Cowpokes and Desperadoes

by Gary Paulsen

  OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  THE COOKCAMP, Gary Paulsen

  THE VOYAGE OF THE FROG, Gary Paulsen

  THE BOY WHO OWNED THE SCHOOL, Gary Paulsen

  THE RIVER, Gary Paulsen

  THE MONUMENT, Gary Paulsen

  HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, Thomas Rockwell

  HOW TO FIGHT A GIRL, Thomas Rockwell

  HOW TO GET FABULOUSLY RICH, Thomas Rockwell

  CHOCOLATE FEVER, Robert Kimmel Smith

  BOBBY BASEBALL, Robert Kimmel Smith

  YEARLING BOOKS/YOUNG YEARLINGS/YEARLING CLASSICS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,

  write to Dell Readers Service,

  P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1994 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The trademark Yearling® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80379-5

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Yearling Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  •1

  Duncan—Dunc—Culpepper sat on the corner of the window watching his lifetime best friend, Amos Binder, pack his suitcase. Amos had a system. If it was semiclean and fell into the category of clothing—throw it in.

  Dunc glanced around Amos’s room. It looked as if it had been through a recent nuclear blast. Junk was thrown (Amos said it was strategically placed) everywhere. Dunc picked up a torn poster of a race car. Underneath was a rotten banana peel, a moldy sock, and a pair of jeans.

  Amos grabbed the jeans and threw them into his suitcase. “That ought to be enough stuff for two weeks. This is so great! I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a real cowboy. Can’t you just see me riding the range, roping cows, and singing songs on the lone prairie? I’m lucky your uncle invited me to come with you.”

  “Uncle Woody said he was glad to have you. He’s a little shorthanded at the ranch right now. Some of his hands just recently quit.”

  Amos sighed. “Melissa is going to be so impressed.”

  Melissa Hansen was the girl Amos dreamed about—the only girl in the world, as far as Amos was concerned. He spent most of his life working on schemes to get her to notice him. Like the time he joined the circus as a trapeze artist and ended up landing on her and breaking her arm. But not even that did it. So far nothing had worked. But Amos never gave up hope.

  “This cowboy thing could turn out to be a lot more work than you think,” Dunc said.

  Amos’s eyebrows went up. “Work? I thought all cowboys did was ride around and look at cows.”

  “I don’t want to discourage you, but there’s a lot more to it than that. The horses have to be fed, and the barn has to be—”

  Amos put his hand up. “Don’t be so negative. This trip is going to be fantastic. Besides, I think it’ll be good for me to get away for a while. Kind of let things settle. Due to the fire and all.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yeah. Our kitchen caught fire last night. It really wasn’t that big a deal—mostly smoke. The fire department put it out in no time.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I was watching my cousin, little Brucie, in the back yard. You remember little Brucie?”

  Dunc nodded. “Cute kid. Last time he was at your house, he ate your goldfish.”

  “That’s him. I had baby-sitting duty while my dad was cooking hamburgers on the grill. That’s when the phone rang. I was pretty sure it was Melissa calling to talk about my trip to the ranch and how impressed she was about my being a cowboy.”

  Dunc nodded again. He knew it couldn’t have been Melissa. It was never Melissa. Had never been Melissa. Would never be Melissa.

  “She likes for me to get it on that all-important first ring, so naturally I took the shortest route possible to the phone. There was just one problem—the barbecue grill was in the way.”

  “You knocked over your dad’s barbecue grill?”

  “No. You would have been proud of me, Dunc. I was in classic form, with just the right amount of momentum. My stride was great—I hurdled it. I wish someone could have taken my picture. I was incredible.”

  Dunc frowned. “If you didn’t knock over the grill, then how did you start a fire?”

  “I had almost cleared the grill when things sort of went downhill. A flame shot up and my pant leg caught on fire. I think I could have handled it and still made it to the phone if it hadn’t been for the marbles.”

  Dunc shook his head. “You lost me.”

  “Little Brucie. He left his marbles on the kitchen floor. I’m pretty sure he did it on purpose. He’s only three, but he can be vicious. Anyway, I hit them at a dead run, lost my balance, and slid under the table right into the trash can. It was full of paper. My pant leg ignited the paper, and that’s how the fire started.”

  “Did you get to the phone?”

  “No. Amy answered it. She claimed it was someone selling tickets to the firemen’s ball. My dad bought quite a few.”

  Dunc tried to keep from smiling. “I can see why it might be better for you to go out of town for a while.”

  “Yeah, I hope it’ll give my parents time to calm down. I think they will, unless they listen to my sister. Amy says this is her big chance. She’s going to try to talk them into moving to another part of the country while I’m gone.”

  “Don’t worry, Amos. She’s probably kidding.”

  “I don’t know. You should have seen the gleam in my dad’s eye when she first suggested it.”

