For the Brand

by Ralph Compton

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  A WARM WYOMING WELCOME

  In pure instinct, Willis grabbed Laurella and swung her behind him. “You!” he exclaimed.

  Laurella’s fingernails bit into his arm. “Who is he?”

  “Isn’t it sweet?” said the Flour Sack Kid. “A lunkhead and his lady.”

  “What do you want?” Laurella demanded. “If it’s money you’re after, I don’t have any with me.”

  “Stifle yourself, woman.” The green eyes under the flour sack were fixed on Willis. “All I’m after is the pleasure of your company.”

  “Lay a hand on me and I’ll have every man in the territory after you,” Laurella vowed. “This might not be Texas, but abusin’ a woman is as vile as can be.”

  “Good Lord,” the Kid said. “You think awful highly of yourself, don’t you? You must be pretty under that silly veil. Why don’t you show me?”

  “I’ll be damned if I will.”

  “Such language,” the Flour Sack Kid said, and thumbed back the hammers on his black-handled revolvers. “You’ll show me or I’ll shoot your friend here in his good leg.”

  SIGNET

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, October 2005

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2005

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  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,

  Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling, allowing me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Chapter 1

  Willis woke up at the crack of dawn. He always woke up at the crack of dawn. It was as much a habit as breathing.

  The sparrows helped. They started chirping and flitting about in the bushes beside the line shack at the first hint of light. Sometimes Willis would lie and listen and envy them their joy and their energy. His own vigor was not what it had been, and he had not known joy—pure, real joy—since his days with Mattie. Willis missed his sister more than anything.

  Willis did not stir until the edges around the door brightened. Then he reluctantly cast off the blanket and sat up. The old bed creaked. So did a few of his joints. A hell of a thing, Willis thought, for a man who wouldn’t turn fifty for pretty near ten years.

  His bad knee twinged with pain as it was prone to do on brisk mornings, and he cursed himself as he was prone to do.

  Willis flexed his left leg a few times, then glanced at the brace on the floor by the foot of the bed. To hell with it, he decided. He pushed to his feet and took three steps toward the stove before his leg reminded him that human bone and human sinew should never be taken for granted. Whoever did was liable to end his days a cripple. He pitched onto his hands and his good knee, and cursed himself anew.

  His bouts of temper never lasted long. He had never been a hothead, not even as a boy. He had been mad at himself now for what seemed like forever but that was not the same. A man had a right to be mad when he did something stupid. The stupider it was, the madder he could be.

  Willis curled his legs under himself and levered across the floor to where he had thrown the brace the night before. He had to be careful, he reminded himself, or he might break it, and then where would he be? Up the creek without a paddle. No, up the creek without a damn canoe.

  It took a while to get the brace on. Willis had to place it just right or it would chafe something awful and, worse, his leg wouldn’t hold him up. Th
e thick leather straps had to be as tight as a woman’s corset. Not that he had much experience with corsets. He had seen Mattie’s, of course, but had never thought of touching it; you never thought like that about your sister. Then there had been that dove down to Kansas, at the end of a trail drive, with a corset it took what seemed like hours to undo. And that was it. Some of the punchers liked to boast of undoing more corsets than they had fingers and toes, and he could only boast of undoing one, and even then he had needed the dove’s help.

  Presently, the brace was secure. Propping himself against the wall, Willis slowly stood, and when he was satisfied he would not fall, he limped to the bed and pulled his pants and his shirt on over his long underwear. His pants were baggier than most but they had to be because of the brace. Next he forced his stockinged feet into his boots and donned his hat.

  Willis studied his reflection in the square of glass above the washbasin. His eyebrows were too bushy and his nose was too long and too crooked from where a bronc had busted it one time, and his square chin gave his face the look of a box. The only good feature he had were his eyes. As green as the greenest pine, that dove had said. Or as his sister liked to say, as green as the prairie in the first bloom of spring. She always had a fine way with words, Mattie did. It made her fate all that more pitiable.

