Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  “That shirt-folding, button salesman ought to be glad we get down off our horses long enough to talk to the likes of him.” He paused for an impressive string of profanity. “I’m certain of something, Nate.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He doesn’t know one damned thing about cowboys.”

  “Not one thing.”

  “We’ve got good horses to ride, plenty of open country, and we go where we please. That means a whole lot more than money.”

  “He doesn’t know anything at all.” My blood was getting up all over again.

  “Now you’re talking, Nate. If we want to sweet-talk his daughter, we’ll do it, and if he doesn’t like it he can kiss our callused asses!”

  Damned if Billy wasn’t right. We had it all, and thought it would last forever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The summer rolled on, and neither Billy nor I laid eyes on Barby Allen for a long time. The roundup south of the Canadian worked east to about sixty miles west of Henrietta, and then north up into the Territory. We worked both the Comanche and the southern edge of the Cheyenne Reservation, where various brands were operating under leases. We logged what must have been ten thousand miles on horseback.

  I thought about Barby Allen constantly, and Billy did too. I know, because he told me. Both of us were set on being the object of Barby’s affection, and jealous of the other’s intentions. For a good bit after our Clarendon picnic there was a touch of the uncomfortable for each of us in one another’s company.

  It was just a subtle contention between us, nagging and chewing at us, until we talked less, and the old banter between us was all but gone for a time. It was like wearing a pair of baggy, sweaty britches to work. After a while a man gets pretty chafed and blistered, and soon he’s sore as hell and walking funny around his best friend.

  We recognized the change that had taken place between us, but I figure we were both too proud and stubborn to do anything about it. Barby Allen was just too damned good-looking for either one of us to let go of, even if it wasn’t the actual woman that we both claimed to possess, but rather the notion of her.

  She was something glorious to carry around inside of us and think upon. Those storybook writers will tell you that we all spent all our nights in camp singing to a bunch of cows, or yodeling and plunking on guitars around the campfire. But many a man passed the quiet hours lying alone in his bedroll, awake and staring at the dark sky overhead—lost in his own thoughts. You might work up a picture in your mind of the old home you’d left long ago, or maybe dream on what you’d like to do or see. Barby was our little dream, and night after night, Billy and I lay down to sleep, each begrudging the other a hard-on.

  Given a little time, we seemed to have made our peace over that girl. Maybe we both realized how foolish it was to fight over a girl neither of us had a claim on. That doesn’t mean we forgot about her, not by a long shot. We talked about her frequently. It might sound silly, us acting that way over her, but there were few women in the country, and none at all like her. I guess we were about as female starved and girl-crazy as men can get. If Billy told about her just right I would get a picture of her so stuck in my head that it would be an hour after I lay down before I could go to sleep.

  And I know it was the same for Billy, because sometimes, when I had lain there unable to sleep, his voice would come quietly out of the night, whispering like some blind oracle.

  “She’s sure something, ain’t she, pard?”

  And he was right.

  There was another thing that helped smooth things over between us, and that was a change in our fortunes. I mean to say, that we suddenly had more jingle in our pockets.

  Nobody ever got rich cowboying, and by the same turn, nobody ever took up the trade who had such lofty financial aspirations—all those types became bankers, lawyers, railroad men, or pimps. A little extra money to spend on liquor, gambling, or trinkets was always a soothing thing.

  Our path to riches came to us in the form of one certain paint Indian pony in Billy’s possession. That crazy little pinto was faster than greased lightning. And once we determined that Little Paint, as we had taken to calling him, could run, there wasn’t anything short of an act of God that was going to keep the money out of our pockets. None of my crew held anything against a little easy money as long as it came by honest means—like gambling.

  We ran Little Paint a few times against some of the Lazy F horses that were known to be quicker than usual and none of them could even give him a race. Word soon spread among the outfits on roundup that our camp had a fast horse, and it didn’t take long for someone to propose the first race for stakes. Little Paint put the dust in their faces, and we put their money in our pockets. All the riches in the world looked like gravy to us. One after another, week to week, cowboys brought their fastest stock to match against Little Paint. He outran them all like they were standing still.

  If someone should ever build a museum in honor of all the good Texas cowboys who ever lived, I would think it fitting for them to paper the walls with playing cards, and plow up a nice sandy lane leading up to it suitable for a horse race. For if there’s one thing most cowboys had in common it was the love of gambling.

  A lot of us loved a good game of poker, but horse racing was the best of all. In an age where everyone rode a horse there was bound to be a large percentage of people who felt they were experts regarding all things equestrian. Given the frontier’s propensity to gamble, there were also a lot of folks willing to wager that they knew more about a horse than the next fellow did.

  Horse racing was especially rampant in Texas. There were about as many little brush tracks as there were outhouses in certain parts of the state. There was tale after tale of entire towns losing their fortune backing a local favorite in a match race. And a horse race didn’t require any official, organized track to take place. A race might spring up anywhere two riders met.

