Big Jim 11

by Marshall Grover

  By the time the big black had carried him to flat ground, he was in considerable pain, yet curiously immune to it. The threat to an entire community took precedence over such minor matters as personal discomfort. On the flats, he heeled Hank to an even harder run, and the charcoal made for the mesquite at a speed that carried it thirty paces ahead of the other ^animals in double-quick time.

  He jerked the black to a slithering halt, hastily scanned the brush and was relieved to observe that it took the form of a broken line extending quite a distance. Yes, this could do it. Darting flames would be well and truly visible to the oncoming steers, even through the thick pall of dust. He had struck and dropped three matches by the time the other riders were joining him. In response to his urging, they wheeled their mounts and rode along the line of mesquite. Here and there, men dismounted, the better to reach the bottom sections of the brush with their makeshift torches.

  The effect was exactly as Jim had anticipated and would have done justice to a veteran cattleman accustomed to the nerve-wracking chore of blocking a stampeded herd. A long line of fire danced skyward to bedazzle and confuse the bellowing beeves. Twenty yards from the blazing brush, they baulked. A few veered to continue their run, moving north or south. Some milled in indecision. But the majority turned and began moving backward, so that the approaching employees of the Double G now had their chance to ring them.

  In less than twenty minutes, the danger had lessened. Within the half-hour, it was all over. The much-subdued 3000, minus those that had fallen and been trampled to death, were plodding away to where trail-herds usually bedded down during a Pringle stopover.

  Atop the hill to which they had retreated, Jim and the towners were presently joined by two dust-caked, perspiring riders from the drive—the slim, deeply-affected Gil Goodwin y, and his gnarled old ramrod, Luke Bristow. The marshal, an acquaintance of both cattlemen, introduced them to the big man on the black stallion, explaining that Jim had been the instigator of the brush burning. After shaking hands all round, the ramrod of Double G spat tobacco-juice, grimaced and declared,

  “You’re lucky there was mesquite for the burnin’.”

  “That’s for sure, Rand,” nodded Goodwin, mopping at his brow with a shirtsleeve. “I never saw a herd move so fast. We did our damnedest, but we couldn’t get ahead of ’em.” To Doc and the Marshal, he muttered an apology, “I’m mighty sorry. Don’t know what spooked ’em. And—when I think of what might’ve happened to your town...”

  “Scarce any brick buildin’ in Pringle,” mused Luke Bristow. “Adobe and clapboard mostly, eh? Well, them critters would’ve flattened her. Yes siree. I mean flat.”

  The cattlemen conversed with the men of Pringle a few more moments before riding away to the small canyon wherein most northbound outfits were wont to make overnight camp. Just beyond that small canyon was the plain where the herd would be quartered.

  Back to town rode Big Jim and the locals, all of them heaving sighs of relief—all except Jim himself. He found sighing to be almost as painful an operation as coughing, sneezing or laughing. Now that the danger had been overcome, he sat the big black gingerly, trying not to wince under the steady gaze of Doc Fenton.

  “Straight to my surgery—don’t forget,” muttered the medico. “And then I want you to stay off your feet until tomorrow. Let Benito put up your horse and—from my bended knees, Jim—stay out of that saddle from now on!”

  “You’ll run out of plaster,” quipped Jim.

  “It isn’t funny,” chided Doc. Soberly, he added, “Nor is it pleasant to contemplate what might’ve happened to Pringle today. We were all petrified with shock when we saw those damn steers stampeding directly at us—too shocked to think clearly. If you hadn’t hit on the idea of firing the brush...”

  “If I hadn’t thought of it, somebody else would have,” Jim opined.’

  “Maybe,” shrugged Doc.

  “Maybe,” grunted Benito. “¿Quien sabe?”

  Under cover of all this excitement—and blissfully unaware that he had caused it—Toby Munce brought his bride-to-be and her bovine brother to the southern outskirts of Pringle, found a suitable campsite in a cottonwood grove and announced that this would be his center of operations. The three amateurs were settling into this camp when, less than fifty yards away, the second professional hustled his mount along the trail to town; Jason Keane was destined to enter Pringle almost unnoticed because several Double G hands would arrive at this same time. His horse no longer limped. In Pringle, he would do as Bissell had done. He would check into a hotel, ascertain the whereabouts of the big hunter and then keep him under observation, awaiting his chance to draw a bead and trigger a killing bullet.

