The Crimson Trail

by Eric Red

  The sinister well-dressed cattle baron Crispin Calhoun entered at his leisure, uninterested in his cowpuncher’s pathetic pleas for mercy because his interests lay in the array of butcher knives and cleavers industrial slaughterhouses use to process mass quantities of cows and pigs. Calhoun looked the implements over for one best suited to extract payment for the debt, considering his options. The cowboy henchmen stood beside the trussed foreman.

  The cattleman hefted a jagged skinning knife of nightmarish proportions that took both hands to grip and would strip the muscle and tendon like butter from the bone. “This will do.”

  “I pay you anything, please don’t cut me, I give you all my money!”

  “The butcher’s bill is paid in flesh, pound for pound. Next time read your Shakespeare, you ignorant uneducated wretch.”

  The poor Mexican foreman threw up all over himself as the cattleman brandished the skinning knife and solemnly uttered, “Ave tenebris Dominus.”

  Calhoun started cutting.

  Throughout the night and all through the following day, the hideous, appalling screams emanated from the slaughterhouse, but out in the boonies of East Texas on rural outer reaches of the Bar T ranch, nobody was close enough to hear and if they were, they didn’t listen. They knew better.

  And by that time, cattle baron Crispin Calhoun had already boarded the train to Cheyenne.

  * * *

  “It’s losing the cows he’s going to be mad about, not the men he’s lost,” Cole Starborough said with a tone of ironic forbearance. “Mr. Calhoun couldn’t care less how many of his men die—the way he looks at it now, he doesn’t have to pay them—but the loss of a single steer, just one, that he takes personally. God help the man who works for Mr. Calhoun who loses a cow. Mr. Calhoun will take a pound of flesh from that luckless individual for every pound of flesh of that cow, exactly what it cost him. Of course, compared to a whole cow, no man has that much flesh to spare, but Mr. Calhoun will take it nonetheless, I’ve seen him do it.”

  “Good Lord.” Laura Holdridge couldn’t believe her ears as she sat inside a large canvas tent that had been designated her private quarters, having a conversation with Cole Starborough. He poured her a glass of wine from a bottle he brought for her comfort, then one for himself. She took small sips, not wanting to get drunk, as much as she dearly wanted to, for she had to keep her wits about her. “How?” she wanted to know.

  “He flays them. A grown man has, on average, a hundred and fifty pounds of flesh on his body. An average cow, fourteen hundred pounds. Even when that man has had every last ounce of meat stripped from his bones and he’s just a red skeleton, he still hasn’t paid off the pounds of cow flesh he owes, and the way Calhoun sees it, the debt hasn’t been paid.”

  “But the man who lost the cow is dead.”

  “Indeed. But not his dependents who inherit his debts—his wife, children, even parents.”

  “Do you mean to tell me? Dear God, not—”

  “Take my word for it, Mr. Calhoun always has his debts paid in full, gets everything owed to him. Every dollar, every dime, every nickel, every ounce of flesh he’s ever been owed, Calhoun keeps track of those accounts in his little black book up here.” Cole tapped his temple with a gloved finger. “His obsession with every cent, every cow, attention to detail to the point of madness, for some would be termed a pathology, but it is his methodology, and some might call it insanity, but Mr. Calhoun calls it business. That’s why he has so much money and power and is indisputably the greatest cattleman in America.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “And this is why, Mrs. Holdridge, you do not want to mess with Crispin Calhoun.” The gentleman foreman got up and went to the tent opening, brushed aside the flap, turned and looked back. “You asked me why I make such a point about not losing livestock, and hopefully I have explained. This is why I refuse to lose a single cow in that herd out there, Mrs. Holdridge. I will not be the man Mr. Calhoun extracts his pounds of flesh from. So you need not worry about the health of those steers, because rest assured I will deliver every last head to my boss without even a scratch on their horns. I’ll stop by again in a few hours to check in on you.”

