The Texans

by Brett Cogburn

  A day north of finding the dead Mexican hunters, Odell and Son scouted far to the west of the Prussian’s force. They skirted the edge of a red-dusted, broken maze of badlands on their return. The day was hot and Odell badly wanted to take a drink, but his canteen was less than half full. He decided to emulate Son, and put a peeled chunk of prickly pear cactus in his mouth to keep it moist.

  “Game gets scarcer the closer you get to the Llano except for buffler, and most of the shaggies are already gone north,” Son said. “We’d have done better to stay out of these breaks and to have hunted to the east.”

  Odell squinted into the sun and scowled at the hard bit of tortured earth before him. “Hell must look a lot like those badlands to the west of us in summer, but I like that prairie country you’ve guided us through.”

  Son wallowed his chunk of prickly pear around in his cheek like a chaw of tobacco and nodded lazily. “It’s a shitty stretch of ground between here and the Llano if you’re partial to good water. I’ve never brought anything back from that country but dust and an empty belly. I froze my pinkie toe off in a blizzard one winter on the head of the Brazos, and I reckon the little bone of it is still lying out there somewhere if the coyotes couldn’t digest it.”

  Son had managed to kill a mule deer buck, and they had a ten-mile ride back to the column. In Odell’s mind, talking was the only thing to help pass the time. “I was thinking that a man could make a pretty good home back there before the Brazos forked.”

  Son came out of his sleepy trance and looked at Odell like he was crazy. “It’s a fair country if you can live like an Injun, but if you want to farm, you’d best go back where you came from.”

  Odell wasn’t one to let go of a thing once he got started, and he had spent too much time thinking about the prairie country just west of the Cross Timbers to be thwarted. “You might grow a little along the river, but farming ain’t all a man can do with a piece of ground. Placido said those old Spanish priests down on the San Saba used to run cattle around their mission, and Manuel Ortega tells me that his kin raise cattle on far drier country south of the border.”

  “Just what do you know about cattle? And besides, a cow is worth just barely more than a cold turd in Texas,” Son scoffed.

  “Well, there are more folks moving to Texas every day, and maybe cows won’t always be so cheap.”

  Son’s laugh was like the bray of a mule. “Kid, you figure out what to do with the Comanches and the buffalo, find somewhere with a market for beef, and maybe you could make a go of it.”

  “The Prussian is always saying a businessman has to think ahead if he wants to get in on the beginnings of a coming thing.”

  “You’ll notice the Prussian still has the good sense to stay east of the frontier to make his money. That’s where the people are,” Son said. “At the rate things are going it’ll be another fifty years before you can live out here without getting yourself scalped, much less build a rancho.”

  “I’d be there first,” Odell said stubbornly.

  “If you want to start wearing a sombrero and big spurs you’d be better off to look at that cedar country down the Brazos and east of the Cross Timbers.”

  “I like it farther west. The country suits me.”

  “I don’t know why I bother with you. Most times you’re like talking to a rock.” Son tried to ride ahead and avoid any more conversation.

  “My mama used to say that you had to follow your heart,” Odell said to Son’s back.

  Son twisted in his saddle to look back. “No offense to your mama, but I’d recommend following something safer like common sense. You’ll live longer that way.”

  “Sooner or later, we’ll all die, and I reckon I’ll go my own way until then.”

  “I’m sure you will, but I would just as soon have that dying part later rather than sooner. There’s no sense rushing things.” Son paused to cock one ear to the wind. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “You can’t hear nothing with all your jabbering. I swore I just heard a fawn bleating,” Son said.

  Odell hushed and the two of them listened until they both heard the sound again. It did sound like the bleat of a baby deer or an antelope in distress. The repeated cries were coming from the foot of a series of red, white-capped buttes on the far side of a deep gash in the ground west of them. The meat from the dead buck they were carrying wasn’t going to make a dent in their party’s hunger, and both of them headed off eagerly toward a chance at gathering a little more supper.

