I knew a little about Ben Thompson from Abilene, where he had partnered with another Texas hard rock at the Bull’s Head Saloon. Loss of the cattle trade must have sent Thompson following the Drovers Cottage to Ellsworth. I didn’t know his brother. Didn’t even know he had a brother. From what I knew of Ben, he was too ornery to even have a mother.
“What I’m saying, gents,” Sheriff Whitney said, “is that since the arrival of the first herd from Texas, I’ve learned a lot about ... how should I put this? ... the will of a Texian?. We grinned at that. “I’m also saying that the law in Ellsworth County knows about that quarantine law.. He let a couple seconds slowly pass. “We’re just ignoring that law.”
When our laughter faded, he added: “But Councilman Ronan thought that since a few of our farmers have objected to what they consider a lack of justice, perhaps I should lead you into town.”
Quiet Tommy Canton picked that time to mouth off a little bravado. “We don’t need no protection, Sheriff.. His hand gripped that old Spiller and Burr .36 tucked in his chaps’ belt. Showing off, Tommy was, but it got his pa to smile.
“Well then, son,” Sheriff Whitney said, “how about if you Texas drovers protect poor little me, and you-all lead me into town?”
That sheriff was all right. He could keep the peace about as well as Mr. Justus.
Later that evening, Le Fevre whispered to me that Whitney had a yellow streak down his back, but I didn’t think so, though I certainly didn’t let that man-killer know I disagreed with him.
Before the summer was over, Sheriff Chauncey Belton Whitney would show us, and all of Ellsworth County, exactly what he was made of.
chapter
4
“What’s Ellsworth like?” I found myself asking Sheriff Whitney two nights later. He had dragged his saddle and sougans by mine, and, criminy, curiosity had taken hold of me and just wouldn’t let go.
He ran his hands through that wind-swept beard of his, and stared at me as if he hadn’t noticed me before. Which, come to think on it, he probably hadn’t.
Instead of answering my question, he fired one my way. “How old are you?”
That struck me as downright rude. Straightening to my full five-foot-seven-inch height, I gave him my most intimidating stare. “I’m eighteen.. That was a lie. I was maybe two weeks past sixteen.
“Uhn-huh.”
“And this is my fourth trip to Kansas pushing cattle.. Bona-fide, that statement proved to be, and I guess he knew it.
“I know that Tommy boy is Major Canton’s son. You got kin with this crew?”
“No. I wasn’t standing so tall any more. A sigh slipped past my lips, and I kneeled again to unroll my sougans. “My papa died in the war. I’m the oldest of five, and Major Canton hired me back in ’Seventy. He and Papa had served together. Reckon he knew we needed the money. The last statement I could barely hear myself I said it so softly.
“So ...”—Whitney fished a cigar from his vest pocket—“you would have been thirteen, I reckon, on your first drive.”
I shrugged. “Twelve, actually. When we left Pleasanton. I had my birthday ..... My eyes drilled through him, understanding how he’d tricked me, but he didn’t look like some sinister confidence man. The fact was, he was holding out that cigar to me.
Taking the stogie, I stuck it in my mouth, and squatted on my saddle as he pulled out another smoke, and then a box of lucifers from another pocket.
He fired up his first, shook out the match, and tilted his small head at me. “Need to clip the end first, er ...?”
“Madison,” I said, and bit off an end, same as I’d seen him do. “Madison Carter MacRae.”
Another match flared, and I leaned forward to let him light my cigar. When we both had our cigars smoking, he stretched out his legs in front of him, crossed his feet at the ankles of his patent leather boots, and leaned back. I did the same. The smoke warmed my mouth. It tasted better than McNab’s coffee, but I guess I preferred chewing tobacco, a habit I had been accustomed to since I’d turned eleven.
“I get these cheroots at the Star Mercantile,” he said, and winked. “The owner gives me a discount. Says he owes me that much for protecting the citizens.”
“You were telling me about Ellsworth,” I prodded. He hadn’t done any telling at all.
“I always thought Ellsworth was a nice town, Madison,” he said.
