Open Range

by Lauran Paine

Mose pushed up into a sitting position and winced. His entire body ached. Charley pretended not to notice as he said, “Button, stir up the fire. Swab out the fry pan.”

  Boss walked back where he’d heard their voices and gazed a long time at Mose. Then he went rummaging for a bottle of Taos Lightning, which he poured into a tin cup for the injured big man. He, too, forced an appearance of normalcy, but the look in his eyes was as cold and hard as granite.

  While they ate he said even less than usual. Charley, who understood Boss Spearman best, heaved an inner sigh. He had seen Boss with his back to a wall before: That expression meant he was not going to strike camp meekly and start the herd moving again, as the town marshal and that possum-bellied cowman with the false smile had told him to do.

  The day was wearing along. For a change, it was neither muggy nor particularly hot. The sky was flawless. Because of that rainstorm followed by several hot days, grass was growing faster than cattle could eat it off. The land was empty as far as a man could see, giving the natural splendor a deceptive appearance of tranquility.

  Chapter Five

  The Next Day

  The following morning Boss said nothing about moving on. After breakfast they left Mose resting in camp and rode out among the cattle. Button had not found any hung-up calvy cows the previous day, but the men sifted through the herd today anyway, leaving Charley to suspect that Boss’s mind was not on what he was doing. Every now and then he would straighten up in the saddle and gaze far out and around as though seeking something. Charley knew what he was looking for, and also watched, but there were no horsemen out there.

  Button found a sweating razorback cow with her head lower on one side. She was wringing wet with sweat, and rolled bloodshot eyes as Button passed by. He halted at a discreet distance and watched her for a while, then hunted up the older men.

  They rode back with him. The cow was slobbering and tossing her head. Boss sighed. “Broke the tip off her damned horn.” Charley nodded; he knew as well as Boss did what the razorback’s trouble was. He also knew that this time it was going to make pulling a calf look like a Sunday picnic.

  They sent Button back to the wagon for the medicine box. During his absence, Boss alternately watched the slobbering cow and raked the countryside for sign of horsemen. There were none in sight but the cow was acting crazier by the moment.

  When Button loped back, Boss told him to go out a ways with the medicine box and stay out of the way. Then he and Charley took down their ropes, shook out loops, and walked their horses straight at the cow. She would have fought them if they got too close, even if she didn’t have trouble enough to make her wild. She stopped shaking her head, lowered it, pawed dirt, bawled, slobbered, and charged. Boss halted with his loop on the right side. He allowed the cow to get within a hundred feet of him before reining to the left. The cow was coming too fast to change direction at that distance even though she tried by corkscrewing her body and slamming both front hooves sideways.

  Boss went closer, rolled his loop twice, and cast it. Charley was already coming in from the opposite side so that when Boss picked up his slack in fast dallies and rode away dragging the fighting cow, she bawled, flung slobbers, and jammed both front legs into the ground, resisting the pulling as Charley got behind her to one side. He made a low cast, caught both hind legs at the pasterns, took fast dallies, and set his horse up to brace against the shock when the cow came to the end of the rope.

  She teetered, still fighting wildly, until she could no longer maintain balance, then fell on her left side, pawing with her front legs, trying to gather herself to jump up, which she could not do as long as they had her stretched out.

  Boss bellowed for Button and was just dismounting as the youth rode up. Boss gave a little slack and switched his dallies from his own saddlehorn to Button’s as he took the medicine box and said, “Keep the slack out, boy. Back your horse if she gets any slack but don’t choke the old fool to death.”

  Button’s face was chalk white as he took the tag end of Boss’s lariat. There was no prior training for most of the emergencies cattlemen encountered. Button could rope passably well, but this was different. He’d seen them spread-eagle cattle before, but watching was different from doing. He was concentrating so hard on keeping the cow strung out that he didn’t hear Charley until he’d yelled twice. “Don’t choke her! Give a little slack!”

