Rancher's Law

by Dusty Richards

  “Watch for them rattlers,” he warned her each time she went off. Many times, dress in hand on her way to some comfort station in a dry wash, she stopped and held her breath at the alarming buzzing sound. Stood there frozen, until she discovered a fat yellow grasshopper clacking its wings clinging to her outfit. Then with a deep sigh of relief, she would brush it away and go on.

  The water from Jinx’s canteens tasted tinny, but she knew she needed the moisture. He fed her spicy jerky and told her funny stories about his many trips as they rolled southward. Before the sun dropped to the western horizon, she started seeing the scattered cedars he called junipers.

  “We can spend the night at the next place. Jules will bust his buttons to meet you,” he said with a shake of his head, letting the sweaty horses walk.

  “What’s he like?” She frowned with suspicion at him.

  “Old rancher, but you’ll like him.”

  “Where will I sleep?” she asked, wondering about respectability again. Being a bride had turned into such a worrisome thing.

  “Oh, don’t worry your pretty mind none. You’ll be safe at Jules’s.”

  “Thanks,” she said. In the past, the company of two robust men for the night would have thrilled her, but that was then, and she had new obligations now. These folks knew nothing about her past; maybe she could keep it concealed. She looked to the blue sky. God help her.

  19

  Bones made camp at the month of Bear Canyon. When Luther rode up in sight of the setup, he wondered how the man ever managed to get the wagon and mules in there, but he felt satisfied. The remuda was scattered down the flats and the canyon full of the echos of boys’ axes busting wood.

  His visit an hour or so before with the McKean woman weighed on his mind. Attractive enough woman with a mist of freckles. He couldn’t forget Stearn’s painting when she came on the porch to speak to him. Hirk had been right—the artist knew his subject too well.

  “Mr. McKean is in the Valley. But Jakes, our foreman, will be there to meet you or send someone,” she said with a certain aloofness. A distinct kind of importance in her tone, so he didn’t forget that her outfit was one of the biggest in that basin. Some women used this attitude as a disguise to appear indifferent toward a lesser visitor.

  A teenage boy about the same age as his crew came out on crutches. He smiled friendly at Luther. “Wish I could ride with you and the guys, mister.”

  “You can’t,” she said coldly. “Not until that leg heals.”

  Settled on his crutches, he gave a disappointed head shake. “Tell Pyle and them others that I said howdy.”

  “I will,” Luther promised, and prepared to mount. She’d made no offer to give him a drink of water or any hospitality. Perhaps she worried about her reputation. It wasn’t respectable to ask a strange man inside. But her son was there.

  Luther tipped his hat and started to rein the horse around.

  “Mr. Haskell, I realize you are working for Mr. Allen, but be certain those cattle you round up have the proper brands on them.”

  “I’ll watch, and then allow Mr. Stran to do his job, ma’am. That’s why they have brand inspectors. You’ve had some cattle stolen?”

  “We’ve had several head taken.”

  “Strange, ma’am,” Luther said, checking his horse, then slapping him on the poll with the flat of his hand to settle his fidgeting. “But I seem to recall hearing that your husband told the deputies, a few days ago, that he had no proof of any rustling.”

  “They’ve been stealing them.”

  “They?”

  She blinked at him.

  “Those three men that were hung?”

  “Are you insinuating—”

  It was the boy’s face that Luther noticed go pale as a ghost. He choked, coughed. His hands went to cover his face. Then he fell off his crutches to his knees and began to vomit. She dropped beside him, her arm protectively over his shoulder.

  “Oh, Randy, are you all right?”

  “I’ll—be—” He retched more sourness up in a milky flood from the depths of his stomach onto the porch steps.

  “He’s been like this since a bronc threw him,” she quickly explained, as if she felt Luther needed to know the reason for his sickness. “Something must be hurt inside him. I can handle this.” She waved him away as she hovered over her coughing son. “Jakes will send you help.”

