The Devil's Posse

by Charles G. West

  “You’re the boss,” Ox grunted, still glaring at the new man. He remained to hover over Logan for a few moments more before finding an empty spot at the long table.

  Looks like it’s going to be a long day, Logan thought. But at least the brute can talk. He had seen the ritual before, but this would be the first time for him as a participant.

  The rest of the breakfast went peacefully enough, with the usual good-natured ribbing and playful insults among the hands. Near the end, Jace told them how they would work the day, and who would go where on the extensive range the Triple-T covered. Most of the men made it a point to say howdy to Logan on their way out of the cookhouse, and a couple offered a handshake.

  Before he could go to work, Logan had to find a space in the tack room of the barn to leave his packsaddle, supplies, and other gear. This delay seemed to irritate Ox, judging by the expression on his face, even though he had to saddle his horse while Logan was in the process of stowing his gear. Ready to ride, Logan turned his buckskin out with the remuda and followed the belligerent brute out of the yard at a lope.

  Ox followed a wide stream that meandered across the rolling prairie grassland, passing large and small groups of grazing cattle. Logan remained content to ride silently along behind him.

  After about two hours, they reached the Belle Fourche River, and Ox turned east to follow the river’s course. As Jace had probably expected, there were a large number of cattle that had found their way to the river, too many for the two of them to round up and drive back toward the ranch by themselves. Ox pulled up to look out over a narrow draw that led down to the water’s edge where Logan counted about forty head of cows.

  “I expect we’ll need half a dozen men to bunch all these cows along this river and drive ’em back,” Logan suggested. They were the first words spoken since leaving the bunkhouse.

  Suspicious of new men by nature, Ox shot him a look of contempt, and Logan thought he was not going to reply for a long moment. Finally Ox said, “Maybe where you come from—I could round up these strays and drive ’em back to the ranch by myself, long as you didn’t get in my way.”

  Logan had expected to get some japing, but that bordered on ridiculous. “Well, now, that would be somethin’ I’d truly like to see. I’ll sure as hell try to stay outta your way while you’re doin’ it.”

  “Are you sayin’ I can’t?” Ox responded.

  “Why, no,” Logan said. “I ain’t sayin’ you can’t. I just said I wanna watch you do it.”

  “You callin’ me a liar?”

  “Not at all,” Logan answered. “I was just hopin’ I’d get to see somethin’ a man don’t get to see every day.”

  Ox hesitated, not sure if he was being baited or not. Logan’s expression held no hint of a challenge, so he gave his horse a kick and started down across the draw.

  “You might get to see somethin’ you ain’t seen, all right, before this day is over,” he mumbled.

  Logan exhaled a long, tired sigh. He was sure now that what he had at first suspected was true. Ox obviously enjoyed the title of the toughest man in the crew. Logan figured that any new man who was a little bigger than average, or powerfully built, must be seen as a challenge to Ox’s claim, and was consequently called out to contest it. Logan wasn’t interested in the competition, so he intended to remain passive.

  They continued along the river for a couple of miles to get a rough count of the strays. They weren’t concerned about any cows crossing to the other side of the river, because of the animals’ natural reluctance to cross any river.

  When they reached a double bend in the river where a backup of the water had created a boggy area, they discovered a cow in trouble. It had moved too far out for the quicksandlike bottom and gotten stuck.

  Upon spotting the cow, Logan automatically pulled the coil of rope from his saddle and snaked out a loop. He guided Pepper along the edge of the water, lassoed the stalled cow, and pulled it back to dry land. Somehow his actions displeased Ox, who figured the new man was showing off.

  “You ought’n done that, without askin’ me first,” Ox said. “You coulda got that horse sucked down in that mess, too.”

  “I don’t think so,” Logan said. “This ain’t my first time ropin’ a cow.”

  “It’s your first time ridin’ with me, and I don’t tolerate workin’ with somebody who don’t know what the hell he’s doin’.”

  Logan glared at him for a long moment before he responded, still determined not to get into it with the quarrelsome bully. Then very calmly he spoke. “We’ll tell Jace not to put me with you after this. Would that satisfy you?”

