“No, Dempster, Ben ain’t armed!” one of the other customers shouted.
Glancing toward the driver, Pearlie saw that he wasn’t armed. Looking back toward Dempster, he saw that the angry man was drawing his pistol.
Acting instinctively, Pearlie threw his beer mug at Dempster. The mug hit Dempster on the side of his head, and Dempster dropped like a poleaxed steer.
“Damn, mister, I reckon you just saved my life,” Ben said.
“I reckon I did,” Pearlie replied.
Ben sighed. “Now I’m going to have to find someone to ride shotgun with me tomorrow.”
“No, you won’t,” Pearlie said.
“What do you mean, I won’t?”
“You just found someone,” Pearlie said.
“You?”
“Me.”
“All right, I tell you what. I’ll tell Mr. Montgomery about you. You come on down to the depot before the stage leaves tomorrow, and you talk to him. If he’s willing to hire you, it’s fine with me.”
“What time does the stage leave?”
“It leaves at eight in the morning.”
“I’ll be there.”
Pearlie spent the night on the ground, just outside of town. When he rode back in the next morning, he saw the stagecoach sitting out in front of the depot. The team had not yet been connected, but hostlers were over in front of the barn, putting the team into harness.
The words on the side of the coach, painted in red and outlined in gold, read, SUNSET STAGE COACH LINE. Pearlie glanced around for the driver, but didn’t see him. For a moment, he considered waiting until he did see the driver; then he decided it would be best to just go on into the depot.
Inside, he saw a tall, silver-haired, dignified-looking man.
“Are you Mr. Montgomery?” Pearlie asked.
“I am.”
“Mr. Montgomery, last night I met a fella by the name of Ben. He suggested I come see you, to ask about working as a shotgun guard.”
“Oh, yeah, Ben talked to me about you. You’re the one called Pearlie?”
“Yes, sir.”
Montgomery chuckled. “Ben said you laid ole Dempster out with a beer mug. I sure wish I could have seen that.”
“At the time, it seemed the thing to do,” Pearlie said.
Montgomery whooped with laughter. “I don’t think I’ve ever met you,” Montgomery said. “How long have you lived in Los Brazos?”
“I’ll tell you that as soon as I find a place to live,” Pearlie replied.
Montgomery looked surprised for a moment; then he laughed again.
“Well, that’s a straight answer. Are you married?”
“No, I—” Pearlie paused. “I was married, but my wife died.”
“Oh, I’m real sorry to hear that, son. But, and don’t get me wrong but I have to ask this. Have you ever been in trouble with the law?”
“I’m not a wanted man,” Pearlie said.
“You’re not a wanted man?”
“No, sir, I am not.”
“All right,” he said. “I guess that’s a pretty straight answer, too. And because you gave me a straight answer, I won’t go any further into it. Ben tells me you were in the saloon when he told Dempster that he was fired.”
“Yes, sir, I was.”
“I don’t reckon it was any mystery to you why we fired him. He is a drunk. Now, let me ask you this. What were you doing in the saloon? You aren’t a drunk, are you?”
“I had a long ride, and for most of that ride, I was looking forward to a beer. When I rode into town last night, that was the first thing I did.”
“One beer?”
“One beer,” Pearlie said. “Well, that is, part of one beer. There was still some left when I threw it at Dempster.”
Montgomery laughed again. “All right, I reckon that’s good enough for me. Tell me this. If I hire you, how soon can you go to work?”
“When does the coach leave?”
“In about ten minutes.”
“If you hire me, I’ll be on it.”
Montgomery pointed to a cabinet. “There’s a twelve-gauge double-barrel and a .44-.40 Winchester in there. Take one or both.”
“I’ll take ’em both,” Pearlie said. He started toward the cabinet, then stopped and looked back toward Montgomery. “Mr. Montgomery, I think I need to tell you—I don’t plan to be here for a very long time.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“After my wife was—uh, after she died, I felt like I needed to get away. Everything back there reminded me of her and the hurt was just too much. But the time is going to come when I want to get back and be around my own friends and people.”