  Most of the races were sprint races, matching good quarter horses over short distances. They were usually under a quarter of a mile, but one might see any kind of a race imaginable here and there. The Indians loved to run longer races where their mustang ponies’ endurance played to their favor. A bunch of the high-rollers down in South and East Texas had even been importing good thoroughbreds.

  I don’t guess it’s any wonder that men who spent most of their living hours in a saddle should love horse racing so much. It’s safe to say that I don’t know if I ever felt more alive than when I was standing at the finish line and cheering on the fast horse that I had bet on at the time. And like every other damn fool for a horse and a dollar, my favorite races were when I won.

  After a few weeks of racing Little Paint around the roundup camps, our outfit took on a new air. It’s a wonder every one of us didn’t lose our jobs, but even Hell’s Bells hauled himself right into the mix. He was as proud as any of us that our outfit had the fastest horse on the roundup. Being a bit older than the rest of us, H.B., without nomination, took on the role of manager and trainer. Every night he came into camp and informed us of potential matches, giving us his opinion of different horses and their merits, and the prospect of getting a race up.

  Carlito, the cook, took on the role of groom, and against all cow camp etiquette he started keeping Little Paint tied to the chuckwagon. He managed to scare up a bit of grain to feed the horse, and he rubbed the little devil until his coat was shiny and slick. You never would have known he was the same long-haired, knotty little pony we stole off the reservation.

  Andy became our official jockey on account of his slight stature. We all strutted around some, but he outdid us all. After every race he insisted on recounting the affair in a play-by-play fashion, highlighting the brilliant strategy he had deployed, and the subtle jockey techniques he had made use of to bring about victory. We were all so happy counting our winnings, both past and future, that none of us pointed out the fact that Little Paint was so damned fast that a monkey could have rode him to a win.


  The biggest part of the general roundups in the Panhandle was over by the Fourth of July and we were finishing up our last work just east of Mobeetie four days before the holiday. We had worked a big circle between the Washita and the Salt Fork of the Red and had a herd gathered to work about two miles south of the Sweetwater. I was castrating a calf when High Card Henson rode up to the fire I was helping work. I rose to meet him, wiping the bloody blade of my pocketknife on the bottom of my chaps’ leg. Two strangers were with him, but stopped off at a distance and waited.

  Now old High Card weighed about a hundred pounds, stood about six foot six, and the only thing longer jointed than him was the handlebar mustache he kept tugging down below his jaw while he pulled up his horse and hooked a leg over his saddle horn. He was a professional gambler, and if you doubted the fact all you had to do to was ask him. I even heard that for a while he introduced himself with business cards he had printed in Austin that presented him as such. The thing about High Card was that he spent more time following cow tracks than he did sitting over a card game. Any time you asked him why he wasn’t gambling it was because he had had to go to work to replenish his stake. It took High Card about two hours to lose any kind of stake, and at thirty-or-forty-a-month cowboy wages, it took him a hell of a lot longer to rake another one up.

  If I was to have summed him up I guess I would call him a determined sort of a fellow. And then again, he wasn’t all that much different from a lot of gamblers I knew. Even poor gamblers know that there are very few regular winners and a sight more losers that just show up with their donations. The trick is that almost every gambler identifies himself as a winner, suffering from an eternal case of chronic optimism whereby the rest of the world is just a bunch of suckers.

  “Are you winning so much you’ve taken to traveling with bodyguards?” I pointed to his fellow travelers sitting off behind him.

  High Card’s face brightened and he seemed pleased that I could expect so much of him. “Naw, that ain’t it at all. Those are some of my professional associates.”

  “That a fact?”

  “We’ve a camp back up the Sweetwater a little bit—tents set up with tables and such. There’s liquor, women, cards, rooster-fighting, and well . . . just about everything a man who’s been out working all summer could desire.”

  “Are you making the rounds advertising?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Speak your piece. I’ve got a man fixing to need a hot iron.” I gestured back at the bawling calf being drug by its hind legs in a trail of dust toward us.

  He twisted in the saddle and glanced back at his friends, followed by a studious observance of the sky. Finally, as if slipping something of the utmost unimportance and trivial nature into the conversation, he slyly said, “We heard you boys have a racehorse in camp.”

  “We might,” I replied with equal unconcern and nonchalance.

  He continued to make a show of gauging the sun. “That’s a coincidence, because there are a couple of gentlemen in our camp that are sure getting frustrated.”

  “If it was winter, and it’s that Mobeetie crowd you’re running with, I’d say the watered-down whiskey froze again and busted the barrels.”

  He didn’t like my measure of his newfound friends, but he was quick to cover it up. He yawned and stretched and adjusted his tempo before he answered. “They hauled a couple of good horses all the way up from San Antonio a month ago, and ain’t been able to find a single bit of competition for their animals.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s a fact. It seems they’re beginning to doubt the quality of horseflesh in these parts.”

  “Maybe they ain’t been looking in the right places.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe they’re long on talk and short on funds.”

  High Card shook his head solemnly. “No, sir. Those boys got money by the sackfuls, and are game and ready to risk a little of it should a worthy challenge for their horses come along.”

  “You’re meaning they would like a little match race with our horse?”