  Time to ride on. Luther turned the roan and headed for the road. Why did he feel that boy’s sudden sickness had something to do with the lynching? Maybe Pyle could answer some of his questions. But as he recalled the boys talking in camp, neither McKean nor Charboneau had anything to say to the deputies about rustling, nor the three suspected rustlers. Yet, Taneal McKean had a lot to say about all the rustling going on in the basin. The year before, Matt McKean had warned all the small outfits around the basin’s edges under the law that they couldn’t legally maverick in the basin. The boys told him that, too, but the big ranchers said they had no proof on the three dead men. Or did they have the goods and wouldn’t discuss it with the law? In the next weeks, he would see all the cattle that Burtle claimed. He’d seen enough blotched brands in his life to know one when he saw one. If they were there, he’d soon find ’em.

  He short-loped Cochise for the first night’s camp. When he found the wagon tracks going into the mouth of Bear Canyon, he smiled and set the roan into an easy gait through the pines toward the sharp smell of wood smoke coming on the afternoon wind.

  Ute took his horse for the herd after Luther stripped off his saddle and gear. Bones ambled over about to bust his buttons wagging a cup of steaming fresh coffee.

  “How’s things going?” he asked, holding his suspenders.

  “Fine. What’s for supper?”

  “Beef.”

  “Hope it was Burtle’s.” Luther said, and blew on the coffee.

  “We ain’t rustlers—yet.” Then Bones wiped his hands on his apron and smiled sly like. “Next time we’ll eat one of theirs.”

  Luther shook his head after his cook’s retreat to the cooking fire. Range land practice was not to choke eating your own beef at a neighbor’s cow camp.

  “Well, we made it,” Hirk said, and jammed his hands in his pockets.

  “You did good. I went by McKean’s today and he’s gone to the Valley.”

  “Salt River Valley, Hayden’s Mill, and Phoenix down there?”

  “I guess that’s where he went. Anyway, Mrs. McKean ain’t real hospitable, but that’s beside the point. Sending Jakes or someone up here.”

  Hirk looked around to be certain they were alone. “See any resemblance?”

  “Yeah, right off. She spoke about rustling and how I needed to be certain I wasn’t taking her cattle.”

  “Things been touchy up here.” Hirk shook his head.

  “I’m going to ask you something private. Those boys said McKean spooked them out of mavericking in the basin. He did that, then the only others that could were Dikes, Burtle, and the artist.”

  Hirk nodded and looked off at the peaks. “You’ve got the answer, I figure.”

  “But there’s a helluva lot of difference between rustling and mavericking.”

  “Not to some folks’ way of thinking.”

  “Right,” he quietly agreed. All he had to do was prove it. Whew. This job got rougher and rougher. But if you ran into a brick wall you needed to chink the mortar away to ever take it down. That McKean boy and Reed Porter looked like his best chance so far. Things sure went slow at this job, no riding up and serving a warrant or tracking down some wanted man that the grand jury had indicted.

  “Supper!” Bones shouted, banging on a washtub with a wooden spoon.

  Luther nodded for Hirk to go on, and remained to sip his coffee, still engrossed in his own notions about the lynching. In the absence of any other evidence, he needed solid witnesses. How many had been there that day? It took more than two men to pull it off. Had Randy McKean been there? One thing he knew, that boy didn’t g
et sick over a bronc wreck. The talk about that lynching sent him into a tailspin. He saw him pale at the very words. That boy needed to be questioned. Maybe a grand jury could find out from Porter and Randy who did it. Still engrossed in his figuring, Luther finished his coffee and walked toward the camp.

  Bones brought him a heaping plate of food, topped with perfectly browned dutch oven biscuits. “Stop your worrying. This crew’s going to get them cow brutes out of the breaks, boss.”

  He smiled in surrender. “I believe they will.”

  “Stop worrying about it, boss. They’ll get it done.”

  Luther considered the plate of food he handed him and nodded.

  If that was all I had to worry about, Bones, I’d dance a jig tonight to that boy’s fiddle. What was the major thinking about this matter?