  Boss got up to the cow from behind her, away from those flailing front feet, and dropped to one knee as though he did this every day and there were no danger. He pulled out a pocketknife, pinned the cow’s head with his weight, and whittled at the broken tip of her horn until he had trimmed the ragged hole and had enlarged it slightly, then he turned to open the box and rummage until he found a thick blue bottle. He uncorked it with his teeth, stifled a cough as fumes went up his nose, waited until Charley had taken up more slack, then leaned with sweat running down his face, forcing the cow’s head still for several seconds and pouring some of the contents of the blue bottle into the holed horn.

  The cow was making strangling sounds. She was fighting so hard for breath that she was probably not even conscious of the big older man working on her. Even after he poured fluid into her horn she did not heed him.

  Boss methodically stoppered the bottle and placed it back in the wooden box. He stood up to mop off sweat and looked over at Button. The kid’s jaw muscles were bulged, his eyes fixed on the cow. Then Boss knelt and yelled to the youth.

  “Lots of slack, son, fast! Jump your horse ahead!”

  Button obeyed. Boss dropped atop the cow’s head, fumbling for the lariat. The moment he yanked it slack the cow sucked down a huge lungful of air; so much oxygen at once nearly overwhelmed her. This was the brief instant Boss needed to wrench the loop loose and fling it aside.

  Charley backed his horse as the cow got both front feet beneath her, ready to spring up and charge as Boss ran toward his horse. Charley yanked her back down from behind each time she bawled in fury and tried to spring to her feet. He did not ride up enough so she could kick frantically free of his heeling rope until Boss was in the saddle with the medicine box.

  Boss took the slack rope from Button and said, “Run for it!”

  Button and Boss raced away with the gasping, wild-eyed razorback cow glaring after them. Charley was coiling his rope as he stood in his stirrups while his mount trotted clear.

  From a decent distance all three of them stopped, turned, and watched as the cow braced her front legs wide and began to furiously shake her head. Boss sighed, cleared his throat, spat aside, and said, “You did right well, Button. What a man’s got to watch for is that he don’t get excited and choke ’em to death.”

  Button was sweating even under his shirt, and his hands were shaking, so he gripped the saddle-horn with them. “What was wrong with her?”

  “Any time a critter busts a horn during fly time of year, they get maggots in the core of the horn. Someday when you do the doctoring you’ll hear the flies in there buzzing. It drives a cow crazy. If you don’t get rid of the flies and the maggots she’ll really be crazy and never get over it. Crazier’n a pet ’coon.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Poured chloroform into the horn. See how she’s shaking her head? If we dared, we could ride up to her right now an’ you’d see the dead flies an’ maggots being flung out of the little hole. They come out in globs. We better ride on.”

  Button used a sleeve to push off sweat. As the horses began moving he twisted to watch the razorback cow. She was still rattling her horns but was no longer acting crazy.

  By the time they reached Charley, he had tied his lariat into place and was sitting calmly, hands atop the saddlehorn, looking toward the northwest, up where those distant mountains appeared clear as glass.

  He said, “Four this time, Boss.”

  He was correct. Instead of three horsemen sitting beyond gunshot range watching them as Button had seen them the day before, this time there were four riders.
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br />   Boss spat and dryly said, “The country’s filling up.”

  Charley was thinking of something else: something that bulky old cowman had said in the jail-house office about cattle being stampeded. That was in his mind because of what else they’d said down in Harmonville: The freegrazers were supposed to have struck camp and started moving the cattle today, this morning in fact.

  Four armed men could start a stampede very easily with guns and shouts and racing horses. Charley rolled and lit a smoke. “You want to load up and move out, Boss?”

  Spearman had no answer. It would have been reasonable to say yes or no, but he said nothing. He sat easy, watching the distant horsemen from beneath the tipped-down brim of his old hat, silent for a very long time.

  Finally he said, “Charley, which way you reckon they’ll go when they leave?”

  Waite offered a simple answer. “Let’s find out.” He squeezed his horse and started riding slowly in the direction of the watchers. Boss and Button rode on either side of him. They covered several hundred yards before the watchers turned without haste to head back the way they had come, toward the distant foothills but on an easterly slant.

