Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  “That is a fast horse.” His face was unreadable, his coal-chunk eyes burning into the back of my skull.

  I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there like I was shot.

  “You picked a strong Cheyenne pony. Won me lots of money.”

  His face cracked into a big smile and he turned and walked away. I never said a thing, I just watched him leave with my mouth hanging open. It took me a moment to even untrack one step.

  I had taken about two of those shaky steps when Andy came running toward me. I thought I heard him, but it took a second time for me to register what he was yelling.

  “Dutch Henry and his boys have robbed the stakeholders and got off with all our money!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ours was a rags-to-riches story, and in the manner of the turbulent fortunes of the high-stakes gambling world, we didn’t have long to enjoy our fortune before we were back in rags. We never even got one sniff of our winnings before some damned highwaymen held up the guards and took off with our stakes.

  A holiday in cow country can be quite a fracas, but nothing could compare to the pandemonium that set in following the announcement that Dutch Henry’s gang had taken off with most of the loot in camp. I guess a lot of the camp held a vested interest in the stakes. You would have thought that everyone was a winner, because all of them at the same time stormed the tent where the stakes had been held. What must have been fifty or sixty booted men tried to enter that tent at the same time. Despite the numerous assurances that not a red cent was left, everyone had to see for themselves.

  Once the robbery was confirmed somebody gathered up the guards, shook them a time or two to get the straight of things, and in the matter of moments almost every man in camp was mounted and ready to ride. Most of us were impatient to go, and a little hard to rein in, but Cap Arrington took a stand before us.

  “I’ll shoot the son of a bitch who messes up the sign left by these bandits.” The old Ranger was tugging on his mustache with one hand, and the other rested on the butt of his holstered pistol.

  We gathered in a rough semicircle before him to listen.

  “They’re just getting farther away while we sit around here and jaw,” somebody in the crowd all but shouted.

  Cap’s beady-eyed gaze raked the group to discover who had spoken up. “I’ve already put scouts on the trail.”

  Billy was sitting his horse beside me. “This is about the sorriest-looking posse I’ve ever seen.”

  Looking around me, I had to agree with him. A lot of the cowboys, and more than a few others, had bet their saddles and pistols on the race. It seemed that Dutch’s boys had taken all the shooters with the rest of the loot. To top things off, they ran a rope through the swells of every saddle held in the stakes, and drug the whole pile of hulls across the prairie while they fled. As a result half the boys in the posse were bareback and unarmed.

  “Those Cheyenne don’t look anywhere near as ridiculous riding bareback.” I pointed to the wild group of braves that was then racing up to go on the warpath with us.

  Billy looked over at one of the fellows beside us who was sitting bareback on an exceptionally thin horse. The man was squirming around uncomfortably and had one hand between his crotch and the high, thin blade of his horse’s withers.

  “That’s because folks that ride bareback all the time just naturally know not to pick a raw-backed horse,” Billy said.

  “Our bandits are definitely a bold, sassy bunch to have pulled this off,” I said.

  “From what I’ve heard about Dutch Henry, he’s got balls as big as church bells.”

  Without evidence it seems that Dutch Henry was nominated for the theft as the only outlaw in that neck of the woods with enough stature to have pulled it off. He was a salty German who had scouted in the Indian Wars. He had some grudge against the military at Ft. Elliot, and a strong dislike for Indians. Naturally, he and his gang had been waging a horse thieving war against the U.S. Army and the surrounding tribes for many years. He claimed to leave white civilians alone, but a long list of thievery and murder was attached to his name.

  “That damned Dutchman is going to be a handful if we corner him,” an old-timer beside us said.

  Cap must have heard him. “Dutch Henry’s retired. We’re just going after some outlaws of the average sort.”

  The whole posse grumbled a little under their breaths. It seemed that most of our group preferred the thought of being robbed by such a notorious character as Dutch Henry, instead of any old run-of-the-mill bandits.

