So great was the demand that visionary entrepreneurs were raising a town in Abilene, Kansas, to meet the transcontinental railroad surging west. But in the summer of 1867, the dawning of Abilene’s day lay ahead in the future.
With no neighbors near, the Cross spread and surroundings were thick with wild longhorn cattle. Johnny and Luke often went into the brush, rounding up the ornery maverick critters and branding them. Their brand was the “Cross Bow,” consisting of two arrows crisscrossed in an X shape on a rocker. Their herd had been part of a big cattle drive by the Hangtree County ranchers to Sedalia the past summer. Johnny and Luke had come out of it pretty well.
They had added two ranch hands to their outfit, Coot Dooley and Vic Vargas.
Coot was an old-timer, white-haired and white-bearded with the energy of a much younger man. Tough, sinewy, and leathery, he’d been many things in his day—a day he boasted was far from done. He’d been an explorer, mountain man, Army scout, hunter, trapper, Indian fighter, and soldier. He’d fought in the War for Texas Independence, the Mexican-American War, the War Between the States, and countless “little wars without a name,” as he called them.
Vic Vargas was a powerfully built young man with curly black hair and a fierce mustachio. He was from Mextown in Hangtree, an ace ranch hand with a vested interest and percentage of the profits and a ready fast gun with plenty of guts. His résumé was far shorter than Coot Dooley’s, but he’d been alive a lot shorter time. He burned to make his mark on the frontier and his fame fill the minds of men and women.
Luke and Vic had stayed behind to guard the ranch. It was agreed that both pairs not wander off by themselves where they could be picked off more easily by old enemies or new—the Free Company or whomever.
Johnny and Coot hadn’t ridden out to admire the view. They had dismounted and were looking around with a purpose and a particular point of view.
The grass of the knoll had recently been trampled down by a number of horses. Discarded butts of hand-rolled cigarettes littered the turf. Hoofprints were thicker at the foot of the knoll on the north side, where they would have been screened from sight from those at the ranch house. Grass and leaves had been heavily browsed where the horses had grazed.
“Like I said when I come in from riding trail yesterday, somebody’s been sure ’nuff dogging us.”
Johnny agreed. “You were right, Coot.”
“That’s what I like to hear!” Coot said, slapping his thigh to enthusiastically underline his words.
“Why not? It don’t cost me nothing to say so.”
“That’s what you think. Jest wait till I hit you up for a raise, boss.”
“You wait,” Johnny said. “And do me a favor—wait a long time.”
“Why so tightfisted? You got plenty of money,” Coot said.
“I’ve got a lot of expenses, including a lazy, no-working, no-account son of a gun on the payroll, not to mention eating me out of house and home.”
Coot tsk-tsked, shaking his head sadly. “Oh, young Vic ain’t all that bad.”
“Who’s talking about Vic?” Johnny asked.
“Surely you don’t mean pore ol’ hardworking Luke!” Coot exclaimed. “He does drink too much, though Lord knows he’s got reason to.”
“No, I don’t mean Luke, and I’m sure not low-rating myself. You figure out who’s the party in question.”
“I resent those remarks, so I’ll jest pass over them with silence,” Coot said, assuming an attitude of sorely tried dignity.
“A refreshing change, especially the silence part. I’m looking forward to it.” Johnny eyed the horse tracks at the knoll, studying on them. “Three or four watchers, from the look of things. Those are marks of iron horseshoes, so they’re not Indians. That and the cigarette butts pretty well prove that. Could they be rustlers, maybe?”
“No sign that any of the stock’s been run off, Johnny. And rustlers are more likely to stay away from the ranch house, not close to it. They been watching us!”
“Dry-gulchers, maybe. Ambushers.” Johnny sounded undisturbed by the prospect.
“There’s more,” Coot continued. “T’other night while you and Luke was in town, I seed lights in the cut. Torches, I’d say. Been meaning to mention it to you, but I plumb forgot.”
“Better late than never.” Unconsciously, Johnny ran his hands over the omnipresent twin Colts in hip holsters, but for him, it was only the beginning. A veteran pistol fighter in the Missouri Long Rider tradition, he had armed himself with several other revolvers—one worn in the top of his waistband and a smaller caliber gun tucked in his pants at the small of his back.
