Holmes on the Range (8 page)

Old Red always let the rest of us stampede ahead come mealtimes, as he's a bony fellow without the appetite necessary to keep fat on a flea.
But this morning he wasn't the only one to linger. The Swede's grub call barely got a stir out of Pinky Harris. When I walked by his bunk, Pinky was buried facedown in his blankets, the only sign that he was alive a low, muffled groaning. Last night it had been “Ahhhhhh” for old Pinky, but now it was all “Ohhhhhh.”

“Somethin' wrong?” asked his bunkie, Tall John.

Pinky's only reply was another groan.

By the time Pinky and Old Red moseyed out to the cookshack, the rest of us were halfway through our second helpings. When the boys weren't stuffing their mouths, they were shooting them off at each other. The topic was Perkins again—specifically, what could've possessed him to gallop into a killer storm when none of us had even seen him in a saddle before.

“Here's what I think,” I said as Old Red settled down on a stool nearby, and I saw his eyes narrow, flashing me a warning not to let on about his deducifying. “Perkins just went stir-crazy cooped up in the castle all the time.”

My brother's gaze returned to his plate, and he set into his food. The Hornet's Nest gang, meanwhile, set into my theory. Swivel-Eye thought I was onto something, as it was his days trapped in a schoolhouse that had sent him running for a horse and the open plains nearly twenty years earlier. Anytime agreed that hunching over a desk all day would surely sap a real man of his senses, but pointed out that Englishmen start out understocked on sanity in the first place. That put a burr under Crazymouth's saddle blanket, as it was meant to, and the English-born cowpoke shot back some of his mixed-up jabber—something like “ ‘E was a right stuck-up Brighton Pier ‘e was, without the Niagara the old sod gave a house martin.” While the fellows were scratching their heads over that, Pinky put a stop to the fun by finally saying what everyone else had been trying
not
to say.

“Perkins was crazy alright—crazy to trust Uly and Spider,” he croaked, his throat no doubt worn raw by all the alcohol that had
washed over it the night before. “
That's
what did him in. Those bastards saw a chance to grab the VR out from under, and they took it. Am I right?”

No one said, “Damn straight, Pinky!” No one said anything at all. We all just stared, as silent and wooden-stiff as the stools under our rumps.

Pinky broke the awkward silence with a hoarse, forced laugh. “Awwww, don't listen to me. I'm just. . .well. . .”

“Hungover?” Tall John said.

“You smell like you just climbed out of a bathtub full of beer,” Anytime added.

As his handle implies, Pinky was already rosy-skinned, but he turned even redder now.

“Where you got it stashed, Pinky?” Swivel-Eye asked joshingly, obviously trying to keep things from getting too serious again.

“And how come you won't share it?” I threw in.

“You suspicious sons of bitches think I got liquor, you go search my bunk,” Pinky teased back. “All you'll find is lice. . .and you can have ‘em!”

We all laughed a little too loud, and the conversation quickly turned to horses and cows and other safe subjects. When it came down to it, most of the boys didn't want to know what had happened to Perkins—not if it meant they had to do something about it. They weren't interested in mysteries or adventure. They just wanted their five dollars a week. I can't say I blame them.

We knew what our work was to be that morning, so we got to it. Pretty soon mama cows were lowing loud as Tall John and Anytime threw rope on their babies and brought them to the branding pen. The he-calves we were making into steers through the removal of certain dangling glands, and before long the fire outside the pen was not just heating up branding irons but cooking up a mess of prairie oysters, as well. Gustav and I were working inside the pen, notching ears and slicing
off gonads with Swivel-Eye and Crazymouth, while Pinky kept the fire stoked and handed hot irons through the fence boards.

After we'd been at it maybe an hour, the Swede pulled around to the corral in the buckboard he used to tote supplies in from town.

“Hey, Swede! Bring me back some decent tobacco and a pretty gal, would you?” Swivel-Eye shouted at him.

“Bring me two—of each!” I threw in.

Instead of joshing us back, the Swede gave his head a quick shake, and his eyes rolled around to his left. We looked that way and saw Spider and Boudreaux riding toward us.

Spider's lean face was puckered with a little tight-lipped smile, as if he couldn't wait to start laughing at some joke he hadn't yet told. If Boudreaux knew what the joke was, he didn't find it funny—the albino usually looked pretty sour, but just then he seemed practically
curdled
.

“You set, Swede?” Spider asked.

“Yas, Mr. Spiter. I em ready now to be going.”

“Fine.”

The Swede raised up his reins. But before he could give the leather a snap, Spider turned toward us and called out, “Jeee-zus Key-rist!”

Gustav had just thrown a calf, and I was moving in with an iron so flamed up it could leave a brand on the air itself. And I gave it every chance to do so, for Spider's words froze me in my tracks.

“I was just startin' to think you pukes were real hands after all, and then I see a discouragin' thing like that,” Spider said. “Where'd you learn to run a brand, Amlingmeyer?”

I knew Spider didn't want a real answer. But I also knew the smart thing to do was act thick and give him one.

“Well, the first ranch I got on at was the Cross J down in—”

“The Cross J?” Spider waved his hand before his nose as if shooing away a foul odor. “Those Panhandle shitheads couldn't brand their own asses if their hands were hot iron. Let me show you how it's done.”

Spider dismounted, and Boudreaux did likewise.

“Gimme that stamp iron there,” Spider said to Pinky.

Pinky obliged, pulling an iron from the fire and handing it over just as Boudreaux stepped around and got hold of him from behind.

“Hey! What're you—?” was all Pinky got out before Spider swung that branding iron like a baseball bat. Pinky's chin was the ball, and the way it whipped to the side at the force of the blow I almost feared the jawbone would fly through the skin and arc out of sight like a home-run hit. Pinky grunted and sagged back against Boudreaux.

