One look into Frank’s grim, strained face and Winston knew better than to ask questions. “Mrs. Kerrigan’s son is good with the rifle,” he said.
“I need Trace to stay with the herd,” Frank said. “Who else?”
“Well, there’s Dave Roche. He can draw mighty quick, and they say he killed a man over Abilene way a couple of years back. He’s a wild kid, Texas born and raised, but—”
“He’s hard to handle,” Frank said. “Yeah, I know him. He’ll do. Deuce, go get Roche, tell him to come in. You’ll take his place at swing.” He saw the consternation on the young waddie’s face and said, “I’ll get somebody else to ride night herd tonight.”
The prospect of a good night’s sleep cheered the youngster considerably, and he left in search of Roche.
“Frank, can this be resolved without gunplay?” Kate said.
“Sure, if the rustlers are willing to return our cattle. But I’m not counting on it.”
“You said there were four of them. You and Dave Roche will be two,” Kate said. “We can hold the herd here and you can take more men.”
Frank said, “Kate, we need to push on. We’re already at least a day behind half a dozen other outfits. First cows in Dodge bring the best prices. You know that. Besides, I need shootists, not punchers who only use their revolvers to string fence wire. A bunch of dead waddies won’t get the herd to the stockyards.”
“You sure about Hank—”
“He won’t fight.”
Kate said, “All right, if he won’t fight I will. I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not,” Frank said.
A frown gathered between Kate’s eyebrows, never a good sign. “Are you giving me orders, Mr. Cobb?” she said.
“Kate, we’ll riding into trouble, probably gun trouble,” Frank said. “A gunfight is no place for a woman.”
“But it is this woman’s place,” Kate said. “You seem to have forgotten that I’m the owner of the KK ranch. Those are my cattle that were rustled. If I was a man would you expect me to go with you?”
“Yeah, of course. But—”
“But because I’m a woman I can’t handle trouble? Is that it?”
Frank looked into Kate’s eyes, which were full of green fire. He chose his words carefully. “Kate, I know that you’ve killed men before. Three of them in New York when you were just a slip of a girl.”
“They raped my sister, and she later died giving birth to a stillborn child,” Kate said. “I shot all three because back then I was angry and I’m angry now. Fifty cows may not seem like much, but they are mine, and I will not have what’s mine stolen by anyone. What do you want me to do, Frank? Ride point with the chuck wagon with not a care in the world while you do my dirty work and put your life in danger?”
“Kate, I don’t want you to get hurt,” Frank said.
“It comes with the job. I ride for the brand the same as you do.” Kate raised a silencing hand. “No buts, Frank, I am going with you, and there’s an end to it.”
“I admire your determination and your pluck, Kate, but by times you’re a headstrong woman,” Frank said.
“In other words, I’m a stubborn bitch,” Kate said. “Is that it?”
Frank shook his head. “I’ve no answer to your question, Kate. I’m riding wide around that one.”
He was spared further comment when Dave Roche rode in and said, “You want to see me, boss?”
“Rustlers ran off fifty head last night,” Frank said. “I’m taking them back.” Roche made no answer and his young face revealed nothing. “By their tracks, I reckon there are four men involved,” Frank said. “You think you can handle it?”
Roche was a lanky youngster with bright blue eyes, yellow hair and a mouth a little too thin and hard for his nineteen years. He belted his Colt high, horseman style, on his right hip and its worn walnut handle revealed that it was a working gun and not just cowboy fashion. He said, “I ride for the brand.”
Frank nodded. There was nothing more needed to be said.
Kate stepped into the silence. “I’ll be riding with you, Dave,” she said.
The puncher’s eyes slid to Frank, but his expression didn’t change.
Then realization hit Frank Cobb like a slap upside the head. Kate was stubborn all right, pigheaded even, but, by God, right then he was proud of her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tracks left by fifty cows and four riders leave an easy trail to follow, and by mid-morning Kate and the men came on a creek that flowed due south and seemed to have its origin in rolling hills thick with piñon, juniper, and here and there stands of ponderosa pine. The rising sun cast shadows on the grass and the air smelled fresh of the new day.