  It was 4.30 or thereabouts when Toby announced that he was ready to visit the settlement.

  “A man as big as this Rand,” he smugly assured Fiona and Phoebus, “oughtn’t be hard to find.”

  Chapter Six – The Colorado Borgias

  By 5.10 p.m., Toby Munce had run his intended victim to ground—not a difficult chore, considering all he needed to do was check the registers of all Pringle hotels. In the lobby of the Pringle House, having ascertained the number of Jim’s room, he sidled out through the main entrance and made for the hitch rack where his mount awaited. For this visit to the settlement, he had saddled one of the team-horses.

  He did not immediately ride away, however. The desk-clerk was on the hotel porch, conversing with a local. A phrase or two aroused Toby’s interest and he lingered to eavesdrop.

  “...sure chose a bad time to break a leg,” the clerk was saying. “Well, you couldn’t expect a cook to move around the kitchen on a broken leg, so now Leon is laid up and the boss is wondering how in blazes we’re gonna feed our customers tonight.”

  “Walt ought to put his wife to work out back,” suggested the local, “I declare Corinne Pringle is the best durn cook in the whole doggone territory.”

  “She’s up to the chapel for choir practice,” said the clerk. “Nothing on God’s green earth could take Mrs. Pringle away from choir practice. Those women stay at it for hours.”

  “Singin’ they call it,” chuckled the local. “Me, I call it caterwaulin’.”

  A suddenly excited Toby Munce swung astride the broad-backed teamer, wheeled it and started it moving south along Main. In a matter of minutes, he was rejoining his fellow-conspirators in the cottonwood grove and gleefully announcing,

  “I got our man nailed down! Know right where to find him and just how to settle his hash!”

  “How about them two perfeshionals—Keane and Bissell?” demanded Phoebus; his speech was muffled because he was eating—as usual.

  “Didn’t sight .hide nor hair of ’em,” said Toby, dismounting. “But it’s for sure they ain’t made their move yet, because Rand is still well and truly alive.”

  “What you aim to do, darlin’ Toby?” enquired Fiona. “You gonna use your old Sharps, or a six-shooter or a shotgun—or what?”

  “I’ve figured out an easier way,” grinned Toby. He was climbing into the wagon now. “No shootin’. No noise. He just sets down to his supper, eats a spoonful of chow—and that’s all.”

  “You fixin’ to poison him?” blinked Phoebus.

  “Gonna mix the stuff right away,” called Toby. “Fiona’s gonna dish it up to him. It’ll be plumb easy for her, on accounta that hotel needs a relief cook, and Fiona’s gonna show up right when they need her most.”

  From the other side of the fire, Fiona smiled happily at her obese kinsman and began bragging about the agile imagination of her fiancé. Phoebus, scowling at the wagon, bluntly declared,

  “I don’t like it one little bit, sister Fiona. That fool ain’t one quarter as smart as you claim. Him and that box of stink-water—all that powder and pills he stole last spring. I always did say it wasn’t a bright notion—robbin’ that apothecary feller. What could he do with such stuff?”

  “Toby figured to buy a chemistry book mail order,” Fiona pointed out, “and
learn himself how to be a regular apothecary, and make his fortune.”

  “He could never do it,” mumbled Phoebus. “He ain’t got the wits for it and, besides, he can’t hardly read.”

  “I’d best fetch my Sunday bonnet,” decided Fiona, “if I’m goin’ to town to hire out as hotel cook.”

  She was ready to leave when Toby clambered out of the wagon. Grinning complacently, he presented her with a small metal canister.

  “This’ll do it,’’ he assured her.

  “What’s in it, darlin’ Toby?”

  “A mite of everything. I just poured a little of all them powders and stuff into this here little can. If it don’t kill Rand, it’ll mean his belly is made of solid steel.”

  “Which hotel?”

  “Pringle Hotel. You can’t miss it. Just sashay around back and tell ’em as how you hanker to sign on as cook.”

  “You seen Rand already?”

  “Nope, but he’ll be easy to peg. He’ll be the big feller, and somebody’s just bound to call him by name.”

