by Jake Logan
“Somethin’ like that,” Tewksbury said.
“We have time. Let’s scout some of those wild horses,” Slocum said.
“That’s talkin’! I figgered I could count on you, Slocum.”
They left the trail meandering back to the ranch house and struck out north. Tewksbury chattered away like an old woman at a quilting bee, but Slocum only grunted in response now and then. He worried about what he was getting himself into. Rustlers. Sheep. A rancher who was open about being a crook.
Lydia.
No matter how many different things he considered that told him to keep riding, he kept coming back to her. She had seemed such a chaste, demure young thing. How wrong he had been. Sampling what she so willingly offered—for a week or two—couldn’t be wrong, he finally decided.
“There!” cried Tewksbury. “See ’em?”
“The cloud of dust?” Slocum pulled his hat brim down to shade his eyes and noted the new bullet damage there. He ignored the hole and slowly studied the dust. It grew larger as it came toward them. Slocum pushed his hat back as the herd thundered along.
“The Tonto Basin has about anything a man could want,” he said slowly. A quick count showed better than twenty head of wild horses.
“Lookee there. One of them’s trailin’ behind. What do you think, Slocum?”
Slocum wasn’t listening. He had seen the horse, too, and was already racing forward to cut it off from the remainder of the herd. As he rode, he unfastened his lariat. The horse he had singled out trotted along, then slowed and stopped to toss its head. Slocum couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.
He rode down on the horse, his lariat spinning over his head. Judging distances and the way the horse was likely to bolt, Slocum adjusted his approach just enough. When the mustang finally started to run, it was too late. The rope spun through the air and dropped neatly over the animal’s head. Slocum’s mare responded perfectly. He took two quick turns around the saddle horn as the mare dug in her heels. The mustang reared. This settled the rope even more securely around its neck.
Before he could call out to Tewksbury, the man added a second rope so the mustang was effectively trapped between them.
“We make quite a team,” Slocum said to Tewksbury. “This one’s wild enough and strong enough that one rope wouldn’t do much good.” He reeled in the slack and gave the horse a chance to settle down. Slocum worried that, like the cattle, these horses might be branded, but the hip on this paint was unbranded.
“This is the easy part. Hell, me and the boys’ve caught more’n one of these wild beasts. Breakin’ ’em is another kettle of fish.”
Slocum looked over the paint’s sleek lines.
“Breaking this filly’s going to be fun,” he said.
Tewksbury only smiled as they started back to the Circle T corral with the paint captured between them.
7
“Where’s your pa?” Slocum pushed back from the breakfast table, belly full and feeling like he could whip his weight in wildcats. When Lydia didn’t answer right away, he pushed away the empty tin plate and leaned forward with his elbows on the table and waited. She finally looked up from her busy work. Her ginger eyes locked with his.
“Rather not say. Pa goes off from time to time.”
“Considering how touchy everyone in the territory is, he ought to take Caleb or a couple of his hands with him.”
Lydia laughed harshly.
“You’ve seen the kind of men we have working here, John. He’s better off riding alone.”
“You include me in that?”
“What? Oh, no, of course not. You’re quite the cowboy. You’ve broke five horses. Selling them will keep the Circle T in business for a while longer.” Lydia wiped her hands on her apron and came around the table. She pushed the plate back even farther and perched on the edge. Slocum felt his heart pounding faster at her nearness.
Lydia lifted one leg high and swept it over his head so she straddled him, her behind resting on the table. With a little twitch, she lifted her skirt a mite.
“Go on, John,” she said in a husky whisper. “See what I’ve got up there. Just for you.”
Slocum’s hand slipped under the cloth and found warm, firm leg. Slowly working his stroking fingers up to her thigh made the woman sigh. Lydia shuddered lightly and closed her eyes as she leaned back, bracing herself with both hands on the table. Her legs drifted apart even more as Slocum probed up even farther and found the tangled mat nestled between her legs. The dampness there told him she was ready for him.
She jerked upright and pushed him back so hard his chair skidded.
“Pa,” she said. Her face was flushed and her gaze hot. She silently mouthed, “Later,” as John Tewksbury came in.
