These past few months I’d seen a few tough men go to meet their maker unexpected. I’d seen Webb in action, and the man he’d killed hadn’t expected to die.
The way I saw it, if you asked for it you were going to get it.
Chapter 23
WHEN THEY HAD gone old Uruwishi came out of the brush with his old Hawken rifle. I’d no idea where he’d been, but all the while the old coot had been lying back there with one of those men in his sights. It gave me a good feeling to know he was around.
He might have years behind him, but those hard old eyes could look down a rifle barrel as well as any young warrior whose first scalp was not dry.
We held our place, letting the cattle graze and waiting for Short Bull. He would find us, but I hated to move on leaving him to ride into trouble unaware of it.
Yet he was gone less time than expected, for he met four Yakimas on the south side of the mountain where they had gathered after a hunt. They had horses, and they were ready to trade. It had been a hard winter, and there was hunger in the lodges, so we talked, fed them, drank coffee, and they smoked. In the end I drove a close bargain. I was to get six horses for two steers and forty dollars. Many an Indian pony had been sold for ten dollars, but times were bad and these were to be especially good stock.
I sent Uruwishi along to pick them out and remained alone with the cattle.
Before they pulled out we shifted the cattle to a meadow several miles further along, with two of the Yakimas to help. We watered them, bedded them down, and then the Indians rode away.
With my horses and rifle I pulled back atop a small knoll. The cattle were fifty to sixty feet lower down and contented to be resting and grazing. My lookout gave me a good view over the country around so I could see anybody who might come up on me.
Building a small fire, I put on a coffeepot and settled down with a rock at my back and a view of the stock. Nothing was going to come up behind me with those horses of mine feeding nearby…they’d warn me in time. Nonetheless, from time to time I took a careful look around.
One time I picked up a little dust, maybe a half mile off, but whoever it was seemed content to look. I made no attempt to conceal my fire. Anybody with half a mind could see that I had good cover, and anybody coming up on me would be in view for a good quarter of a mile or further.
Several times during the long evening I dozed a little, knowing the rest would do me good, and when night came I tightened my cinch, mounted up and rode down the slope, and began my riding around the cattle.
They were a small bunch, so it was no problem, and I generally stayed back a little. Whenever I closed in I sang to them.
After a while they got up, took their stretch and grazed a bit, then lay down again. I drank coffee, added fuel to the fire to keep it smoldering, then went back to the cattle. About daybreak when the cattle were up I loaded up and moved out, trusting to the Indians to follow, for there was little enough time for the long drive ahead. With any kind of luck I hoped to buy more cattle as we moved along, for much of what we had to go through was cattle country.
Shelde and his outfit were probably the first in this area, and his kind did not always last long. He’d come up against the wrong outfit and he’d be planted somewhere along the slope to make the grass grow better for latecomers.
I drifted the cattle slowly, letting them graze and water when they were of a mind to, and when it was close by. They were beginning to show the results of good grass. A couple of times I saw riders.…
On the fourth day I was camped on Alder Creek when the Indians came back, and they had six head of good, tough Indian ponies.
We saw no more of Shelde or his friends during the drive to Umatilla Landing.
This was a new place, scarcely a town, yet as towns were in those days we might have called it such. A half dozen buildings had gone up in a few days and more were building. It was the point where the Umatilla flowed into the Columbia. Long ago, Uruwishi told us, there had been an Indian village at that point.
At the point where we crossed the river a man in a fur cap rode down to watch our herd bed down for the night. “You ain’t buyin’ cows, be you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Depend on what was offered and for how much.”
“Wal,” he said, curling a leg around the saddle horn, “I’ve got some young stuff up yonder, an’ mighty little feed. I’m bein’ crowded off my range.”
“It looks to me like there is plenty of that,” I commented. “Who’s crowding?”
“Feller name of Shelde. He pushes an’ he pushes hard. My old woman, she wants us to pull out, says they’ll kill folks.”
