by J. T. Edson
“Hold it, Taggert!” Slaughter snapped, lunging up from the ground.
With a snarl that was part fear and part rage, Scar began to shoot. He held his Colt in his right hand, while the left came across in short, chopping motions which drove back and released the hammer. He gave no thought to his brother, only to his own escape, for his plan had failed and his catalogue of mistakes grown longer with each move he made. A man did not stay alive for long in the cattle stealing business if he made too many mistakes and Scar Taggert’s quota began to run out. Wildly fanning off his shots proved to be the mistake where the gods of chance called time on Taggert’s career. Only a few, a very few, men could perform accurate shooting when fanning a gun, and then only at close ranges, and Taggert did not belong to that magic-handed few. Fanning was the fastest possible method of emptying a single-action gun in the general direction of a target, but it was mostly pure luck if any of the bullets should happen to connect.
Lead sang through the air around Slaughter as he sprang away from the horses, trying to draw Taggert’s fire away from them. Burned black powder smoke laid whirling eddies before Taggert, hiding him from view almost. Almost, but not quite. Slaughter fired at the vaguely defined shape behind the smoke, while Trace sighted on where he reckoned, from the position of Scar’s feet, Taggert’s body ought to be. Two aimed guns added their roars to the crashing of Scar Taggert’s Colt. The small man seemed to lift from the ground and fly back as two heavy bullets struck him. Spinning around, he fanned one last shot into the ground, and followed the bullet down an instant later.
Silence fell like a pall on the range. John Slaughter and Washita Trace glanced at each other as the foreman rose to his feet. Neither relaxed and they both held their guns ready for use. Too many men had died because they failed to take such a precaution and relaxed after seeing a man go down, only to take his lead before they realized he was faking.
Moving forward, Slaughter glanced down at Bill’s body, one quick look being all necessary to show there was no danger from that source. Nor from Scar, for the two bullets could have been covered by the width of a small palm, were in the left side of the chest and either on its own would have been fatal. On crossing to the barn, Trace checked on Zeke, looked down at him then turned to face Slaughter.
“He’s cashed, too,” he said.
“Go round up their horses, Wash,” Slaughter replied. “We’ll take their bodies into town and hand them over to the sheriff.”
There were some folk, armchair moralists, or intellectual thinkers, who might claim that Slaughter had no right to take the law into his own hands in such a manner. To the moralist or the intellectual every criminal wore a mantle of self-righteous glorification and was the ill-used, misunderstood victim of the rich minority’s grasping greed; a product of a heartless, uncaring society; or the praiseworthy dupe of circumstances who had been driven to a life of crime though no fault of his own, yet was prevented from turning honest again by the mean-minded, puritanical hypocrisy of the non-moralist and non-intellectual people of the world.
The Taggert brothers became thieves because they were too idle to work and thought stealing offered them the easiest way of gaining the comforts of life. Which although no intellectual would believe it, was the reason most criminals took up a life of crime.
For all Slaughter had cared, the Taggerts might have lived out their lives in peace as his neighbors. While he knew of their pasts, he would not have let the knowledge affect his treatment of them—as long as they mended their ways, stayed honest and respected his rights and property. Slaughter had no desire to buy their land and had not imposed such restrictions on their freedom that they were compelled to turn to a life of crime to stay alive. All he had ever asked was that they lived as good neighbors. He would have helped them get the spread on its feet again if they had asked him, or left them in peace if they wanted it that way.
Only the Taggerts had not wanted it that way. They chose to steal from him and Slaughter hated thieves. A man who had given his sweat and blood to build up a ranch and gather a herd did not take kindly to having his property stolen by a bunch who were too idle to work. However, having recovered his cattle without any bloodshed, Slaughter would have been willing to warn the brothers off and given them a reasonable time to clear out of Blantyre County. Nor would he have been tearing them from their family’s old home. If it came to a point, the bank was due to foreclose on its note in the next few days.