“Mornin’ all,” he said, flopping into a chair. “What’s fer breakfast? I’m hungry ’nuff to eat a horse.”
“Luckily, we sold them, Pa,” Lydia said. She stayed turned away long enough for the flush in her cheeks to fade. She dropped a plate in front of him. “Beefsteak. Same as always.”
“How many of them mooin’ bastards we got left to eat? I’m sick of ’em.”
“Don’t get too sick. I reckon you owe me twenty by now.” Slocum had spoken several times with Caleb and the other hands, who assured him that he could sell a decently fattened cow for as much as eight dollars in Prescott. When he broke enough horses to get up to twenty-five cows owed him, Slocum intended to drive the small herd to Prescott, sell them and then leave.
Standing behind her father, Lydia caught Slocum’s eye. She pressed her hands hard onto her breasts and then massaged enough to cause the nipples to pop up. What she did with her tongue was enough to make Slocum hard.
“More, Pa?” Lydia reached over to the counter and grabbed a plate of biscuits. She dropped those on the table in front of her father. If Tewksbury knew what his daughter did behind his back, he showed no sign as he plowed into the steak and wolfed down a hot biscuit smeared with fresh churned butter before answering.
“A shot of bourbon would go mighty good, but I reckon we ain’t got none, do we?”
“Too expensive, Pa, except for use as medicine.” Lydia came around and sat on the chair opposite her father. “Don’t tell me you drank our medicinal supply?”
“Now, daughter, I was feelin’ a whole lot of pain the other night. Put it on your list when we get supplies.”
Tewksbury forked in a large hunk of meat, then turned to Slocum and said, “You up to ridin’ with me? I got to talk to the Daggs boys.”
“Those sheepherders?” Lydia scoffed. “They’re crooks, Papa. Don’t forget to count your fingers if you shake hands with either of them. I wouldn’t put it past them to steal your pinky and maybe your thumb, to boot.”
“They’re not so bad. They know how to raise sheep and said they’d show me how to tend a herd of them cheap.”
“Flock,” Slocum corrected. “Cattle are in herds; sheep are in flocks. You need a sheepdog, too.”
“Never liked dogs. All the time yappin’ and snuffin’ around. No tellin’ what varmint they’d kill and bring back, either. I’ll let Caleb chase them woollies around. Since he got his arms all shot up, seems the courage drained outta him.” Tewksbury finished his breakfast and leaned back, satisfied. He hooked his thumbs under his suspenders, lifted them away from his ample belly and belched. “Mighty good tucker, daughter. You’ll make a man a fine wife one day, the way you cook.”
“Who’d marry me without a dowry, Papa?” she said with mock sweetness.
“That’s what I love ’bout her. She’s jist like her ma. Got quite a mouth.”
“That she does,” Slocum said.
“What?” Tewksbury looked at him sharply.
“I don’t often hear a girl mouthing off to her pa the way Lydia does to you.”
“Yeah, right,” Tewksbury said. “Let’s get out to meet with them Daggs brothers. The sooner we talk to them, the sooner I can be raisin’ mutton.”
“Where are we supposed to
meet them?” Slocum asked.
“They got a big spread up to the northeast in Flagstaff, way past Graham’s spread on Cherry Creek. So we sneak through Graham land and find where them sheepherders are camped.”
“That’s guaranteed to make for trouble, if Graham and his men spot us,” Slocum said.
“You ain’t afeared of ’em, Slocum. I saw the way you faced down Tom Graham before. With an empty gun, yet!”
Slocum hadn’t told the man that. He wondered if Tewksbury was good at guessing or just figured it was true after their run-in with the Apaches in the Sierra Anchas. Playing poker with Tewksbury might end up with all the chips on the other side of the table.
“We can go west to the lake and then due north. That ought to keep the peace awhile longer,” said Slocum.
They rode for most of the day, Slocum warily looking for any hint that Graham saw them riding across his land. A little after sundown Slocum sniffed hard at the cool air and caught a hint of smoke.
“That’s got to be them,” Tewksbury said. “Take a really good whiff. They’re cookin’ mutton.”