“I understand. Pearlie, is it?”
“Yes, sir, folks call me Pearlie.”
“Do you have a last name, Pearlie?”
“Do I need one?”
Montgomery paused for a moment; then he chuckled. “No, I guess not. All right, Pearlie, you can work for me as long as you want, as long as you keep your nose clean, and as long as Ben is comfortable with you. When the time comes that you feel like you want to go back home, tell me. There will be no hard feelings.”
“Thanks, Mr. Montgomery, I appreciate your understanding,” Pearlie replied.
Montgomery stepped up to the door, then called outside. “Ben?”
“Yes, Mr. Montgomery?” Ben’s voice floated in from the stable area.
“Come in here and meet your new shotgun guard.” “I already met him,” Ben replied. “If he’s been hired, tell him to get his ass out here and climb aboard.”
Montgomery turned toward Pearlie. “Oh, uh, I didn’t tell you. Ben is pretty much of what I think you would call a curmudgeon.”
“A what?”
“A grouch.”
Pearlie laughed. “That’s all right, I like grouches. You always know where you stand with a grouch.”
Pearlie grabbed the two weapons, then walked outside. The coach had been pulled into position and Pearlie put the two guns on the seat, then climbed up. Once up on the seat, he laid the guns down in the foot well, then scooted over to the left side.
“Hrmmph,” Ben said. He spit out a quid of tobacco. “At least you got enough sense to know which side of the seat to sit on.”
When all of the passengers were on board, Ben clambered up onto the driver’s seat, spit out another quid of tobacco, then snapped the long whip over the head of his team. The pop of the whip was as loud as a pistol shot, and the coach started forward.
They had been on the road for about fifteen minutes without either of them saying a word.
“How come you ain’t asked me?” Ben asked.
“Asked you what?”
“Asked me how long it’s goin’ to be before we get to where we’re goin’.”
“You’re the one drivin’,” Pearlie replied. “All I have to do is just sit here. I figure we’ll get there when we get there.”
Ben chuckled, and it was the first time since they had met that Pearlie had seen anything other than a frown on his face.
“You figure we’ll get there when we get there,” Ben repeated. “Yes, sir, Pearlie, I think you may just work out all right.”
Chapter Two
Santa Clara, Colorado
One hundred and seventy-five miles southeast of Sugarloaf, at a ranch called the Tumbling Q, near the small railroad town of Santa Clara, a meeting was being held. Attending the meeting were all the ranchers whose own spreads lay within a twenty-mile radius of the Tumbling Q. The breed of choice for the ranchers was the Texas longhorn. Most had been running the longhorn ever since they started ranching. The longhorn was a hardy breed, a breed that could survive drought and find something to eat where little forage seemed available.
Today, the ranchers were complaining bitterly over the fact that the market for longhorns was dropping. The meeting had been called by Pogue Quentin, the biggest rancher in the county and owner of the Tumbling Q.
“It’s these damn Herefords,” Pe
ters said. Peters owned a neighboring ranch. “That’s all the slaughterhouses is wantin’ now, and they ain’t willin’ to pay enough for our cows for us to make any money at all. In fact, at the way this is goin’, by the time it’s all said and done, we’ll be lucky to hang on to our ranches.”
Gillespie held up his hands to quiet the group; then he nodded toward Quentin, who had been watching and listening to the whole thing. So far, Quentin had said nothing.
“Quentin, you called this here meeting,” Gillespie said. “So I figure that means you must have an idea or two.”
“Yeah, Quentin, you said you had a way we could beat this. What have you got in mind?”
Quentin, who had been sitting quietly in a chair near the window, stood up. A very heavyset man, he was clean shaven, and had a ring of white hair that circled his head and left the top bald and shining.
“Gentlemen, the time of the longhorn has gone,” he said. “We may as well face facts.”
