by J. T. Edson
“Nope,” Slaughter replied.
“Got twenty good men here,” Chisum pointed out. “And I don’t figure you’ve had time to gather your boys from the herd since my scout left. Anyways, happen shooting starts, you’ll be like I was yesterday. Your herd’ll’ve gone, John, and I don’t reckon you’ll get that Army contract filled in time if that happens. So I reckon you’ll show good sense and let me take my hundred head.”
Behind Chisum the twenty “warriors” tensed. They knew of Slaughter’s way when dealing with folks who tried to push him around; and they had seen his speed with a gun. In a few short minutes there would be shooting unless, which was as likely as a snowball keeping its shape on a red-hot stove top, Slaughter backed down and handed over the cattle. Or unless his men came into sight on the valley top and brought the weight of their rifles to bear.
Yet the hard-cases felt puzzled. In the silence which followed Chisum’s words, all heard the sounds of men working cattle. It did not seem likely that Slaughter had sufficient men to work his petalta and bring along so many that they could handle the full strength of the Long Rail.
“Afore you go and do anything hot-headed, Mr. Chisum,” Slaughter said quietly, “I’d say you’d best look up there to the right.”
Every eye turned in the direction Slaughter suggested. The “warriors” expected to find themselves covered by a line of rifles. Instead they saw nothing more dangerous than a couple of men standing on the lip of the slope, neither of them holding a gun. Not one of the hard-cases could think what Slaughter reckoned to be so dangerous about the two men. Nor could they imagine the Cattle King being swayed from his purpose by so small a threat.
In this the “warriors” were about as wrong as men could be. Chisum’s eyes bulged out as he stared at the thing the dark, burly youngster held. Here stood a menace more terrifying to Chisum’s eyes than the threat of armed men.
“Wh—where did you get th—that?” Chisum croaked in a strangled voice, staring at the length of zinc stovepipe in Burt Alvord’s hands.
“Do we take ’em, boss?” asked his segundo, sotto voce and gripping his rifle.
Standing at Alvord’s side, Washita Trace rasped a match on his pants’ seat and applied its flame to the end of the length of brush in his other hand. From the way the brush took fire, it had been soaked in kerosene, for the flames licked up around it. Once the torch was blazing well, Trace brought its lit end towards the open mouth of the pipe.
“B—boot your rifles, boys!” Chisum yelped. “Do it, damn you to hell, do it right now!”
Something in the urgent manner used by Chisum caused his men to obey him instantly. None knew for sure what those two hombres on the rim held, but whatever it was, it sure set their boss back on his heels. So every one of the “warriors” thrust his rifle into the saddleboot and sat back as if trying to dissociate himself from the whole affair.
“Where did you get it, Texas John?” Chisum asked, never taking his eyes from the length of stovepipe and the torch which hovered its open mouth.
“Picked it up from under that fancy bed you use, in your bed wagon last night while you was liquoring your hands.”
For a wild moment Chisum had thought, hoped even, that Slaughter might be trying to run a bluff. After all one length of stovepipe looked pretty much like another. But Chisum remembered that Slaughter had not seen his hiding place, nor could have guessed where he carried his precious container. There was no bluff in Slaughter’s actions. Alvord held Chisum’s property in his hands.
“What’s the game?” asked Chisum, his stomach seeming to turn a double somersault as the blazing torch dipped slightly closer towards the mouth of the pipe.
“Tell that whiskery jasper to move his hand from his gun, Chisum!” Trace called, having caught a suspicious movement.
Twisting in his saddle, Chisum cut loose with a burst of profanity at the men, warning them not to touch weapons.
“They’ll be good,” he promised, turning a scared face to Slaughter. “Don’t let him shove that torch inside.”
