Open Range

by Lauran Paine

  They knew where the herd was or they wouldn’t have been riding in that direction. Boss turned and nodded to Charley. Both men knelt to hobble their animals, after which they struck out on foot to keep abreast of the northward riders, giving ground a little until they could not see the horsemen, to be sure that the horsemen could not see them either, then they paralleled the strangers by sound.

  The moon was coming. For a while it was little more than half a silver cartwheel above the farthest rims and peaks, but its light increased visibility a little. It was no longer full. Even so, Boss and Charley had to drop farther southward to avoid being seen.

  When gravel-voice said, “Hell, we’re wastin’ time,” Boss began to move closer. He was up where he could see the riders with Charley to the east a few yards when he made a spurt to get slightly ahead of the unsuspecting horsemen.

  The horsemen were riding relaxed and unwary, right up to the moment that Boss shouldered his Winchester, cocked it, and called out.

  “That’s far enough! Don’t take another step!”

  The horses hauled to a dead stop without their riders’ lifting a rein hand. The horses were quicker at perceiving danger than the men had been.

  Charley came up from their left side, knelt, and also cocked his carbine. The sound of oiled steel sliding over oiled steel on their left completed the surprise. From his position, Charley could see them clearly outlined in the increasing moonlight.

  Boss gave an order. “Get down. Step to the head of your horses. One bad move and you’re going to hell.”

  They dismounted, moved up, and stood like stones, silent and motionless. Charley stood up, eased the dog down on his Winchester, and approached them from the left. They could see him clearly, but except for glancing around when he walked up, they were more concerned about the one they could see only vaguely who was up ahead aiming his weapon at them.

  Charley grounded his Winchester, freed his coat for access to his holstered Colt, and said, “Shuck your weapons.” He neither raised his voice nor sounded particularly menacing, but the horsemen obeyed him. They were recovering from shock, but slowly. Their astonishment had been complete.

  Charley went up where he could see their faces. One of them seemed to recognize him because he made a little gasping sound.

  Boss came forward from in front, Winchester held low in both hands. He and Charley returned the looks they were getting throughout a moment of silence.

  Boss said, “Which one of you’s got a sore back?”

  No one answered.

  Charley swept his right hand back and downward as Boss headed for the riders, stopped three feet from the foremost man, whose coat was unbuttoned and whose holster was empty. He pushed the Winchester muzzle into the man’s soft parts. “Which one?” he asked again.

  The man jerked his head. “Gus.”

  Boss pushed the speaker away with this gun muzzle and turned upon the man nearest to him to the right. “You’re Gus?”

  He didn’t get an answer, just a nod of the head.

  Boss eased down the carbine’s hammer and swung the weapon like a club. The blow sounded like someone striking a sack of grain. Gus went over sidways and scrabbled against the ground with both hands until Boss stepped beside him, placed the carbine muzzle against his back, and cocked it. Gus wilted to the ground and did not move except to breathe in little grunts. He was injured but, worse, he was very frightened. He said, “Wait a minute, mister.”

  Boss did not move the gun away.

  Gus risked a twisted look upward. Boss’s granite expression must have convinced him he was one breath away from shaking hands with Señor Satán, because he blurted words out, running them all together.

  “Wait a minute, it wasn’t my idea to jump that feller in town. That’s who you’re mad about, ain’t it mister? It wasn’t my idea at all it was Mister Baxter sent us to call him an’ rough him up because we knew he was one of them freegrazers Mister Baxter said he was goin’ to teach ’em a lesson they’d never forget.”

  Boss eased up on the muzzle pressure, stepped back, and said, “Get up, you son of a bitch!”

  Gus arose clumsily. His ribs were sore. Each deep breath burned like fire. He was still recovering from being hurled against the iron stove in the emporium down at Harmonville.

  He was not a large man, more wiry than thick, quick and sinewy rather than strong. He was built like a young man, though he hadn’t been young for fifteen years.

  Boss went back to the larger man at the head of the riders. He grounded his carbine at a distance of about ten feet and looked the larger man in the eye as he said, “What’s your name?”

  “Vincent Ballester.”

  “You ride for Baxter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many riders does he have?”

  “Seven.”

  “Where are the other three?”

  Vincent Ballester hung fire over his anwer, clearly reluctant to give it. Boss raised the carbine, holding it in both hands like a club.

  Charley had listened to their exchange and now was beginning to have a very bad premonition. He addressed Ballester from slightly behind him and to his left. “You’re wastin’ time, cowboy.”

  Ballester flinched at the menace in Charley’s voice. “They was sent down to that wagoncamp. Are you fellers from down there?”

  Neither answered. Boss swung his carbine again, but harder this time. Although Ballester tried to jump away, the blow smashed into his left hip with all the force Boss could put into it, knocking him to the ground. Ballester roiled dust as he flailed his arms, a strangling scream in his throat.

  Charley aimed his six-gun at the other two men. They did not seem to be breathing as they watched Ballester writhing in agony. Charley said, “Get belly-down, flat out!”