  “I wait till he orders, spill some of this stuff on his chow—and then I light outa there?”

  “That’s it, Fiona beloved. The only hard chore was mixin’ it up, and that’s all took care of. You get to handle the easy part.”

  “I won’t let you down, darlin’ Toby.”

  “I know you won’t, Fiona. And, when we get back to Cordova, we’ll just tell Mr. Somers what we done, and then we’ll pick us up a thousand greenbacks, by glory!”

  Sourly, Phoebus drawled a challenge. “You better be able to guarantee my sister’ll be safe. You sure that stuff can’t hurt her?”

  “Would I let Fiona take any risks?” countered Toby. “Hell, Phoebus, she ain’t gonna drink none of it!” He gestured to the saddled horse. “Get a’goin’, Fiona.”

  The fat woman struggled astride the team-horse with assistance from both men. Then, smiling happily at them, she remarked,

  “I can’t hardly wait to see the look on Mr. Rand’s face, when this here poison starts a’curdlin’ his innards.” She waved farewell, turned the horse and made for Pringle at speed.

  After her arrival, it took her only a few moments to locate the hotel. She made for the rear lane by way of a side alley, dismounted and tethered the teamer, then adjusted her bonnet and toted her bag to the rear door. In response to her knock, the door was opened by a harassed Walt Pringle. Behind Pringle hovered a skinny, dismal-looking individual in shirtsleeves.

  “I’m here,” Fiona informed the owner, “to sign on as cook—if a cook is what you need.”

  “If a cook is what I need?” repeated Pringle. He took a step backward. Not given to superstition, he was nonetheless staggered at the rapidity with which a volunteer cook had appeared, so soon after the indisposition of his regular chef. “How—how in Sam Hill did you know we needed a cook here?”

  “Didn’t know,” lied Fiona. “Just come to town to find a job. Figured to check all the hotels, and this happens to be the first place I come to.” She moved in, shut the door behind her and removed her bonnet. Glancing toward the stove, she rolled up her sleeves. “The name’s Smith,” she informed Pringle. “Jasmine Smith.”

  And, while she donned an apron, Pringle joyfully informed the man in shirtsleeves,

  “You won’t have to cook after all, Charlie!”

  “Told you before, Walt,” growled Charlie. “I can wait on table, but I never been no cook.”

  “I know,” nodded Pringle, “but I was getting desperate.” He turned to Fiona again. “In a half-hour—maybe sooner—I’ll have to open our dining room. Supper has to be ready by then. How about it, Miss Smith? Can you manage?”

  “Depends,” she shrugged, as she began investigating the stove and the uncooked food on the big table. “What kinda chow do your customers look for?”

  “Three main dishes would be enough,” said Pringle.

  “We specialize in the steak dinner, the fried chicken and the beef stew.”

  “Nothin’ to it,” she loftily assured him. “We’ll be ready to dish up just as soon as they’re ready to eat.”

  Upstairs, Jim rose from his bed and moved carefully across to the washbasin to bathe his face. The Mex was perched on the window-ledge, languidly strumming his guitar, puffing on a thin cigar. Studying his rugged visage in the mirror above the basin, the big man reflected it had been quite a day. In a matter of hours he had fought off the attack of a sniper obviously bent on murdering him, and had helped turn a herd of 3000 rampaging Longhorns. Quite a day’s work—for a man under orders to take life easy.

  “What I need now,” he remarked to Benito, “is a man-sized supper. Plenty of everything.”

  “You have much hunger, Amigo Jim?” enquired the Mex.

  “Si. Mucho,” grunted Jim, as he reached for his shirt.

  “We stay in this town nine more days, no?” asked Benito.

  “That’s how Doc Fenton wants it,” nodded Jim. “I don’t much enjoy the idea of just hanging around. On the other hand, I can’t argue with two cracked ribs. After that fast ride today I felt as though a half-dozen horses had been stomping on my back.”

  Soon afterward, when they quit their room and strolled the corridor to the stairs, they encountered several other guests headed in the same direction. Two of the men flashed the big stranger companionable grins. He was identified now as one of those who had helped avert a disaster; this might have been Pringle’s black Sunday, had that stampede not been turned in the nick of time. Every Pringle citizen realized and appreciated the significance of that fast ride to the hill by Jim, Benito, the marshal and the other volunteers.