  Boss said, “All right. That’s good enough. Let’s go back to camp.”

  None of this made any sense to Button, but he had been learning prudence lately so he loped along without asking a single question.

  When they got back, Mose had done something that surprised them. He had gone over to that willow creek, taken an all-over bath, had walked back, and was coaxing a little cooking fire to life wearing his boots and britches but no shirt.

  He had bruises in front and in back, which he ignored as the others came up into canvas shade and sank down. He grinned at them from a battered face topped by a turbanlike bandage that was not as white as it had been the day before.

  “Spuds, salt beef, and biscuits. How’s that sound?”

  It sounded wonderful. More so because big Mose seemed almost completely recovered from his beating, although the marks of it were glaringly obvious and probably would remain so for a week or two.

  The mood was light as they sat close with their tin plates and cups. Boss did not say very much, but he teased Button as he usually did when his mind was not occupied with problems. Charley, though, watched Boss and speculated. Boss had something on his mind.

  Mose finally told them about the fight in the general store. It had started when three rangemen had strolled in as he was going over his list of supplies with the storekeeper. They had stood on both sides of Mose at the long counter, listening to the talk as Mose and the storekeeper went down the list to tally up the expense. One of them taunted him by saying, “By golly, ain’t that downright remarkable? It can read.”

  Another cowboy said, “Naw, that ain’t so much, Slim. Once I seen a man who had a bear about as dirty an’ shaggy as this feller who could count with his paws.”

  Mose said the storekeeper had suddenly turned to depart, leaving Mose counting up the money for the supplies. The third cowboy, Mose told them, was a tall man with a tied-down ivory-handled six-gun and a long pockmarked face. He walked slowly over, tapped Mose on the back, and when Mose turned, the tall man swung.

  “I knew it was coming,” Mose told them. “I caught his wrist in the air and fetched it down hard across my upraised leg. The bone snapped like a twig. The other two come at me swingin’ like windmills. I got hit a few times, nothing much. I got one by the throat and flung him into the iron stove. The last one, he was stoppin’ his charge. Maybe he would have run. But I jumped first, got most of his shirt in my left hand, and hit him three, four times in the face until he was limp as a rag. . . . That’s all I recollect until I come around over in the jailhouse hurt all over. Someone hit me from behind. I guess everyone put the boots to me after that. At least that’s what the doctor told me. He was friendly and all.”

  Boss got the whiskey bottle and poured a little into each coffee cup. He poured little more than a spoonful into Button’s cup. Even though he’d done a man’s work today and had done it well, he was still a button.

  They loafed away the evening, replete and relaxed. Charley still watched Boss. Mose was the first to leave the fire. Button was next. Charley made the coals hiss by pouring coffee dregs atop them.

  He put the cup aside and was methodically rolling a smoke when he said, “What’s on your mind?”

  Boss had dumped his hat aside. From the bridge of his nose to the hairline, his skin was as white as snow. Below the bridge of his nose it was weathered a uniform shade of bronze tinted with a faint redness.

  He scratched his head without looking at Charley. “I hate to owe someone something and not pay ’em,” he said, looking briefly sideways at Charley Waite before returning his gaze to the sizzling coals.

  Charley lit up, trickled smoke upward, and faced the older man. “Yeah. Well . . .?”

  “They’ll return from the same direction, Charley.”

  Charley nodded. “Yeah.” He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Boss, it’ll stir up a hornet’s nest.”

  “Maybe. What do you expect we should do, tuck our tails and run like they told us to do?”

  Charley continued to smoke over an interval of silence before answering. One thing he’d learned in his lifetime was that there were times to lash out and times not to. Right now, with not just the lawman against them but probably every damned rancher and range rider in the territory, and only the Lord knew how many that meant, was not a time to lash out. But Charley also knew he’d be wasting his breath trying to make these points with Boss Spearman, so he said, “We’re goin’ to get stampeded if we don’t, and we’re goin’ to get ourselves into a damned war if we do.”

