Buckhorn gave a curt nod.
“What the old man said.”
Then he slipped the Colt back into its holster.
A ripple of ragged tension passed through the scene. Nobody moved or spoke for several beats.
Until Buckhorn started backing Sarge away, saying, “I’ll move on out of earshot so’s the rest of you can finish talking . . .”
CHAPTER 16
When the Circle D ranch headquarters came into sight, it was every bit as sizable and impressive as Buckhorn had by then reckoned it would be.
The whole works was laid out in a sort of V formation, with the main house—a sprawling, flat-roofed, stone and wood construct—tucked into the inner point of the V, a tree-studded slope rising up on its back side. Angling away from the house, making up the two “legs” of the V, was a row of structures including corrals, various outbuildings, and an elongated bunkhouse. All appeared sturdy looking and in good repair.
On the way in, Buckhorn had gotten glimpses of longhorn cattle clustered among the grassy hills. At present, there were none visible around the headquarters though there were numerous holding pens that could have contained a large quantity. In nearby corrals, however, several dozen horses milled about.
Back on the trail, the discussion between Pamela and her son hadn’t lasted for very long after Buckhorn separated himself so they were free to talk. Once finished, Micah and his companions tore off in a cloud of dust for town and Pamela and Obie had rolled on to where Buckhorn waited.
As the handyman reined the buggy up next to him, Buckhorn’s eyes met the somewhat troubled gaze of Pamela and he asked, “Do I still have a job with you?”
“Of course,” she’d answered promptly enough. “Although I must say that I don’t entirely approve of the way you so promptly made your gun a part of that altercation. At the same time, however, I understand that the gun is part of who and what you are, and I also recognize that much of my disapproval stems from protective motherly instincts. I know that Micah can be headstrong and mouthy, even what some might call a bully on occasion. But none of that means I am prepared to see him shot.”
“Understandable.”
“When he returns home later on and has had a chance to cool down, I will talk to him and calm him down some more. I’m usually able to get him to listen to me, to reason . . . albeit grudgingly at times. I doubt I’ll be able to coax out that apology, but I believe he’ll come around otherwise. In his own way, he’s just as worried about his brother as I am. If you can steer as clear of him as you’re able in the meantime, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Buckhorn had promised her. “Most likely my search for Jeff will keep me mostly away from the ranch, anyhow.”
“I think that would be beneficial. Micah’s preoccupation with this perceived new rustling threat will help, too.”
For the rest of the trip, they hadn’t talked much more. Buckhorn was naturally curious about whatever it was that had Micah so convinced another rustling raid was imminent, but he didn’t push it. If the cattle stealing part of Pamela’s problems was going to be handled by Micah and the legal authorities, headed by Ranger Menlo and probably backed by Sheriff Tolliver, then so be it. Buckhorn was going to have his hands full trying to unravel what was behind Jeff Danvers’s disappearance and hopefully find a way to get the young man back home safe and sound.
One thing further that was decided on the way was overnight accommodations for Buckhorn. At first, Pamela revealed, she was going to invite him to stay in one of the main house’s guest bedrooms. But in view of the friction now existing between him and Micah, that hardly seemed like a wise idea. Same for staying in the bunkhouse, inasmuch as veteran wranglers Hank and Dave had been part of the recent confrontation and likely would “poison the well” as far as the attitudes of the other hands toward Buckhorn.
It was Obie who spoke up and solved the problem by suggesting that Buckhorn bunk with him in the separate cabin where he lived in accordance to his long-standing special status with the Danverses. Stifling any mention of his concerns about ever getting any sleep, considering the handyman’s near-constant jabbering, Buckhorn had said that would be fine with him. Pamela agreed, and so the matter was settled. The one addendum was her insistence that both Buckhorn and Obie would join her for dinner later, in the main house.
* * *
“Well, here she is. Home sweet home,” announced Obie as he ushered Buckhorn into his cabin. “Nothing fancy, but it suits me real fine. Gives me my privacy and more room for me and my bum hip to shuffle around ’thout bumpin’ into the other fellas or their gear over in the crowded bunkhouse.”