“They call me Mad Carter,” I said, and spit beside my saddle. Smoking a cheroot sure made your mouth water.
He looked up from underneath his straw hat. “There something to that name?”
I grinned, and he smiled back. “I reckon it seems more fitting for a cowboy than Madison.”
Chuckling, he said: “Try being a sheriff named Chauncey Whitney.”
Yes, sir, Chauncey Whitney seemed all right. We smoked a while in silence, and finally the sheriff sat up, pushed back his hat, and said: “Town’s growing.”
I just nodded as if I agreed.
“Tents are lining our streets, and being replaced with frame buildings as quick as folks can get the wood. Twelve hotels, or that was the number when I rode out four days ago. You know about the cattle pens by the railroad, I take it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a racetrack.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“A tonsorial parlor, couple of bathhouses. He studied me again. “You should visit that store.”
“Why’s that?”
His eyes twinkled. “Because those duds of yours are not fit to be worn in public. Not when I’m the law. The mercantile’s on Walnut Street. You’ll like it there. Alroy O’Sullivan charges fair prices.”
And discounts your cigars, I decided.
I swallowed down more smoke and saliva, tried to keep down what kept creeping up my throat, yet still put that cheroot right back in my mouth. “You and me ain’t speaking the same language, Sheriff,” I said.
Another smile stretched his slim face, and he pitched his cigar into the dust.
“You want to hear about Nauchville, not Ellsworth.”
“Nauchville?”
“That’s down along the river bottoms. That’s where you’ll find the racetrack. That’s where you’ll find most of the saloons, including Sean Ronan’s Lone Star, and most of the gambling houses. That’s where you’ll find most of you Texas drovers. That’s where you’ll find ..... He rose, mentioned that he might as well see if he could lend McNab a hand with the grub, but stopped and stood, towering over me. “You’d do well, Mad Carter MacRae, to stay clear of Nauchville.”
I thought about answering him, but figured it wise to keep my mouth closed for the time being, at least as long as I could.
“My jurisdiction is the county,” he was saying, although his words suddenly seemed mighty far away, and his face swam in and out of focus. “The town proper is under the jurisdiction of Marshal Brocky Jack Norton and his police force.. It’s only now, all these years later, that I understand his words. I was way too sick at that time to catch most of what he told me, but now I can hear plain and clear the contemptuousness of those words police force. “Watch out when you find yourself in front of an Ellsworth city peace officer, especially if it’s Happy Jack.”
I interrupted. “Happy Jack. Thought you called him Brocky Jack.”
“Brocky’s the marshal. Happy Jack Morco is one of his deputies. Don’t provoke them. They rule the city. I’m just a county lawdog.”
At that point, Sheriff Whitney’s face started spinning like the rowels on my spurs when I felt like playing with them.
“And nobody,” Whitney continued, “and I mean nobody, cares one whit what happens to anybody, especially a Texas drover, in Nauchville. Stay clear, Madison. You hear me?”
I didn’t really hear him, but I nodded, and he strode away.
Me. I heard his boots trample the grass as he made a beeli
ne for the chuck wagon, then I got a whiff of that stew McNab was fixing. That’s all it took. Crushing the cheroot in the pulsating dust, I rolled over, and crawled as fast as I could away from my bedroll and saddle, away from the chuck wagon, as far south as I could make it until I pushed myself onto my elbows, and puked out my innards.
It wasn’t pretty. Since that day, I’ve stuck to chewing Big Chunk, and steered clear of cheroots or any type of smoking tobacco.
My stomach didn’t settle and the green didn’t really leave my face until two days later, when we rode into Ellsworth, Kansas.
* * * * *
Despite blowing dust, we saw it long before we were anywhere near it. At least, we could make out the façades of the buildings, the black smoke coughing out of locomotives, and the slanting telegraph poles that marked the tracks of the Kansas Pacific. Then the mirage would disappear as we dipped into a gully, only to reappear when the land rose. I know folks think of Kansas as being flatter than a hot cake. From a distance, it sure looks level, but that ground can be mighty deceiving.