  “Cap’s right. I know for a fact that the Law caught Old Dutch and hauled him to Dodge City.” H.B. spit for emphasis any time he thought he had said something important.

  I studied the tobacco juice staining his whiskers. “Is he in prison?”

  “No, Dutch is wily enough to know you won’t get far in the outlaw business without the best lawyers money can buy.”

  “If he ain’t in prison, where’s he at?”

  “He moved on to other parts. This damned country is getting too civilized for an outlaw to operate with the proper aplomb and bold manner which he was accustomed to.”

  Somebody listening behind me scoffed at H.B.’s tale. “Bat Masterson shot Dutch dead at Trinidad, Colorado in ’78. My uncle saw it happen.”

  H.B. cast a frown back over his shoulder at the man who’d contested his story, but seemed content to let it rest. I listened to men behind me continuing the discussion for a bit.

  I leaned over and spoke quietly for only H.B. to hear. “I was up in that country in ’78, and I didn’t hear anything about a shootout between those two.”

  H.B. grunted and growled around the pipe clenched in his teeth. “Famous folks all have more than one version of their life story.”

  “You men pay heed to me and we’ll catch these robbers,” Cap said loudly.

  The mass of mad men was about to grow mutinous if held back any longer, and Cap had to take an occasional step back to keep their nervous horses from trampling him. I guess he saw the blood in our eyes, because he cut short his instructions on the professional manner of catching bandits.

  “Just remember, don’t go shooting these bandits if you can help it. Let the Law deal with them.” Cap hurried for his horse.

  “That just means he doesn’t want us killing them before he can hang them,” Billy said.

  Cap stuck a foot in the stirrup and loped off toward the Sweetwater with all of us at his heels and threatening to run him down. Being in the lead must have been important to him, because he sure had to get his horse up to speed to stay ahead. We were an impatient bunch used to dealing with our own troubles after our own fashion, and we didn’t need anybody on a white horse on yonder hill to wave us on with the brim of his hat and a few fighting words.

  We followed a line of torn-up ground where the outlaws had drug the saddles. Here and there was a chunk or a piece of some poor fellow’s kak, and you could hear the groans of misery go through our posse like a dose of salts.

  A couple of the Cheyenne scouts were waiting for us on the bank of the Sweetwater about four miles down the creek. They had found where the outlaws had crossed and, figuring a bunch of dumb white men couldn’t track an elephant through a snow bank, a few of them were waiting to guide us.

  One of the Cheyenne told us that the outlaws had dumped our saddles in the creek. Just like that, several of our own jumped down and hit the water. It was swimming depth out in the middle, and they looked like a bunch of ducks bobbing up and down. Before long, one of them came up to the surface and shouted that he had a hold of the rope that the saddles were strung together with.

  Soon, more of them were in the water and had taken hold of the rope. After several minutes of choking and straining they managed to work their way closer to wading water. Somebody rode out and took the end of the rope, dallied it to his saddle horn, and spurred up the bank. Something broke loose, and as a result, only about half of the saddles ended up on dry land. The rest of them were l
eft to posterity in the bottom of the creek, despite the repeated attempts of some of the boys to salvage them.

  There was a mad scramble as those who had ridden bareback sought their saddles from the muddy pile of offerings. You can understand that not all of them came out of that scrap with a saddle, and even the ones who did weren’t necessarily carrying the saddle they had lost. If you couldn’t find your own saddle, you might get lucky and commandeer one belonging to somebody who wasn’t present. For years afterward men were still swapping saddles trying to find their own.

  We loped off that day from the Sweetwater leaving several of our men behind to continue their futile river salvage operation. A few of the men who had firearms but no saddles lent out their weapons to those who were blessed with a saddle. If our numbers were somewhat lessened when we left the Sweetwater, we were at least better armed.

  I couldn’t blame most of the bareback brigade for staying behind, and I myself would have had to have lost a kid sister or something to go along without my tack. You can’t begin to imagine the indignant nature of riding along bareback with a group of properly equipped men.