  20

  The drum of the horses’ hooves counted cadence for the major as he galloped through the starlit night. Ride one and lead one gave him double horse power by him switching from one to the other. Earlier, he had found the coach, without any sign of the outlaw they’d left. He considered that Pablo might have found himself a wagon horse to ride off on.

  Ahead, the seam of the sky in the east turned purple. A distant jagged peak to the left began to show in the first light as the sun raced across the saguaro-studded country side. He urged the horses on. They were too big to be comfortable to ride, but the animals had run hard all night for him. The two old Mexican saddles were little more than wooden horns and tapaderos to put his feet in, but he felt good when the green fields of the Indian corn and squash began to appear. He’d soon be at the Papago Wells station, and hoped to learn more about the outlaws there.

  At the hitch rack, when the major drew up, he saw several skinny broomtail mustangs. He eyed the adobe station and saw nothing but some cur dogs heralding his welcome. The robbers wouldn’t know him on sight, but they might suspect a man riding one saddled horse and leading another sweaty one. Both animals were too hot to be allowed to drink. That would come later. Wary of someone coming out shooting, he reined the horses to the back. A sleepy Mexican came out of the shed, obviously taking a siesta in a hay pile, for he looked like a mattress with the stuffing coming out of it. His weather-beaten straw sombrero had been bitten by a horse or a mule, and had three chunks missing out of the floppy brim.

  “Buenos días, senor.” Then the man blinked and his jaw sagged. “You are riding the stage line’s horses?” Shock swept over his face and he looked ready to run.

  “Shut up. I am a lawman. The men who robbed the Yuma stage last night are inside.” He handed the man the reins to both horses. “How many men are in there?”

  “Four, I think.”

  “Can we put that cart against the back door so they can’t get out?”

  “I guess so.” He shrugged at the notion of wheeling the wooden cart against the back door.

  “Tie these horses up and come help me.”

  The major already had the shafts picked up when the man came shuffling over in his sandals to assist him. The sun was higher and the temperature was already way over a hundred and ten.

  At first their straining did nothing, then the axles began to squeal like a stuck pig, only more in a moan, as they could barely make the cart roll. At last, the right wheel rested against the door, he dropped the shafts and nodded for the man to get some sticks of firewood for a block. The man hurried to complete the job.

  Satisfied he had the outlaws locked inside, save for the front door because the windows were too small for anything but a snake to crawl out of them. He strode across the burning hot ground, jerked the rifle out of the scabbard, and told the man to tell the help and the old man to come outside and see the new kittens.

  “But the banditos?”

  “They won’t know what you are doing.”

  “Oh, I hope you are right, señor?”

  “Tell them one of the new kittens in the barn has two heads.”

  “But what if the bandits they come?”

  “Quit worrying. I’ll handle them.”

  The man’s brown complexion paled, but he did as he was asked and went around front ahead of him. He hesitated at the door, then he went inside. There was much Spanish thrown about, and soon a man in an apron and a woman came out with the horse hustler.

  The stage workers blinked in disbelief at the major, who stood on the porch with the rifle ready. He shook his head to silence them and motioned for them to get out of the way. It would be darker inside. He hoped the shade of the palm frond cover on the porch adjusted his eyes enough for him to see when he stormed in. Quickly, he ducked through the doorway, firing a shot in the ceiling that brought down a cloud of dust. The gunpowder smoke made seeing impossible.

  “Hands up or die!” he shouted, making a motion with his gun barrel for them to go outside. The coughing outlaws came stumbling by him with their hands high. They grumbled, but he used his free hand to jerk loose their sidearms and dropped their hardware on the ground. Satisfied they were disarmed, he waved the bandits into the sunshine, forcing them to look east and have the brightness in their faces. Eyeing his prisoners carefully for any tricks, he edged behind and swept off their sombreros to further expose them. He removed a remaining visible knife or two, tossing the cutlery aside.