Coot Dooley had a well-worn .44 at his right hip, a tomahawk-style war hatchet and knife at his belt, and a Spencer carbine in his saddle scabbard.
“The tracks lead over to the Breaks. Let’s follow them and see where they lead,” Johnny said.
They mounted up, pointing their horses west toward the hills. No rain had fallen for the last few days, so the tracks remained intact. Sunlight at the riders’ backs threw a golden glow on the foothills, the light climbing ever higher on the range as the sun rose.
Johnny and Coot threw long shadows as they neared the vertical rock walls looming ahead. A keen-eyed search unearthed another spot that the unknown watchers had used as an observation post to spy on the ranch. Sets of tracks indicated that the Unseen had made more than one such visit in the past few days.
All the tracks came from the cut—Cross’s Cut, as it was called—and returned there. It was a pass running east-west through the Breaks into Wild Horse Canyon, which ran west of and parallel to the north-south range of hills.
They rode into the cut. It was several hundred yards wide and a half mile long. Purple-blue shadows lay at the far end of the passage where the sunlight had not yet reached. The two rode to the cut’s western mouth at the opposite end.
The Breaks was not a single range but a group of several ranges of high rocky limestone hills and ridges running north-south. Wild Horse Canyon lay between the eastern range and the next long parallel ridge of the Breaks. It was well-watered with good grazing land. Hundreds of free-roving mustangs lived there, using it as a corridor to access a wide expanse of grassy valleys nestled in the hills. The terrain featured lots of side-pockets, draws, and gaps—good hiding places.
As a place of refuge for the hunted, it attracted not only wild horses but wild men. Indians, outlaws, fugitives, hermits, half-crazed solitary wayfarers, and such had all made the canyon their home at one time or another.
The canyon was cool and hazy, the grass dewy. Chuckling, purling sounds of streams and rivulets could be heard throughout the canyon.
“No mustangs to be seen hereabouts today, Johnny.”
“Could be they were scared off by strangers, Coot. Plenty of comings and goings here lately,” Johnny said, indicating tracks on the turf.
It was easy to tell the difference between the hoofprints of wild horses and those of mounted men. Mustangs went unshod. The horses of men bore the unmistakable imprint of iron horseshoes. Indian ponies were often unshod, but the hoofprints of mounted men dug deeper into the ground due to their heavier weight.
Any number of tracks were laid down over the springy turf. The strangers never traveled alone, always riding in groups of no fewer than three men at one time, and often as many as a half dozen. They not only went back and forth to the cut but south toward the Notch and Buffalo Hump, too far distant to be seen.
“Most of them tracks lead farther north,” Coot said.
“Let’s follow them,” said Johnny.
Follow them they did.
The cool morning air was freshened with moisture from the many streams of the canyon. Ghostly fleeting images of horses in the distance flitted in and out of sight, quick and elusive as cloud shadows.
Johnny and Coot rode on for several miles. They were watchful, talking little. Tracks of intruders curved to the left going from Wild Horse Canyon into the pass that ran through the we
stern spine of the Breaks to the plains and the limitless Llano beyond.
A massive rock buttress shouldered deep into the western pass, forcing Johnny and Coot to go around it to proceed farther.
“Looks like that’s where them rascals have been coming from,” Coot said, leaning to one side in the saddle for a better look at the horse tracks.
“And here they are,” Johnny declared flatly, his soft-spoken voice quivering with implicit menace. Menace that radiated, not menace felt.
Rounding the blind corner of the rock limb, Johnny and Coot suddenly saw a group of riders coming from the west end of the pass. Johnny’s thumbs stealthily slipped the rawhide thong loops at the tops of his twin holstered Colts, readying them for action. He and Coot were confronted by five well-armed strangers.
A stir went through the others at the sight of the duo. Low mean laughter sounded.
Johnny and Coot looked cool, unflappable. And why not? Both had made a longtime habit of riding into trouble and, what’s more important, riding out of it. They might have been out for a pleasant Sunday ride, so calm and unaffected did they seem. Unruffled as a clear pond surface on a windless day.