All too well Chisum knew what would happen should the flames of the torch get in among his power-of-attorney notes and destroy them. His herd had a good proportion of stock which did not belong to his Long Rail brand, but was legally— or as near legally as mattered—covered by the notes. Without the slips of paper authorizing him to gather and drive cattle from those brands to market, he would be in difficulties at the shipping pens. The fast growing Cattleman’s Association had long been aware of his games, even though they could not stop them. If he arrived at Dodge with a good third of his herd wearing other ranches’ brands, and could not produce evidence of his right to do so, the association would move in, take possession of the non-Long Rail stock, sell it and return the sale money to its lawful owners. Chisum knew that even his “warriors” would object to fighting the powerful association and the law. So Chisum shuddered at the thought of seeing his precious notes go up in flames. They were his legal right to rob and cheat. If he lost them his revenue would be at least halved.
“It’s a poor state of affairs if a feller can’t come a-visiting without all this unpleasantness, Texas John,” Chisum said in his most winning manner after the torch moved a few inches away from the pipe’s mouth.
He saw a chance, a slim, but possible chance, of breaking the deadlock and regaining control of the situation. The torch Washita Trace held burned smaller all the time. Soon the man would be unable to hold it. Before he could pick up and light a fresh torch something might be done.
Chisum thought of the possibility—and so had John Slaughter.
“I’m counting to five, Mr. Chisum, and your men had best be turning to ride before I reach the fifth, or that torch goes in.”
Chisum lost his fresh-gathered joviality and seemed to be swallowing something which blocked his throat. Never before had any man even beaten him down once. Yet Slaughter had done so three times. For beaten Chisum now was, just as surely as if the Texas rancher held a cocked gun to the Cattle King’s head.
Even a sudden grabbing for guns and shooting down Trace and Alvord would solve nothing. On the first move made, either the torch would be thrust into his power-of-attorney notes, or Alvord would up-end the pipe and spill them out. The wind had enough power up there to scatter his papers to hell-and-gone and they would not be easily regathered.
There was one other sobering thought for Chisum. If shooting started, the first man to go was likely to be Chisum himself. He did not doubt that Slaughter planned to make him the first victim, and none of the Long Rail hands could draw a gun fast enough to have him.
“All right, boys,” he said, tasting the bitter ashes of defeat, “go back to the herd.”
“Tell them to head it up and keep it moving,” Slaughter ordered. “Then you can come down to the house for a meal. When I’m sure your herd’s on its way, and your men not likely to be coming back, I’ll return that pipe to you.”
“Base!” Chisum snapped, turning in his saddle; and his segundo rode back. “You heard what Texas John said. Do it. Get the herd moving and don’t come back. I mean that, too.”
“If you say so, boss.”
“I say so.”
“Hombre!” Slaughter barked before the segundo could turn away.
“Yeah?”
“You and your boys came off easy this time. Mind my words. Next time you set foot on my range, I’ll start shooting.”
Chisum’s segundo reckoned to be a tough man in his own right, but there was something in Slaughter’s eyes and manner that warned him not to chance his luck. Swinging his horse, the man rode after the departing “warriors.” On catching up with the others, he delivered Chisum’s orders and Slaughter’s warning. By that time the whisky-developed hatred of Slaughter had died down, and their drunken loyalty to Long Rail made a change. Not one of the crew raised any objection to their boss’s orders. In fact, most of them had seen all they wanted of Texas John Slaughter’s land and more than they wanted of Slaughter’s way.
After the Long Rail hands departed, Burt Alvord set down the stovepipe and drifted off out of sight. He had orders to see the “warriors” off the J.S. range and make sure they did not return. However, his disappearance did not ease Chisum’s position any, for Washita Trace stood with the burning stub of torch hovering the mouth of the pipe.
At last, with Chisum sweating out every minute, Slaughter made a sign and Trace stubbed out his torch, then put the cover on the pipe. Chisum wiped sweat from his brow and turned a grudging admiring face to Slaughter.
“I should never have let you see that stovepipe, Texas John, only I wanted to prove that I had the right to butcher that Box O steer. And I usually check on it every morning as soon as I get out of bed, but I was so busy thinking about—well, I didn’t look this morning.”
“Here’s the three hundred dollars,” Slaughter replied. “You can sign a receipt down at the house.”
“Sure, John. You know something, nobody ever bettered me once afore, and you done it three times.”
“There’d better not be another time,” Slaughter warned.
