Gunpoint

by Giles Tippette

  I found a stick and deliberately tripped the other two traps. I had no further use for them. They’d been a wild idea that hadn’t done any good.

  I walked back down the incline and got the horses ready to go. The green patches seemed to be closer. I mounted the roan and headed downgrade for the nearest one. The chestnut came slowly and unwillingly. I knew he’d be stiff after the night of standing around in the cool air. I took it as slow as I could, gradually letting him loosen up. The sun got up and the air began to warm. For the first time on the trip I was welcoming the summer’s heat.

  After a couple of miles he began going along a little easier, and I gradually picked up the shambling pace we’d been in. All I could hope was that some farmer would have that extra horse. I figured to get stung on the trade but there wasn’t much I could do about that. It was, as Norris would have said, a seller’s market.

  I had been riding about three hours when my watchdogs suddenly appeared on a long ridge over to my right. There was no mistaking them because, by now, I had gotten familiar with their horses. Two of them rode bays and one of them rode a buckskin. The bays were common but you didn’t see many buckskins.

  I watched them paralleling my path, I was getting angrier by the minute. They were keeping a steady distance of about a half a mile between us. I suddenly pulled up the roan. They stopped also. I abruptly jerked my rifle out of the boot and levered a shell into the chamber. It was foolish and it was pointless because they were well out of range, but I elevated my carbine and fired six shots as fast as I could in their direction. I was hoping a slug would arc down and either hit one of them or one of their horses. The bullet would be falling and wouldn’t have enough power to even break the skin, but maybe it would bruise one of them.

  They never even moved, just sat their horses watching me. I guess every slug fell well short. They sat watching me while I reloaded and rammed my carbine back in the boot. Then I took up the reins and started off again. They immediately did the same, keeping their horses to the same pace as mine. I was sure my outburst, plus my gunfire of the night before, was handing them a good laugh. Likely they’d report to J.C. Flood that I was starting to get spooked, that the pressure was starting to wear me down. And I was sure that they had more than once asked Flood why he didn’t just let them go ahead and finish me off. But they were just thickheaded gun hands; they could have no conception of how a mind like Flood’s worked.

  I was just anxious to get to Rocksprings and try and get word back from Norris about the ranch. And there was also Nora. This was my eleventh day on the trail. She could well have already started for home. It had been a good job that I’d told Lonnie Parker to keep her in town. If I had a vulnerable point it was Nora.

  * * *

  I finally reached the valley floor about mid-morning. Even without all the rough country separating us my escort maintained the steady half-mile distance. Sometimes I felt like waving at them just to see what they do. And other times I felt like charging them, but the last seemed like a poor play. They were three guns to my one, and I’d have to cover a considerable distance before I could even begin firing with any hope of effect.

  Once I was in the valley the little patches of green didn’t seem so green. They had mostly seemed that way because they were outlined against the dull brown of the rest of the country. I headed for the nearest farm, which was about two miles away. I stopped once for a little fork of the Nueces River and let the horses have a good watering. The Nueces was what made the little valley barely livable. Lord knows the nesters didn’t farm off the rain, and as a consequence, most of the farms were strung out along one or more of the forks of the little river. Some of its waters saturated into the soil and did the plants some good.

  As I got near to the farm I was aiming for I could see the man had a few acres in some scraggly corn and about the same in some thin wheat. He had a field of potatoes, I could see, and then a big kitchen garden behind his house. The house was a small, boxlike affair built of adobe and rock. Wasn’t any timber in the country and store-bought lumber was too dear for these folks.

  Behind the garden I could see a pigpen and a barn with a corral. The fence was high, but I could make out three horses shaded up next to the barn. I hoped that meant he had one too many.

  I rode on up to the front of the house and give it a loud, “Hello, the house!” I halfway expected to catch the farmer out in the fields, but pretty soon a gnarled-looking old man came to the door. He didn’t open it all the way, just kind of peered out. He said, “What’chutbe wantin’?”

  I said, “I’d like to talk to the owner. My packhorse has gone lame and I’m looking to make some kind of swap.”