  The periodic bleat of the fawn had grown louder by the time they traveled a quarter of a mile along the edge of the steep-sided canyon. They soon spotted a small bunch of antelope on the canyon floor at the foot of the far buttes some three hundred yards away. Both of them stopped their horses and tried to come up with a means of getting closer to their prey. The wind was at their faces, but they were sky-lined and to ride any closer was sure to run the animals off. The bleating continued and the pronghorns all had their heads raised and were working cautiously toward that sound.

  “There’s your fawn, and he’s an ugly devil.” Son pointed slowly to a point much closer and below them.

  Odell stood in his stirrups where he could look down over the lip of the canyon wall. The first thing he saw was Dub Harris kneeling behind a hump of ground and scraggly grass with his rifle pointed at the antelopes. He was doing his best imitation of a fawn’s bleat to bring his quarry closer.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Son said quietly. “I never would have suspected it from Dub. He’s as stout as a bull, but he ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  They sat still and watched Dub draw a bead on the antelope doe in the lead. His mimicry was about to get him an easy shot, and they would go down and help him skin out the meat once he made the kill. It was Odell who first saw the tawny streak bounding through the grass and rocks toward Dub’s back.

  The mountain lion was just as fooled as the antelope were, and his ears had it convinced that a tender young fawn lay hidden in the grass. The only thing that even gave Dub a fighting chance was the fact that his calling was so good that it had excited the big cat enough to start its charge from a distance instead of stalking close for a pounce. Dub heard his attacker coming at the last minute and fumbled to get his rifle around in time to defend himself.

  The cougar was sixty yards away from Dub and closing impossibly fast when Odell finally shouldered his rifle. There was no time for careful aim, and he simply swung his gun barrel through the running cat and squeezed the trigger when its head appeared in his sights. The Bishop gun boomed and the cat crashed into Dub with the force of a freight train, knocking the powerful brawler off his feet.

  “That was a hell of a shot.” Son hadn’t even managed to get his own rifle from its saddle boot. “You’re plumb quick when you want to be.”

  “It wasn’t much.” Odell was pleased, but he knew that a snapshot at a running target at better than a hundred yards had more to do with luck than it did with marksmanship.

  The mountain lion must have twitched or shown some sign of life, because Dub jumped to his feet and fired another shot into it before beginning to beat the carcass with his rifle butt. Odell and Son rode along the rim until they found an eroded cut leading down into the canyon. Dub’s horse was tied there, and they brought him along with them to where Dub stood over the dead lion. All three of the horses blew and shied nervously, refusing to get too close to a predator that was known to have a special love for horseflesh.

  “Thanks, Son.” Somebody, sometime, had busted Dub’s front teeth, and his smile was a snaggled thing.

  “Don’t thank me. It was Odell who shot that catamount off of you,” Son said.

  Dub frowned at Odell but managed to mumble something that might have been faked gratitude. His attention quickly went back to the cat, and he studied it cautiously, as if it might come
to life again. “I’ve never heard of a lion attacking a full-grown man in broad daylight.”

  “He probably never saw you and was just homing in on what he thought was an injured fawn,” Odell said.

  “Yeah.” Dub studied Odell. “He probably would’ve veered off when he saw me.”

  “That’s if he saw you. Haven’t you ever seen a house cat stalking something it hears in the grass? They’ll locate the sound and pounce without ever seeing what they’re after,” Son said. “I don’t figure he would’ve killed you, but Odell surely kept your backside from getting clawed up.”

  Dub frowned at the lion. “This critter caused me to miss out on those antelopes, but I’ve heard you old-timers swear that panther meat is the best there is.”

  Son tried to look serious, but a grin quickly spread across his mouth. “I’ve told that whopper myself, but the truth is, I’ve never tasted it.”

  “Well, meat’s been scarce as of late, so get down and help me load him,” Dub said.

  “Odell’s the one that shot the cat. I reckon the hide is his,” Son said.

