Rancher's Law

by Dusty Richards

  He looked with bitter disgust at the ashen-faced Randall seated on his dun. Nothing he could do about that for the time being. He spurred his horse for the stream.

  The fiddle music carried in the evening air. The usual Saturday night crowd of ranchers and settlers was gathered at the Lone Pine Schoolhouse. Matt stood beside the buggy; Taneal on the other side was busy gossiping with Lucy Burns. Nothing out of place in the twilight that spread purple shadows across the grounds. He went and unhooked the horse. Needed to feed him some grain and tie him to a tree. Unlike the old days when they came in a farm wagon or buckboard like most folks, they had a nice buggy with a leather seat and a top to drive to the dance.

  “No, Randall was sick tonight. Couldn’t keep anything down.” He heard Taneal tell Lucy as he hitched the horse’s lead to a tree and went back for the feed bucket.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Lucy asked.

  “I think it’s those bronc horses that Matt has him riding. I believe he’s all busted up inside.”

  “No such thing,” Matt said, returning to join them. “He ate something on the ride today that didn’t settle. He just got sick to his stomach. He was perfectly fine till we had some work to do.”

  “You aren’t a doctor either, Matthew McKean.” Taneal glared at him.

  “If he ain’t better in the morning, you can take him to Fortune and have him checked out by Doc.”

  The three of them looked up as a racing horse and rider burst into the yard. The intruder came charging through without any regards for the safety of all the playing children. You didn’t do that on the school grounds. A few angry voices were raised to complain about his disrespectful invasion. Mothers rushed to protect their little ones. The rider dove off his mount and ran into the hitch rack. It was Jacky. Out of breath, he collapsed on the rail.

  “Oh, my God!” he gasped. “There’s been a triple hanging!”

  “Who?” someone shouted at the cowboy. People rushed outside the school building and came on the run from across the grounds to hear the news.

  “Stearn, Burtle,” Jacky managed to say between gasps. “And Teddy Dikes.”

  “Oh, no! Not my Teddy!” Margie Porter’s shrill voice carried over the school yard. “Tell me, Jacky, it ain’t so?”

  Skirt in her hand, the attractive girl of nineteen rushed down the schoolhouse stairs. She made her way through the crowd to confront the visibly shaken messenger.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The cowboy’s hat in his hands, he nodded it was so and dropped his head.

  “Do something, Matthew,” Taneal said, sounding annoyed at his lack of action.

  “Boys, boys,” Matt said, holding up his hands and starting across the yard. “Get a wagon and some blankets. Several of you menfolks come help me get them down.” Then, fatherly, he laid his hand on the young messenger’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea who did this, Jacky?”

  “No, sir. I just saw them up there. Hanging—” He shook his head, unable to say any more for the tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “Where are they at?” Matt asked, to his own relief that at the last minute he recalled that he wasn’t supposed to know their location.

  “At the Alma Creek Ford,” Jacky managed to say, and whipped off his kerchief to mop his wet eyes and face. “You can’t miss them.”

  “I’ve got a rig still hitched that we can use,” one of the Mormon men said.

  “Good, I’ll ride with you,” Matt said, turning to Taneal. “I’ll go help them take the bodies down.” He shook his head in disapproval. “Then we can have them properly buried.”

  “Yes, you should go. People look to you for leadership. But, Matthew, shouldn’t we send word to the sheriff?”

  “Good idea,” Matt said, then with hint of sarcasm added, “He’ll send some deputy over here in a week or two.”

  “He’s the law, and he needs to know about this crime,” she insisted.

  “We’ll send him word in the morning. I have to go with the wagon now,” Matt said. “I’ll be back.” The man was there with his team and rig ready to leave.

  “Be careful,” she said, sounding concerned. “No telling who did this.”

  He agreed and climbed up on the spring seat beside the Mormon man. Matt believed no telling was right, and it needed to stay that way.