  Willis shook himself and limped to the stove. He added wood from a pile under the window and kindled a new fire by puffing on glowing embers left over from the night before.

  The shack always took a while to warm. Not that it was big, as line shacks went. In addition to his bunk there were some bunks he was required to keep ready for use at any hour of the day or night. The only other furniture was a small table with two chairs

  Willis held his hands to the flames, then rubbed them and walked to the door. He did not bother with his coat. It was not winter yet although that high up a body could be forgiven for thinking maybe it was.

  A golden eyeball peeked at him over the rim of the world. Willis closed the door and limped around the side to the corral. The horses were there, his and the two extras, as they should have been. “No sign of that varmint?” Willis asked. Not one horse had the decency to look up. “Lazy no-accounts,” he grumbled.

  Willis looked off down the mountain. The woods were dark yet. A few low clouds hugged the treetops. It always tickled him being higher than the clouds. Some days in the winter, the valley was nothing but clouds from end to end, lending him the notion he was on top of the world. He wasn’t, of course. The Tetons were high but they weren’t as high as that mountain over in Asia somewhere, the one Charlie Weaver said was so high, a man could stand on his toes and about touch the moon. Charlie was known to stretch the truth, but other folks had said the mountain was as high as anything, so maybe it really was.

  About to turn and go back in, Willis paused at a hint of movement far below. He figured it to be an elk or a deer or some other critter but the sky picked that moment to lighten a few degrees and he saw the unmistakable silhouette of a distant horse and ride.

  “I’ll be damned!” Willis blurted, too overcome with excitement to move. He had to remind himself that Indians rode horses, too. So did badmen, although badmen were rare in those parts ever since the Flour Sack Kid left that neck of the country and was giving folks down in Colorado fits.

  Willis didn’t really reckon it was an Indian. The Shoshones were all over to the Wind River region and the Blackfeet hadn’t acted up in a coon’s age. He rubbed his hands again and hurried back in. The shack was nicely warm and the stove was hot. He got down the Arbuckle’s from a shelf and put a fresh pot of coffee on. Then he took down the flour and some of the precious butter and the Borden’s condensed milk and the salt, and by the time hooves clomped outside he had a dozen hot flapjacks heaped and ready, plus the coffee and some potatoes, besides.

  Willis limped to the door. The rider had drawn rein, and was framed by the rising sun. Willis had to squint to see who it was. “Well, this is a wonderment. Are you drunk? Or did you get lost and end up here by mistake?”

  “Is that any way to greet someone who has come five hundred miles to bring you the news?” Charlie Weaver asked. He was half Willis’ age and uncommonly plump for a cow hand but he could ride with the best of them and had the cheeriest disposition this side of a patent medicine salesman. Perhaps too cheery.

  “It’s only forty miles to the ranch house,” Willis corrected him, “and more than likely the news you’re bringin’ is your new conquest over to the Lucky Dollar.”

  Charlie pressed a hand to his chest in one of his typical theatrics. “You wound me, pard. You truly do. How you can think so little of me after all the great times we’ve had is a mystery.”

  “Climb down and I’ll tend to your horse,” Willis said. It was his job and he always did what was expected of him.

  “No need,” Charlie said. “This ain’t official. It’s a social call. I can do it my own self.”

  “Climb down,” Willis insisted. “There’s breakfast waitin’. Just be sure to leave some for me or I’ll boot you out on your ear.”

  “Did someone mention food?” Charlie was off his sorrel so fast he practically sprouted wings. “Yes, indeed! I can smell it from here! Pard, you are a gem of a gent and I’ll punch any uncouth clod who says different.”

  “Shut up and go eat, you jackass,” Willis said gruffly. His friend’s fondness for flowery words was often an embarrassment. Willis led the sorrel to the corral and stripped off the saddle and the saddle blanket and the bridle, then carried the saddle and the bedroll and saddlebags inside.