Dave Roche had followed the northward course of the stream and now he rode back to Kate and Frank and said, “Looks like they stopped to water the cattle about a quarter mile from here. Both banks are well broken down. I reckon cows have used that part of the creek before.”
“Then their cabin is likely to be close,” Frank said.
“That would be my thinking,” Roche said.
Frank looked at Roche and then Kate. “We ready for this?” he said.
The young puncher grinned and nodded, and Kate slid her Winchester from the boot. “Say the word, Frank,” she said.
“I reckon everything has already been said, Kate. Let’s ride.”
Roche led the way along the creek bank. After half a mile the stream looped to the east around a cottonwood and then came up on a short stretch of piñon and juniper that opened onto a grassy meadow where dusty cattle grazed. All wore the KK brand.
A cabin lay on the northernmost edge of the meadow, a low structure with a sagging roof and a rickety porch out front. A pole corral holding five horses stood nearby and there were several outbuildings. Even from a distance it was a rundown, two-by-twice outfit that told a tale of lazy, shiftless occupants who kept their place together with baling wire and twine.
As Kate and the others rode closer through the grazing cows a greasy man with a huge belly stepped out of the cabin door and threw a pan of dirty water into the dust outside. He looked up, saw the riders coming, and ducked back inside. A few moments later he reappeared, this time wearing a gun, and was joined on the porch by three others, big, bearded, long-haired men, all of them armed.
The men watched the KK riders come, Frank Cobb in the lead. When he was within fifty feet of the cabin the big-bellied man yelled, “That’s far enough.”
Frank ignored that and didn’t draw rein until he, Kate, and Roche were ten feet from the porch. It was draw-fighting distance and the rustlers knew it.
“What the hell do you want?” the man with the belly said.
Kate answered, smiling. “There appears to have been a misunderstanding. It seems you lifted some of our cows by mistake and we’re here to take them off your hands.”
“That was no mistake, lady,” big belly said. “We’re poor, hungry folks, and we need them cows. Fact is, we need them so bad we’ll probably come back and help ourselves to more.”
Frank’s scanned the men on the porch, taking their measure.
The big-bellied man and two others just like him wore guns. But their cartridge belts and holsters were of poor quality, and the Colts hung too low, awkward and unhandy. They were men who used guns but they would not be fast on the draw and shoot. But the fourth man was different. As tall as the others, he was lean, narrow-faced with a great beak of a nose and hooded black eyes that were set too close together. He wore a gray frock coat, a collarless white shirt, and a flat-brimmed, low-crowned hat. His bone-handled Colt rode high, between the wrist and elbow of his right arm, and his gun leather was of good quality, obviously of Texas manufacture.
Frank pegged him as a pistolero. He’d be fast and at close range deadly.
Beside him Kate spoke again. “I don’t wish to resort to violence, so this is your last warning. Return my cattle now or face the consequences.”
A younger man, slac
k-mouthed, his hair falling over his shoulders in lank brown strands, said, “All right, enough talk. You two men ride out of here while you still can.” His eyes slimed like slugs over Kate’s breasts, and a smile touched his thick lips. “But the redheaded woman stays. I’m claiming her. She’s my lady now, understand?”
When he looked back on things, Frank Cobb couldn’t rightly figure how events might have gone from there. No doubt a general draw and shoot with a mighty uncertain outcome.
But it was young, reckless Dave Roche who had summed up the opposition and decided to deal the cards.
Schooled by his CSA veteran father in the ways of horseback fighters like William Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, and the incomparable John Mosby, Roche’s instinct and training was to strike hard, strike fast, and come a-shooting.
Roche kicked his horse into a startled gallop, let loose a rebel yell, and charged directly at the men on the porch. He’d read the same signs as Frank had, and as his mount jumped onto the porch Roche fired at the big-nosed draw fighter, then turned and shot at one of the other rustlers.
