear a revolver or have a rifle. What if we are attacked? How will you defend yourself? Or don’t gods bother?”

  “You poke more fun, señor. But I would not give my life up without a fight. And I have something better than a gun.” From under his serape Benedito slid a long-bladed weapon. He tapped the blade with a fingernail and it rang softly like the chime of a bell. “My machete.”

  “Good Lord! You could cleave someone in half,” Pitney exclaimed.

  “That is one use, señor.” Benedito smiled. “But a neck is much easier to cut, and when an enemy loses an arm or leg, much of the fight goes out of them.”