“And there won’t be,” Chisum promised, then a grin split his face; but for once it was a grin of genuine amusement and even reached his eyes. “Don’t reckon you’d care to give me a power-of-attorney note to gather any of your stock I come across, would you?”
“Nope,” Slaughter replied dryly. “You’re not getting the hundred head back out of me that way.”
Part Two – Bitter-Creek Gallagher’s Head Tax Toll
Three thousand head of long-horned, half-wild Texas cattle moved slowly through the bottomlands of the Devil River country of New Mexico, heading for Fort McClellan down by the Mexican border just beyond the Arizona line. They stretched back over a full mile, not held bunched together but allowed to make their own pace and graze as they went.
In the lead, between the two point riders, came Big Bill the lead bull and the only beef critter in the herd not doomed to become some Apache’s dinner; the rest of the herd being used to feed reservation Indians on arrival. Big Bill was huge, black and had a six-foot span of horns he was full willing to use on anybody or anything that riled him. The willingness to fight made Big Bill an invaluable herd leader—he had already led three drives—and any critter fool enough to challenge his rule wound up as beef stew for the trail crew.
Behind the point, the first third of the herd was handled by the swing men, the next third came under the care of the flank riders, while the remainder was watched over by the drag hands.
Eighteen men, including the segundo, Tex Burton, rode the herd. Every one of the crew was a tough, salty and efficient cowhand who knew his work from soda to hock, including the drag riders, for it was not Slaughter’s way to hire any other kind. The herd belonged to Texas John Slaughter. His hands rode swing, flank and drag turn-about, as opposed to some ranchers’ method of hiring cheap, poor quality men to handle the drag.
Following the herd came the remuda, the spare horses used by the trail hands and watched over by a youngster learning the cowhand trade from the bottom and performing the menial horse-herding task until in the fullness of time he, in the words of the crew, made a hand.
Paralleling the herd on its right flank came the trail hands mobile home, in the shape of two wagons pulled by four mules each and containing all those sons-of-the-saddle needed to live out their spell of riding on a cattle drive.
The bed wagon travelled in the rear position, driven by Hop Tow, a small, serious young Chinaman learning the camp cook’s trade by serving in the capacity of louse; or assistant to less cultural people than cowhands. The bed wagon carried the trail hands’ bedding, saving weight on the backs of the hard-worked horses, spare saddlery, an anvil, horse-shoeing gear and a keg of good-enoughs, v along with other equipment which might be needed on the drive. Among all this, swinging in a hammock with the ease of a sailor, Insomny Sam, the nighthawk, caught up on his sleep during the day so as to be alert and wakeful while he handled the remuda in the dark hours.
As became its importance to the herd, the chuck wagon preceded the bed wagon and was driven by Coonskin, Slaughter’s cook. Driven might be too expansive a term, for the fat, jovial Negro had his mule team so well trained that they would stay alongside the herd, without needing a guiding hand on the ribbons, come rain, snow, heat or blow. Which same allowed the cook to strum on his banjo and give out with song to the pleasure of all who heard him.
Coonskin was singing that early afternoon as the herd moved along at an easy pace.
“If he says to you,
‘Git out of town,’
You’d best do what he say,
’Cause he don’t ask no second time,
For that ain’t Slaughter’s way.”
“Ole Coonskin sure sings elegant,” drawled Tex Burton, easing his medium-sized, stocky length in his low horned, double-girthed Texas saddle. He did not ease or set right his holster, or make sure the walnut-handled Colt Artillery Peacemaker rode loose, for the gunbelt hung just right. In fact any gunbelt which needed such attention after once being strapped on in the morning was a liability, not an asset to its wearer.
“Sure does,” grunted Talking Bill, so called because he could manage to say less than most folks about any subject under the sun.
“And he’s just right in what he says about Texas John,” Tex went on. While he was not a wild chatterer himself, he always found himself jawing more than usual while riding point with Talking Bill. “Wonder what John aims to do about that Bitter-Creek Gallagher who folks claim takes head tax toll on every herd of beef that comes through this way.”