  “Maybe,” Ox replied, thinking that Logan was showing signs of knuckling under. Confident now that the new man seemed intent upon avoiding any confrontation with him, and his spirits seemed to lift a little. “All right, I think it’s time to rest these horses, and get a bite to eat. I hope you got somethin’, ’cause I don’t figure on feedin’ you.” He stepped down and reached in his saddlebag and took out a biscuit and some sowbelly wrapped in a cloth. “It’s every man for hisself,” he said, and took a bite of the biscuit.

  “Fair enough,” Logan said. He dismounted and pulled the saddle off Pepper. Then he took his little coffeepot out of his war bag and went to the river to fill it. “We might as well have some coffee, as long as we’ve got to rest the horses. And I just happen to have some.”

  Ox said nothing as he watched Logan gather up some dead limbs for a fire. When the flame was kindled and the coffeepot was on the fire and starting to boil, Ox got up on his feet and announced, “Time to get goin’. We ain’t got no time for that.”

  “I thought we were goin’ to rest the horses,” Logan said.

  “They’re rested enough,” Ox insisted. “Dump that out and get mounted.”

  Well, here it is, Logan thought. There ain’t no getting around it. He calmly checked the progress of his coffee, then looked up at Ox looming over him as he knelt beside his fire. “My horse ain’t rested near enough,” Logan said. “And neither is yours from the look of him, so sit your ass back down and we’ll finish eatin’.” He saw the look of shocked disbelief in Ox’s eyes as the big man was suddenly at a loss for words. Before he could recover, Logan went on. “You can have some of this to wash that biscuit down if you’ve got a cup. As fast as you choked it down, I expect it’s still stuck in your throat. If you ain’t got a cup, you’ll have to wait till I finish my coffee, and maybe I’ll let you use mine.”

  “Why, you smart-mouth son of a bitch,” Ox bellowed, “I’m fixin’ to whip your ass.”

  “Take my word for it, Ox,” Logan said calmly as he poured his coffee, “you’ll enjoy a cup of this coffee a whole lot more.”

  Appearing frustrated with Logan’s refusal to respond to his threats in the way he expected, Ox suddenly reached down and grabbed him by the collar. He released it a split second later when he got the steaming cup of hot coffee full in his face.

  “Yow!” he yelped in pain, and stepped backward. Logan followed, springing up under him with a sizable piece of burning firewood in his hand.

  Before Ox had time to recover, Logan bounced the stick of wood off his ear, sending the big man staggering. Stunned by the sudden reversal of roles, Ox tried to gather himself together and attempted to wipe his face clean of the fiery liquid, aware of the throbbing in the side of his head and his bleeding ear. He looked at the man standing poised like a big cat, his feet spread wide, his body in a slight crouch, waiting patiently to meet his attack. Ox realized at that moment that the man did not fear him. It caused him to hesitate. Being a simple man, however, he didn’t know what else to do, so he charged, head down, like a bull, blindly.

  It was what Logan hoped for, because he wasn’t sure how well he would come out in a toe-to-toe fistfight with the hulking brute. He stood his ground, meeting the charge until the last second when, like a bullfight
er, he quickly stepped aside and delivered a blow to the back of Ox’s head strong enough to send him crashing face-first into the fire.

  Roaring out in pain, Ox rolled off the fire, his head throbbing from two blows, frantically slapping at his clothes for fear they had caught fire. Totally confused now, unable to understand why things had happened as they did, he struggled to get up on one knee and gazed bleary-eyed at his adversary. Logan shook his head slowly.

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” he advised calmly, “and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  Ox, uncertain, his physical dominance challenged for the first time, could only stare at his adversary for a long moment while he tried to decide what he should do. The longer he sat there, the more he became aware of his throbbing head and the stinging burning on his right ear. Finally he roared out his outrage and got up on his feet again, prepared to charge.

  “Don’t do it,” Logan warned. “It’s only gonna get worse.”