“I met him,” I said, “and he did seem kind of ornery.”
“Well, I need cash money. If you’ve got cash money for cattle, I’ll sell. They taken most of my stock. When I spoke of it they said to come over and name what was mine, but they said I should bring a gun when I come because they didn’t figure to shoot no unarmed man.”
“You drive your stock down here,” I said, “if you want a reasonable price.”
“Well, if’n I keep ’em they’ll be stole and I’ll get nothin’. What would you say to six dollars a head like they stand? Fifteen for the bull?”
“All right,” I said, “you bring them in.”
There was a store and a saloon on the Washington side of the river. I bunched our stock on the meadow nearby and left the Indians to watch, then rode down to the store. I needed supplies, but most of those I’d get across the river and save carrying them over, but I had a small hunch riding me and bought a sack of fifty .44 cartridges that would fit either my six-gun or the Henry.
I stepped up to the bar and had a drink. The bartender was a baldheaded man with a black mustache and rolled up sleeves.
“You know the Shelde outfit?” I asked.
“I know them.”
“Do you know the man who was just talking to me?”
“Pierson? Yes, I know him. He’s an honest man and a hard worker, for all the good it will do him. There’s no law around here, friend, except what a man carries in his holster. I think left to himself Pierson would back up and fight, but his old woman won’t let him, and he’s got two girls to think of. Shelde’s already made trouble that way, and so has Bud Sallero, one of his riders.”
“How many of them?”
“Five, six usually. Can be twenty or more. Most of them scatter out to find what they can find. Bud sticks close to Norman Shelde and his brother Frank.”
I took my time with my drink, then had coffee. After a bit I stepped into my saddle and rode back to the camp. The cattle were resting easy, and the Indians had a fire going.
Short Bull was packing a rifle and he walked over to me. “Somebody watch,” he said. “Two man.”
“All right,” I said. Then I explained that we might get more cattle.
He looked at me. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think those men say no.”
“Well, I need more cattle. This man Pierson has cattle to sell. Do you know where his place is?”
Short Bull explained, and I got up. “I’m going to ride up and complete my deal. If Pierson wants to sell, I’ll just drive those cattle down myself.”
I saddled up again, and I looked over at Short Bull and Uruwishi. “You take care of yourselves,” I said, “and keep out of sight. If anybody bothers you or those cattle, you handle the situation, d’you hear? I’ll back you from hell to breakfast.”
When I’d stepped into the saddle I looked down at the two Indians. “If it is you or the cattle,” I said, “let the cattle go and save yourselves, but if you can keep them, do it.”
“We will keep the cattle,” Uruwishi said, and I believed him.
Pierson Ranch wasn’t much of a place. A log cabin built against the side of a hill, so probably it was half dugout, a pole corral, and a ramshackle barn. There were several horses in the corral, and a dozen head of cattle were grazing nearby.
I rode up around the barn and stepped down,
tying my horses just out of sight behind the barn and among the trees. There was a trail leading into the hills through the trees.
Pierson and his family greeted me, and I was invited to sit down. Elsa Pierson was a buxom, heavyset woman with a wide, friendly smile, but there were lines of worry around her eyes now, and I noticed that she jumped at every sound.
She got out the coffeepot and she had cookies. The girls were young, almost women, and lovely enough in a healthy, friendly way.
“We want to get out,” Elsa Pierson said quietly. “We do not want any more of this.”
Obviously better educated than her husband, she had a quiet strength and certainty that I liked…it had carried over to the girls.
“I met Shelde,” I said. “I had a bit of trouble with him.”
“Be careful,” Pierson warned, “that bunch is likely to take a shot at you. They’re mean.”
We drank coffee and talked. Pierson had sixty-odd head of cattle, and he would sell at six dollars a head. Most of them were within a half mile of the house. It was the best and closest water, and he had been saving the grass nearer the ranch, so now he’d brought them in close.