  •2

  Amos arrived at Dunc’s house the next morning right on schedule. He was wearing a black cowboy hat that kept slipping down over his ears, boots that would have fit Ronald McDonald, and a belt buckle the size of Montana.

  Dunc scratched his head. “That’s quite an outfit.”

  “Thanks. I borrowed it from Ernie Weller. His older brother used to work for Cowboy Bob’s Pizza Palace. I didn’t want to show up at your uncle Woody’s ranch looking like a dude.”

  Dunc picked up Amos’s suitcase and headed for the car. “You look like a real cowboy, all right. I think it’s the gold pepperoni pizza on the front of the buckle that does it.”

  At the airport, Mrs. Culpepper insisted on pinning name tags on them and kissing Dunc good-bye right out in public where everyone could see. She started for Amos, but he ducked under her arm and head
ed for the plane.

  A flight attendant named Cindy showed them to their seats. Amos took the one by the window.

  “Parents are so weird,” Dunc said. “They let us go all over town by ourselves doing whatever we want. But when we are confined in an airplane, thousands of miles in the air, with no possible means of escape—suddenly they get all mushy and worried and pin a name tag on a guy, like he was some kind of a baby.”

  Amos leaned back in his chair. “Who can figure parents?”

  Cindy came by to make sure they were comfortable and find out if they wanted anything.

  Amos ordered a soda, peanuts, and a pillow. “That Cindy sure is nice. I bet Melissa will be a lot like her when she grows up.”

  Dunc yawned and closed his eyes. “My mom probably bribed her to keep an eye on us. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when we get to New Mexico.”

  Amos looked around the plane. No cowboys. Real cowboys probably don’t ride in airplanes, he thought. He would have asked to be sure, but Dunc was already snoring.

  Amos took his hat off and loosened his buckle. Another thing he needed to find out was how cowboys sit down wearing these big buckles and breathe at the same time.

  He picked up a magazine and thumbed through it. Directly behind him he could hear two male voices talking in low tones.

  “… it shouldn’t be hard. We’ve got him right where we want him. Everything’s all arranged. That Culpepper character will soon be history.”

  Amos sat up. Culpepper? History? He grabbed Dunc’s arm and started shaking.

  Dunc’s eyes flew open. “What?”

  Amos put his finger to his lips. “Shh! Listen.”

  The voices continued. “Culpepper’s an old man. He hardly has any real hands left who’ll work.” The speaker laughed sharply. “We’ve managed to convince them all to leave.”

  “Amos,” Dunc whispered urgently, “we have to go to the bathroom.”

  “We do? I don’t think so. I mean, maybe you do, but I don’t—”

  “Come on.” Dunc pulled him down the aisle.

  There was barely enough room for both of them to stand inside the tiny rest room. Dunc locked the door. “Amos, what did you hear before you woke me up?”

  “Not much. They just said everything was arranged and Culpepper would be history. For a minute there, I thought they were talking about you. I guess it must have been somebody else.”

  “Don’t you get it? Those guys weren’t talking about me. They were talking about my uncle Woody—Woody Culpepper.”

  “Why would anybody want to hurt your uncle? I thought you said he was a nice guy.”

  “He is. I can’t figure why anyone would be after him. Hmm.”

  Amos closed his eyes. “Oh, no. Don’t. Please don’t start with that.”

  “What?”

  “That sound. Every time you make that sound, I wind up in trouble. This is supposed to be a nice, quiet, fun vacation. No mysteries. Why can’t we do it that way just once?”

  “Amos, my uncle could be in some kind of trouble. We can’t just pretend we didn’t hear anything.”

  “I could try. My uncle Alfred—the one who picks his feet?—anyway, he’s always saying things my mom tells me to pretend I didn’t hear. Like the time he dropped his cigar in his lap and burned a hole through his pant leg, and—”

  Dunc interrupted. “This is different. These guys sound serious.”

  Amos sighed. “I suppose you have a plan?”

  “The first thing we need to do is ID those two guys behind us.”

  “Are you going to talk like a secret agent for the whole vacation?”

  Dunc opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked out. “Wait a few minutes, then follow me back to our seats. We don’t want to be noticed, so try to act nonchalant.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Natural. Try to act natural.”

  He shouldn’t have said it. They argued about it later. Natural for some people means one thing, but for Amos, it takes on a whole new definition.

  Dunc was halfway to his seat when he heard the crash. Amos tripped coming-out of the rest room. He did a nose dive into the flight attendant’s serving cart. Several people who were unlucky enough to have aisle seats were drenched with ice water. One man was screaming. He thought he had been shot until he discovered it was only tomato juice on his shirt.

  When Dunc finally found him, Amos was stuck under the seat of an irate lady passenger. She had a grapefruit on her head and was grinding her high heel into the middle of his back.

  It took some doing, but Dunc finally managed to convince the woman that Amos was harmless. She let him up but made him promise not to get out of his seat again until the plane landed.