Overcoming his initial surprise, Frank drew and entered the fight. Roche’s horse rampaged on the narrow porch, rearing, its steel-shod hooves flying. The draw fighter, who’d taken a bullet, shot into Roche’s horse and the animal went down, violently throwing the young puncher out of the saddle. Frank fired at the gunman, missed. Fired again. Hit hard, the draw fighter grimaced and fell back off balance. He crashed through the cabin window in a shattering shower of splintered wood and glass.
Two of the rustlers were still on their feet, and the man with lank hair fired at Frank. He hurried the shot and missed. Frank didn’t. Angered by what the man had said about Kate, he aimed for center chest, fired, and as his Colt rose in recoil, fired again. Two hits, either one a killing shot. Frank’s first bullet crashed into the man’s chest, and the second hit high on his forehead and killed him instantly.
Kate, her Winchester up and ready, saw the surviving rustler bolt from the carnage on the porch and break for the trees. She laid her sights between the man’s shoulder blades and took up the slack on the trigger. But then she drew a deep breath and lowered the rifle. The man was scared and running from the fight, and she could not bring herself to shoot him in the back.
Frank Cobb was less merciful.
He swung his horse and galloped after the fleeing rustler. The man was just a few yards from the trees when he turned and saw Frank on him like the wrath of God. The rustler threw up his arms and screamed for mercy, but Frank drew rein, fired from his rearing horse, and pumped two fast shots into the man’s belly and chest.
Kate watched the rustler double up around his bullet wounds and then fall flat on his face, dead when he hit the ground. Frank rode back at a walk, reloading his Colt from his cartridge belt. The battle had taken only a couple of minutes and gray gunsmoke drifted over the bodies of dead men.
Dave Roche retrieved his fallen Colt, stepped around his dead horse, and walked into the cabin. After a few moments a gunshot racketed from inside, and then Roche appeared at the door again, holstering his gun. He saw Frank and said, “The dude in the frock coat wasn’t quite dead but he is now.”
Frank nodded. “I reckon.”
Then by way of explanation, Roche said, “I was right partial to the zebra dun he shot.”
“Seems like,” Frank said.
Kate said, “Frank, drag the bodies into the cabin, and then set it on fire. I don’t want outlaws to use it again, ever.”
“You didn’t take the shot, Kate,” Frank said. His voice was neutral, neither accusing nor questioning.
“No. No I didn’t,” Kate said.
Frank nodded and then said, “All right, Dave, you heard the lady. We’ve got some burning to do.”
As Kate and the others rode away from the cabin, a column of smoke from the blazing cabin rose into the sky behind them.
* * *
Pushing fifty head of cattle and four horses across broken country, the day was shading into evening by the time Kate reached the herd. Still smarting at being left behind, Trace Kerrigan demanded to know what had happened.
Used up and in no mood to recount the events of the day, Kate said, “Ask Frank.”
Looking sour, Trace went in search of Frank Cobb. Kate stepped to the fire and poured herself much-needed coffee. A young puncher tossed wood on the fire and as sparks rose in a scarlet fountain, she said, “How is the herd?”
“Bedded down on good grass, Mrs. Kerrigan,” the puncher said. “They settled in right well tonight.”
Kate nodded her thanks and the waddie, uncomfortable at being too near the boss, walked away toward the remuda, building a smoke as he went.
“You hungry, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
Kate turned as Lem Winston stepped to her side. He held a tin plate of food, the tines of a fork buried in the beef and beans. Kate wasn’t hungry, the violent deaths she’d witnessed weighing on her, but she smiled and said, “That’s very thoughtful of you, Lem.” She took the plate and said, “Thank you.”
An experienced range cook like Winston could gauge how hungry a person was and he said, “Eat a little, as much as you can. It will give you strength.”
Kate nodded and pretended to eat. Then Dave Roche stepped up and said, “What’s about some supper, Mr. Winston? Damn it all, I’m starving here.”
“Here, Dave, take this,” Kate said, handing the puncher her plate.
“You don’t want it, Mrs. Kerrigan?” Roche said, surprised.
“No. I’ve had enough.”
“Well, I’m sure hungry,” Roche said. He grinned and began to shovel food into his mouth.