“Dunno.”
“Or me. One thing’s for sure though, John Slaughter ain’t fixing in to let no loud-mouthed Yankee muscle him into paying head tax toll for crossing open range ’cause that’s not Slaughter’s way.”
Being Slaughter’s segundo, second-in-command, Tex Burton might be thought to have knowledge of his boss’s plans. In general he did, but Slaughter had made no mention of what he planned to do should Bitter-Creek Gallagher attempt to make him pay for the privilege of crossing open, unowned range.
A mile ahead of the herd, Texas John Slaughter sat his horse and watched the two riders who came towards him. He was not a tall man, being no more than five nine in height; but one did not notice such things as his lack of inches when in his presence. There was something about him, an air of strength and command, that compensated for his lack of inches.
From head to foot his clothes spelled Texas cowhand; and, despite the fact that he looked as work-dirty as any of his men, something about him said top hand and boss to eyes which knew the West. From his low crowned, wide brimmed Stetson hat of costly make—which shielded a tanned strong face with a neat black mustache and trim chin beard, yet had ginger eyebrows and hair—down through the tight rolled bandana trailing ends over his gray shirt, by the levis tucked into expensive made-to-measure boots with Kelly spurs on their heels, he might be Texas cowhand; but that gunbelt around his waist, an ivory-handled Colt Civilian Peacemaker in a contoured holster which hung just right, told that there sat a man who was real good with a gun—or worked hard to make folks believe he was.
It had never been Slaughter’s way to try to fool folks into thinking anything about him.
“There he is,” said one of the approaching riders. “I saw him one time up in Hays City. Let’s deliver Bitter-Creek’s message and get it done.”
“You mean that’s the great Texas John Slaughter?” asked the other, a tall young hard-case who hailed from Dakota Territory and figured they did not come any wilder or woollier than him. “Why he looks five cents worth of nothing to me.”
The first man did not reply, for he watched Slaughter all the time and had the advantage of knowing something about Slaughter’s way. Being a lower-grade professional gunslinger, he preferred that any time he entered a fight he had a considerable edge over his opponent, and that any blood that might be spilled was not his own. He had only
volunteered to deliver Bitter-Creek’s message because his boss agreed to send another man along with him. Two to one were good odds, high enough to make most men think twice before bucking them.
Only now it came to a point he was no longer sure about there being safety in numbers. Nor did he care for the young hard-case’s attitude. Not only was Slaughter no man to push around, but he had at least eighteen men back there with his herd and they would be ready, willing and able to back up their boss’s play.
Bringing their horses to a halt about fifteen feet in front of Slaughter, the two men waited for him to speak. They might have waited until hell froze over for all he cared. Lounging in his saddle, an unlit, crooked, thin black cigar hanging from his lips, Slaughter waited for the men to open the ball.
“Bitter-Creek Gallagher sent us,” the first gunman said.
Gallagher’s name packed a whole heap of weight around that neck of the woods, and his hired men gained a certain protection under its shadow. Slaughter did not even trouble to ask why Gallagher sent men to see him. It was not Slaughter’s way to waste anything, even words.
“Bitter-Creek says you can come through with your herd, and buy supplies in Devil City,” the gunman went on, after a pause while he waited for Slaughter to show some interest and ask questions, “right after you’ve paid two dollars a head on every bull, cow, steer and calf in your herd, took on our trail count.”
“No!”
Just one word left Slaughter’s lips, but it told the two gunmen his feeling on the subject as well as if he had sat back and whittle-whanged for a full hour.
“What d’you mean, ‘no’?” growled the second gunman, showing more courage than good sense.
“Call him off, hombre,” Slaughter warned. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I will if he makes a wrong move.”
“Will, huh?” sneered the second tough, dropping his hand.
Slaughter did not move in his seat, but his right hand dipped—fast. Half a second later the ivory-butted Colt crashed in his right hand and bucked in his palm. He thumb-cocked it on the recoil, for so perfect was the Peacemaker’s balance that the weight of its barrel drew it back into line and cocked back the hammer under Slaughter’s educated thumb.