  He considered that for a moment and then stepped out on the front porch, closing the door behind him. He spit tobacco juice on the floor of the porch and then stirred it around with his boot. He was wearing bib overalls and wasn’t quite as old as I’d first thought him. “Might be I could tend to you. Happens I might.”

  I sat there, on my horse, waiting for him to invite me to step down. “My name is Justa Williams. I’ve got a ranch down along the gulf coast. If you know where that is.”

  “Do tell! Why, boy, you’re a long way from home. An’ this is bad country to have yore packhorse go lame.”

  Well, that was trader talk and he and I both knew it. I said, “I didn’t get your name.”

  He looked surprised and then hesitated. I wondered if he’d been living out in this desolate no-man’s-land so long he’d forgotten it. Finally he said, “Name’s Gamp. Leroy Gamp.”

  “Well, could we look at what you might be willing to swap for?”

  He shook his head uncertainly. “Livestock is mighty dear out here. Yes, sir, mighty dear.”

  And getting dearer, I thought, as I watched him sizing up my outfit and figuring out to the penny just what he thought he could work me for. Well, I didn’t much blame him. I figured he had a pretty hard life and it wasn’t every day that a man came by with a lame packhorse.

  He said, “Well, step down, step down, an’ we’ll go an’ have a look. Don’t know if I kin he’p you, though. I ain’t got but the one team left an’ I shore can’t split them up.”

  I untied the lead rope of the chestnut and then dismounted. I left the roan standing where he was, but I took the chestnut on lead and walked along by Mister Gamp as we headed back toward the corral. He glanced at the chestnut. He wasn’t limping badly at all, mainly because he was good and warm. But next morning he’d hardly be able to get around.

  Gamp nodded his head at the packhorse. “What be the wrong with him?”

  “He’s got a bruised hip. The right hip. Happened yesterday.”

  “That so?” he said. “That’s mighty serious. Yes, sir, mighty serious.”

  I half smiled. “Are you going to tell a rancher about horses, Mister Gamp?”

  He shook his head. “Never kin tell with them kind o’ things. Sometimes they gets better and sometimes they don’t.”

  “Mister Gamp, all this horse needs is about a week’s rest. Maybe ten days. After that he’ll be good as new.”

  “How’d he get hurt?”

  “Rock slide,” I said briefly. “Coming over the caprock.”

  He nodded and spit. “That’ll happen. He looks pretty old.”

  “He’s an honest seven,” I said. “You can mouth him. He’s been a cow horse up until I took him on this trip with me. He’s a good, gentle horse that will do his best at whatever job you set for him.”

  “Will he pull a plow?”

  “If you show him what’s wanted. He’s never pulled one, but I reckon he will.”

  By then we were at the corral. Mister Gamp opened the gate and we stepped inside. The three horses were at the far end, in the shade of the small rock barn. Two of them were obviously plow horses, and I couldn’t quite see the third as he was standing behind the other two. They barely took notice of our entrance, just stood there, their heads down, one hind leg drawn up. Gamp said, “
It would have to be that horse in the back. That black. The other two are a matched set of the best plow horses in this valley.”

  I walked toward the horses. The two plow horses looked up and reluctantly separated, one going one way, the other in the opposite direction. I reckoned they figured I’d come to put them to work and they were going to make it as hard as possible to get harness on their backs.

  The black just stood there, raising his head slightly. He was skinny and dusty from where he’d been rolling around on the ground, but there was no mistaking what he was. He was a genuine Thoroughbred racehorse, the kind they so prided themselves on up in Kentucky and places like that. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where Gamp had got such an animal. He obviously didn’t know what he had and I wasn’t about to tell him. Not because I wanted to cheat the man but because he wouldn’t trade him. A horse like that, if he wasn’t hurt or broken down, was worth upwards of a few thousand dollars, and I didn’t need any thousand-dollar packhorses. As a matter of fact I didn’t even know if he’d carry a pack. I said, “He’s mighty thin. Don’t look like he’s been eating regularly.”

