Killoe (1962) (3 page)

We sat on the steps or squatted around on the ground against the wall, eating in silence. Karen came out with the big pot and refilled our cups, and took a mite longer over Tap's cup.

None of us was talking very much, but Zebony moved over beside me when he had finished eating and began to make one of those cigarettes of his.

"You been over to the Leon?"

"No."

"You and me . . . we take a pasear over there. What do you say?"

"There's plenty of work right here," I said. "I don't see--" "I do," Tap interrupted.

"I know what he means."

Zeb touched a delicate tongue-tip to his thin paper. "Do you think," he said to me, "they will let you drive your cattle away?"

"They belong to us."

"'Sure--there are mighty few that don't. Those others . . . the newcomers . . . they have no cattle, and they have been living on yours. By now they know you are planning a drive, and are cleaning out the breaks."

"So?"

"Dan, what's got into you?" Tap asked irritably. "They'll rustle every steer they can, and fight you for the others. How many men have we got?"

"Now? Nine or ten."

"And how many of them? There must be thirty."

"Closer to forty," Zeb said. "There's tracks over on the Leon. They are bunching your cows faster than you are, and driving them north into the wild country."

"I reckon we'd best go after them," I said.

Tap got up. "I reckon we had," he said dryly. "And if you ever carried a short gun, you'd better carry one when you go after them."

It made sense. This lot who had squatted around us had brought nothing into the country except some beat-up horse and wagon outfits. Not more than two or three had so much as a milk cow ... and they had been getting fat on our beef, eating it, which Pa never minded much, and even selling it. And not one of them had done a tap of work.

They had come over from the east and south somewhere---a bedraggled bunch of poor whites and the like.

That did not make them easy. Some of that outfit had come down from Missouri and Arkansas, and some were from the Five Counties, where there had been fighting for years. Pa was easygoing and generous, and they had spotted it right off. "Don't tell Pa," I said. "He's no hand with a gun."

Tap glanced at me briefly as if to say, "And I suppose you are?" But I paid him no mind.

Tim Foley saw us bunched up and he walked over. That man never missed a thing. He minded his own affairs, but he kept an ear to the ground. "Y
o
u boys be careful," was all he said.

The sun was staining the sky with rose when we moved out from the place. As we role away, I told Ben Cole to keep the rest of them in the bottoms of the Cowhouse and to keep busy. They knew something was up, but they offered no
comment
, and we trailed it off to the west, then swung north.

"You know who it is?" I asked Zeb.

"That Holt outfit, Mack, Billy, and Webb---all that crowd who ride with them."

Tough men, and
mean
men. Dirty, unshaven, thieves and killers all of them. A time or two I'd seen them around.

"Webb," I commented, "is left-handed."

Tap looked around at me. "Now that," he said, "is a good thing to know."

"Carries his gun on the right side, butt first, and he draws with either hand."

We picked up their trail in a coulee near the Leon River and we took it easy. They were driving some twenty head, and there were two men. Following the trail was no trick, because they had made no attempt to hide it. In tact, they seemed to be inviting trouble, and realizing how the odds figured out, they might have had that in mind.

We walked our horses up every slope and looked around before we crossed the ridges or hills. We kept to low ground when we could and just managed to keep the trail in sight.

If we moved our cattle out of this country the rest of that ragtag and bobtail would have to move out or starve to death. Cattle were plentiful in most parts of Texas and it wasn't until later that folks began to watch their beef. For a long time, when a man needed beef he went out and killed one, just as he had buffalo, and nobody paid it no mind.

In those days cattle were good for their hides and tallow, and there was no other market. A few drives had been made to Louisiana, to Shreveport, and over into Alabama, but cattle were a drug on the market. However, this far west the wild cattle had begun to thin out, and fewer were to be found.

This was the frontier, and west of us there was nothing but wide, unsettled country.

In those days the settler furthest west in Texas was a
homer
who was about four miles west of Fort Belknap, and that was away off north of us, and a little west.

Cattle liked the country further east or along the river bottoms where the grass was thick. Zeb Lambert told me he had seen a
cow
over on the Colorado, west of us, but they were strays that had somehow found their way there. Nobody lived in that country.

The coolness remained in the morning, clouds were heavy, and there was a dampness as of coming rain. Despite the work we had to do, we hoped for it. Rain in this country meant not only water in the water-holes and basins, but it meant grass on the range. In a few days our lives would depend on both. Zeb Lambert pulled up. "Dan," he said, "look here."

We both stopped and looked at the trail. Two riders had come in from the east and joined the two we were trailing. The grass was pushed down by their horses' hoofs and had not straightened up--they could have joined them only minutes before.

Tap Henry looked at those tracks. "It could be accident," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Or it could be that somebody told them we were riding this way."

Zebony said nothing, but he started building himself one of those cigarettes he set so much store by.

"Who would do a thing like that?" I asked. "None of our crowd."

"When you've lived as long as me," Tap said shortly, "you won't trust anybody. We were following two men.., now two more come in out of nowhere."

We rode on, more
cautiously
now. Tap was too suspicious. None of our folks would carry word to that bunch of no-account
squatters. Yet there were four of them now, and only three of us. We did not mind the odds, but it set a man to thinking. If they were tipped off that we were moving against them there might be more of them coming.

Tap suddenly turned his head and saw Zeb cutting off over the rise.

"Now what's got into him?" he demanded.