Just hours before the young man had killed two men, one of them who was already wounded, helpless, and out of the fight, and Kate marveled at that. She’d also watched Frank kill a fleeing man, a merciless act that didn’t trouble him in the least. If she’d questioned him he would have said, “Hell, I had the drop on him, Kate. What did you expect me to do?”
Kate looked around her and then watched Roche and Frank eat like hungry wolves as though all the shooting, killings, and burning had never happened.
She sighed deeply. Though she admired their reckless courage, would she ever truly understand the ways of Western men?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kate Kerrigan sought her blankets early, hurried though a rosary, closed her eyes, and let sleep take her. An hour passed, then another . . . and then a commotion woke her and she sat bolt upright, as did the punchers sleeping around the guttering fire.
“What the hell?” a man said.
His answer was Lem Winston’s angry shout of, “Stop! Thief!”
Kate caught a glimpse of what looked like a boy running from the chuck wagon, and then she heard his startled yelp as he ran into Frank Cobb. Grabbing the boy by the scruff of his ragged shirt, Frank marched him to the wagon, where Winston waited, holding a wooden spoon like a club.
“This your thief, Mr. Winston?” Frank said.
The cook shook the spoon in front of the boy’s face. “That’s him. Little bandit tried to rob me.”
Frank grinned. “Want me to shoot him?”
Kate’s voice cut through the flickering night. “Frank, you’ll scare the child,” she said.
“The big lug doesn’t scare me,” the boy said, struggling to break from Frank’s grasp.
The kid looked to be about ten years old, undersized, undernourished, and ragged. He had a mop of straw-colored hair, brown eyes, and a pugnacious expression on his homely face.
“Did you try to steal our food?” Kate said.
“Yeah, I did,” the boy said. “I’m hungry.”
“When did you last eat?” Kate said.
“I dunno. Four, five days.”
“No wonder you’re hungry,” Kate said. “What’s your name and how old are you?”
“Nobody ever give me a name. I think I’m eleven, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Eleven?” Frank said. “T
hen you must have been the runt of the litter, huh?”
The boy again tried to wrench free of Frank and in the struggle his shirt rode up his back. “Hell, look at that,” Lem Winston said.
Kate let out a shocked little gasp and said, “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” the boy said.
“Someone beat you, and beat you badly,” Kate said. “Your back and your arms are covered in red welts.”
“Yeah, well, old man Baggot done that,” the boy said. “Said I gave him sass.” He looked at Kate. “You’d sass as well if his pigs ate better than you did.”
“Who is this Baggot?” Winston said. “Speak up now, and take that surly look off your face when you talk to Mrs. Kerrigan. I will not tolerate a surly boy, or a secretive one.”
“He’s a farmer,” the boy said. “My pa was a farmer, or tried to be, but he never made a go of it. Came one day my ma hung herself from the rafters of the barn, and Pa gave up on the farm and on me. He sold me to Baggot for ten dollars and a jug of whiskey and then he went away. I’ve never seen him since.”
“When was this?” Kate said.
“A year ago on last Christmas Eve. Baggot beat me that very night and I spit in his eye.” The boy managed a tight smile. “And then he beat me again with a hay rake, much harder.”
“And now you’re hungry?” Kate said.
“Right now I’d rather be eating than talking,” the boy said.
“I’ll feed him,” Winston said. “You like beans and cornbread, boy?”
“Right now I’d like anything that comes on a plate,” the boy said.
* * *
“I’ll call him Sam,” Kate said. “I’ve always been partial to that name.”
Frank Cobb watched the boy ravenously wolf down food, and raised an eyebrow in amazement. “How can anybody eat like that?” he said. “Look at him.”
“He’s hungry,” Kate said.
“Must be. I’ve never seen the like,” Frank said. “Hey, slow down there, boy. You’ll give yourself a bellyache or choke, whatever comes first.”
The kid ignored that and continued to eat, gorging his way through a whole round of cornbread and a vast mound of beans. When he was finally satisfied, he lay on the ground by the fire and within moments was asleep.
Hate Thy Neighbor Page 8