When the brothers elected to make a fight of it, Slaughter and his foreman reacted with deadly speed. They believed that a man had a right to protect his own life even to the extent of killing an aggressor, and under the circumstances they had been given little or no choice but to do so.
Loading the three bodies face down across the horses’ backs, Slaughter and Trace climbed into their saddles and headed for Blantyre City with their loads. Slaughter had warned the Taggerts to mend their ways. When they failed to do so, he attended to the mending himself. For that was Slaughter’s way.
Chapter Six – He’s Coming with Twenty Men
Bess Slaughter looked at the clock on the sitting room wall. Its fingers showed the time to be nine o’clock and her husband had not yet returned from riding out that morning.
For a few minutes she sat trying to concentrate on the darning of a sock, but somehow the needle did not seem to be going in the right place and she found she had botched it up. With an angry sniff, she lowered the sock and needle. It was no use, she felt worried and promised to give her husband hell when he came home for not warning her how long he would be gone. Bess tried not to think that Texas John might be hurt, or even dead, and she wished that he had taken more men with him when he went to visit the Taggerts.
A knock sounded at the front door and the hinges creaked as the door opened. The big blue tick hound lying by her chair did not move or raise its head, but its tail beat on the floor a couple of times, showing it knew whoever came in to be a friend.
“Fellers asked me to come across, Miz Bess,” Coonskin said, entering the sitting room with his hat in his hand. “They wants you to know effen you-all reckons they should take out and look for Massa John.”
For a moment Bess did not reply and she gave thought to the suggestion. She had been raised on a ranch and knew enough about the cattle business to be aware of how tired the crew must be after a day’s hard work cutting cattle from the petalta. Yet the hands, like Bess, were worried about the non-arrival of Texas John and Washita Trace. It said much for the respect of the cowhands felt for Bess that they thought of sending to her for advice and orders on such an important matter as their boss’s welfare.
While she felt concerned about her husband’s absence, Bess did not want to do the wrong thing. She knew how important the Army contract was to Texas John and how he wanted to make sure of delivering his herd inside the allotted time. If he was all right, he would not want the crew sending out riding the range all night and having them so tired they would be unfit for work the following day.
Even as Bess thought of the matter, and before she reached any decision, the blue-tick lurched to its feet and walked across the room. Halting by the part-opened window, it reared up to rest its forepaws on the ledge and looked out into the night, its tail wagging from side to side.
An expression of relief came to both Bess and Coonskin’s faces as they watched the dog.
“That’s John coming now,” Bess said, although she still could not hear the sound which attracted the hound’s attention.
“Yes’m,” agreed Coonskin with a grin. “That fool ole Blue dawg there ain’t likely to get hisself all excited for anything ’cepting a cougar, b’ar, or ’cause Massa John’s coming.” Hearing its name, the big blue-tick dropped on to all fours and padded past the cook to Bess’s side. She dropped a hand to the dog’s head and patted it gently, then went to the window and looked out. The dog followed on her heels, a hundred pounds of sleek-muscled fighting fury, yet gentle enough with its master, mistress and the
Negro cook, although it merely tolerated the rest of the ranch hands and ignored strangers who, if they showed good sense, left Blue strictly alone.
“I can’t see anything yet,” Bess said, raising the window sash. “But I can hear horses.”
“Two of ’em, Miz Bess,” Coonskin confirmed and eyed the dog as his voice took on a mock fierce tone. “Dang fool critter. You-all come round my kitchen bothering Mr. Earp again and danged if I don’t take ole Betsy Two-Eyes to your hide and fill you full of rock salt.”
“I don’t think Blue would be fool enough to tangle with Mr. Earp,” Bess remarked, smiling at the cook and knowing that Betsy Two-Eyes was the name he gave to his ancient, percussion-fired, muzzle-loading eight-gauge shotgun.