  Behind me Gamp cleared his throat and didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t have to. He hadn’t been feeding the horse because he couldn’t get the horse to work, and on the kind of farm Gamp’s place was you didn’t eat if you didn’t work. But even as thin as the horse was, I could see the long, graceful lines, the dainty front legs, the huge, driving hindquarters, the long back and neck. Oh, he was a runner, all right; that is, if he wasn’t foundered.

  I went up to him. He trembled slightly, but stood stock still. I mouthed him and his teeth told me he was a clean four-year-old. At the same time I noticed the tattoo on the inside of his lower lip. That was his registration number. I’d read where those racing organizations had done that to keep people from running in a faster horse that looked alike, for one that was not so fast. I said casually, “This your saddle horse, Mister Gamp?” I looked around at him.

  He didn’t look too comfortable with the question. A man is allowed a certain amount of leeway with the truth when he’s horse-trading, but he ain’t supposed to just out and out lie.

  He said, “I’ve had a saddle on him.” But he said it after some consideration and said it looking the other way.

  He might have had a saddle on him, but I doubted both the saddle and Mister Gamp had ever been on the horse’s back for long. I half smiled to myself at Gamp’s answer. I’d of been surprised at any other. I felt the horse all over, feeling up and down his legs and his flanks and around his neck for any swelling that might indicate he’d been colicky. He was wearing a halter, a very good quality halter, though somewhat worn, and I took him by it and led him around in a circle. He came readily enough, arching his neck and dancing just a bit.

  Mister Gamp cleared his throat. “Now, that thar horse is a good ’un. I reckon I’ll have to have some boot ’tween him and yores.”

  I stopped and stared at him. “Boot? You want boot? I was thinking of asking for boot.”

  “Now just hold on thar, sir! By yore own mouth you admit yore horse will take ten days, two weeks to git well. All he’ll be doin’ is eatin’ his head off and me not gettin’ a lick of work outen him.”

  “And how much work you been getting out of this one, Mister Gamp? How many times you had him to a plow? How many times you actually ridden him? And I don’t mean to town. You’d never get him to town. Not with you on him.”

  “Wa’l, I ain’t sayin’ yes or no to them questions. But I got a sound horse an’ you ain’t. An’ you want a packhorse an’ I don’t.”

  I laughed. “Mister Gamp, where did you get this horse? I know what he is and you don’t. You got about as much use for him as you do for a silk hat.”

  He looked at me for a long moment and then spit tobacco juice. He said, kind of slowly, “He is a right strange kind of horse.”

  “Where’d you get him?”

  He shrugged. “He jest come wandering up here one day. ’Bout two weeks ago. Poor feller was near about starved to death. I took him in and fed him what I could afford, thinkin’ I’d make a saddle pony out of him. Takes forever to get to town ridin’ one of them plow horses.”

  I looked at Gamp. He wasn’t very tall, but he made up for it in wideness. I reckoned he weighed close to two hundred pounds. And racehorses were not used to carrying two hundred pounds. I said, “What happened when you tried to ride him?”

  Gamp said, “Why, he scared me to death. I’d no more than got on him an’ he tried to run out from under me. Landed me on my back an’ hurt my shoulder. An’ him with my good saddle on his back. He finally come back when I was feedin’ the other horses. Since then I’ve jest give him a good lettin’ alone.”

  “He just come wandering up? Just out of nowhere?”

  Mister Gamp looked uncomfortable. “Wa’l, I did hear that the TP an’ Rio Grande had theyselves a wreck a few miles from here. It was said that some livestock got loose. Train was comin’ up from Mexico. I figgered that thar horse might of been offen that train. But I been jest too busy to go ’round tryin’ to find out ’bout no lost railroad property. An’ the nearest depot fer the TP an’ Rio Grande is Uvalde an’ that’s forty miles.”