  Laura had something on her mind. “Mr. Starborough, may I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  “How did you know so damn much about my cattle drive? It’s like you always knew our next move before we made it, one step ahead of us the whole time. You’re intelligent, I grant you, but nobody’s that smart.”

  “I had a spy in your outfit.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  Laura wanted to say her wranglers were like family and none of them would ever betray her. But remembering one of the outfit was a killer, and seeing the truthful gaze of the gentleman henchman, she lowered her eyes and said simply, “Who?”

  “The cook. Kettlebone.”

  The cattlewoman wanted to cry and it took all her willpower to keep the tears out of her eyes.

  “I thought you already knew,” Cole admitted. “I didn’t see the cook with the rest of your outfit when we confiscated your cattle, so assumed you’d discovered him and cut him loose.”

  She heaved a sad sigh. “You bastard.”

  Calhoun’s enforcer wore a sympathetic expression. “Don’t take it personally, Mrs. Holdridge. Every man has his price, it’s just some men’s price is higher and they’re better negotiators.” He tipped his bowler hat and left.

  Laura sat quietly on her cot reflecting on another very civil conversation with Cole Starborough, who frequently dropped in on her to see how she was doing and to ask if there was anything he could do to make her more comfortable. “During her stay” was the phrase he preferred, even though they both knew the correct word was “kidnapped.” It was how the blue bloods put things. Cole clearly had an upper-class upbringing and a well-bred background, though how he ended out West engaged in frontier criminal enterprises was anyone’s guess. She was intrigued and intended to ask him. The only thing about Cole’s past Laura had gotten out of him was that he’d been thrown out of West Point.

  True to his word, Cole Starborough had given her first-class treatment since he’d kidnapped her, attending to her every creature comfort. He was a complete gentleman, an educated man whose air of refinement contrasted with his battlefield manner. Her tent had a bed and silk sheets, fine scented soaps, chocolates, several fine classic books, hot and cold water basins and fresh-water jugs, refilled several times a day. There were even flowers in a vase that the posse must have freshly picked on the trail. Ironically, the lifelong cowgirl couldn’t remember being pampered like this. Cole Starborough treated her considerately from the moment she was in his charge; it made her not hate him as much as she probably should.

  A few days ago, five minutes after she’d watched her wranglers and Joe Noose ride out of sight, Cole had immediately cut the detonation wire and removed the sticks of dynamite and entire TNT vest from her midriff. Since then, Laura had not been handcuffed or tied up or trammeled in any way. Starborough had behaved with extreme courtesy with her, as did his men. As hostages go, she was receiving special treatment, but she was still a prisoner. Night and day, the tread of boots outside her tent were a constant reminder to Laura she had the eyes of the posse on her every waking and sleeping moment, except when she had to relieve herself and was afforded privacy. Even then, the posse knew where she was and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  There was nowhere to go, and Laura knew it. Held captive by heavily armed professional mercenaries, she had no illusions. No matter how many gentlemanly conversations she had with Cole—who she knew was really no gentleman—she was in the bad company of dangerous men; if she wasn’t hurt it was only because they hadn’t hurt her yet, and all that could change. Cole Starborough and his men were killers, capable of anything.

  Men on the payroll of Crispin Calhoun, the worst of the worst.

  What was going to happen to her? she wondered for the countless time.

&nbs
p; Was Calhoun going to kill her? Would his enforcer Cole Starborough be the one who pulled the trigger? She didn’t know and tried not to think about it.

  Her questions to Cole about what was happening were always gracefully deflected. Politely, he kept his plans to himself. After the posse took possession of the herd, Starborough drove the five hundred head for two days into northern Wyoming. The cattlewoman had no idea where the posse were taking the steers except it was the exact opposite direction of Cheyenne; each mile the herd covered in the wrong direction set Laura two miles back from her goal of getting her longhorns to Cheyenne, if by some miracle the outfit got the herd back and turned it around. She felt her heart sink with every step of the hooves, until hope was just about lost.

