by Short, Luke;
The first few drops of rain quickly turned into a slashing downpour as the storm rode over him. Yes, that was what he could do, he thought then—say nothing and watch, say nothing and wait.
When he rode in to the Slash Seven, it was raining in great driving sheets; the bare barn lot seemed to boil with the rain that hit the hard ground and, now muddy, bounced up a foot before settling again.
Reese put his grey in the open-faced stable, rubbing him down with a gunny sack, then headed through the driving rain for the kitchen door to the house. The usual smoke from the stove was missing, Reese noted, or else the battering rain had beat it down.
He stepped through the kitchen doorway and closed it behind him and looked about the room which was empty. He stood there, water channelling down his slicker around his boots and called, “Callie.”
There was no answer and only then did he notice the piece of paper on the kitchen table held down by a salt cellar. Moving over to it, he picked it up and saw that it was in Callie’s nervous handwriting. The note read, “You had your week. Now I’ll have mine. Callie.”
2
Big John’s message, brought home to Orville by Emmett, was that there was a herd of two thousand Texas cattle on its way up the National Trail and that it would be in the vicinity of the Little Muddy in three days. The message came four days after Reese started work on the line shack and Ty immediately came over to Slash Seven with a wagon-load of grub, picked Callie up and then headed for Ty’s line shack in Copper Canyon to get the Hoad camp in readiness.
Orville Hoad was ready and had his organization planned, his men primed to go when the message arrived. Buddy, Ty’s boy, would pick up the two young Plunkets, Abner and Marvin, who were the sons of Sarah Plunket, sister to Orville and Ty. Another sister, Amy Bashear, had three boys, grown and married men, who had agreed to make up a second unit. The third, of course, would be Orv with Emmett, Junior and Big John.
Nine men traveling together would attract attention and be remembered, Orville knew, so he directed the units to travel separately to their rendezvous with Big John at the Little Muddy. Here they would learn from Big John the location of the herd and agree on the date and time for stampeding it. Afterwards they would split up again and once they had stampeded the herd they would make their gather separately and take different routes to Ty’s Copper Canyon line shack. Orville had cautioned them not to be greedy; the more cattle they had to drive, the slower the pace would be. The idea was to strike swiftly and get out in a hurry. If the stampede succeeded, the drover and his trail crew would have to spend days rounding up the herd and counting it, and by that time the cattle should be well through the rough badlands country that covered twenty of the forty miles between Bale and the National Trail. Even after they reached the Wheelers they must approach Copper Canyon by different routes.
The night the three units rendezvoused at Big John’s camp, it was raining and Orville learned from his eldest son that the herd was bedded down less than five miles down the Trail. The three units set off immediately, separating. Orville would fire the first shots that would start the stampede an hour before dawn. It was unlikely that the trail crew could start the cattle milling since they already would be wet, miserable and spooky. They would, Orville hoped, stampede west into the broken country before the brakes, which would make the job of rounding them up twice as difficult as if they were stampeded up the Trail.
The plan worked to perfection; the trail crew was double-guarding the restless herd, but Orville’s shots simply turned the storm-caused uneasiness of the cattle into instant panic. His shots drew a return fire from the night herders that only increased the panic and, since Orville’s station was on the east side of the herd, the cattle ran west as Orville hoped they would. The attempt to turn the herd and get them to mill in a circle failed and the herd running west spread out where the other two units hazed them by gunfire. When daylight came two units started their roundup of the lead cattle before the trail crew on their weary horses could begin their search for the scattered bunches of cattle.
The rain held on all that day, alternating between a drizzle and occasional downpours that, Orville knew, would erase all tracks. He and his boys had sixty head in their band as they headed into the brakes in mid-morning. Whatever trails they left around the rocks at the base of the clay dunes and canyon floors were erased by the rain. By afternoon they were on the range that held other cattle whose tracks and signs would confuse any possible pursuit.
By the third day after the stampede the three units had arrived at Ty’s line cabin. Together they had got away with one hundred and ninety-eight double-wintered Texas beeves. Ty’s log line shack consisted of a single room fronted by an open park where the men immediately set about vent-branding the cattle and re-branding them with the HL connected brand which was already registered as the brand of the Hoad Land & Cattle Company. During these days the eleven men of the Hoad blood line slept in two dirty grey tents pitched back of the line shack. Callie cooked and served the meals and slept alone in the line shack. She worked as hard as any of the men and each night before darkness set in she would look out across the big meadow at their newly acquired wealth and a renewed determination mixed with pride came to her. Big John, while waiting, had learned the name of the approaching herd’s owner, so that Callie could forge a bill of sale with the name of the Texas owner. If by some unlikely chance anyone strayed into the remote Copper Canyon and was curious, the bill of sale would be ready for him.
This day, the branding finished, the Plunkets and the Bashears and two of Orville’s boys and Buddy had left for home, leaving Ty, Orville and Big John in camp with Callie. That evening after supper Orville lighted the lantern and hung it on a piece of baling wire over the big deal table.