The cabin was a simple but functional layout. A good-sized single room, square in shape, with a kitchen area on one side, a small wooden table and three straight-backed chairs in the middle, a fireplace over against the opposite wall bracketed on one side by a cowhide-covered easy chair and on the other by a sling bed in a sturdy wood frame. Above the bed was a narrow loft accessible by a ladder reaching up from just off the kitchen.
Pointing, Obie said, “I’ve always got plenty of coffee, jerky, beans, and biscuits over in that cabinet by the stove. Feel free to help yourself for as long as you’re here. For breakfast and my midday meal, I usually wander over and see what they’re dishin’ up in the grub shack on the other side of the bunkhouse. Of an evenin’, I usually take my meal here. Except for once in a while—like tonight—when Miss Pamela invites me to the big house.”
“Not a bad setup. Not bad at all,” Buckhorn said sincerely.
Obie pointed again.
“There’s a sleepin’ pallet up there in the loft that you’re welcome to use. Or, if you don’t favor the climb—like I can’t manage no more—you can spread your bedroll on the floor wherever it suits you, or stretch out in my big ol’ chair if you want. I promise you’ll find that mighty comfortable. Many’s the time I doze off in it and sleep the night through.”
“If it’s all the same to you, that chair looks pretty inviting,” said Buckhorn. It wasn’t that the climb up to the loft bothered him; it was the confinement up there, the risk of getting trapped in that small a space, that he didn’t like the thought of.
“Done and done,” proclaimed Obie. “Go ahead and give ’er a try, see what you think.”
Buckhorn took him up on the offer and found the chair indeed very roomy and comfortable. So much so, in fact, that he hated to crawl back out and join Obie at the table where a cup of thick black coffee was placed before him.
“Need any fixin’s?” Obie wanted to know. “Got no cream, but I do have some sugar.”
“This is fine.”
“Yup. That’s the way I like it, too. Straight and strong.”
They each blew on their cupfuls of the strong, black brew, cooling the surface enough for cautious sips.
After he’d slurped down a couple swallows, Obie eyed Buckhorn and said, “You’re a quiet cuss, ain’t you, Powder-burner? Patient.”
Buckhorn shrugged and said, “When it suits me.”
“Uh-huh. But you ain’t foolin’ me.” Obie took another loud slurp. “You’re anxious to know what Micah saw that’s got him so primed about another rustlin’ raid comin’ soon, ain’t you?”
Buckhorn started to protest but then changed his mind. He didn’t feel a pressing need to know what Micah was up to, yet he nevertheless was somewhat curious. Why talk himself out of learning something that might prove unexpectedly useful? So he said, “Well, since it was sorta dangled under my nose, then yanked away, yeah, I can’t deny wondering about it some.”
“I figured as much. I know your main interest now is supposed to be finding young Jeff, but you’re probably thinkin’ that the rustlin’ that’s been goin’ on—especially if Dan Riley is the one behind it like Miss Pamela is so dead set on believin’—just might be tied in. Right?”
“Seems worth considering,” Buckhorn said. “I don’t know about the rustling part, but it’s hard to leave out
Riley since it’s his daughter Jeff supposedly ran off with.”
“One way or other, it’s all tangled together.”
“You sound awfully sure about that.”
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“Me neither. But back up a minute. You said if Dan Riley is behind the rustling like Miss Pamela is so dead set on believing. Sounds like Riley’s involvement is something you’re not so sure of.”
“You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
Obie drank some more of his coffee.
“I don’t think you’ve heard the full story on Dan Riley. So let’s back up a little farther yet and I’ll fill you in. At one time, you see, Dan was the ramrod for the Circle D. I first hired him, as a matter of fact, when I held that position. He was a top hand right from the get-go. The Circle D was growin’ steady all that time and Dan Riley fast became my right-hand man. When that ol’ bull got me cornered in a holdin’ pen and damn near killed me, it was Dan who finally drove him off. I got left with this”—Obie savagely whacked his right fist against his damaged hip—“but I never would’ve come out of it alive if not for Dan.”