"He'll be hunting sign. Zeb could track a coon over the cap-rock in the dark of the moon."

"Will he stand?"

"He'll stand. He's a fighter, Tap. You never saw a better." Tap looked 'after him, but made no comment. Tap was riding tall in the saddle this morning, head up and alert, ready for trouble. And Tap Henry was a man who had seen trouble. There had been times before he left us when he had to face up to a difficulty, and no telling how many times since then. Suddenly, we smelled smoke.

Almost at the same moment we saw our cattle. There
m
ust have been three hundred head bunched there, and four men were sitting around the fire. Only one of them got to his feet as we approached.

"Watch it, Tap," I said, "there's more of them."

The hollow where they were was long, maybe a quarter of a mile, and there were willows and cottonwood along the creek, and here and there some mesquite. Those willows shielded the creek from view. No telling what else they might hide.

The remuda was staked out close by. My eyes went to the staked-out horses. "Tap,"

I said, "five of those horses are showing sweat."

Webb Holt was there, and Bud Caldwell, and a long, lean man named Tuttle. The fourth man had a shock of uncombed blond hair that curled over his shirt collar, and a chin that somehow did not quite track with his face. He had a sour, mean look about him.

"'Those cows are showing our brand," I said mildly. "We're taking them back."

"Are you now?" Webb Holt asked insolently.

"And we're serving notice. No more beef---not even one." "You folks come it mighty big around here," Webb commented. "Where'd you get the right to all these cattle?

They run loose until you came along."

"Not here they didn't. There were no cattle here until my father drove them in, and the rest came by natural increase.

Since then we've ridden herd on them, nursed them, dragged them out of bogs, and fought the heel-flies and varmints.

"You folks came in here with nothing and you've made no attempt to get anything.

We'd see no man go hungry, least of all when he has young ones, so we've let you have beef to eat. Now you're stealing."

"Do tell?" Holt tucked his thumbs behind his belt. "Well, let me tell you something.

You folks want to leave out of here, you can. But you're taking no cows."

"If you're counting on that man back in the brush," I said, "you'd best forget him.

He won't be able to help you none."

Holt's eyes flickered, and Bud Caldwell touched his tongue to his lips. The blond man never turned a hair. He kept looking at Tap Henry like he'd seen him some place before.

"I don't know what you're figuring on," I said, "but in your place I'd just saddle up and ride out. And what other cattle of ours you have, I'd drive back."

"Now why would we do that?" Holt asked, recovering some of his confidence. "We got the cows. You got nothing. You haven't even got the men."

"The kind we've got," Tap said, "we don't need many." Holt's eyes shifted. "I don't know you," he said.

Tap jerked his head. "]I'm Dan's stepbrother, you might say, and I've got a shooting
interest
in that stock."

"I know him," the blond man said suddenly. "That's Tap Henry. I knew him over on the Nueces."

"So?"

"He's a gunfighter, Webb."

Webb Holt centered his attention on Tap. He was wary now. Bud Caldwell moved a little to one side, spreading them out. My Patterson revolving rifle lay across my saddle, my hand across the action, and as he moved, I let the muzzle follow him . it seemed to make him nervous.

Tap kept his eyes on Holt. We knew there was a man out there in the brush, but we
at least I did
,
depended on Zeb to take care of him. It was a lot of depending, yet a man can do only so much, and we had four men there in front of us.

"You're going to have a choice to make," Tap said, "any minute now. If you make the right choice, you live."

Webb Holt's tongue touched his lips. He knew he was looking right down the muzzle of Tap's gun, and if Tap was faster than he was, Webb was dead. I had let my horse back up a mite so I could keep both Bud and that blond man under my eyes.

"You can catch up your horses and ride out," I said. "You can start any time you're of a mind to."

Suddenly Zebony Lambert was standing on the edge of the brush. "You boys can open the ball any time you like," he said. "There's nobody out there in the brush to worry about."

You could see them start to sweat. It was three to four now, and my rifle was laid right on one of them. Bud was a tough enough man, but he wasn't going to play the hero. Not on this fine spring morning. Until a few minutes ago he had been complaining the weather was mighty miserable; now any kind of a morning was a fine morning.

"You kill that man?" Holt demanded.

"He didn't make an issue of it," Zeb replied. , Nobody said anything for about a minute, and it was a long minute. Then I stepped my horse up, holding that rifle muzzle on Caldwell.

"Case you're interested," I said casually, "this here is a Patterson revolving rifle and she shoots five shots 56 caliber."

"Webb ... ?" Bud Caldwell was kind of nervous. That Patterson was pointed right at his stomach and the range was less than twenty feet.

"All right," Webb Holt replied, "we can wait. We got forty men, and we want these cows. You folks take 'em along now--you won't keep them."

"Webb?" Tap's voice had an edge to it that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

"You and me, Webb. Those others are out of it."'

"Now see here!" Webb Holt's face was touched with pallor.

"Forty, you said." Tap was very quiet. "I say thirty-nine, Webb. Just thirty-nine."

Bud Caldwell reached for the sky with both hands and the thin man backed up so fast he fell over a log and he just lay there, his arms outspread.

The blond man stood solid where he was. "He called it," he said loudly. "It's them two."

Webb Holt stood with his feet spread, his right side toward Tap Henry. His gun butt was on his right hip, the butt end to the fore and canted a mite.

"Look," he said, "we don't need to--" He grabbed iron and Tap shot him twice through the chest.