A close observer might have noticed a peculiar change come over Johnny’s eyes. Ordinarily, they were hazel in color, a kind of yellow-brownish hue. They were changeable by nature, sometimes shading more yellow than brown, other times more brown than yellow. Their color could depend on many things of the moment—the season, time of day or night, the light or lack of it and, especially, Johnny’s mercurial moods.
When he was heading into trouble, the yellow hue predominated, giving his eyes a catlike glow as if shining with an eerie inner light. For more than a few men, those shiny yellow orbs were the last thing they saw in this life.
Johnny and Coot advanced their horses at a walk.
The strangers were little more than a stone’s throw away. They looked like—were—hardcases. Some were recognizable. Troy Madison and Kinney Scopes were part of the Hog Ranch crowd, an important part. Troy was the outfit’s resident fast gun and Kinney was a versatile, devious crook-of-all-trades. All lawless trades, that is.
Also present was Buck Thornton, a sometime scout for wagon trains passing through Hangtree. Apparently the wagon trains had passed through, but Buck remained.
The other two were strangers to Johnny. One was a youngster who looked barely out of his mid-teens, if that. He had a mop of sandy hair, round blue eyes, a snub nose, and a shiny-smooth pink face. Draped on his undersized frame, the big-caliber gun in his hip holster looked like an oversized horse pistol, almost too big for his neat small hands.
The other man had a lion’s mane of unkempt wiry iron-gray hair and long narrow eyes. His weather-beaten face was a mass of wrinkles where it wasn’t covered by a long straggly salt-and-pepper beard.
“Psst! That baby-faced kid is Brat Sisely,” Coot said in a stage whisper only Johnny could hear. “Don’t let his looks fool you. He’s lightning fast—killed twelve men in gunfights that I know of. Take him first. I’ll take Troy.”
“Uh-huh,” Johnny murmured, letting the oldster know he’d gotten the message.
“Howdy, boys,” Kinney Scopes said, smirking. He’d just commenced the endgame whether he knew it or not. A tough, rowdy loudmouth, he wore a battered high-crowned hat, tufts of hair sticking out the sides over a jowly face whose receding chin sprouted a mass of billy goat whiskers.
“This here’s Johnny Cross, a big man in these parts and fast with a gun,” Scopes announced to his partners. It was his way of alerting those who didn’t know who Johnny Cross was that he could shoot.
“Never heard of him,” Sisely piped up in a high-pitched boyish voice.
“You should have,” Madison said, looking a bit sullen around eyes and mouth. “He ain’t no greenhorn.”
“And I am?” Sisely challenged. Something in his voice, some note or tone evocative of a whiny, smart-alecky kid sassing off raised the hackles of every grown man within hearing distance.
“Don’t take offense where none is offered, boy,” Madison said, his sullenness increasing. It was clear there was no love lost between him and the youngster.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Sisely shrilled, bridling. “And don’t call me boy, I don’t like it!”
“Now, now lad. Don’t go picking fights with your friends,” soothed the prune-faced man with the lion’s mane of hair and wild beard.
“I don’t want none of your advice, Titus Gow. You ain’t my pa!” Sisley retorted.
“It’s good advice. Pretty soon you won’t have no friends left to pick fights with,” Gow said with seeming good cheer. “’Specially not with that quick trigger finger of yours,” he added with a laugh.
“Dog my cats if it ain’t Buck Thornton,” Coot said conversationally across the narrow gap between him and Johnny and the oncoming riders. When they were facing each other, he went on as if merely passing the time of day. “Hardly expected to see you in these parts, Buck.” In reality, so much more than that was going on beneath the surface of the chance encounter. The undercurrents were running deep.
Buck Thornton wore a fringed buckskin jacket and a flat-crowned hat with a snakeskin hatband. His six-gun was worn in a soft, rawhide, Mexican-style bus-cadero holster rig.
“Last I seed of you, Buck, you was scouting for Major Adams and a wagon train of pilgrims headed for Califor-nye-ay.”
“The major and I came to a parting of the ways, Coot,” Thornton said easily.
“Haw!” Scopes’s laughter was explosive, raw, and taunting, provoking a glare from Buck Thornton. “Major Adams fired his ass off the wagon train after ol’ Buck got somebody’s unmarried daughter in the family way!”