  Then one afternoon the posse simply parked the herd, and hadn’t moved it a foot since. Cole found a place that suited him and they corralled the steers in a wide ravine, threw up some tents and made camp. Three sunrises and sunsets had come and gone, and the only thing that had changed were the flowers in Laura’s vase and her sheets each day. It was just day after day of sit and wait, and Laura had no idea what Crispin Calhoun’s operatives planned to do next.

  Her best guess was the posse wasn’t moving the livestock anytime soon and they’d stay put. The plan seemed to be to remain here, wherever here was, and sit it out until the cattlemen’s auction in Cheyenne was over. Cole Starborough had already said as much, that he intended to hold her and the cattle until then. It was overkill; in another five, maybe six days by her calculations, there would not be enough time to drive the entire herd to Cheyenne two hundred miles across Wyoming in time to make the auction, even if her outfit rode eighteen hours a day every day.

  It was over. Calhoun had broken her. He’d stolen her herd, taken everything she had. Even if Laura somehow got her cows back, if she didn’t sell them at the auction she would be broke; that meant having to sell the ranch she built with Sam, losing all those memories of him, and selling off the entire herd to another cattleman for a huge markdown. Laura would never sell to Calhoun and give him the satisfaction, but her outfit would lose everything; all the blood that had been spilt on this crimson trail would have been for naught.

  She’d fought Calhoun and he’d won. She’d lost.

  The big cattle syndicate boys had all beaten her.

  This was all her fault.

  They were right about her.

  She was just one woman.

  They were men. She had been arrogant and reckless to think she stood a chance of fighting the system, going up against the entrenched male establishment and beating them at their own game. Who did she think she was? She knew the people she was dealing with: a rich, powerful syndicate of ruthless corrupt cattlemen who would use any means at their disposal to control the beef business.

  Her late husband, Sam Holdridge, had not been a man like that; knowing she had married an honest cattleman and a good, decent man gave her comfort in her dark hour. Sam had built their Bar H Ranch and grown their herd with bare-knuckled hard work and fair dealings, with Laura as his partner. They had done it together, as a team, with the muscles in their arms. On their own honorable, reputable terms, Sam and Laura had become successful cattle ranchers in the business. Perhaps not as successful as Crispin Calhoun, but Sam and Laura Holdridge could sleep at night with clear consciences because they hadn’t committed criminal acts like murder, rustling, bribery, and robbery to get to the top of the cattle business the way Calhoun did.

  Sam Holdridge died with no blood on his hands, but the same couldn’t be said for Crispin Calhoun, whose bloody hands would never wash clean. Laura Holdridge could never live with herself if she or her husband had ever done the terrible things it was rumored corrupt big-time cattlemen did, like murdering small-time ranchers for their grazing land and rustling their cattle. Sam’s soul was pure when he died; hers better be untarnished, too, if she was going to end up in the same place he was and be together again. The bold cattlewoman was not afraid to die for a lot of brave reasons, but one above all others: Laura believed with all her heart she would be reunited with her husband, Sam, in Heaven.

  She would never be like Calhoun, who had sold his soul to the Devil.

  Laura Holdridge’s conscience was clean.

  And a clean soul was something no amount of cattle and no amount of money in the world could buy.

  Let Crispin Calhoun keep his filthy money.

  Little good it will do him when he has to spend it in Hell . . .

  CHAPTER 22

  Joe Noose lifted the field glasses to his eyes, crawling on his stomach across the mesa to get a closer look at the encampment down in the arroyo a quarter mile away. The outfit had caught up with Cole Starborough and his posse, tracking them to the camp where they were holding their stolen herd and the kidnapped cattlewoman. The six men were here to get them back.

  Scoping out the installation, Noose couldn’t see any sign of Laura, figuring she must be in one of the tents on the ridge of the canyon where the posse had made camp. Peering through the binoculars, the installation looked like an ant hill from this distance, the posse crawling like ants around the fortifications the location provided. He counted fifteen men in the posse. A lot of guns.