  He appeared to be in serious contemplation. He winced as he said, “Well now, I don’t doubt you boys have got a horse you think is fast, but how’s your financial situation?”

  “Have you gone to banking too?”

  “No, it’s just that those racehorse men up on the Sweetwater are getting pretty bored with the action around these parts and are willing to entertain a little betting on a much smaller scale than they’re used to.”

  “Why don’t your high-rolling racehorse men come down here themselves if they want to dicker up a match?”

  “You saying y’all might be interested?”

  “We might.” I paused before adding, “Of course we realize that it would be professional horsemen and imported stock that we would be dealing with, and would expect certain considerations.”

  High Card nodded his head in satisfaction. “They’ve invited y’all up to our camp to palaver with them tonight.”

  “Where do we find you?”

  “Just ride west until you hit the Sweetwater and turn up it until you see our fires.”

  “I reckon we can find you if we’re interested.”

  The men behind me had already worked two calves shorthanded, and I turned as if to go back to work. For kicks, I stopped and motioned for High Card to get down. “You might as well lend a hand to keep in practice.”

  He made a show of brushing the dust off the cheap suit coat he was wearing, and then pulled a pocket watch from his vest and studied it as if his schedule required him to be off to better and more important places. “I believe I’ll pass. I’ve had enough of the dust pneumonia and the gyp water squirts.”

  “The work here is honest,” I said.

  He turned away and, as he was riding off, he called back to me, “A man should work in the vocation of his calling.”

  I watched him for a minute before turning back to my calling. What I mean is that there were three fellows behind me calling me all sorts of foul names for standing around while they worked.

  Andy watched me from his perch atop the neck of the calf just drug to him. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his dusty face, leaving a ragged, muddy streak. “What are you looking so happy about?”

  I grabbed up a hind leg and flopped myself down to take a hold on the calf. The calf bucked against the hot iron laid on him while I grinned at Andy and held on. “You smell that?”

  “The shit, or the burning hair?” He wrinkled his nose as the branding smoke rolled across his face.

  “No.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Has the heat gone to your head?” He got up from the calf and kicked at it as it rose and trotted off bawling for its mother.

  “Can’t you smell it?” I asked again.

  “What?” he almost yelled back at me.

  “Money. Lots of money.”

  “Where?”

  I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder toward High Card’s bunch loping off on the horizon. “It looks like we found ourselves a horse race.”

  Andy leapt into the air and clicked both spurs together before he hit the ground. He did a little Indian shuffle in a tight circle, and without hesitating he bailed on the next calf drug to us while I slipped the rope off of its heels. We grinned at each other like we had both just escaped the loony bin.

  “I want to know one thing.” He sounded very serious, and I patiently waited while he paused for dramatic emphasis.

  “Where did you find those suckers?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Billy took the news just like I’d walked up to him and handed him a draft on the entire funds of the Denver Mint. All of our camp was excited by the prospects of a horse race for bigger stakes. None of us seemed to have the sense to be concerned about our challengers. That Mobeetie crowd was a bunch of holdout men and shysters that made their living skinning the likes of us. Dealing with those boys could be like sticking your hand in a sack of shook-up ratt
lesnakes.

  Billy had the final say in any proposed race, as it was his racehorse, and he asked me to go with him to visit the Mobeetie gamblers’ camp. Andy wanted to come along, but we knew he’d get drunk and wouldn’t make it back to work the next day, or maybe for even longer. H.B. seconded our opinion, and ordered Andy to stay in camp.

  We headed for our horses and H.B. like to have trampled down the back of our britches’ legs following us. It seemed like he was set on going with us. Besides being our boss, he was a stubborn old fart, and it was usually wasted time trying to change his mind once he’d made it up. Billy had to try anyway.

  “Won’t you miss your beauty rest, H.B.?”

  H.B. snorted, “Why hell’s bells, you boys need a grown-up along for wise council and a mature outlook.”

  Showing some good sense, Billy gave up the argument and climbed aboard his horse. He and H.B. took off in a lope, with me following along behind. The old man’s horse was a cold-backed SOB that had to be ridden a bit before he could be trusted, and he tried to pitch. Old H.B. Gruber just jammed his pipe in his teeth and cracked him across the butt with the tail end of his reins. He had him lined out in a few stiff little hops, and was soon tearing along with his long beard whipping down either side of his face. He looked like some mad general charging off across the battlefield.

  The ride to the Sweetwater was only a two-mile jaunt, and we had the fresh rode off our horses by the time we hit its banks. We turned up the creek and followed it for a few miles until we saw big fires lighting some trees ahead.

  They had picket lines strung up between the trees and we slipped our cinches and tied up there. Somebody helloed us and we made our way over to the fires. There were two or three tents, and a couple of tarp lean-tos set up with a few long tables laid out between them and the fire.

  The crowd wasn’t the sort you would see in Sunday school. There must have been twenty or thirty men gathered around the fires, a couple of what passed for women, and five or six mean-looking dogs tied to the trees. I don’t know who looked mangier and meaner, the dogs or the people.