“Shut up, Scopes,” Thornton said tightly, his face coloring red from the neck up.
Scopes’s broad grin radiated undimmed.
“Nothing to be ashamed of, Buck. You was just doing what comes natural.” Gow made a show of looking around at his fellows. “Ain’t a one of us here that ain’t made a slip one time or another.”
“I’ll say!” Scopes said, laughing his loud jackass bray.
“And done worse than getting some pore little Sunbonnet Sue with a child,” Gow added.
“Ain’t that the truth!” Scopes chimed in.
Madison kept aloof from the horseplay, remaining serious and unsmiling. He was watching Johnny’s hands and eyes. Watching closely.
Resting folded hands on top of the saddle horn, Gow leaned forward, eyes nearly swallowed up in a nest of wrinkled creases as he squinted at Coot, studying him. “I know you,” he said with the preoccupied air of one struggling to recall a memory. “I know you from someplace. Wish I could recollect where . . . Well, it’ll come to me.”
“Everybody knows Coot Dooley. He’s been around forever and he’s older than the hills,” Scopes said. “Older than the dust on Moses’s sandals!”
Coot didn’t bat an eye. “You said it, not me, but I’ll second the motion.” To Gow he said, “You might remember me from a long time ago, a long long time ago. I was at Fort Tanner when the McKie rescue party came in.”
Gow never lost his smile, showing a mouthful of the blackened stumps of rotten teeth.
“Then again you might not recall me. You was in mighty sad shape when they brung you in,” Coot went on. “Being snowed in at that mining camp in the mountains all winter with no food and just them seven other miners must have been mighty rough.”
“It surely was,” Gow said, eyes getting a fixed faraway look. “Surely was.” If there had been a risk of him losing his composure, it was gone. The moment had passed.
“You was the onliest one to survive, as I recollect,” Coot said. “Mighty lucky!”
Gow nodded. “I’m a lucky fellow. Reckon I’ve always been lucky that way.”
“Not today,” Coot said with a ring of finality. That dropped a heavy stone into the pond, ripples spreading outward.
“We gonna stand here jawing all morning?” Sisely
demanded, breaking the stillness.
“That’s youngsters for you, al’us in a hurry to git somewhere,” Gow said, chuckling. “They don’t appreciate the satisfaction a man takes in talking over old times.”
“Kind of a surprise running into you out here, Johnny,” Scopes said. “Off your home range, ain’t ya?”
“You know what they say about the early bird catching the worm,” Johnny pointed out.
Gow laughed. “They do say that! The question is, who’s the bird and who’s the worm?”
“You know how you can find out,” Johnny said. Mindful of Coot’s warning, he threw down first on Brat Sisely.
The kid was fast. Johnny moved first, but Sisely’s gun cleared the holster before his did. That big, oversized horse pistol was clutched in both hands at the same time and began firing away. Overanxious, his opening shots missed, the rounds thrumming so close by that Johnny felt the wind of their passage.
The kid missed his target, but Johnny didn’t. The Colt in his right fist put two in Sisely’s middle, blowing him out of the saddle.
As Johnny and Sisley traded shots, Coot dug his boot heels sharp into the pinto’s flanks, hauling back hard on the reins at the same time.
Nickering in protest at the unaccustomed hard use, the pinto upreared, rising on its hind legs, forelegs off the ground. Coot held himself in the saddle by the viselike grip of his long, bowed thighs.
The draw between Johnny and Sisely gave Madison a lightning-like but very real jolt, throwing him off a hair by its surprise. He’d expected to be Johnny’s prime target.
Madison drew without thinking, snaking his gun out of the holster. Johnny was still his intended target, but Coot’s horse going up on its hind legs and rising to a height of eight feet and more blocked his line of fire. He balked for an instant in the deadly contest where life and death were measured in instants and split seconds.
Madison had no clear shot at Coot, either, shielded by the horse’s bulk as he was. To the outlaw’s way of thinking shooting a horse was a waste of bullets, especially in a gunfight, so Madison was temporarily put in check for a critical interval during the moment of truth.
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