“Pay attention, boys,” Spider said as he brought up the still-glowing iron and pressed it against Pinky's chest. “This is how you lay down a good brand!”

Pinky's shirt began smoldering, and pretty quick we heard the sizzling we knew to be fired metal on flesh. Pinky writhed and screamed in Boudreaux's grip, but after the swat he'd taken he was too weak to escape.

For once, the albino was having a hard time floating above it all. The marble hardness of his pale features finally broke, at last revealing a real feeling—disgust.

Spider was giggling.

The iron in my hand had cooled down some, but it was still hot enough to char a Bar VR across Spider's forehead. I started toward the fence with exactly that in mind, but a hand caught my forearm and pulled me to a stop.

“Wait,” Gustav said.

I tore my arm from his grip. “Wait for what? For them to kill him?”

I turned back toward Spider and Boudreaux, but the branding was over, and they let Pinky sink to the ground in a whimpering heap.

“You're fired,” Spider said to him. Then he looked up at the rest of us, and his right hand settled a few inches from the grip of his spit-polished six-gun. “We don't need thieves or bigmouth troublemakers around here. Any of you forget that, you'll get the same treatment . . . or worse.”

I managed to keep a rein on my anger while Spider and Boudreaux loaded Pinky in the back of the wagon—where they'd already piled his saddle and war bags, we now saw. Once they had him stowed, Spider walked back to the fire, snatched up a smoldering pair of huevos, and popped them in his mouth. He grinned as he chewed, and after he'd swallowed and given his lips a big wet lick, he and Boudreaux horsed themselves. Spider gave us a jaunty wave of his hat as they set off for Miles City.

When they were out of sight, I roared like a grizzly passing a kidney stone.

“God damn! What is wrong with us? Standing by and watching a thing like that!”

The boys just shook their heads or stood there, frozen, their eyes still wide with surprise. Even Anytime was quiet for once, simply turning away and kicking at the dirt.

“We're nothin' but a bunch of cowards!” I hollered.

“Button your lip, Brother,” Gustav said.

“Oh, to hell with you! I'm sick and tired of your bull—”

Old Red grabbed a fistful of shirt and jerked me down so our eyes were but inches apart.

“I said
shut up
.”

I've felt like taking a poke at Gustav many times over the years, though I'd never been quite mad enough to do it—until that moment. My fist was clenched and ready to shoot up to the side of his skull. But when Old Red spoke again, his words took the fight right out of me.

“Damn it, Brother, don't you see? We gotta watch our step,” he whispered. “One of the Hornet's Nest boys is a spy.”

Or, A Clue Gallops Right Under Our Noses

S
omehow us Hornet's Nesters
managed to brand calves for the next two hours with barely twenty words passing among us. What did get said was on the order of “That one next” or “Hot iron here.” I reckon most of the boys were feeling guilty about not helping Pinky. I was trying to figure out who
didn't
feel guilty.

I'd picked up on Old Red's point about a spy right off. Given Pinky's bloodshot eyes and rummy breath, it would've been easy to peg him as the thief who'd helped himself to the castle's liquor the night before. But Spider wouldn't know he was a “bigmouth troublemaker” unless he knew what Pinky had said at breakfast—which meant someone had tattled.

The easiest fellow to point a finger at would be the Swede. He was a VR man before any of us, and he could've gone running to Uly after we'd headed out for work. But given that English for the old cook seemed to be less a second language than a fifth or sixth, I couldn't believe he'd be much good at eavesdropping. With Pinky hardly a sensible
candidate and my brother and myself disqualified for equally obvious reasons, that left the other Hornet's Nesters to consider: Tall John, Swivel-Eye, Anytime, and Crazymouth.

Unfortunately, once I'd tallied up all the jaunts to fetch saddles and catch mounts and take pisses and squats, I realized every one of them had been out of my sight that morning at one point or another. In the end, I settled on Anytime as my main suspect for the not exactly airtight reason that he was a nasty son of a bitch.

Despite my irritation with Old Red—it still chafed on me that we hadn't stood up for Pinky—there was nothing I wanted more just then than to pick my brother's prickly brain. I didn't see how I'd get a chance, though, as we were still branding calves with Swivel-Eye and Crazymouth, and neither man was more than a dogie-length away at any given moment. I was trying to figure how to get Gustav alone when my brother let out a mighty “
Damn it all!
”

We'd just mugged a calf, twisting her head and bringing her down on her side—and it looked like we'd brought her down on Old Red's foot, as well. Since punchers find nothing more amusing than humiliation and pain inflicted on another, this gave the boys a good guffaw. As usual, Anytime was the first to get a dig in.

“You're supposed to wait till the skin's leathered up before ya try to wear it!”

“Yeah!” Tall John called out from his spot by the fire, where he'd taken Pinky's place. “That boot's got too much beef in it yet!”

“Haw haw,” Gustav yelled back, taking a wobbly step toward the fence. “Help me out here, Brother.”

I wrapped an arm around him, and together we hop-walked to the far side of the pen. Old Red sat in the dirt and tugged at his boot.

“Damn, that smarts.” Then, in a much softer voice, he added, “Quick—what do you want to know?”

“What?”

Gustav got himself unshod and took to inspecting his toes as if to make sure they were all still there.

“I could tell you were bustin' apart with questions. So I'm givin' you a chance to ask ‘em.”

“You sayin' you dropped that calf on your foot on purpose?”

“I didn't drop that calf on my foot at all. Now spit it out—I didn't go to all this trouble so we could squat here and play pat-a-cake.”

A low growl rumbled in my throat. Even when my brother was doing me a favor, he had to be high-handed about it.

“Alright,” I said. “Why'd you take so long gettin' back last night?”