“What do you mean by face facts?” Peters asked.
“I mean, you may as well face facts that if you are running a herd of longhorns, you ain’t goin’ to be makin’ any money from ’em. So your best bet is to get rid of ’em.”
“Get rid of ’em how? If nobody wants them, what are we goin’ to do, shoot ’em?”
“Oh, the market for longhorns is dwindling to be sure, but there is still some market there, so it is going to become a matter of supply and demand. If we control the supply, we can have some input into the demand.”
“And just how the hell are we supposed to control supply?” Gillespie asked.
“My suggestion would be for us to form a corporation. A cattle corporation. We’ll join all our ranches and our herds together. We’ll be able to control supply that way, because we will approach the market as a single supplier.”
“How would something like that work?” James Colby, one of the other ranchers, asked.
“It’s really very simple,” Quentin answered. “All we have to do is merge our ranches and our cattle into one large ranch and cattle company.”
“One large ranch? I don’t know about that. Who would own it?”
“We would all own it,” Quentin said. “We would each own a share of the company in proportion with what we put into it.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“All right, let’s say we put all our cattle together, and we come up with one hundred head,” Quentin said, starting to explain.
“Ha, I got more than a hunnert head all by my own self,” Colby said.
The others laughed, and Quentin held up his hand as if telling him to wait. “I’m using a hundred head so I can explain it. Now, if we have one hundred head, and you put in two cows, Gillespie puts in six cows, and Peters puts in ten cows, you will own two percent of the company, Gillespie will own six percent of the company, and Peters will own ten percent.”
“Who owns the rest?”
“We all own the rest, according to how many head of cattle we put in. I’ll own most of the company, because I have the most cattle.”
“And you say we’re doin’ that so we can control the market?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll put my cattle in,” Colby said.
“And your ranch,” Quentin added.
“My ranch? What do you mean, my ranch?”
“If we are going to make this a corporation, then it has to have some substance,” Quentin said. “Look, we all agree that we are going to have to switch over to Herefords, don’t we?”
“Well, yes,” Colby said. “That’s what we need to do.”
“Can you afford to do that right now?”
“No.”
“Don’t feel bad about it, most of us are in the same boat.”
“No, we ain’t,” Colby said. “We’re all in a rowboat, but you are in a ship. You’re the biggest rancher in the county.”
The others laughed at Colby’s analogy.
“Yes, but compared to some of the other ranchers in the state, the Tumbling Q might be considered small. However, if we joined all our ranches into one ranch, we would be as big as anyone else.”
“So, you want me to give you my ranch?”
“No, you won’t be giving your ranch to me. You will be buying into the corporation with your ranch, which will make you a part owner,” Quentin said. “Don’t you see? With one big ranch, we’ll have enough power to go to any bank in the state and take out a loan for as much money as we need to buy Herefords. I propose that we join all our ranches into one big ranch, with each of us owning a percentage of that ranch—then we sell the entire herd of longhorns, use what money we get from that sale, plus what we can borrow on the ranch, and buy Herefords.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Gillespie agreed.
“I guess it makes sense,” Peters added. “I do have a question, though.”
“What is your question?”
“When this is all put together, what percentage will you own?”
“I’ve had Lawyer Gilmore draw up the papers for us,” Quentin replied. “Mr. Gilmore, can you answer Mr. Peters’ question?”
Gilmore cleared his throat, then read from a piece of paper. “Given the value of the various ranches, as appraised by the county tax commission, and the number of head of cattle each of you will be bringing to this enterprise, Mr. Quentin will own eighty-seven percent.”
“Eighty-seven percent? Isn’t that a lot? I mean, if we sell our herd, that means you get eighty-seven percent of the money we make?”
“It also means I’m responsible for eighty-seven percent of the cost of operation,” Quentin pointed out. “Unless you want to assume a larger percentage of the expenses.”