  2

  Under a clondless sky, Luther jogged his team of bays down the rutted Texas Road toward the settlement. Any wagon tracks that ran southerly in the Nation carried the same title, because if you went far enough down it, you arrived in the Lone Star State. The ruts were still mud-filled from the past hard rain. They called this community Oats. The small crossroads contained a store with a smattering of raw cabins clustered around it. A few straggly pines that barely escaped the axe and crosscut saw stood above new corn patches.

  Since early morning he had hurried, hoping to find Choc Bleau at home. The breed, who spoke three dialects, made a good posse man to help him serve warrants and make arrests where he was headed in the Kiamish District.

  Framed in thick braids, a brown face popped up in the waving green blades. Armed with a hoe, she blinked at him in the distance, then she spoke sharply to her force of small faces who were equally equipped. Skirt in hand, she began to run across the rows through the knee-high stalks toward the cabin, looking back as if to check if he was still driving his bays up the road.

  Nancy Bleau was her name, a full blood. The smaller ones were her and Choc’s brood of half a dozen field hands up to the age of perhaps twelve; she obviously planned to leave them to hoe weeds in her absence. At her current rate of travel, her long legs taking such great strides, she would be at the cabin door before he came up to their place. Choc’s hounds began to bark in excitement. They ran out to the road as if to guard it so he couldn’t go past them.

  A low growl from under the seat drew from Luther. “Shut up, Ben. We ain’t having fights with Choc’s hounds today.”

  Still looking unconvinced of the matter of calling off any altercations, the thick-set English bulldog licked his face with his wide red tongue. He gave Luther a sardonic pose, “How come?” then he dropped back to the floor of the bed.

  Ignoring the spotted hounds’ chorus, Luther took the lane toward the cabin. Their incisive throaty racket reached a level where he could no longer hear the worn wagon hub knock. Nancy disappeared through the open front door. He reined up and she reappeared, smiled, and armed with a broom, dispersed the noisy pack to the rear of the house from where they spied distrustfully around the corner at the newly arrived rig.

  The brake set and reins wrapped around the handle, Luther looked up in time to see Choc’s frame fill the opening. Good. He wasn’t gone somewhere. The tall breed ran the webs of his hands under the yellow suspenders as if testing their elasticity and nodded a hello. Luther returned his welcome and climbed down, anxious to stretch his stiff legs and back.

  The half Osage’s black hair stuck straight up. It gave him a look of being much taller than six three. He leaned back inside and found the unblocked gray hat with the greasy eagle feather adornment to complete his dress.

  Luther reached in the wagon, took Ben by the plump midsection, and put him on the ground. Without hesitation, but still a wary look out for the pot-lickers, Ben went around and lifted his leg to all four wheels. The ceremony completed, Luther ordered him to stay under the rig. He checked on the dun saddle horse, whose lead rope was tied to the tailgate; he was fine. That accomplished, he turned to see Nancy returning around the cabin’s corner.

  “Damn hounds,” she said, out of breath. A warm smile spread over her face as she stuck out her long brown hand to him. “Good to see you, Luther.”

  “Good morning.” Funny thing, Luther decided, how her hand could be so callused from work, yet still feel definitely feminine to his touch. Straight-backed with her raven-black hair parted in the middle and bound in thick braids, she filled out the wash-worn calico dress with an appealing firmness.

  “Nice to see you agai
n, Nancy. You sure have a greatlooking corn crop this year.”

  She glanced over as if to check on it. Hard put to suppress her obvious pride, she beamed at his approval. “Doing good now. If it don’t get too dry this summer.”

  Luther agreed.

  “You must have got up pretty early,” Choc said with a slow grin, and stepped off onto the log stoop. “You usually never get here till lunchtime.” He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked for the sun to tell the time.

  “I did. I’ve got a wad of warrants to serve in this district.”

  “We better eat lunch before we go,” Choc said.

  “He’s worried you won’t stop and eat.” Nancy laughed out loud at her husband’s expense.

  Choc gave her small frown of disapproval.

  “He’s probably right,” Luther agreed.

  “Come on,” she said, with a wave for him to follow her inside. “It won’t take long. I already have stew on the stove. And some corn bread left from breakfast.”