  He watched the frustrated monster closely. Ox was big and powerful, but he was clumsy, and this was the advantage that Logan knew was his. With his enthusiasm waning, Ox braced himself for one more attack, not knowing what else to do. The charge, like the one before it, came in a head-down bull rush. The results were much the same as the first. As before, Logan stepped deftly aside and this time planted his foot on Ox’s backside as the bull passed by him. Ox’s momentum, aided by Logan’s boot, was the principal cause of yet another crash to the ground. Bewildered and frustrated, the big man rolled over and remained sitting on the ground for a moment unsure of another attempt. He started to get up, but Logan stopped him.

  “Just sit right there and think about it,” he said. “There ain’t no reason for you to try to make an enemy outta me. I got nothin’ against you, and I ain’t done nothin’ to make you wanna fight me. As far as I’m concerned, this never happened. Now I’m gonna see if I can put my fire back together and we’ll have that cup of coffee before we go back to work. Is that all right with you?”

  Dumbstruck and confused, Ox had to think about it for a few moments. For the first time in his adult life, he felt small and defeated. He gazed vacantly at the seemingly agreeable face of his reluctant adversary. Finally the simple brute said, “I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”

  In a short while, the two combatants sat drinking coffee and chewing on some smoked venison that Logan supplied from his saddlebags. Ox was not quite sure how the circumstances had changed. He knew he had been bested, but he no longer had any desire to fight the new hire.

  Afterward, they continued riding along the Belle Fourche until meeting two of the men working the river in the opposite direction. With the scouting of the northern section of their range completed, their job for the day was completed. The actual roundup would probably start the next day.

  The burned bruise on Ox’s right ear did not go unnoticed, nor the black smudge across the back of his collar. One of the two men, Jim Bledsoe, was prompted to ask, “What the hell happened to you, Ox?”

  Before Ox could answer, Logan responded for him. “He tripped and fell right in the fire we built for some coffee.”

  Ox shot a quick glance of appreciation in Logan’s direction before saying, “Yeah, I reckon my feet are gettin’ too big to go where I put ’em.” And though Logan wasn’t aware of it at the moment, with that comment, he had made a firm friend on the Triple-T.

  The same version of Ox’s accident was retold back at the bunkhouse that night. But it was puzzling to the other men that Ox had for some reason accepted Logan without challenging him to prove himself physically. Ox was, after all, a simple man, and sometimes hard to explain. Jace Evans, on the other hand, held a suspicion that his new hire had a hell of a lot more to do with Ox’s acceptance than would ever be told.

  The next morning signaled the actual start of the roundup and Jace sent his men out in groups of three, riding out to the farther reaches of the range to begin the process of finding the strays and driving them back to the Triple-T. This meant returning to the Belle Fourche to pick up those cows that had strayed that far. Logan was sent out with Jim Bledsoe and Bob Whitley. They drew enough supplies and extra horses to sustain them for at least four days, since they would not be able to return to the ranch every night.

  Peace of mind returned to Logan when he was back in the business of tending cattle. It was a business that he knew well, so it was a pleasure to be back doing it. Both Bledsoe and Whitley were good men to work with, so in no time at all, he felt that he had found a home. His only worry at this point was whether or not he would be cut loose when winter set in. Being the latest hire, he might be the first to be let go to ride the grub line with cowhands from other spreads who were out of work for the winter.

  I’ll worry about that when the time comes, he told himself.

  Chapter 8

  “Looks like a town up ahead,” Lonnie Morgan called back over his shoulder.

  “Spearfish,” Quincy responded, making the same assumption Logan had. “I figured that’s where he was headed. Couldn’ta been nowhere else.”

  They lost the tracks they had been following two days before, but they had continued to ride out the canyon to its mouth. Leaving the mountains behind now, they were glad to see the buildings of Spearfish.

  “I hope to hell there’s a saloon there,” Riley Stokes moaned. “If I don’t get a drink of whiskey pretty soon, I’m gonna wither up and die.”

  Lonnie laughed, ready for a drink himself. “Anytime there’s two buildin’s standin’, one of ’em’s a saloon. And I see half a dozen or more already.” He reined his horse back until Quincy pulled up beside him. “How ’bout you, cousin? A drink right now would be pretty good, wouldn’t it?”