  In the dining room, Jim and Benito chose a table not far from the open doorway leading into the lobby. Jim sat with his back to the wall and, when the lugubrious Charlie came to them ordered the beef stew. Benito settled for chicken, after which they lapsed into unruffled silence, patiently awaiting the delivery of their supper.

  In the kitchen, Charlie monotonously listed the orders for the new cook.

  “Four beef stews, a couple steak dinners, three chickens ...”

  “For who?” she demanded, as she ladled stew into bowls.

  “Who cares for who?” he shrugged. “You just gimme the dishes. I’ll deliver ’em.”

  “I like to know who I’m cookin’ for,” she insisted.

  “What difference?” he challenged. “You’re new in town. You don’t know nobody.”

  “Best way to get to know folks,” she smiled, “Is dishin’ up the kinda chow they favor. C’mon now, Charlie. What’s for who?”

  “Three beef stews for the Garvey brothers and their cousin Jake,” mumbled Charlie, gesturing impatiently. “The other one’s for the big stranger, Jim Rand. One of the chicken dinners is for Rand’s Mex friend...”

  He listed the names of the other diners, but Fiona was only pretending to listen. She had heard enough. The stew placed before Mr. Jim Rand this night would be something special, in more ways than one. When Charlie collected the tray containing the orders of Messrs. Michael and Daniel Garvey and cousin, she murmured,

  “Hustle back and I’ll have Mr. Rand’s chow all ready.”

  She placed a chicken dinner on a tray, added a platter of sliced bread and the fourth bowl of stew. Into that bowl, she emptied the contents of the canister given her by her devoted swain. Her smile was sunny and without guile, when Charlie returned and took the tray from her.

  The change in the atmosphere didn’t become apparent until Charlie had delivered the dishes to Jim and the Mex and had moved away to attend other diners. Benito began attacking his chicken with relish. Jim took up a fork, made to scoop up a mouthful of his beef stew, then paused, his nose wrinkling.

  “Damn and blast,” he breathed.

  “You do not wish this beef stew?” frowned Benito. “But this is what you order, no?”

  Jim set his fork down, studied his bowl with increasing interest. The diners nearest him turned to stare. Two of them leapt to
their feet and, with kerchiefs clamped to their noses, made for the exit. Jim couldn’t see Fiona. He wasn’t glancing toward the kitchen entrance, where she hovered and watched so eagerly. All his attention was focused on that bowl.

  The aroma arising from it was really no aroma at all. Odor would have been a better word. And, as if the smell weren’t bad enough, the stew now began to hiss and bubble. Some of it rose and slopped over the side of the bowl. Where it splashed the tablecloth, the fabric immediately gave way and the wood beneath began to emit a sizzling sound.

  “¡Caramba!” gasped Benito.

  “Better leave that chicken alone,” Jim sourly advised, as he shoved his chair back. “If it came from the same ranch as this beef, it’s apt to take off and fly away when you dig a fork in it.”

  By now, three other diners were performing a fast disappearing trick, making for the exit in frantic haste. Whatever that bowl on Jim’s table contained, its smell was not exactly fragrant. Jim stood up and reached for his hat. The Mex followed his example. To have paused to discuss their next move would have been pointless; they were in mutual agreement, both needing to get out of here—muy pronto.

  Walt Pringle came bounding into the dining room just as the last gasping guest departed. That last guest lacked the courage to stumble clear across the dining-room to the exit, but what he lacked in courage was made up for by resourcefulness; he opened a front window and dived out into the street head-first.

  “What in tarnation?” boomed Pringle. “Where is everybody? What happened here? What’s that—that…?” He whipped out a kerchief, clamped it to his nose. “What’s that infernal smell…?”

  Charlie appeared in the kitchen entrance, confused by the mass exodus of the regular clientele.

  “What is it?” wailed Pringle. “Did some fool deliver skunk-meat along with the beef? Send for the marshal! I can take a practical joke, but this is too much!”

  “I swear I dunno…” began Charlie.

  “Where’s that new cook, that big female?” demanded Pringle.