  As Boss stood above the writhing man, face contorted, Charley went over the prone men for weapons, didn’t find any, gathered up what weapons they had dropped earlier, shoved them into his britches top, and went among the horses, angrily slashing horsehair cinches. He hoorawed the horses until they went flinging away into the darkness, dumping saddles as they ran.

  He went over to Boss and said, “Let’s go.” He had to repeat it twice before Boss hauled around, leaving the injured man moaning through clenched teeth.

  The prone men rolled their eyes to watch their ambushers trot out throught he darkness, but made no move to rise until they heard running horses southward.

  Charley did not say a word. Neither did Boss. They had time to guess that even if they could have sprouted wings they would not be able to reach the wagon before Baxter’s other three riders had done what they skulked down there to do.

  Finally, Charley slackened to a kidney-jolting trot and stood in the stirrups to avoid most of it. They were close enough now to hear gunshots, if there were any. But there weren’t, and that made Charley’s anxiety increase. It required an effort not to run his horse the rest of the way but a wind-broke horse was not going to contribute anything. Whatever had happened down there had already happened.

  Boss swore to himself in a guttural tone. He seemed oblivious of his companion, though he wasn’t. When they were almost in sight of the camp he said, “They better be all right or I’m goin’ after Baxter, an’ when I’m finished with him his own damned mother wouldn’t recognize him.”

  They slackened to a walk. Charley held up a hand. “If it’s an ambush . . .”

  Boss grudgingly dropped down to a walk also, but the look on his face said clearly that ambush or no ambush, he was unwilling to be very cautious.

  There was a great depth of silence up ahead. By the time they could make out the ghostly pale wagon canvas, Charley was ready to dismount, leave his horse, and creep ahead on foot.

  Boss followed Waite’s example, but was not very quiet about it. They spread out, approaching the camp from two sides. The moon was high and climbing. It was lopsided and pale gray.

  Charley came down toward the wagon from the northwest. Boss was out th
ere on the opposite side. Nothing moved as they approached. Charley took a chance, but knelt to make himself a smaller target as he cupped both hands and called ahead.

  “Button? Mose?”

  The only sound was his echo.

  Charley remained kneeling for a while trying to hold back his bad premonition, which was a sickening dread by now.

  Boss called to him in an unsteady voice from the rear of the wagon. “Come on in, Charley.”

  Boss was standing just outside the texas in moonlight, hands hanging at his sides. The tailgate canvas kept out most of the moonlight, but enough got beneath it to stop Charley Waite in his tracks.

  Mose was lying spread out on his back. Button was lying nearby on his side, his head on his arm as though he were sleeping. He had one leg crooked up over the other.

  A puddle of glistening blood that looked black in the moonlight spread out beside Mose’s head. He had been shot slightly in front of, and slightly above, the ear.

  He was beyond help and had been for a couple of hours. If Charley and Boss hadn’t been so far northward, they would have been able to hear the gunshot on a quiet night like this one. But they had.

  Boss seemed incapable of coming beneath the overhead canvas. He seemed to have been paralyzed by shock.

  Charley leaned aside his Winchester, went over beside Mose, saw the swollen, bruised face with its wide-open eyes staring straight upward, and turned toward Button.

  He knelt to gently ease the youth onto his back, and Button moaned.

  Chapter Seven

  Departure of the Sun

  Button did not recover consciousness until shortly before dawn. But even then he was incoherent. He had been struck alongside the head above the temple. His hair was matted with dried blood, but he was alive. Charley told Boss that as bad as the swelling looked, unless Button’s skull had been cracked he would recover.

  Boss knelt beside the bedroll, nodding his head and holding Button’s limp hand.

  Charley needed time, and because he’d already done everything he knew to do for Button, he took a pick and shovel and walked southward from the wagon to start digging Mose’s grave.

  He hadn’t been in favor of fighting Baxter, or anyone else, at the outset. If he’d been in Boss Spearman’s boots he’d have struck camp this morning and started on westward. There was stirrup-high feed out there for many miles. They had all seen it out there.

  He dug and sweated, sucked down big gulps of air, and swung the pick until he was past hardpan into moist earth, where all he needed was the shovel.

  He’d thought for some time now that what Boss had said was right: the day of the freegrazers was about over and done with.

  But last night’s raid had changed everything. To stampede the cattle was one thing, maybe to be expected. It certainly had been done before when they’d freegrazed into territory claimed by established ranchers.

  But murder was a different matter, especially since there had been no need for it. If the cattle had been stampeded out of the territory, Boss and his crew wouldn’t have any choice but to go after them, by which time they would be many miles westward by now.

  He paused to lean on the shovel and shake sweat off. It was cold, which he had not noticed. It was also getting close to dawn. He spat on his hands and went back to digging, slamming the shovel into yielding prairie soil as though it were a mortal enemy.

  Charley did not have a quick temper, but he did have a temper. It took more to get Charley Waite roiled up than it did most men.

  Losing Mosely Harrison was like losing a brother. Big Mose never slackered, never complained, was loyal as they came. He wasn’t a deep thinker, but maybe that was in his favor. He joshed a lot and took joshing in good spirit. He sure as hell deserved better than to be shot from hiding like that by some bushwhacker lying out in the darkness. If there was any consolation to his death it had to be that Mose probably hadn’t had any idea what happened. A head shot like that killed a man instantly.