“These here blue-ticks don’t have no sense at all, Miz Bess. Now effen he was a black and tan—”
Bess laughed and headed for the sitting room door. One thing she had learned real early in her marriage was never to become involved in a discussion on the relative merits of various breeds of hound dogs with the cook. She knew there was no danger of Blue tangling with Coonskin’s pet, even though the blue-tick out-weighed Mr. Earp iii by maybe eighty pounds and had tangled with both bear and cougar in his day.
“Will you be taking Mr. Earp along on the drive?” she asked as Coonskin opened the front door for her.
“Ye’m. Shuckens, I know you-all’d take good care of him, but he’s kinda delicate and needs my especial care.”
The subject of Mr. Earp was dropped as Bess and Coonskin stood on the porch of the ranch house arid looked across the range. By that time the two riders were in sight and Bess felt relief drifting over her as she saw her husband did not appear to be hurt in any way, nor did Washita Trace.
Even as Bess ran towards her husband, the ranch crew, led by Tex Burton, came swarming out of the bunkhouse and converged on their boss and foreman.
“Did you-all see the Taggerts, John?” Burton asked.
“We saw them.”
Slaughter left it at that and nobody thought of asking him any more questions on the subject, even though the rancher’s reply left a whole lot unexplained. Maybe Washita Trace would go further into the matter when he joined the other hands in the bunkhouse. Or maybe he would not. Most likely he would add nothing to what his boss had already told the others about the visit to the Taggerts’ place, for John Slaughter’s foreman had never been noted for long-distance chatter.
In view of Slaughter’s reply, one thing was for certain sure; the Taggerts were unlikely to be around to steal any more cattle. One way or another, the Taggert brothers’ stay in Blantyre County had come to an end with Slaughter and Trace’s visit. That much the J.S. hands knew without needing the aid of any fancy speechifying to explain it to them. The only thing remaining unexplained was the manner in which the brothers left the area, and that was likely to remain a mystery for quite a spell.
Seeing the manner in which his wife eyed him up and down, Slaughter thought and acted with his usual speed. Ignoring the circle of cowhands who stood watching, he scooped Bess into his arms and planted a kiss full on her lips.
“Could we run to having Wash and Tex over to the house for supper, honey?” he asked, releasing her and speaking before she could get unflustered. “I want to jaw out a few things with them.”
“Bring them along,” Bess replied. “I’ll go lay the table while you tend to the horses and wash up.”
Watching his wife depart in the direction of the house, Slaughter grinned a little to himself. He reckoned he had slipped out of that tricky situation real neatly, even though he needed to waste a few words to do it. Apart from having to settle the final details for cutting the petalta, deciding whether they would need to gather in any more cattle to complete the trail herd, and picking the members of the ranch crew who would go along on the drive, Slaughter wanted company when he first went into the house.
Given good cause Bess could blister a man’s hide with her tongue, and John Slaughter reckoned he might have handed his wife that cause. He had not failed to notice the expression of mingled anxiety and relief on her face as she came towards him, and knew Bess must have been worried almost sick by his long absence. Now, after worrying her for hours, he rode up all bright, chirpy and without a scratch on his ornery hide. Knowing women in general, and Bess in particular, Slaughter figured Bess was likely to be fit to be tied after fretting for so long, then to see him ride up all unharmed and uninjured. One way or another he reckoned he deserved a good spur-raking for making her worry, but nobody could blame a man for trying to avoid one.
Slaughter knew danged well that after attending to the mending of the Taggert brothers’ ways he ought to have sent Washita Trace home with word of what had happened, so as to relieve Bess’s anxiety. However, toting in the three bodies had been a two-man chore, so Slaughter did not send word to his wife. On reaching Blantyre City with the bodies, Slaughter learned that the county sheriff was due in at around sundown. The town marshal’s legal jurisdiction ended on the edge of city limits and the affair of the Taggerts’ redemption did not come into his bailiwick. So Slaughter and Trace waited for the sheriff to arrive, turned over the bodies to his care and made their statement of what happened. The sheriff pronounced that not only had Slaughter acted in the best possible manner, but that he ought to have got around to it earlier. A search of the brothers produced the three hundred dollars Chisum paid for the fatal hundred head, and this the sheriff turned over to Slaughter who promised to have it delivered to the Cattle King as soon as possible.