  “Who you looking for this time?” Choc asked with his full brown lips pursed.

  “First, can I hire you?” Luther asked, at the base of the stoop.

  “How long?”

  “Couple of weeks. You got other work to do?”

  Luther could see that Nancy had stopped to stare at her husband. His reply affected her, too. A noisy crow went by overhead. The pine floor of the cabin creaked as if in protest.

  Choc shook his head. “There’s a stomp dance coming up, but I can always go to a dance.”

  Satisfied, Nancy agreed with a hard nod of approval to his words and headed across the room to the stove.

  “It pays the same,” Luther added. “Buck a day.”

  “Good,” Choc said, and motioned for him to take a seat opposite him at the wooden table.

  “I’ll wash my hands first,” Luther said. After holding the lines all morning and messing with harnessing the team earlier, they needed to be cleaned. He searched around for the washbowl.

  “There is a basin.” She pointed to the dry sink and tossed him a flour sack towel. With hot water from a cast-iron kettle off the range, she filled it for him.

  “What’s been happening up here?” Luther asked, busy cleaning his hands.

  “They say they will pay our allotments in August this year,” she said over her shoulder.

  Choc shook his head. “They never do them on the time they say.”

  Luther agreed and dried his hands. Then he came over and sat on the straight-back chair reserved for company and no doubt Choc when there weren’t guests. He scooted it up to the table as Nancy delivered them each a blue and white china bowl of stew. Obviously, this must be her best serving ware. Then she added the half skillet of corn bread to the table.

  “Should we have coffee and celebrate?” she asked her husband who agreed with a grunt between spoons of stew.

  From the top shelf of her open cupboards, she took down a small cloth sack. Soon she had the beans in a grinder tucked under her arm and swirled the handle with no effort.

  “Good thing you came,” she said, and laughed. “He’s pretty stingy with his coffee.”

  To suppress his amusement at her words, Luther nodded he heard her. No doubt she used his presence to gouge her husband a little about his thriftiness over the coffee beans. Choc was no big spender, and little doubt the dollar-a-day posse man’s wages that the U.S. Marshal’s office paid him helped them out financially. Few other employment opportunities existed in the district besides logging in the hills. Lumbering only paid fifty cents a day, and that was after and if the sawmill sold the wood.

  Luther set the warrants on the table, picked up the first one, and recalled previously arresting the same one-eyed breed.

  “Curly Meantoe,” he said, reading the first name.

  “He may be up near the Clam Shell Schoolhouse,” Choc said, and stopped eating. His great brown eyes blinked as if in deep thought, then he nodded in certainty. “He has a sister up there.”

  “She’s married to a Fox,” Nancy put in, busy stoking the range’s firebox and adding wood.

  “Their name is Clothesrod.” Satisfied with knowing the man’s identity, Choc went back to eating. “He won’t be hard to find. What he do?”

  “Says robbery.” Luther turned to the next warrant on the tabletop, took another bite of the rich stew, and read the next name. “Buddy Hart.”

  Nancy swiftly turned and looked hard at her husband.

  “He killed a white man, huh?” Choc asked without looking up from his food.

  “That’s the warrant. Murder. You don’t have to go with me after him,” Luther said.

  Choc shrugged as if to dismiss his concern.

  “He is your half brother.” Luther wanted to see Choc’s response, though he counted on some lack of it being the nature of the man.

  “He broke the law. He is another criminal. I will help you find him.”

  “First or last?”

  “First,” Choc said, his attention still focused on the stew in his bowl. “He hears we are after him, I bet he will run. We better get him first.”

  Luther agreed. He glanced over and saw Nancy turn back to the stove. Hard to tell if she looked relieved or had simply accepted it. All the way from Fort. Smith, the past two days on the road, he had wondered how Choc would take this warrant for Buddy Hart. There were other trackers available, but the Osage was Luther’s favorite one to hire. In a tight place, he always felt that he could count on him.

  Luther felt good that the matter was settled. When he looked up, she delivered them cups of steaming coffee.

  “Good coffee,” Luther said in approval, after his first sip of the searing hot brew.