  “You don’t have to go to China,” Boss said from the rim of the grave.

  Charley held up the shovel. Boss grasped the upper end and braced himself as Charley climbed out, paused to beat moist soil off his legs, and straightened up. The sky was pale gray, which made Boss’s face look old. Scraggly gray beard-stubble heightened that impression.

  Charley said, “How’s Button?”

  “He come around after I got a little whiskey down him.”

  “What did he see?”

  “Nothing. Neither of them did until someone out in the night shot Mose, then they charged in, and when Button tried to climb over the tailgate one of ’em hauled him back by the ankles an’ another one hit him alongside the head.”

  “How many?”

  Boss answered only after looking steadily at Charley for a moment. “Three.”

  “Did he see any of their faces?”

  “No. It all happened fast after they shot Mose.”

  Charley groped for his makings and rolled a smoke in silence. He lit up the same way and watched daylight breaking. “We should have moved on,” he said.

  Boss’s reply was short. “We didn’t.”

  Charley blew smoke at the watery gray sky. “We got to hitch up and take Button to that doctor down there. It’s not like a busted hip, Boss, like you give that son of a bitch up yonder.”

  “I wish I’d shot him, Charley.”

  Waite ignored that. “A bad hit on the head can crack a man’s skull and make him strange for the rest of his life.” Charley leaned to drop the quirley down into the grave. “Let’s bury Mose and go hunt down that doctor.”

  Putting Mose into his final place of rest did not take long, but shoveling the dirt in did. Afterward when they straggled back to the camp, they made coffee, which was all either of them wanted, before they brought in the team and flung on the harness.

  The sun was climbing and it was probably going to be another hot day. But while they loaded the wagon and chained up the tailgate and got untracked in the direction of Harmonville, it was still cool. It remained that way until late afternoon, when they stopped in a bosque of white oaks to set up camp for the night. Then the heat rolled up off the ground as it also came downward from above.

  It was pleasant among the oak trees. There was feed for the team first, and when Charley and Boss finally sat down to their evening meal, they were ready to eat.

  Button came out of the wagon with dusk arriving. They had done their best for him by soaking the matted hair and cleaning the wound. It was an ugly gash, badly swollen now and hot to the touch, but it was no longer bleeding.

  Button sat down very carefully, like a man would who was balancing something atop his head. They offered him supper but he shook his head. “You buried Mose back there?”

  Boss replied, “Yes.”

  “But . . . he didn’t get a chance,” Button blurted, lips trembling.

  Charley kept his eyes on his tin plate. Boss, too, did not look up. Button finally fled out among the trees, where he could lie down and let the tears come.

  Boss turned aside to spit out some gristle, turned back, and said, “I’m goin’ to settle with Baxter, Charley. I don’t give a damn if he’s got an army, I’m goin’ to see him down on his knees begging.”

  Charley drank coffee before commenting. “You can have Baxter, Boss. I’m goin’ after that town marshal. After him, I’m goin’ after whoever else was in that fight at the store, besides Gus.”

  Boss stopped chewing to eye the younger man. He seemed about to speak, but didn’t. Not until they had finished supper and were rolling smokes did he say, “After Baxter, I want the skulking son of a bitch that shot Mose from ambush.”

  Charley was quiet for a long while. He was watching Button returning from among the oaks when he said, “It might have been better if one of us had gone down there and got that doctor to ride back with us. Harmonville’s not real friendly toward us.”

  Boss snorted. “Damned few towns ever have been.”

&n
bsp; Button went past them as though they did not exist, climbed over the tailgate, and disappeared inside the wagon. They finished their coffee, their smokes, banked the coals for the breakfast fire, and dragged their bedrolls out a short distance.

  Charley fell asleep quickly. Boss lay on his back, thick arms raised, hands beneath his head, looking at the stars.

  The night did not seem long enough to Charley. Even then Boss had meat frying and coffee boiling before he awakened.

  Grave digging was something that made a man’s muscles ache from the feet upward. It wasn’t like other varieties of manual labor that a man could become accustomed to. In a lifetime a man might never dig more than two or three graves. Charley stood up to yank on his britches and tighten his belt. Even one grave was one too many, he told himself, and went over to the washbasin.

  Button had a fever. Boss was worried when he handed Charley his breakfast. “I hope it’s just an infection. That’d be bad enough, but if it’s from inside his head . . .”

  Charley tried to be reassuring. “He talks all right, Boss. He don’t fall down when he walks or such things.”

  They left the bosque of trees shortly ahead of sunrise and by the time the sun began to soar they were moving steadily across open country that neither of them had seen before by daylight. But today there was something new, a cloudbank of enormous white rain galleons bearing down in disarray from the north.

  Boss studied them and said, “Maybe by tonight. More likely not until tomorrow.” He looked around at the man beside him on the wagon seat. “Seems that whenever it rains in this country it don’t horse around about it.”

  Charley was watching for rooftops. By the time he could distantly make them out, the massive clouds had moved in front of the sun, blotting out daylight. Yet the air did not smell of rain, so Charley thought Boss might be right about when the storm would arrive.