  The mountain lion was an exceptionally big tom, and it was plain that Dub didn’t like the thought of Odell getting such a fine trophy. “There’s two bullets in the cat, and one of them is mine.”

  “You know better than that.” Son examined the carcass and pointed to where Odell’s bullet had gone in one side of the cat’s neck and out its throat on the other side, breaking its neck. “Dub, you just shot a dead lion, and made a poor shot at that.”

  “Maybe that’s the kid’s bullet hole back there in its hip, and mine’s the one through the neck,” Dub said belligerently.

  “You know better than that. You just don’t like Odell, and don’t want to admit he pulled your fat out of the fire,” Son said.

  “You’re damned right I don’t like him. He’s too cocky,” Dub said. “And I’ve just about had all of your taking up for him.”

  Son had his rifle cradled in the bend of his left elbow, but he turned slightly so that the muzzle was near to pointing at Dub’s chest. “Now Dub, I know that look you’re getting, and I’m too old to go knuckle and skull with you. You give me trouble and I’ll split your noggin with a bullet, and not lose any sleep over it either.”

  Dub’s temper was known to be as volatile as a tornado, but he wasn’t mad enough yet not to realize that Son would do just what he said. He clenched his beefy fists and stared past Son at Odell.

  “You can have the hide. I’ve killed panthers before,” Odell said. He would have liked to have the pelt, but it wasn’t worth Son having to shoot the bully.

  “You’re full of shit,” Dub said. “You ain’t shot a big cat before.”

  Odell knew he ought to keep quiet, but he couldn’t. “One time back in Georgia I thought my hounds had a coon treed, but when I climbed the tree to find him and knock him out, I found out it was a panther.”

  “Are you claiming that you killed a lion with a club?” Dub asked.

  “I ain’t claiming anything. That cat wasn’t near as big as this one, but I killed him just the same,” Odell said. “He wasn’t any too happy about me climbing up in the tree with him, and it was a bit of a tussle there for a while.”

  Dub looked from Odell to Son’s rifle barrel and finally laughed. “You two are a pair. Take that damned pelt if you want it. My horse probably wouldn’t let me load it on him anyway. That bronc has been trying to buck me off at the least excuse ever since I bought him.”

  Dub didn’t lend a hand while Odell and Son attempted to load the lion on Crow’s back. The horse was having no part of it, and kicked the lion out of their hands and pawed a dent in the crown of Odell’s hat before they gave up their effort. They skinned the lion and stuffed a few of the choicer cuts of meat into Odell’s saddlebags. Dub rode up out of the canyon and left them before they coaxed Crow into letting them tie the bundled hide behind his saddle.

  “That was a big cat,” Son said as he mounted. “I’d guess him to be every bit of eight foot from his nose to the tip of his tail.”

  “He’ll look pretty good tacked up on a wall.”

  Son rubbed his whiskers and grimaced. “You’re gonna have trouble with Dub. There ain’t no two ways about it.”

  “I figure I can handle him.” Odell swung his leg over his saddle and followed Son out of the canyon.

  “You’d best just stay as far away from him as you can,” Son said. “I believe your story about that cat back in Georgia, but whupping a catamount would be child’s play compared to fighting Dub Harris.”

  “I ain’t never been licked in a fistfight yet,” Odell said a little proudly.

  “Well, you just tackle old Dub if you’re of a mind to. I can already see that I can’t tell a scrapper like you anything about fighting.” Son wouldn’t say another word for the whole trip back to the Prussian’s evening camp.

  Odell settled in for his share of supper around the fire while Son reported to the Prussian. Odell found the panther meat strong and stringy, and settled for his tiny share of the venison. The other men were apparently so hungry that they didn’t mind eating meat that tasted like cat piss and praised the manly quality of their meal. More than one of them came to Odell to admire his lion pelt and to hear how he had killed it. Although he downplayed what he had done, Dub still glared at him across the fire. The fact that the men razzed the bully unmercifully for being saved by a kid didn’t help matters any. Odell remained quiet and attempted to guide the conversation elsewhere.