  Charlie was at the table, forking a large piece of flapjack into his mouth with a smile of contentment. “You know, Willis, if you ever give up bein’ a cowboy, you could always hire out as a cook. You’re not half bad.”

  “I’m passable.” Willis would not accept the false praise. “You must have ridden all night to get here this early.”

  “That I did,” Charlie allowed, chomping lustily, talking with his mouth full. “I have to be back day after tomorrow and didn’t want to spend two nights on the trail comin’ out.”

  “Day after tomorrow?” Willis repeated. “I figured you were ridin’ the line.”

  “Told you,” Charlie said between chomps, “this is a social visit.”

  Willis digested that while forking a couple of flapjacks onto a plate and reaching for the molasses. He told himself he should wait until Charlie was done before he brought it up but he was burning with interest. “So what’s this big news?”

  “There’s a new girl at the Lucky Dollar.”

  “I knew it,” Willis said.

  “Her name is Gertrude but everybody calls her Gerty. She’s from Ohio. A little too wide at the hips for my tastes and she has the biggest damn feet you ever saw on a female, but she hums real pretty.”

  “Hums?”

  “When she’s not talkin’ and you’re not talkin’, she just sort of sits there and hums,” Charlie related. “About puts me to sleep.”

  “So you’ve had her?” Willis took it for granted.

  “No, sir. Not her. She’s a mite finnicky. Hasn’t invited any of the punchers under the sheets, nor any of the townsmen, besides. Jim Palmer tried, and Lord knows he hasn’t failed yet, but he met his match in Gerty. She told him flat out no man could take liberties with her unless she cottoned to him and he cottoned to her more than any other.”

  “Sounds like she’s throwin’ a loop for a husband,” Willis said. Jim Palmer was the handsomest ranny in the outfit, maybe the most handsome man in all of Wyoming. Any female who could turn Jim down had to be up to no good.

  “My thinkin’ exactly,” Charlie said. “But Gerty ain’t the big news. Neither is the Flour Sack Kid.”

  Willis gave a mild start. He could not help himself. “How does the Kid fit into your news?”

  “I figured you hadn’t heard,” Charlie said smugly. “Word is he made it so hot for himself down in Colorado, vigilantes came within a whisker of tre
atin’ him to a strangulation jig. They say he’s driftin’ up our way again.”

  “Who says this?” Willis asked, alarmed.

  “Oh, you know, the boys at the Lucky Dollar. Slim says he heard it from a drummer, who heard it from a friend of a lawdog down to Denver or some such place.”

  Slim, the bartender at the Lucky Dollar, was as reliable a source of information as Cottonwood had except for the parson, who never, ever lied, and reminded everyone of that regularly. But Willis hoped it wasn’t true. God, how he hoped it wasn’t true. “Well, if Gerty ain’t the news and the Kid ain’t the news, what in blazes is so important you rode all night to see me?”

  Charlie looked him in the eyes. “Abe is thinkin’ of sellin’ the Bar T.”

  This time it was more than a start. It was shock. Pure and total shock. Willis was so numb, he couldn’t say anything.

  Charlie chuckled. “Set you off your feed, did I? Word reached the bunkhouse two days ago. One of Elfie’s friends got it straight from Elfie at a quiltin’ bee and the friend told Jim when he went courtin’.”

  Willis’ spirits sank. “I bet it was Elfie who put Abe up to it. Abe would never sell on his own.” Abe Tyler had built the Bar T from nothing into a prosperous ranch and was as proud of it as a man could be proud of anything on God’s green earth.

  “It would be a rigged bet,” Charlie said. “Of course she prodded him. She never liked it here. She’s a city gal at heart and country livin’ doesn’t agree with her refined disposition.” Charlie snorted. “Abe should never have brought her back from Saint Louis. What he sees in her is hard to untangle.”

  Not for Willis. Elfie had a bosom that resembled twin watermelons, and Abe always had been exceptionally fond of watermelons. “How soon before you reckon Abe finds a buyer?”