Slocum thought Tewksbury had to be right. They rode another half mile and found two men huddled around a campfire, poking at stew in a pot. Both reached for rifles until Tewksbury hailed them.
“No need to ventilate us, least not till we et some of that fine lamb stew.”
“You must be John Tewksbury. This one of your boys?” The shorter of the two men—and neither was hardly more than five-five—pointed at Slocum.
“I’ll vouch fer him. Best damned bronc buster I ever did see, and I seen some dandies,” Tewksbury said. He went on garrulously while Slocum tethered their horses and sat on a log, studying the men closely.
Neither of the Daggs brothers had introduced himself, and Slocum might not have been able to keep them straight if they had. He doubted they were twins, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if they declared themselves to be. Short, stocky, they moved with a slowness that reflected their lives as sheepherders. A cattleman had to be quick. A toss of a bull’s head could ram a horn into a gut. Being butted by a sheep didn’t carry the same penalty. And Slocum had never heard of a sheep stampede. The woollies would run a few yards, then forget what was bothering them and return to cropping the grass so close it would take a couple years to grow back—when the sheep didn’t pull it out of the ground by its roots, killing it.
“You know anything about sheep?”
It took Slocum a few seconds to realize one of the Daggs had spoken to him.
“Prefer cattle,” Slocum said.
“We did, too, until the Hash Knife outfit lit into us. They killed our stock, forcing us to raise sheep.”
“Bet a bunch of drovers loved that,” Slocum said.
“First off, they ran four thousand of our sheep into a river. Then they tied some of our sheepherders to a tree and left ’em to die. We got lucky and found them before they cooked to death in the sun. Since then, it’s been a constant war.”
“That’s why they’re wantin’ me to take a few thousand sheep here,” Tewksbury said. “I graze them in the Basin, they give me a cut of the profit. Not much trouble here findin’ grasslands.”
“What’ll Graham think?”
“Who cares?” Tewksbury said. Slocum thought the rancher sounded a little too gloating. The fight between Tewksbury and Graham had a definite personal undercurrent that went beyond business.
“The market’s good for sheep,” one of the Daggs brothers said. “Real good. We’re looking to double or triple our herd moving some sheep down into the Tonto Basin.”
“I don’t know anything about sheep. Neither does he,” Slocum said, looking squarely at John Tewksbury. “We’ll need some help, or your investment will end up as fertilizer.”
“We have an expert shepherd. He’s a Basque,” said the other Daggs brother. “That’s in Spain.”
“I know that,” Tewksbury said, although Slocum doubted that he did. The limits of Tewksbury’s expertise were cloudy. Slocum knew he was probably a good rustler but not as good keeping herds of cattle and making a profit from them. Being in the middle of the Basin and unable to raise cattle told that much. Slocum had no idea if Tewksbury was right about market prices. He could have been, but this was nothing other ranchers hadn’t faced and survived. Usually drought or disease wiped them out, not conditions that were too favorable.
“Does he speak Spanish?” Slocum asked.
The Daggs brothers glanced at each other and smiled.
“Don’t go joshin’ them none, Slocum,” Tewksbury said. “If their boy’s from Spain, of course he speaks Spanish.”
“No,” said the Daggs on the right. “He does speak English. A little.”
Tewksbury frowned as he looked at Slocum. Whatever poker face he might have normally vanished. Slocum saw that the rancher thought Slocum and the Daggs brothers were pulling his leg.
“The Basque speak a very strange language,” one brother said. “Not like Spanish. Not like anything else you ever heard. The Devil’s Tongue, the Spanish call it. They do not like the Basque.”
The other brother piped up. “And the Basque do not like them so much, either.”
“That don’t make no never mind,” Tewksbury said. “We need to find out how much land the sheep’ll need to graze on. What other things do we have to be on the lookout for to keep them happy?”
“They will be happiest if they are not shot and killed.”
Tewksbury looked at Slocum and said, “Reckon that’s true of most livin’ critters. How many do you want to move onto my land?”
“Ten thousand, to start,” said one Daggs brother. “We can get them moving from Flagstaff and down here on your range by the end of the week. You’ll be drawing maintenance money for them before you know it.”