  He was talking about the Texas Pacific and Rio Grande railroad. Now it made a little sense. This horse had either been sent to Mexico to race or had been down there training. I stood there staring at him, the horse. He had been gelded so he wouldn’t be any good to Ben to breed into our herd. And I couldn’t pay his real value as a racehorse and then use him for a pack animal. I guessed I could go and try at some of the other farms, but I hated to waste the time and drag the chestnut the extra distance. I said, “Mister Gamp, did you advertise you were holding this horse?”

  That surprised him. “Did I ... what?”

  “Advertise. Put it in the papers or spread the word so the rightful owners could lay claim and pay you for your trouble.”

  He looked worried. “Wa’l, I—wa’l, I told a couple of neighbors. Mentioned it in Rocksprings. But I ain’t never taken out no advertisement in the paper. Never even come into my head to do such a thing.”

  “But you put it about that you had the horse?”

  “Hell, yes,” he said. “I wanted somebody to pay me fer the trouble of keepin’ the damn animal up and feedin’ it an’ then to take it offen my hands!”

  He shut up abruptly, looking a little sorry he’d shown his hand so openly. But it didn’t matter. I was about to tell him the truth of the matter. It was only about twelve more miles to Rocksprings and I figured the chestnut could make that if he had to, though I hated to put him through it. “Mister Gamp, what you got here is a racehorse.”

  “A what?” He looked blank.

  “A racehorse.”

  He peered at me. “What prezactly is a racehorse? A fast horse?”

  Well, that took me up a little bit. I didn’t figure I’d ever run into anybody before that didn’t know what a racehorse was. “Yes, a racehorse can run fast. That’s what a racehorse does. He runs on a track against other racehorses. And that’s all he does. He can’t work cattle, he can’t pull a plow. In fact, he won’t even run if he’s got too much weight on him. They got special riders for them. Call them jockeys. Most of them don’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “Do tell,” he said. “Never heered of nothing like that.”

  “Rich men in cities pay considerable money for them. That horse was probably on that train that got wrecked. But I imagine the insurance has already paid off and nobody wants that horse. That makes it yours.”

  “Hell, I don’t want no damn racehorse. I’m willing to try and swap with you.”

  “I don’t even know if the damn animal will even carry a pack.”

  Gamp said, “Whyn’t you sling yore gear on him and see what happens?”

  I half smiled. “I’m liable to get my gear busted all to hell. You pretty sure this horse ain’t foundered?�
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  He shrugged. “I’ll trade him as is, just the way you be tradin’ yore horse. I got no reason to think he’s foundered, but then I never rode him.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter. He’ll mostly be walking. I can’t see where his wind is going to come into it. But he don’t act broke down. I reckon I’ll try and trade with you.”

  Mister Gamp stirred a toe around in the dust of the corral. “Wa’ll, I reckon I’ll take yore horse an’ twenny-five dollars boot.”

  “I’m taking a horse I’m not even sure I can use. In ten days you’ll have a first-class saddle horse and an extra plow horse. And you’ll get ten years’ work out of this animal. He’s part Morgan and they live to be twenty years old. And work right up to the end.”

  Gamp said, “Yeah, but he’s a big horse. Must weigh a thousand pounds. I bet he can match my other two fer eatin’.”

  “I’ll take ten dollars boot and a bushel of shelled corn.”

  “Now hold on, hold on! Let’s us don’t go to talkin’ ’bout what you’ll take. I ain’t the one way out here with a lame packhorse.”

  I started toward the corral gate. “I said I’d try and trade with you. I didn’t say nothing about standing here and getting robbed.”

  He started backing toward the gate. “Now hold on thar. Jest hold on, damnit! I ain’t finished my tradin’.”

  I stopped. “Well?”

  He studied over it for a second. Then he said, “Tell you what. I’ll take ten dollar an’ give you a half a bushel o’ corn.”

  “A bushel.”

  He frowned. “Mister, I ain’t tryin’ to be mean ’bout this, but I didn’t make no very good corn crop.”

  I sighed. I could tell just from looking at his fields he hadn’t made a crop of much of anything. “All right. Just give me enough corn to get my two animals to Rocksprings. That is, if I can get that damn racehorse to haul a pack.”