  “What is wrong, señor?” the best dressed one asked.

  “You are under arrest for armed robbery of a stage and murder.” He stepped back satisfied he had the matter under control. “Someone go get some rope.”

  “Sí,” the horse hustler agreed, and took off.

  “These men robbed the stage and killed the driver, Billy?” the Mexican man in charge of the station asked.

  “Yes. Last night,” he said, then looked to the west at the sound of approaching riders. More robbers? he wondered, watching their dust. He could only make out their Chihuahua-style sombreros. “Who is that?” he asked the station man.

  “Don Robles’s men from Sonora. The man who leads them is Delgado.”

  “What do they want?”

  “These men you have arrested.”

  He recalled talking to the same man before he left there on the stage. Some sort of Mexican lawman or bounty hunter. The leader pulled up the high-stepping black stallion before him.

  “Ah, señor, we meet again, and you have captured these miserable wretches who were spawned by cur bitches with mangy coyotes for fathers.” The confident-acting man leaned on the saddle horn and smiled.

  “They’re under arrest,” the major said.

  “Ah, for what, señor?”

  “Robbery and murder.” Sweat lubricated his hands on the stock of the rifle. He wanted to dry them, but did not dare.

  “You are the sheriff here?” Delgado looked around as if searching for some post of authority.

  “I am the chief marshal of the territorial marshals.”

  “Oh,” the man said, acting impressed. “You have many more men?”

  “Yes,” the major said with force, but knew his bluff would soon wear thin.

  “Let me have these bastards. I will save Arizona the trouble of feeding them and do it as a favor because you captured them for me. All, but one …” Delgado searched around.

  “He’s dead. I shot him last night.”

  The man turned back and nodded in approval. “Shame you didn’t kill the rest.”

  “These men are my prisoners.”

  “You know, amigo, you and I could improve the relations between Mexico and Arizona today.”

  “By giving you the prisoners? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Ah, mi amigo, think how the good man who runs this place and his wife and his hired man could be killed in the shooting. They are innocent. These worthless ones no one would cry for, but you and these others are good people. My men,” he said, gesturing to the three armed riders, “they have wives and many children. They are always busy. They keep their wives pregnant. If your bullets kill some of them, those little ones would go hungry.”

 
“You’d be the first to die.”

  “Ah, yes, but my men would kill you.” Delgado pushed his sombrero to the back of his head. His rich curly hair shone in the sun.

  “We have a standoff,” the major finally said.

  “Let me have the prisoners to take home. They will not come back to rob any more stages.” Delgado crossed himself. “I swear on my holy mother’s grave.”

  “But you have no authority here.”

  “My authority is four guns to your one and the innocent people at this place.”

  He heard the man’s challenge. It didn’t give him much time to consider his options. The three stage line employees were the pawns in this game of standoff. Despite his own convictions that the prisoners were his, he couldn’t risk three civilian lives over four worthless felons. One more thing he wanted from this man.

  “Sign a paper for me that you took them.” At least he would have some evidence of the incident to explain to the stage people and the Arizona law.

  “I will do that.”

  “Fine, go get paper and pen,” he said to the woman, and she hurried off.

  When she returned, the major handed her the rifle and used the saddle of the first pony to write on.

  “What are their names?”

  “Pablo Martinez, Regino Salleras, Gordo Valdez, and Nero Rico.”

  The major finished the list, walked over, held out the paper, and Delgado dismounted. He read the letter or he scanned it anyway, then signed his name at the bottom in flowery penmanship, Juan Cortez Delgado.

  He remounted his black and motioned for his men to take the prisoners. Delgado’s men began to talk to one another, but still looked warily at the major as they tied the prisoners’ hands. Soon the bandits were bound and mounted.

  Delgado rode over on his black to where the major and the three employees stood under the palm frond shade.

  “I can ever help you in Mexico, call on me, señor. You are a tough old man, and a good man, too. Adios, amigos.” He touched his sombrero and they left riding southward through the desert for the border.