Callie, dressed in levis and a man’s shirt, distributed the four tin cups, two on each side of the table before the saw log stools. She poured the coffee, then watched the three men moved toward their seats.
Her father, who had done little these past few days save rustle wood for the branding fire, sat down first as befitted the patriarch of the Hoad clan. His working clothes still retained an unsoiled, store-bought newness about them. Orville, however, was dirty and unshaven and he smelled, but his lean beard-stubbled face and his hawk nose and his arrogant pale eyes held an authority that her father’s face entirely lacked. He, Callie knew, was the driving force in the family, the one who held it together in prideful cohesiveness. He had the guile, the gentleness to his own blood and the disdain for all other men which all the Hoads admired and copied.
Big John was the last to be seated, a man so huge that sitting down he was almost as tall as Callie standing. He had his father’s blade of a nose and his mother’s straight hair, black as any Indian’s. His heavy face held the innocent benignity of an almost simple-minded child but, remembering his boyhood fights with her brother Buddy, Callie knew that he was as savage as any panther when temper took him. He too was dirty and unshaven and so much in need of a haircut that his hat, which he now took off, rode his mop of Indian hair like a woman’s bonnet.
Orville looked at him and grinned, revealing his sharp, tobacco-stained teeth. He shifted a cud of plug tobacco into his other cheek, spat on the floor and said, “My God, Big John. Get Callie to cut your hair tonight before she leaves tomorrow. Another week and you won’t be able to get a hat on.”
“I didn’t bring scissors or clippers, Uncle Orville.”
“Well, take my hunting knife like I used to take on him when he was a kid.”
Callie nodded and came over and sat down.
“Callie,” Orville began. “What you going to tell Reese where you’ve been?”
“Visiting Aunt Amy,” Callie said. “We’ll stop by on the way home and fix the story with her.”
Orville nodded and looked at his son. “Big John, I don’t reckon anybody will stop by here while you’re alone. If they do, treat them good. They get nosey about the cattle, just say it’s the first bunch bo
ught up in Texas by the Hoad Land & Cattle Company. You don’t know where they come from, you’re just working for wages for your cousin Callie.”
Orville turned his head and spat again. “Callie, ain’t no sense in telling Reese about these cattle. If he finds out, tell him the Bashear boys traded for them in Texas. Tell him they come cheap because they was Government bought beef headed for an Indian reservation. The agent sold them to the Bashears and kept the money. He was going to blame his short count on a Canadian river flash flood that caught his herd by surprise. You got the bill of sale and you got the Bashear boys to back up the story.”
“Amy’s boys was always good traders. Reese knows that,” Ty said.
Orville nodded. “Callie, you’ll be the first to know if Reese hears about that stampede on the National.”
“I don’t reckon,” Callie contradicted. “He won’t tell me anything.”
“Still, keep your ears open. Like I told all the boys, soon’s we can move these cattle, me and my boys will drive them over into Moffitt County. After I sell, I’ll open an account in the bank at Moffitt. No use letting the bank here know how much money we’re making.” Now he pushed himself to his feet. “Me, I’m hitting the blankets.” He drew his hunting knife from his sheath and tossed it on the table in front of Callie. “Get to work on Big John, Callie. Just go careful around the ears. They’re so damn big, they’re hard to miss.”
Reese was doing some hated bookwork in his court-house office that morning when he became certain that he was being watched. When he turned his head he saw a man almost as big as himself standing silently in the doorway. The stranger wore ancient chaps over his work-worn levis, his half-boots had dried mud on them and his buttonless vest was as weather-faded as his shirt and battered Stetson. He seemed a man in his middle thirties whose lean and homely face hadn’t seen a razor in weeks. His nose, once broken, was badly mended and this fact, together with his bold and friendly blue eyes, gave an observer a feeling that he had fought much and would fight much more and was not especially concerned with the odds against him.
“You’re Sheriff Branham and I’m Will Reston. Want a little parley with you.”
Reese gestured toward the chair and Reston, unmistakably a Texan, tramped across the room and slacked into the chair. He made no effort to shake hands.
“What can I do for you?” Reese asked quietly.
“Don’t rightly know yet.” He looked around the room and his glance halted on a wall map. He rose now, saying, “Let’s start with this here map now. Would you kindly look at it with me.”
Reese rose and joined him at the map which was of Sutton County. Reston raised a finger and placed it roughly four inches off the righthand side of the map and said, “The National would be about here, d’you reckon?” When Reese nodded, Reston went on moving his finger an inch up the wall. “The Little Muddy would be about here, looks like.”
Reese now touched the map and said, “The head waters start in the brakes here.”
“Well, I come to the right place then,” Reston said mildly. He turned and went back to his chair. Reese came back and sat down and now Reston with a stiff thumb pushed his hat up off his forehead. “Four, five days—no—nights ago my herd was stampeded off the National.”
“Lightning?” Reese asked.
“No, sir, gunfire. One of my night herders was stomped to doll rags. The herd was scattered for fifteen miles.”
“The National doesn’t cross Sutton County, Reston.”
“I know that, but the herd was stampeded toward your county, right at the brakes.”