The trouble was that all this took time, and while Slaughter was attending to the legal aspects of the affair, his wife sat at home worrying her heart out over his welfare.
“Anyway,” Slaughter thought, as he turned to his horse and watched the hands heading back to the bunkhouse, “I got out of that real slick.”
Or had he?
In the kitchen Bess ladled hot stew from a saucepan on to three plates, while Coonskin poured out coffee made in the range tradition of being strong enough for one to stand a spoon upright in it. After putting out the stew, Bess took up a pepper pot and began to sprinkle a liberal amount over one of the plates.
“Give John the plate with the red border, Coonskin,” she ordered.
“Yes-sir, Miz Bess,” the cook replied, his eyes standing out like twin organ stops. “But Massa John don’t like pepper on his food, ma’am.”
“I know.”
Looking at Bess, the Negro grinned to himself and said no more, although he thought plenty. Anyways a man looked at it, ladies was the same no matter what color their skin. Once a man got them all riled up, they sure enough knew a devil of a load of ways to make him suffer for it. Yes sir, and that Miz Bess there, she sure knew how to teach Massa John a lesson. Not that Coonskin disapproved of the lesson in this case. Him and the rest of the boys had been worried near as much as Miz Bess when Massa John and Massa Wash didn’t come back. Not that they figured the boss and Massa Wash couldn’t deal with them Taggert trash, only one never knowed what might happen when associating with evil bad-whites like them ornery brothers.
Bess looked like butter would have a hard time melting in her mouth as she sat facing her husband along the table in the dining room, with Washita Trace at her left and Tex Burton on the right side. Coonskin served the food equally without expression, setting down the plate with the red border before his boss and continuing to serve the other two men.
On his first taste of the stew, Slaughter looked along the table and studied his wife’s face. Both she and Coonskin knew that he did not take pepper on his food, and yet, unless he was mistaken, somebody had piled a fair slew of it on his stew. One glance told Slaughter that his wife had not forgotten his tastes and being a good, sensible husband, he carried on eating, taking his punishment like a man. He only hoped that Bess was not so riled that she had over-sugared his coffee.
The meal went by without any other retaliatory measures being taken, and after eating the three men ga
thered by the fireplace, sitting in comfortable chairs as they discussed the running of the ranch. While talking, John Slaughter and Washita Trace cleaned their Colts and Tex Burton knew enough about guns to see both men’s weapons had been fired that day. He asked no questions, but told what he and the ranch crew accomplished during the day.
“We cut near on all the marketable stuff out of the petalta,” Burton said, nodding his thanks to Coonskin as the latter brought a tray of drinks to them. “I reckon another day’s cutting ought to see us with three thousand head ready to move out.”
“Keep the boys at it in the morning,” Slaughter replied. “We’ll need eighteen hands for the trail crew, Tex. I don’t want to take more than ten of the regular hands. Unless Wash can’t handle things if I take the ten.”
“Reckon I can get by,” Trace answered. “Happen anything comes up, I can likely take a couple of or so hands on.”
“Do that, Wash. Tex, how about the other eight we’ll need?”
“I’ve been passing word around, likely they’ll be along.”
Bess left her husband and the men to their talking. Not that they sat for long, for none of the men believed in wasting time in idle gossip. All three would be up at dawn and could look forward to at least ten hours of hard work the following day, so all aimed to catch all the sleep they could. Once the trail drive started, sleep was a thing nobody managed to get enough of. Nor would the depleted crew at the ranch be in much better position to get their heads on a pillow, for they would each be doing the work of two men.
After seeing his men out, Slaughter returned to the sitting room. He found Coonskin had finished work for the day and just returning from allowing the blue-tick a chance to relieve itself outside.
“Did you put that pepper on my stew?” he growled.
“Who, sah, me, sah?”