  Boss spoke crisply. “Exactly. For a damned fact. Now then, suppose the pair of us go out there and catch them before they start their run on the herd?”

  Charley squinted into the gloom. “Baxter struck me as a mean feller, Boss. He also struck me as a man who owns the law around here, and if that’s so, why then he’s most likely got a hell of a lot of influence everywhere else.”

  Boss peered at Charley through the shadows. “What the hell are you goin’ to do, Charley? Sit here in camp while I go up there and break it up before it gets started?”

  Charley dropped his smoke into the cooling coals and stood up. “I guess not. . . . Sometimes I wished I’d listened to my grandmaw. She wanted me to apprentice out to a printer back in Sioux Falls. She said the printed word was the most important thing in life, next to religion.”

  Boss chuckled at his companion as they went after their horses.

  Chapter Six

  A Night to Remember

  The moon was a long time arriving. For their purpose, weak light from a limitless expanse of bluish-white stars made it possible for them to cover a couple of miles with visibility foreshortened to the area immediately ahead.

  The night was still warm, but they wore coats because before they returned to the wagon the night would have turned cold.

  They halted a couple of times to listen, which Charley thought was not really necessary, but when Boss Spearman was doing something like this he was as wary as an Indian. Which was probably a good way to be, under the circumstances.

  Excluding that dog-leg creek west of the wagon with its willows, there were few pilot points even during daylight. At night men had to ride by the seat of their pants.

  Both Boss and Charley were good at it; where they eventually halted, both men were satisfied there would have been shod-horse marks on the ground if it had been light enough to make them out. This was where those four watchers had been.

  They swung to the ground, testing the night. There was not a sound. Boss hunkered in front of his horse peering eastward. “Be fine with me if they didn’t come,” he said quietly, and although Charley agreed, he did not say so.

  A ground owl came out of his hole thirty or forty feet distant, made a startled squeak because he had picked up the scent even before he saw the four big lumpy sha
pes, sprang into the air, and made whispery sounds as he frantically beat his wings to get away.

  Boss settled on the ground still facing eastward and listening for sound from that direction as he said, “I hope old possum belly is with them. He sat in that jailhouse office sort of sneering and letting his lawman lay down the law until he figured it was time to show us that he an’ not the lawman gave the orders around here.”

  Charley, who had also taken a strong dislike to Denton Baxter, had something to add. “He won’t be, Boss. His kind don’t do things themselves, they hire other men to do things for them. But I got a hunch we’ll meet again—Baxter and us.”

  Boss was silent for a long time. Silent and motionless, until he slowly raised a gloved hand. Charley heard nothing. He even got belly-down with an ear to the ground, but picked up nothing. Boss turned and winterly smiled. “Well, well, they’re coming.”

  Now, finally, Charley heard the faint sounds of riders with rein chains, spur rowels, and dry leather. He did not hear hooffalls until he heard a gravelly voice say, “Like last time, the old man’ll gather up a lot of lost cattle after them bastards is run out of the country.”

  Someone else laughed. “If that happens often enough he’ll make more money gathering stampeded critters than he’ll make trailing down to rail’s end each autumn and peddlin’ off the beef.”

  A voice with a higher pitch to it offered a precaution. “It won’t be so funny if that big one catches us. My back’s still sore as a boil where he flung me into that stove.”

  That remark brought up a fresh topic among the oncoming but as yet invisible horsemen. Gravel-voice said, “Too bad that was Butler’s right arm he busted over his leg. A gunfighter ain’t no good with a busted gun arm. . . . But when it heals and he’s ready, Butler’ll square things up. He told me at the doctor’s place he was goin’ to find that big man and shoot him from the knees up, a little at a time.”

  Charley leaned to brush Boss’s arm. He could vaguely make them out. Both Charley and Boss unwound up off the ground, turning for their booted Winchesters. They stood like statues, carbines in the crook of their arms, one hand raised to clamp down hard if either of their horses offered to greet the strange horses, and watched as the four riders passed directly in front of them traveling due west.