  The bounty hunter hated to admit the area was well chosen. The cattle were down in a basin beneath the ridge where the tents were pitched below the top of the canyon whose rock walls formed a natural keep that penned the steers in. Starborough had picked a secure place to bivouac: the camp was protected on all sides by rugged high canyon walls providing excellent cover and formidable defenses against any conventional assault; it was all high ground, with visibility for miles in all directions. The heavily armed posse lookouts patrolled the perimeter atop the ridge on all sides. Daytime penetration was not an option. The rescue mission would need to be a nighttime operation. Even then, it was going to be a challenge.

  It looked like there was no way in or out of the arroyo basin other than a single goat trail. Hoof prints on the ground showed Joe the posse originally drove the steers in along this path, but that narrow trail now passed directly by the machine-gun nest the posse had since set up—to get in, Joe and the outfit had to get past a Gatling gun. No other way. How they got the herd in was the only way to get it out.

  Complicating matters, rescuing Laura Holdridge made this operation a double extraction; both breakouts had to be synchronized because Joe and the rovers would only get one shot at this. Knowing the cattlewoman’s exact location beforehand was crucial; they had to pull her out quick while moving the steers. The problem remained. Where was Laura?

  Minutes passed as Joe used the field glasses to survey every square inch of the camp as thoroughly as he could from this vantage on the mesa to the south. Inside the canyon, he scoped out ten tents on the ridge below, three deep, tents in front blocking his view of the ones in back. He decided she logically had to be in one of those tents.

  “What do you savvy, Joe?”

  “I think it’s gonna be tough getting in there. Tougher getting out. Have a look-see.” Noose handed off the binoculars to Curly.

  The wrangler looked through the field glasses and checked out the camp. He whistled. “Hellfire. Getting out is the easy part, they’ll carry us out in coffins. Getting in there ain’t tough, it’s impossible.”

  “Not impossible. Not easy.”

  “You got any ideas, Joe? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

  Curly could see Noose was thinking, his mind working like a machine behind his eyes. “We gotta do something about the Gatling gun for starters. It fires ninety rounds of fifty cal ammo a second. Turn you to a pile of grease. That gun’s gotta go.”

  Picking up the binoculars again, the bounty hunter studied the gun emplacement. “Mebbe have me an idea how to get rid of it.”

  “Just how we gonna take out the biggest gun in the world?”

  “With something bigger. A lot bigger.”

  Joe Noose got a slow grin.

  “We use the her
d.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later at the base of the mesa, Joe Noose hunkered down with the five wranglers of the Bar H Ranch as he drew a crude map of the camp in the sand. “It could work. They won’t be expecting it. If it works we just may have a chance of getting Laura and the whole herd back.”

  “They took our guns,” Maddox pointed out.

  “We’re unarmed, Joe. They have weapons, we don’t,” Barlow added.

  “On the contrary, pardner,” Noose said. “We got the biggest weapon, those five hundred head of cattle and all those horns at a full charge, an unstoppable force crushing everything in its path, and you boys know how to use the herd.”

  “Joe’s right, we do have the biggest weapon,” Idaho agreed.

  “It’s like any weapon, you just got to aim it properly,” Joe said. “You boys know how to do that. This outfit, you’re the pros. If anybody can make five hundred mean longhorns go exactly where you want ’em, it’s you. We going to use those cows to knock out the machine gun nest.”

  Curly shook his head. “The Gatling gun has that whole trail covered, Joe, you saw it and I saw it. The gunner’ll see and hear those cows coming up the trail three hundred yards away and turn ’em into hamburger.”

  “Right.” Noose nodded. “So we got to make sure the gunner’s looking the other direction so he doesn’t see the steers, that what he’s looking at is so loud he can’t hear those cattle coming up behind him. What we need is a good old-fashioned diversion, a big one. And nothing makes a better diversion than a dynamite explosion . . .”

  Now he had their attention. Using the map, Joe Noose laid out his entire action plan for the men, step by unbelievable step—it was crazy, it was dangerous, parts of it made no sense; they had almost no chance in hell of pulling it off, but almost a chance to rescue Laura Holdridge and get back the herd was better than no chance at all.