  “You know,” Choc began, holding up his stained mug. “If you don’t have coffee all the time, it makes a bigger treat.”

  She gave her husband a peevish look of disapproval behind his back for Luther’s sake. Then she went off to sit on edge of the iron bed and drink her own.

  Sunlight shone on the forest floor through a filter of thick leaves. The musty sour smell of the rotted mulch permeated the early-morning air. Choc rode a short coupled roan pony ahead of him up the steep trail. A couple of saucy jays screamed at the mounted intruders. Luther’s Texas dun horse’s shoes clanked on the rock outcropping. He knew his posse man did not approve of the bell-like sounds they made at times, but unshod, the gelding would have been footsore and crippled by this time.

  Beneath Luther’s horse’s belly or behind him trotted the spotted bulldog, named for Luther’s father’s favorite commander in the war. General Ben McCollough, the former Texas ranger, hero of the Wilson Creek Battle in southern Missouri, who was killed by cannon fire at the Elkhorn Tavern fight called Pea Ridge. Luther’s daddy spoke so highly of the man, thus the name for his forty-five-pound tagalong. Somehow, Ben knew the ways to avoid the gelding’s hooves. Aside from a sneeze or two, his presence remained close to invisible.

  With his hand resting on his gun butt, Luther shifted the harness around his waist to relieve some of the pressure of it on his leg. Choc pushed aside a low oak branch and looked back to warn him. He acknowledged the branch and ducked it.

  They reached a bench on the mountain and reined up as a soft breeze swept Luther’s face. From under the towering hardwood canopy, he could see across the deep chasm to the next green range. Somewhere in these mountains, Choc had said earlier that Buddy Hart made his hideout. No one had seen him since the murder. Luther knew no one admitted seeing him for fear his guilt might be shared by anyone who claimed to have been in touch with the twentyyear-old.

  “You been to this place before?” he asked.

  Choc shook his head. “Not in a few years.”

  The exact location of Reed’s lair was irrelevant; Choc’s knowledge of the general area would let him find it. Luther looked down their back trail and saw nothing, but it wasn’t good to take any unnecessary chances.

  Choc gave him a head toss and they set out again. Words were
a short commodity between them, unless the half Osage hit a streak where he talked for hours. Otherwise, he used hand motions and faces to explain his next moves.

  Fox squirrels chattered in the overhead ceiling. Bottom limbs of the great red oaks, ash, and hickory reached far above them in this forest of ancient growth. A faint smell of smoke rode on the air. Only a whiff, but Choc indicated they should stop. Luther searched around. It would be hard to find a place in this glen to tether their horses, the trunks of the giant trees were so vast around.

  “You got hobbles?” Choc asked.

  “Yeah,” Luther said, carefully checking the area as he reached back and undid the saddlebags.

  “Hobble yours, I’ll tie mine to your saddle horn.”

  Luther bailed off his dun and fixed the soft ropes around his legs. Then he loosened the girth to ease the pony while they searched ahead on foot. How far away was the source of that smoke? No trace of any in the air when he tried again to use his nose and find it. He removed the .44/.40 from the scabbard and slipped the lever down to check the chamber. The oily-smelling rifle was loaded to the gills.

  Armed with a double-barreled shotgun, Choc took the lead and headed uphill. The smoke must have come over the ridge to reach them. Wind was out of the south, still, the source of it might be miles away. His boot soles tramped through the deep leaf mulch as Luther hurried to catch up. His man could outdo a horse on foot in the woods. He hoped Choc wasn’t in that big of a hurry this time. When Ben gave a loud sneeze, Luther looked aside at him. They might need the general’s services before this was over.

  “Come on.” Ben fell in with them in his usual aloft manner, stopping to inspect and piss on various items as he went along.

  Choc held out his hand to stop them when they reached the crest. Smoke rose in a thin wisp from a well-made stone chimney. They lay on their stomachs side by side on the ridge. Luther used his looking glass to study the source. No sign of anyone around the outside, but the front door of the small, neat-built cabin was shut.