There it stood, closer, then disappeared, and was reborn again, even nearer.
The shipping pens lay west of town, Sheriff Whitney had told us, but we didn’t go there. In fact, we didn’t even go to Ellsworth.
We crossed the rails about a mile or two west of town, kept driving north, and forded the Smoky Hill River, coming up, climbing those banks among the few trees that grew in that country, and entering range land.
“What are we doing?” Tommy Canton cried out above the bellows of the cattle. “Don’t them fools know that town’s back yonder!”
We were riding drag, along with Davy Booker and Fenton Larue, slapping hats against our thighs, encouraging the stragglers to get across the river.
“Cattle come first,” Davy Booker said, but Tommy just ignored him, and kept on complaining and cussing.
The last of the longhorns climbed up the bank, and we cooled off in the river. I loosened my bandanna, soaking it in the river as we crossed, then wrapped it back around my neck and looked across that endless stretch of prairie and said: “Criminy.”
I almost reined Sad Sarah to a stop.
By that time I had been staring at the hindquarters of two thousand of Mr. June Justus’s beeves for three months, and considered that to be a sizable number of longhorns, yet, looking out, I couldn’t begin to comprehend just how many cattle were grazing here.
Tens of thousands, certainly. I remembered Shanghai Pierce talking back at camp. Can’t say the stockyards are empty, Luke, and they’re getting fuller, but there’s plenty of open range along the Smoky Hill River.
Pens weren’t empty. Certainly the range wasn’t.
“Hey, Mad Carter!” Davy Booker called out to me. “What month of the year it be?”
“June,” I said. “Just June.. I shrugged. “That’s my guess, anyway.”
“Goodness gracious.. Davy shook his head in wonder. “Only June, and already all them longhorns are here.”
Print Olive’s got a herd there already, I heard Shanghai’s voice again, and so do a few others ....
A few. Quickly I started doing some ciphering in my head. Chauncey Whitney had said Willis McCutcheon and J.H. Stevens had bossed herds into Ellsworth. And I remembered McNab saying that Billy Thompson, brother of gambler Ben, rode for one of the herds owned by Judge James Miller and Captain Eugene Millett. Shanghai Pierce had one herd already in Ellsworth, and two more on the way. That would put maybe ten thousand head already here. Counting us, possibly more. I wondered if any herds had been shipped out yet. They must have, by thunder, but it sure didn’t appear that way.
Six miles we rode west.
“We might as well just keep on going to Great Bend, now,” Tommy Canton groused.
“Or Denver!” Fenton Larue said cheerily. “Always wanted to see them mountains in Colorado.”
Eventually we stopped. The grass looked good, and the river would water the cattle and keep them from drifting too far south. Once they were bedded down, the major left Carlos Viera and his son watching the herd, and the rest of us rode to camp.
After turning our horses loose in the rope corral Augusto Sanchez had set up, we practically ran to the chuck wagon. Even the last of Larry McNab’s coffee didn’t taste so foul.
“Where’s Sheriff Whitney?” I asked, after looking around.
“He cut out,” Perry Hopkins said, “when we got to town.”
“Well, we didn’t really get to town,” Byron Guy said.
That’s all it took to get Phineas O’Connor worked up. “Speaking of which, when do we get to see Ellsworth and do her proper?”
“You don’t,” Major Canton said.
chapter
5
“At least not tonight,” Mr. Justus cut in quickly to fetch up any bloody rebellion.
He fired off a few reminders that we had long since forgotten. He needed to go to town, find a bank or a cattle buyer willing to front him some cash money, as much as he hated that idea. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, not the way Ellsworth was looking. Then he could pay off anyone who wanted to cash out at $100, or he could advance maybe a month’s wages to those of us willing to take him up on his offer and stay on until the herd was sold. That would up the bonus to $15, and we’d still be earning $1 a day.
“What we need to know,” the major said, “is who’s willin’ to stay.”
I sure was. I felt no hurry to get back to Pleasanton and my ma and those younger brothers and sisters. What a fine, upstanding son I had turned out to be at sixteen years old. Yeah, I understand that now. No wonder they never write to me.