  He was worried about Quincy and the fact that he had been in one of his dark moods for the past two days since they lost the trail from Deadwood Gulch. Quincy didn’t answer, so deep in thought was he. He sensed that the man who shot Jake was close now.

  “There it is,” Stokes called out. “I see the sign—Gateway Saloon.” He started for it, but Quincy yelled for him to stop. Stokes pulled up immediately. “Ain’t we gonna get a drink?” he asked, disappointed.

  Out of his somber reverie now, Quincy said, “Sure, we’re gonna get a drink. I want one as bad as you do. But I wanna do the talkin’ when we go in that saloon. I don’t want the rest of you mouthin’ off. You got that straight?”

  “Sure, Quincy,” Stokes said. “You’ll do the talkin’.”

  They proceeded to the saloon, dismounted, and tied their horses at the rail. Waiting for Quincy to lead the way, they looked up and down the short street to get an idea of the place they had landed. Then following him, they entered the Gateway Saloon.

  “Afternoon,” Cecil Grant greeted the six strangers. He couldn’t help noticing the way they scanned the room before advancing to the bar. “Welcome to the Gateway,” he said. “You’re the second bunch of folks that rode into town this week.”

  “The second bunch, huh?” Quincy grunted. “Gimme a bottle of whiskey for my men. Then maybe you can give me some information.” He watched Cecil as he got a bottle and six glasses. “You got a sheriff in this town?”

  “Well, no, we ain’t,” Cecil said. “Up to now, we ain’t really needed one.” The question made him a little uncomfortable when he looked at the six men standing at his bar.

  Quincy sensed Cecil’s concern. He fashioned a smile for him and said, “Don’t let the look of my men worry you. I’m a U.S. Marshal and these are my posse men. We’ve been ridin’ hard for the past week, lookin’ for a killer that murdered a man in Montana City. Figured you mighta seen him. I’m pretty sure he passed this way. His name’s Logan Cross.” He placed money on the bar for the whiskey. “What about it? You see a stranger come through here by that name in the past week?”

  “No, can’t say as I have,” Cecil replied, a little more comfortable now that he thought
the strangers were actually lawmen. “We had a man and a woman pass through here a few days ago, but I ain’t seen a man like you’re lookin’ for.” He knew now that the lady’s name was Hannah but couldn’t recall if the man had given his name or not when he was in the saloon. He would have been truly surprised if that man was the murdering outlaw the marshal was looking for, however.

  “A man and a woman,” Quincy repeated, thinking back on the campsites they had found where they thought they found evidence of someone else with Cross. “What did the man look like?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cecil answered. “Average-lookin’ fellow, I guess, pretty big.” He nodded toward Curly. “Not as big as him.”

  That didn’t give Quincy any more help than Lacey’s description had. Then he remembered something else Lacey had told him. “What kinda horse was he ridin’?”

  “Lemme think a minute,” Cecil said. “If I recollect right, I think he was ridin’ a gray horse, one of them with spots all over it.”

  That was enough to excite Quincy. “Is he still in town?”

  “Oh no, he didn’t hang around long.” He picked up a glass from the counter and began wiping it with a rag. “The lady that was with him stayed here, though.”

  From the look of excitement in Quincy’s face, it occurred to Cecil that it would have been just as well had he not told him that. “That lady wasn’t the kind of woman to be ridin’ with an outlaw,” he said. “No, sir, she’s an upstandin’ woman, settlin’ down here in Spearfish. And like I said, that fellow she was with didn’t look like an outlaw.”

  Quincy smiled. “Well, now, outlaws come in all kinds of sizes and shapes, don’t they? She might not a’ knowed she was ridin’ with an outlaw. Where is the woman? And remember, you’re talkin’ to a U.S. Marshal, so don’t play no games with me.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Cecil replied quickly. “I wouldn’t do that. I’ve got no reason to help an outlaw. Her name’s Hannah and she’s stayin’ at that two-story house down past the stable. A really nice lady, who’s just lost her husband—she’s gonna help Mae Davis run the dinin’ room.”