“And you’re missing some beef, I take it.”
“We lost a couple of dozen killed but that don’t add up to over two hundred.”
“Can you give me anything to go on?” Reese asked. “See anybody? Hear ’em talk?”
“No. Only thing I can give you to go on is my brand. R-Cross on the left hip.”
“And you think they’re in Sutton County?”
“All I know is that they were headed this way,” Reston said. “It rained the whole damn day and night too and a stolen cow makes the same tracks as a cow that ain’t stolen. When we finally run into stuff with local brands, we quit looking.”
Reese nodded. “What do you want me to do, Reston?”
“I don’t know your people and you do,” Reston said mildly. “You lost much stock here?”
“Once in a while we run across a fresh hide. We figure it’s likely some miner from one of the mines up in the Wheelers is too lazy to hunt his own buckskin. Nobody misses many cattle, so there’s your answer. Folks around here are average honest, maybe better than average.”
“Many herds on the National raided?”
“You’d know more about that than I would, being a drover,” Reese answered. “I understand they had some trouble but that was further south and the trouble was Indian.”
Reston grunted. “Still is.” Now he put his hands on his knees, about to rise. “Don’t reckon I give you much to go on, but, damn! I hate a thief.” He pushed himself erect now and said, “If any of my stuff shows up, just write me at Big Island, Texas.”
Reese rose and they shook hands. After Reston had gone Reese wrote down his name, address and brand on a slip of paper which he tucked in one of the desk pigeon holes. Then, leaning back in his chair, he looked out the window. If Reston is right, this was disturbing news—but was he right? Reese had heard of stampedes where a third of the stampeded herd had simply vanished. Some drovers would accept a two hundred head loss as one of the accepted hazards met along the hundred miles of trail, but apparently Reston wasn’t one of them. With nothing more than Reston’s story to go on, there was little he himself could do except look out for R-Cross branded cattle. That number wouldn’t be easy to hide. If they were here, they would show. It was a worrisome thing too, Reese thought. When a county got a bad name with drovers, it could mean real trouble. An angry trail crew could wreck a town if it thought the town was in league against it.
The only thing he could do was wait and then he thought wryly, I’m getting pretty good at that.
It was Buddy Hoad who first spotted the R-Cross branded bay pony at the Best Bet tie-rail and the shock of seeing it stopped him cold in his tracks on the boardwalk. This was the brand he and the other Hoads had just got through venting on two hundred stolen cattle. Now it appeared on the left hip of a rangy bay tied in front of the Bale saloon and Buddy felt a moment of panic. He looked at the horses racked on either side of the bay and saw with a vast relief that the others horses had local brands, which meant that the bay’s owner was probably alone.
Buddy’s next move was instinctive. He turned and retraced his steps past the blacksmith’s shop and Silberman’s Emporium and shouldered his way through the batwing doors of Maceys Saloon, where he had left his Uncle Orville only a minute ago. Maceys was a small saloon and shabby, with a bar on the left. Tim Macey had married one of Amy Bashear’s daughters, so he was counted a Hoad. Bald and short, a soft and surly man of forty, he was now filling pint bottles from a gallon jug behind the bar. Orville was giving him a lazy attention and Buddy moved in beside him. “Uncle Orv, you better come with me,” Buddy said quietly.
Something in Buddy’s voice made Orville look at him abruptly. “All right,” Orville said mildly.
He followed Buddy out of the saloon and caught up with him as they passed the blacksmith’s shop.
“See that bay past the break in the tie-rail?”
“What about him?”
“Look at his brand.”
The two men moved and when Orville saw the brand, he, like Buddy had before him, halted abruptly. “Well now,” he said softly, swivelling his glance from the horse to the Best Bet’s half doors. Without speaking to Buddy, he pushed into the saloon bar just inside the door. The big room held a couple of men drinking at one of the card tables and a half dozen at the bar full down its length. Orville knew every man in the room and now he traveled half the length of the bar, Bu
ddy trailing him. He halted. The bartender left his other customers and came up to them. He was a bony man, red-eyed from drink, and his white apron at this hour of the morning was still unsoiled.
“Perry, see that bay out at the break in the tie-rail?”
Perry leaned over so he could see beyond the open batwings. “Yeah,” he said then. “Looks like he’s forgot to eat.”
“Who owns him?” Orville asked.
Perry straightened up. “Some Texas trail hand. He come in earlier, asked the sheriff’s name, bought himself a drink, then headed for the court-house.”
“Did he now?” Orville said softly.
He turned and went out and again Buddy trailed him. Pausing on the boardwalk just to the right of the door, Orville half sat down on the sill of the many-paned window. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, he stroked the ridge of his narrow, hawk nose. Finally, Buddy watching had to speak. “What d’you think, Uncle Orv?”
“I think we’re in trouble, Buddy, but I don’t know what kind of trouble.”
“If he seen any of us or had anything Reese could use, Reese would be on to us right now.”
“Maybe not. Maybe Reese would wait until he got the goods on us. But us, we can’t wait.”