Augusto Sanchez was the first to step forward, apologizing in a mix of border Spanish and Texas English that he had his mother to think of and that he must carry the sad news to the family of Marcelo Begoña.
I had almost forgotten about poor Marcelo being trampled to death. That nearly made me draw my time, too, not to go to Nauchville to spend it, but to go home and to pay my respects to Begoña’s family as well as see my own mother and the young ’uns.
“I’m paying Marcelo for the full drive,” Mr. Justus announced. And to Sanchez he said: “You will see that his widow gets it?”
“Sí, señor.”
“Good. And I hope you’ll be wrangling the remuda for me next year.”
“Sí, Señor Justus. Carlos, por favor, has agreed that he will ride back to Texas with me.. He gestured northward. “He circles the herd with segundón Tommy.”
We were losing Carlos Viera, too.
“That’s fine,” Mr. Justus said. “It’s good to have a saddle pal for conversation on that long ride south.. He studied the rest of our crew. “Anyone else?”
“I reckon I’m homesick,” Davy Booker said. The wiry Negro turned to his bunkie. “You comin’, Fenton?”
“No, Davy. I’ll stay. Maybe from here I’ll go to Denver, finally see them mountains.”
“Then, if it’s all right with you,” Davy said, turning toward the Mexicans, “I’ll tag along with you, Augusto, and Carlos.”
Augusto nodded his approval.
Byron Guy said he’d take his money now, too. So did Phineas O’Connor.
I sipped coffee.
“So,” Mr. Justus said, “I just need to pay off five hands, six counting Begoña?. His face told me he had hoped a few more hands would have stayed on, but saving money is one thing nobody ever had success teaching a cowhand. Truth was, by that point in time I again felt Nauchville tugging on my lead rope, pulling me there, with $100 to spend. Memory of the late Marcelo Begoña had promptly faded again.
“How about you, Le Fevre?” the major asked.
That mean-looking gunman grinned. “Changed my mind. Reckon I’ll stay on a while.”
Again Mr. Justus asked: “Anybody else?”
“I’ll draw my time, too. Per
ry Hopkins dropped his tin cup in the wreck pan, and crossed that line Mr. Justus had figuratively drawn in the sand.
That didn’t surprise me. Perry hadn’t wanted to come to Ellsworth to begin with, and he always spoke his mind. Personally I didn’t want him to go. The drover I wanted to light a shuck out of our camp just squatted by the chuck wagon’s tongue, picking at his nails with a pocket knife, not giving a fip about the conversation going on. That didn’t surprise me about Le Fevre, either. What surprised me was what happened next.
“I’d rather you didn’t. It was the major. He didn’t just say that. He stood up, like he would fight Perry Hopkins to keep him from quitting.
Perry straightened. “Why?” he asked.
“I’m getting short-handed,” the major said. “Two kids.. He gestured at me, but I knew he meant his son, too, off circling the herd with Carlos. That ruffled my feathers, seeing how I had just completed my fourth drive from South Texas to Kansas.
“And him.. The major’s chin jutted toward Fenton Larue, which likely irked the black cowhand. He’d been pushing beef up the trails since right after the war. The major didn’t even consider André Le Fevre.
“You don’t need many to hold those beeves here,” Perry countered, “or run them to the stockyards once Mister Justus sells them.”
“Maybe.”
Perry shook his head. “If you run short of men, you can always bail some out of the city jail, or find one or two in the gutters.”
“Maybe,” the major said again. “But you know cow towns.”
“I don’t like Ellsworth.”
Now Mr. Justus cut in, laughing a bit, and saying: “You’ve never even seen this town, Perry.”
“Then call it a feeling I got.”
Larry McNab said: “Don’t be superstitious.”
Nobody said anything for a while, till the major cleared his throat and said: “I’d appreciate it, Perry, if you’d stay on. For me.”
That’s all it took. Perry Hopkins cussed a mite, kicked dust up with his boots, but finally turned back, and said, with some more choice cussing, that he’d go spell Carlos or Tommy.
Summer of the Star Page 4