  Our posse was somewhat better equipped when we left, but there remained several men riding bareback, and you could easily spot the men lacking firearms by the shameful looks on their faces. You would have thought they had been forced to troop across the country naked or something. Then again, when you’re used to having a pistol on your hip to flop around and fondle as a sure sign of a swinging dick, removal of said item is bound to cause discomfort.

  Right then I thought that it was safe to say that those bandits had made a grave mistake due to a miscalculation of human nature. The stealing of a citizen’s money is bound to cause a certain amount of desire to chastise and punish the guilty party, but the bandits had acted in such a way as to cause a degree of bloodthirsty need for revenge never seen in simple matters of financial loss. To force a man to pursue his losses in a fashion where he feels naked and missing his parts before his clothed and properly equipped comrades is a sure way to get hanged.

  The trail led straight west, mile after mile, hour after hour, and every time our horses’ hooves hit the ground somebody was either propping themselves up off a galded crotch, or reaching for the comfort of a pistol that wasn’t there anymore. And with each and every step of the way, they got madder, and the thoughts of many in our posse dwelled on the torturous manner with which they would deal with the bandits once they captured them. It was more than justice that we demanded; it was revenge. Yeah, it was going to be a short trial, a quick verdict, and those money-stealing, ass-torturing, emasculating sons of bitches were going to hang—if we could catch them.

  The afternoon of the second day, the trail split between the headwaters of McClellan Creek and the Mulberry. The Cheyenne scouts determined that there were five men in the outlaw gang. Three of the men had headed northwest toward the Canadian, while the other two had turned off to the southwest. A quick powwow was held and it seemed that Arrington had received the Army’s assurance that they would proceed at haste westward up the Canadian looking to cut the sign of the outlaw gang. Riders had also been sent to Tascosa to notify authorities in that locality of the possibility of our bandits passing through in the near future. It appeared that the three outlaws who had turned north were riding into our support, while the two who had ridden away from the Canadian had the greatest chance for escape.

  Arrington quickly divided our posse. One group, led by Colonel Andrews, was to pursue the three outlaws headed for the Canadian as closely as possible, and strengthen their numbers by rendezvous with the soldiers if feasible. The Cheyenne went with the colonel, as they claimed the country to the southwest had always been bad medicine for them, fit for nothing but Comanches and Mexicans.

  Meanwhile, Cap would lead the other party in pursuit of the two outlaws who had headed southwest. All of our Lazy F crowd, including myself, went with Cap at his request, because of our supposed knowledge of the country where we were headed. For my own part I didn’t know squat about that country except for the fact that most of the water out there was bad when you could find any. Billy informed me that there was plenty of water all the way to New Mexico if you knew where to look, but even he made no claims about taste.

  Cap Arrington was reputed to be of the old frontier mold, but despite his survey of the country beyond the headwaters of the Red and his much publicized discovery of the Lost Lakes, he had come near freezing and starving to death himself and a whole company of Rangers the winter before on the Yellow Houses. Even though many of the men had worked some of that country, and were at least familiar with parts of it, H.B. just had to volunteer. He assured us that, should we need his services as a scout, he had once carried the mail and two gallons of whiskey from Mobeetie to Roswell. No matter the quality and quantity of the whiskey, he was sure he had a good feel for the country.

  It seemed that our knowledge of the terrain and its finicky waterings would counterbalance the cunningness of the outlaws and lead us to their inevitable capture. However, I was beginning to get the feeling that we were going to eat a whole lot more dust before that happened.

  We lost the trail several miles down the Mulberry, but continued on, looking to pick it back up. Our way led us down the creek to where the JA boys were building a set of pens on the flats there. A crew was digging postholes, and a wide, stocky man with a set of white whiskers put down his crowbar and walked out to meet us. Even after Cap informed him of our mission to apprehend the outlaws the man continued to eye us with more than a little disdain. Either he seemed to doubt our ability to capture bandits, or he suspected our party of being equally guilty of similar crimes worthy of legal sentence. He would do nothing for several minutes other than cuss and spit.