“I’ll sell off what remains of my cattle.”
Slocum wondered how many cows were left—he had worried about getting twenty as payment for his work breaking mustangs. If Tewksbury wanted to get rid of a herd, Slocum considered driving them to Prescott to get what he could for them. For a cut of the sale price.
“Shake on it,” Tewksbury said, thrusting out his grimy hand. Both Daggs brothers also shook.
“I’m itchin’ to git on back to the Circle T, Slocum,” Tewksbury said. “Let’s hit the trail.”
Slocum silently followed the rancher. It was well past sundown now and the Daggs brothers had offered some of their stew. He didn’t know what the rancher’s hurry was leaving. He found out when they were out of earshot.
“Cain’t abide by the smell of that cookin’ meat. Might have to cram straw up my nose if them woollies smell as bad.”
“You heard what they said about the Hash Knife outfit killing their sheep. Do you think Graham will be any more accommodating?”
“Hell, no. If anything, he’ll take this as a personal insult. That means we gotta watch all the closer.”
“If you want the cattle off your rangeland, I’ll drive the herd to market for you. I’ll take my share for breaking the horses and split the rest.”
“Jist you drivin’ a whole herd? You’d need a couple of my hands. Caleb, maybe, and one or two of the others.”
“They’d be a big help,” Slocum said.
“Not gonna happen, Slocum. Cain’t spare them now that I got ten thousand sheep on the way from Flagstaff.”
“Why are you in such a hurry to get back to the Circle T?”
“It shows, eh? Well, let me tell you, Slocum, there’s trouble brewin’, and I don’t want to be too far off fer too long.”
“Graham?”
“Who else? That skunk’d stink up the whole damn Basin, given the chance. And he thinks now’s his time to try.”
“What have you heard?”
“Herd,” Tewksbury mused. “That’s the word. I got Caleb and the boys out guardin’ what’s left of our herd, but I want to be on hand myself. You kin join in since I know you don’t fancy Tom Graham much, either.”
“I don’t have a quarrel with him,” Slocum said. He thought on it. Murphy presented a bigger problem than his boss, but Slocum realized he had chosen sides and it wasn’t with Tom Graham.
“Got the bulk of the herd up near that lake where you and Graham’s boys mixed it up.”
They left the road and cut across the countryside. Slocum was sure they trespassed on Graham’s ranch, but he said nothing. Tewksbury kept up a steady stream of meaningless chatter that eventually put Slocum on edge.
“I don’t know why Graham is still a problem,” Slocum said. “By now you could have talked him to death.”
“Never got that close to the varmint, Slocum,” Tewksbury said, laughing. “You got a good sense of humor. That’s one thing I like ’bout you.” Tewksbury pulled back on his reins and pointed. “Up over that there hill’s the lake where the herd ought to be. You ready fer some gunplay?”
“I avoid it when I can,” Slocum said, “but if Graham or anyone else tries to steal the cattle, I won’t shy away from it.”
“Course not. Them’s your cattle. Many of ’em, at any rate,” Tewksbury said, grinning crookedly. He snapped his reins and shot off, letting Slocum trail behind.
Slocum had the feeling he was riding into a tornado, but when they reached a ridge looking down into the hollow, all seemed peaceful. Now and then a cow lowed. The bright starlight turned the valley into a gently illuminated stretch that seemed peaceful—until Slocum spotted a few cattle edging away from a wooded area.
“Something’s going on over there.”
“Rustlers?”
Slocum shook his head. There was no way of telling at this distance. He pulled the Winchester from its sheath and levered in a round.
“Back me up,” he told Tewksbury.
“You—”
Slocum wasn’t inclined to listen to the long-winded rancher. Better to tackle a dozen rustlers than hear one more story of life in Texas and how Graham was a snake in the grass. Slocum rode so he kept the bulk of the herd between him and the copse that the cattle shied from.
He reached the far side of the herd and waited. Every sense straining, Slocum tried to catch the hint of odor on the soft wind fitfully meandering across the valley. Leather. Gun oil. Horses. He didn’t catch any of those scents, but the cows caught something.