  “So much for not drawing attention to ourselves,” Dunc said.

  He led Amos back down the aisle to their seats. Before they sat down, Dunc casually leaned around the back of his seat to get a look at the men in the row behind them.

  Empty.

  Not one person was sitting in the whole row.

  Now, why would they have moved? Dunc thought. They couldn’t have known … or could they? He looked down at the name tag on his shirt. His last name was in bold print.

  Culpepper.

  •3

  Uncle Woody met them at the airport. He was a tall, lean man with a twinkle in his brown eyes. He gave Dunc a bear hug and shook Amos’s hand as if he were pumping water. They loaded their bags into the back of his ancient pickup truck and headed for the ranch.

  Dunc answered all the usual questions about his family. Then came the question he was waiting for.

  “Did you boys have a good flight out?”

  “It was a pretty smooth flight, but we did have something strange happen. Two men sitting behind us were talking about taking care of someone named Culpepper who owned a ranch.” Dunc looked over at his uncle.

  The tall man rubbed his temple. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “It couldn’t have been anything important,” he said. “You probably had the misfortune of sitting in front of our distinguished bank president, J. B. Grimes. He and I have had some unpleasant dealings lately. He makes a lot of threats, but he’s mostly full of hot air. Don’t let it bother you.”

  “Oh, we won’t.” Amos glared at Dunc. “Will we?”

  Dunc ignored him. “You mentioned in your letter that a lot of your hands had quit. Did they tell you why?”

  “They all had their reasons, I guess.” Uncle Woody shifted in his seat. “It’s really lucky for me that you boys came out when you did. I can sure use your help until the new hands get here.”

  “We’re the lucky ones,” Amos said. “Riding, roping, herding them little dogies …”

  “Now, hold on, pardner.” Uncle Woody grinned. “We do have a couple horses picked out for you boys, but you’ll need to take it real slow. For the first few days, I’ll have Juan show you around. Then if you’re still willing, well talk about your chores.”

  “How much farther is it to the ranch?” Amos asked.

  “Son, we’ve been on it ever since we turned off the highway. The Rocking C covers a good chunk of land. We’ll reach the main house in about fifteen minutes.”

  Amos sat back and looked at the desert landscape. In the distance were rolling hills, and farther away, blue-gray mountains.

  Uncle Woody slowed down. He was looking at some cows milling around a dirt tank. A cowboy was riding among them. When he spotted the truck, the cowboy turned his horse and took off at a dead run.

  “What was that all about?” Dunc asked.

  Uncle Woody pulled up beside the tank. “Another unwelcome visitor. We’ve been having our share of those lately.”

  He stepped out of the truck and looked around. The cows were gentle, and when they saw the truck, they headed for it and started bawling for food. Uncle Woody reached in the back for a can of grain and poured it into a trough.

  Dunc slipped out the other side of the truck. “That guy doesn’t wor
k for you?”

  “Nope. I’m not sure who he works for, but I think he was after these cows. If we hadn’t come up on him, he might have pulled it off.”

  Amos walked over. “Are you serious? Cattle rustlers? I thought that stuff only happened in the movies.”

  Uncle Woody bent down to look at the track the horse had left. “Believe it or not, cows are worth a lot of money. We’ve had quite a few stolen lately.”

  “Have you called the police?” Dunc asked.

  “I had the sheriff out here the other day. But so far he hasn’t come up with anything.” Uncle Woody straightened up. “Well, we’d better get a move on, boys, or Juan and Maria will be wondering what’s keeping us.”

  “Do Juan and Maria work for you?” Amos asked.

  “It’s more like they work with me. Maria is Juan’s grandmother. She’s lived on this ranch almost as long as I have. Juan is my top hand, and Maria sort of runs the place. I couldn’t make it without them.”

  Amos stepped in a pile of cow manure on his way back to the truck. He kicked hard in an effort to whip the slimy stuff off, but instead his boot went sailing through the air.

  Dunc went on talking as if nothing unusual were happening. “How many cowboys do you have working for you altogether?”

  Amos hopped around on one foot trying to get to his loose boot.

  “Counting Juan, two.”

  Dunc opened the truck door. “You run this big place with two ranch hands?”

  “Well, I work, too, of course. And you boys are fixing to help out. So now we have five.”

  Amos’s hat slipped down over his eyes, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He reached down for the boot, but his buckle wouldn’t let him bend over. He wobbled, tried to regain his balance, and fell backward, seat-first, into another pile of cow manure.

  Dunc sighed and closed the truck door. He walked over, helped Amos to his feet, and handed him his boot.

  Uncle Woody laughed. “Amos, now you not only look like a cowboy, you smell like one too.”

  •4

  The pickup came to a stop in front of a white adobe ranch house. Tall cottonwood trees covered the front of it. A black and white border collie jumped the fence and ran to greet them.