“No, no, I—I guess you are right,” Peters agreed.
Quentin smiled. “But that’s not the way to look at it, Peters,” he said. “Remember, the whole idea is that we are partners of the whole. All of you will be part owners of the Tumbling Q ranch.”
“Yeah,” Gillespie said. “Yeah, I like that idea.”
“Gentlemen, if you’ll just sign the paper, we’ll be in business,” Quentin said, holding his hand out toward the desk where Gilmore stood with the paper and a pen, ready for the other ranchers to sign. Gillespie, Peters, and the other three ranchers present signed. But when it came time for Colby to sign, he hesitated.
“Are you going to sign, or not?” Gilmore asked.
“I don’t know,” Colby replied. “I was all right with the idea of joining our herds. But the land? I’m not so good with that. After the war, I come out here from Missouri and started cowboyin’. I liked the work, and I never worked for a boss that I didn’t like. But from the time I first come here, I always had it in my mind to someday own me my own ranch. Well, after a lot of hard work, I finally managed to get my own spread. Oh, it ain’t much, I guess, considerin’ the size of some of the other ranches hereabout. But it’s mine. Now, if I join up with this corporation you’re talkin’ about, it won’t be mine anymore. I’ll be right back where I started, just another cowhand working someone else’s ranch.
“That’s not true,” Quentin said. “You won’t be an employee of the ranch, you’ll be one of the owners, a partner in a ranch that is bigger than anything you’ve ever dreamed of.”
“Consider this, Colby,” Gillespie said. “If you don’t join, you’ll be even smaller, compared to what we will be. You’ll be squeezed out of business in no time at all.”
“Listen to what Gillespie is saying, Colby,” Quentin said. “He’s tellin’ you like it is.”
“James, me an’ you been friends ever since you come out here,” Peters said to Colby. “I think Gillespie is makin’ sense. I don’t think you got no other choice, but to join up with the rest of us.”
“But what about the men we’d need to work an outfit this large?” Colby asked. “Won’t we have to hire a lot more men?”
“Not really,” Quentin replied. “Because we’ll be poolin’ all our cowboys so we
won’t need any more men than what we already have.”
“I only got two hands workin’ for me and I do as much or more than either of them. Now, I don’t mind doin’ it for my own ranch, but looks like the way this is settin’ up, I’ll wind up workin’ for the company.”
“Ah, but don’t forget. You are the company,” Quentin said.
“A company’s got to have a boss, don’t it?” Colby asked.
“Yes, of course,” Quentin replied. “Where would any outfit be without a boss?”
“Then that means I’ll be workin’ for that boss.”
“By the way, how do we select the boss?” Peters asked.
“We’ll vote.”
“Each of us get a vote?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in that case, I don’t reckon it’ll be all that bad,” Peters said.
“One vote for each percentage point of the ranch that you own,” Quentin said.
“Wait a minute. So if I own six percent, I get six votes?”
“Yes.”
“And you get eighty-seven votes?” Peters asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you are the only vote that counts.”
“If you want to put it that way,” Quentin replied.
“What the hell, Peters, Quentin is the biggest rancher here, and this was his idea,” Gillespie said. “When you think about it, it only makes sense that he be the boss.”
“I suppose you are right.”
Although Colby was holding the pen, he had still not signed the paper. Now, he put the pen down.
“James, what are you doin’?” Peters asked.
“I’m sorry,” Colby said. “I just can’t do it. I worked too hard to get my own ranch. I just can’t give it away like this.”
“Mr. Colby,” Quentin said. “I have to do what is best for all of us. That means that if you don’t join us, you won’t be able to survive, you will have no market for your cattle, and your ranch will be squeezed out. You’ll be lucky if you have enough money to buy a ticket back to Missouri.”
“Yeah? Well, at least I’ll be my own boss,” Colby said. “Good-bye, gents.” He started toward the door.
“Colby?” Quentin called.
Savagery of The Mountain Man Page 2