“The girls he’ped,” he said, “but it ain’t safe for them no more. That’s a mean lot, and that Sallero is bad around women.”
“We’ll make our own gather,” I said, “but you can help us, Pierson. I wouldn’t want the women-folks involved.” I looked over at Mrs. Pierson. “Can you get out of here, all right? I mean, how can you get away?”
“There’s a man coming to the landing. He’ll pick us up and take us on down to The Dalles. There’s a man there who’ll hire both me and the wife.”
“All right. It’s a deal then.” I held out my hand. “I’m buying the cattle, everything wearing the P Bar…is that right?”
“Yes, sir. It surely is.”
We shook hands on it and I ate a last cookie, picked up my hat, and turned toward the door.
“Pierson! Come out here!”
It was Norm Shelde’s voice. I would have known it anywhere. Pierson started for the door and I stopped him.
“You’d be a damn’ fool to go out there. Ask him what he wants.”
“What you want?” Pierson yelled from the crack of the door.
“I hear you been talkin’ to that damn’ Yankee Shafter! Now you get this! You sell him one head of stock an’ we’ll kill you!”
My hand was on the door latch, and I opened it and stepped out. There are some things that make me mad, and one of them is a man who bullies other folks. Right now there was something coming up in me that I didn’t like the feel of, but it was there. I stepped outside.
“I’ve bought every head of stock Pierson owned,” I said. “What have you got to say to that?”
Well, you’d have thought I’d slapped him. He hadn’t seen my horse and had no idea I was anywhere around. It might have made no difference, but I think it would have. Men of his stripe don’t want witnesses or other men who’ll stand up to them.
He had the same two men with him, the one I picked for his brother Frank, and the other this Bud Sallero.
“I don’t like it,” Shelde said. He was surprised but he was mad, also. “I don’t like it at all. My suggestion to you is to get on your horse and ride out of here.”
“All of which I intend to do,” I said, “when I have bunched my stock so’s I can drive it with me. Pierson and his family are coming along.”
He didn’t like me one little bit. He rolled his quid in his jaw and spat. “You’re askin’ trouble,” he said, “an’ I’ll tell you once more…get out!”
Sallero had his rifle in his hands and so did Frank Shelde, but it wasn’t a thing that mattered to me right then. My eyes were on Norm, and he was trying to decide how much of me was talk and how much was man.
All of a sudden his manner changed. He’d been trying to make up his mind, and I felt him change right in front of me. There had to be a reason and my guess was that somebody else had entered the picture…another man.
But where was he?
“Pierson,” I said, “leave Norm Shelde for me. You can have Sallero.”
Shelde’s eyes flickered, and I knew where the other man was. Near the shed…must be the far end because there had been no sound from horses. If I’d put Shelde at twelve o’clock on a clock dial, that would put this other man at ten o’clock. If I were to step quickly back and left as I drew, he’d be likely to miss…of course, a man never knew. You have to play them the way they’re dealt.
“Pierson?” Shelde sneered. “You got you nothing at all there. He wouldn’t shoot.”
He glanced quickly to his right, then said, “All right, boys, shoot him!”
My foot went back and left and I shot at Shelde, then turned, dropped to my knees and shot at the man by the corner of the barn.
At the same instant there were a half dozen other shots, then silence.
Bud Sallero was hanging to his saddle horn with both hands, his eyes round and staring. His rifle lay in the dust where it had fallen, and his face grew red from blood, then turned gray. There was a spreading stain of darkness on his shirt.
Frank Shelde was in the dust of the ranch yard, and Pierson had stepped out of the door, holding an old Sharps .50.
Sallero slowly let his hands slip off the horn, and he fell from the saddle into the dust.
The man at the corner of the barn was crawling. Pierson nodded at him. “He’s gettin’ away, Ben.”
“Let him go. He won’t travel far with what he’s carrying. I know where I put it.”