The old handyman paused to smile thinly before adding, “Sometimes, when I’m of a mood to feel sorry for myself, I ain’t so sure whether he did me any favors or not . . . but that’s for me to deal with.”
“Pain and setbacks can seem like they get laid on awful thick at times,” Buckhorn responded in an understanding tone. “But, generally speaking, coming out alive is usually for the best.”
“Anyway,” Obie continued with a faint sigh, “after I got took out of commission, Dan Riley was the logical choice to take over ramroddin’ the outfit. He took right to it and did a helluva fine job. Him and Boss Gus really hit it off, too. I always stayed close to both of ’em, but the way the two of ’em carried on together actually kinda made me jealous.
“Dan got married to a gal from town. Celeste, her name was. Wasn’t long before daughter Eve came along. Miss Pamela and Boss Gus were her godparents. After the baby, though, Celeste fell to poor health. She never lived to see her daughter’s second birthday. Mighty sad times around here after that. We all got Dan through it. Miss Pamela and her housekeeper-cook Helga—she’s still aboard; you’ll meet her at dinner later on—helped with the raisin’ of little Eve. She grew up a rough and tumble tomboy, but on the outside as pretty as a palomino colt.”
“So she was raised with the Danvers boys?” Buckhorn asked.
“In a manner of speakin’. She was quite a bit younger than them, remember. They mostly didn’t want nothing to do with her back then.”
“From the sound of it, though, I guess that changed. Leastways where Jeff is concerned.”
“Yeah, that’s what things do. Change.” An abrupt gloominess seemed to have crept into Obie’s voice. A moment later it became evident why, where his thoughts had gone. “One of the biggest changes we all had to go through . . . one of the worst . . . was when Boss Gus took sick and died.” He hung his head over his cup of coffee and shook it slowly back and forth. “Never been through a rougher time than that.”
Not wanting to let the oldster get too mired in grief, Buckhorn prodded him a bit by saying, “And then, afterwards, is when Dan Riley turned bad?”
“Not right away. But in time, yeah. It was almost as hard to believe as it was to accept that Boss Gus was gone for permanent. But too many signs pointed that way. Missin’ cattle, feeble excuses, descriptions that fit Dan to a tee for a fella offerin’ to sell beef on the sly, money traceable to Dan that he shouldn’t’ve oughta had. Too many things piled up. Miss Pamela had no choice but to confront him. When he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—come up with any reasonable explanations, there wasn’t nothing left for her to do but fire him.”
“Yet,” Buckhorn said, “you continue to have a hard time buying Riley as a rustler.”
Obie lifted his face. There was still sadness pooling in his eyes, but there was also a hard edge of determination showing through.
“You spend enough time with a man, you go through all kinds of trouble and challenges with him—I’m talkin’ wranglin’ herd after herd of ornery cattle, sloggin’ through seasons of the worst weather conditions you can think of, goin’ gun to gun against for-real rustlers, even a skirmish or two with renegade Injuns—you make it through all that, you get a pretty doggone good feel for the fella who went through it alongside you. What he’s made of, where he’ll draw the line on what he will or won’t do.”
“And your feeling is that Riley wouldn’t turn bad, wouldn’t start rustlin’ and cheatin’ the Circle D brand.”
“In spite of all the signs pointin’ his way, I’ve never been able to swallow it all the way down.”
“What about the other kinds of crime? Stagecoach robberies or such?”
“It’d be more of a possibility than turnin’ on the Circle D. But not by much.”
“More than any other critter, human beings can fool you. Take a turn for the worse plumb out of the blue. For reasons nobody else can ever figure.”
Obie shook his head stubbornly. “For one thing, Dan never had no cause to. He had it made right like things was. Plenty of folks around—busybodies and nosy parkers partly, but others who weren’t generally given to that sort of thing—speculated that Dan and Miss Pamela, seein’s how they’d always been close-like and then had gone on to suffer the loss of their spouses, might even end up together some day. Man and wife.”
“You?”
Obie shrugged and replied, “Never saw no outward sign of it. But things like that happen. They’d’ve made a right handsome couple. In a way, it would’ve almost seemed like a natural thing.”