  Upon hearing Cap out with only a few interruptions of profanity, he tugged at his whiskers some and called one of his hands over. Upon questioning, the hand told us that two horsemen had come by the camp that morning and stopped to eat. They had tried to trade horses, but the JA hands had suspected what they were and sent them on their way astride the horses they came in on.

  “Which way were they headed?” Cap asked the JA man.

  “Where in the hell do you think?” the whiskered man interrupted before the other could answer.

  Cap looked perturbed and was pulling irritably on his killer mustache, but he kept his voice calm. “Colonel, when I catch them I might ask them where they were headed.”

  Texas seemed to have a colonel or a captain behind every bush, and I began to feel a little left out. I began considering a title for myself. This was my first acquaintance with Colonel Charles Goodnight, and despite the fact that I was never to know him well, I got the impression that he was a man who felt great impatience with the portion of the world outside his operation. I was more than a little surprised that he would curse so much and seem to have so little respect for a Ranger of such reputation as our staunch captain, and sheriff of Wheeler County no less—a man of two titles.

  “They sure as hell didn’t go up my canyon, so they’ll have to ride up the Tule. At the head of the Tule the old Comanchero trail forks three ways. They could go west to Las Escarbadas, northwest to the head of the Trujillo and Puerto de las Rivajenos, or southwest across Double Mountain Fork and to the Yellow Houses. You should split your men and send one bunch up the Palo Duro and across to the Trujillo. The other bunch can ride like hell to Las Escarbadas. You ought to be able to head them off or catch up to them.” Colonel Goodnight eyed the cap rock to the west like he could see them traveling right then.

  “What if they go south?” Cap asked.

  “Well then, you can chase them some more, but it’s been my experience that most bandits are headed for Fort Sumner or Las Vegas, and your average bandit is just smart enough to know that he needs to go west and not south to get to either one.” Goodnight sounded like he was lecturing a ten-year-old.

  “I came through that country and didn’t go just like you tell it,” C
ap said.

  “Yeah, and you like to have killed yourself too. Not many men have any sense of direction or the skill necessary to navigate such a country beyond the bounds of its known trails, and I doubt your bandits are any exception.”

  I could tell Cap started to relate the bandits’ actions concerning the taking of our saddles and firearms as evidence of their unusual abilities, but he thought better of it considering the nature of who he was conversing with. Instead, he tipped his hat and started to turn his horse around.

  “We bid you good day, Colonel, and leave you to the romantic undertaking of building an empire.”

  Goodnight squinted in the sun and gave him a look that would sour corn on the stalk. He hollered back over his shoulder at one of his men. “Farrington, saddle up and go with these horse racers and catch their bandits for them.”

  “To hell with you, Colonel. I am perfectly capable of catching my own bandits,” Cap snapped back at him.

  “Well, go on then. You’re impeding my progress in this construction.” Goodnight waved us off and took his digging bar back up.

  On his way back to the posthole he had so recently left, he spit and cussed everything in general, from the weather, cattle prices, lawyers, and bankers to bandits, and the incompetent vigilantes who chased them. As we rode off I heard him telling a couple of his men to head up the Palo Duro and over to the head of the Truijillo to look out for the bandits that we were bound to miss.

  I rode off thinking that he must have thought a lot of the two men he was sending, or else he didn’t think much of us. For some reason, I decided I liked the cantankerous devil, but Billy rode by me cussing Goodnight under his breath. I think Billy just didn’t like too much authority in any one location, namely in his location.

  We crossed the Tule at Mackenzie Crossing and made our way up the canyon for several miles. Not long after sunset we began passing the scattered, bleached bones of what must have been hundreds and hundreds of horses. The varmints and such had scattered them over a broad swathe of the canyon floor, but in the mouth of a side canyon the bones were still piled thick.