  Dub tried to fend off the teasing of his comrades good-naturedly, but every time he looked at Odell he got a little madder. It bothered him that so many of the men set store by the overgrown kid. He couldn’t understand why they were so impressed by his determination to avenge his grandfather and save his sweetheart, and the fact that he had ridden the Staked Plains alone. The kid just had more than his share of dumb luck, as was evident by his finding of Bowie’s knife. Dub thought he saw Odell smirk at him several times, and he was sure that that the boy was gloating over his recent embarrassment of him. And that was what he hated the worst about Odell—the fact that he wasn’t scared of him. In Dub’s experience, big lunks like Odell always thought they were tougher than somebody shorter.

  Odell was scraping a little meat and fat from the lion hide with his Bowie knife, and the sight of two things that Dub envied brought his temper to a boil. He reached out with one foot and kicked the fire as if by accident, knocking sparks all over Odell.

  “Watch it,” Odell said irritably.

  Dub stood quickly. “Are you looking for trouble?”

  Odell took a deep breath and pointed casually with his blade at Dub. He didn’t mean the gesture as a threat and did it without thinking. “I reckon it was an accident.”

  “I’ll teach you to pull a knife on me.” Dub immediately drew his own knife and started around the fire.

  Odell lunged backward off the saddle he was sitting on and barely managed to avoid the swipe of Dub’s blade. He sucked in his gut with his back arched and his arms thrown out as Dub’s backhand stroke cut a long slit in the belly of his leather hunting shirt. Odell stabbed with his Bowie and missed badly enough that Dub caught his wrist. Dub tried to wrench the blade away, and stuck his leg behind Odell in an attempt to backheel him to the ground. Odell skipped over the extended leg and caught Dub’s knife wrist as he reared it above his head for a downstroke.

  The two of them slung each other around the fire in an attempt to free their knives. Odell strained to pull away from Dub’s viselike grip, and then gave suddenly, punching the heavy butt of his knife handle into the other man’s temple. Dub was knocked to one knee, but Odell took a deep cut across his thigh for his trouble when he tried to close. Dub got to his feet with blood seeping from his scalp, and the two of them circled slowly while they looked for an opening to kill each other.

  The sharp click of a
cocking hammer and the cold steel of a pistol barrel pressed against his temple stopped Dub in his tracks. His eyes grew wide and white in the dim light as he looked to the Prussian at his side without moving his head. The man’s hand was as steady as a rock and his finger was on the trigger. Son Ballard stepped in front of Odell with his rifle ready.

  “Kentucky Bob, you stay out of this,” Son said to Dub’s brother, who was slipping closer to the fire with his rifle. “I don’t want to shoot one Harris, much less two.”

  “Herr Dub,” the Prussian said coolly, “I can’t afford to lose a single man, but if there is to be any killing, I will be the one to do it.”

  Dub released his knife without argument when the Prussian reached for it. Dub knew that Son Ballard might give a man fair warning, but it was a wonder the Prussian hadn’t already shot him.

  “That goes for you too,” Son said to Odell. “Put up your knife.”

  Odell sheathed the Bowie while he kept an eye on Dub over Son’s shoulder. “He came hunting me.”

  “I was just going to whittle on him a little,” Dub said to the Prussian. “You can take your pistol down if you want.”

  All of the Texans had gathered close. Most of them didn’t look too happy with Dub, but there were a few that seemed generally enthusiastic to see a scrap. Odell realized that nobody believed he could whip Dub, and the thought bothered him greatly. He’d been able to straighten a horseshoe with his bare hands since he was thirteen, and there wasn’t a man among them that reached his chin except for Placido. He was tired of being treated like a kid, and thought it high time they all learned who the bull of the woods was. If it took whipping a knothead like Dub Harris to gain some respect, then that was what he was going to do.