“Only it didn’t go that way,” Buckhorn summed up. “In fact, it eventually swung about as far away from anything like that as it could get.”
“That’s for sure. And all the while the rustlin’ has continued and Miss Pamela’s feelings toward Dan Riley have turned more and more bitter until seein’ him caught and punished is almost like a . . . a . . . what’s the word I want?”
“Obsession?”
“That’s the one! Even though no kind of hard proof has ever turned up, Miss Pamela is so convinced, so obsessed, that it’s almost like she’ll never be able to rest in her own grave until she first sees Dan swing by his neck for betrayin’ the Circle D and her and Boss Gus’s memory like she’s bound and determined he’s done.”
Buckhorn said, “Which brings us to the here and now, with her not only convinced Riley is behind the rustling but also insisting he might be somehow involved in Jeff’s prolonged disappearance.”
Obie got up and went to fetch the coffeepot. Bringing it over and refilling their cups, he said, “She’s a hardheaded gal once she gets her mind made up. Maybe this new rustlin’ raid that Micah thinks he’s got sniffed out, especially if he gets the ranger’s cooperation, will settle a thing or two.”
“Maybe,” Buckhorn allowed. “This thing that’s got Micah so worked up . . . you were workin’ your way around to tell me about it, remember?”
CHAPTER 17
Even with the sun in its afternoon descent and the ground he was covering cast in mottled shade, the day remained hot. Buckhorn passed the back of one hand across his forehead, wiping away sweat.
He was about ten miles from the ranch headquarters, making his way on foot along the crown of a weedy, tree-studded hogback. Sarge was tied downslope a ways back, grazing contentedly.
Obie had provided good directions and Buckhorn had found his way to this spot with minimal trouble. To the south and west of the hogback lay a large, flat meadow, oval in shape, of fresh spring grass. On the back side of the hogback, to the north, the ground quickly turned rocky and broken.
Under the direction of Micah Danvers, who was ramrodding the Circle D operation these days, the original plan had been to move a good-sized herd of longhorns into the lush meadow this very afternoon. The meadow was part of a piece of land the Circ
le D had acquired from a neighbor the previous winter, and Micah and his crew had been looking forward to grazing a herd of prime beef there the first chance they got.
Scouting ahead of the much-anticipated move, however, looking for any sign of cougars or wolves that might pose a threat to the herd, the two wranglers Hank and Dave had instead spotted some suspicious horse tracks up on the hogback. Upon reporting these to Micah, he’d ridden back with them to have a look for himself.
What was suspicious about the tracks was the fact that they were fresh and that no Circle D riders had been sent this way in weeks. And when they led away from the hogback, they disappeared into the broken land to the north, never showing any inclination of heading off east toward ranch headquarters.
What all of this had immediately signaled to Micah and his riders was that word had gotten out somehow about a herd being brought to this somewhat isolated graze, and as a result, some eager would-be rustlers had paid a visit to look the layout over and plan their raid. Subsequently, moving the herd in this afternoon was temporarily delayed and instead Micah and his boys headed for town to see if they could interest Ranger Menlo and/or Sheriff Tolliver in helping to set a trap.
When Obie had related these details to Buckhorn, the gunman, for some reason he couldn’t fully explain, had felt a strong impulse to go check out the spot for himself. There were hours to kill before dinner, and Buckhorn had already been feeling restless, so he didn’t put much effort into fighting the impulse.
The terrain was too rough for a buggy and Obie couldn’t sit a horse with his bad hip, so it wasn’t feasible for him to come along. But since he knew practically every inch of Circle D property, the directions he scribbled down were almost as precise as if he were right there pointing the way.
“Hard to believe Micah would be showin’ back up out there from town in the time it’ll take you to pay a visit from here. But in case he does,” the old man had cautioned, “you make yourself scarce, you hear? I know you ain’t afraid of him and I know skitterin’ wide of trouble ain’t exactly your way. But as a favor to me and for Miss Pamela’s sake, don’t push it when it comes to him if you can help it. Okay?”
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