Norman Shelde was still in the saddle, and he was alive. Either I’d shot too quick, trying to get the other man, or his horse had stepped over, for my bullet had smashed his gun hand, cutting deep into the web of flesh that joins the thumb to the hand. The bullet had gone right up the forearm and smashed through the arm at the elbow.
We just stood there, I don’t know how many seconds, and the shock was getting to me. I was shaking a little from reaction, and to cover it I started to talk.
“The odds weren’t just like you figured, Shelde,” I said, “so now you’re finished. Unless you’re pretty good with your left hand you’d better just ride out of here to some place where nobody knows you.”
The blood was dripping from his hand and arm, and when he moved the hand it looked like the thumb was dangling. That his arm was smashed at the elbow anybody could see.
He just stared at me, then at it. He was numb, shocked into silence.
“I didn’t want to kill anybody,” Pierson said. “I’m a friendly man. I never figured to hurt anybody at all, but they come at me.”
Elsa was out there. “You did just fine!” she said. “You did just what you had to do, and I’m right proud of you! You’d have done it before if I’d kept still, only I knew they’d never leave you to one man. It wasn’t like them.”
“I still want to leave here,” Pierson said. “I want to go to The Dalles.”
“Let’s round up those cattle,” I said, “it’s a long ride to South Pass.”
Chapter 24
I HAD PICKED up mail from home at the last station, but there had been no time to read it. Hurriedly, I had stuffed it into my saddlebags and had been busy on other things.
Now I was trailing southeast toward the Blue Mountains with one hundred and twenty-two head of mixed stuff, most of it young. The grazing was fairly good, and by scouting ahead and locating likely meadows I would have little trouble with my small herd.
I had picked up three more horses from Pierson, and he and his daughters had helped with the crossing and to get started on the trail away from the Landing.
At the end of the first day Pierson drew up and thrust out his hand. “Ain’t likely I can ever thank you enough,” he said simply. “I would have faced those men but ma couldn’t see me leaving my two girls without a pa in this country, an’ she was right. I’d likely have got one or two, but they’d surely have killed me.”
“Maybe,�
�� I said. “You never know. Anyway, your family will do better at The Dalles, I’m thinking.”
I lifted a hand to them and turned away. The heads of the cattle were bobbing, dust was lifting from the road, and deep-marked in the sod to left and right were the ruts of long-gone wagons, the pioneer wagons, the first to cut this road.
The Blue Mountains hung in the misty distance, shadowy, changing, elusive, until a man could not say if they were mountains or only a mirage of mountains. We worked the cattle slowly on, taking our time, letting them fatten for the long drives to come, and saving our few horses.
Uruwishi, ancient as the ancient hills, rode like a young boy, and the gleam in his eyes was good. Once, reined in beside the road to let the cattle pass, I said to him, “I would like to have seen you as a young man, Uruwishi. You must have been something then!”
“I was a warrior,” he said simply. “I counted plenty coups, took many scalps.”
“What do you want for Short Bull?” I asked. “What do you see for him?”
He stared after the young Indian and then said, “I would wish he could ride the land as I did when I was young. Now he cannot, for the land has changed. He must go the white man’s way.”
“You think it is the best way?”
He looked at me. “No,” he said, “but it is here.”
After a while I told him, “Both of you can stay at South Pass with us. You’re good men, and we need good men.”
“In a white man’s town?”
“It is a man’s town,” I said.
To tell the truth I’d never given much thought to that side of it and thought there might be some argument from Webb and Neely. Webb would grumble, but when he saw the Indians would stand to their guns in time of trouble and do their share of what had to be done, he would say no more. As for Neely, I was used to him.
Of course, I had not opened the letters yet.
It wasn’t until a few days later, camped under the pines at Emigrant Springs, that I finally read them. There were three, from Ruth Macken, from Lorna, and from Ninon.
Novel 1978 - Bendigo Shafter (v5.0) Page 17