Longhorn Country

Title Page
PROLOGUE: END OF SEARCH
CHAPTER 1: QUICKSAND
CHAPTER 2: REVENGE
CHAPTER 3: PUNISHMENT
CHAPTER 4: VANISHED
CHAPTER 5: BACK TO STAY
CHAPTER 6: LONG VENGEANCE
CHAPTER 7: IN OLD MONTERREY
CHAPTER 8: HOWDY AND ADIOS
CHAPTER 9: WELCOME BACK
CHAPTER 10: FRAME-UP
CHAPTER 11: TRAIL’S END
By the Same Author
Copyright

He hadn’t slept deeply or soundly for the last five years so he heard the horsemen riding into the ranchyard long before someone threw a handful of gravel against his window pane. He slid the window up in its frame and moonlight glinted on his cap of thick silver hair as he leaned out, shotgun in hand, plain for all of the dozen horsemen below to see.

‘It better be good!’

‘Best news we’ve had in a coon’s age, Morg!’ called back the leader, standing beside his sweat-polished mount. ‘Scout rode in with a stone arrer-head in his ass – got it runnin’ away from a bunch of Comanche.’ The man paused and added with an edge of
excitement
. ‘Bunch led by an Injun with a yaller band of feathers in his headress.’

Morgan O’Day’s grip tightened on the shotgun
and he felt as if all the air had been punched from his lungs.

It took him long seconds to find enough breath to ask, ‘Yellow Wolf?’

‘It’s him, Morg – and he’s got his whole kit-an’-kaboodle with him, pitchin’ camp up in the Saltlicks, squaws, kids, the lot. And the scout’s pretty sure she’s with him!’

Morgan still couldn’t breathe.
Five long years he’d searched for Katy! Hell, he’d hungered for her a lot longer than that – fifteen years easy – But she’d married Adam Blaine, dead long since, then been kidnapped by this bastard calling himself Yellow Wolf … And now at long last, she was back where he could reach her, rescue her from the hell she must have been through
…

‘Be right down, Marsh!’ Morgan O’Day managed to croak at last. ‘Get the boys from the bunkhouse. Tell ’em to bring plenty of ammo!’

The Indians figured they were safe in the Saltlicks. They always had been, and Comanche were prone to routine: camp for the summer in one place, head out in the fall for better protection from the snow and cold before winter set in, come on down from the hills to make for the same spring campsite – round and round, following a gigantic circle that took in country in three, sometimes four, States.

Creatures of habit – and it was to be their undoing. Usually, they had always been well-settled in the Saltlicks camps, heavily guarded and protected, before the white men knew they were back. But this time was different – the wounded scout had brought
invaluable news to Morg O’Day and the other
ranchers
and townsmen who had lost family to the Comanche in that devastating raid five years ago.

‘Time to pay the fiddler, you sons of bitches!’ muttered Sheriff Marsh Kilgour as he and his men settled down on the low ridge surrounding the
riverbank
camp, the teepees shrouded in drifting
night-fire
smoke, hardly a soul stirring in this thick grey light, hung with rags of mist clinging to the trees. There wasn’t even the usual dawning birdsong.

Marsh Kilgour worked his battered watch out from the pocket of his vest, pulled his head back to squint at the time. He couldn’t read it properly but it was somewhere near five o’clock. Just light enough to pick out the special teepees where the hostages were – non-targets for now.

Kilgour rolled onto his belly again, and drew the rifle butt tight into this shoulder. ‘Welcome to your last day on earth, Yaller Wolf, you woman-snatchin’ son of a bitch!’

He opened fire and a second later guns crashed from all round the ridges. These were not warning shots – right from the first bullet, they were meant to kill. They shredded the warriors’ teepees, scattered smouldering cooking fires, bullets cutting through buffalo-hide shields hanging by entrances with the warriors’ weapons. Horses on the picket line were slaughtered where they stood, fell writhing and shrieking and kicking. Two boys were the first Indians to die, running in terror from their teepee. They never knew who was attacking or why they were cut down before they had taken two steps outside the
teepee. Young bodies were flung into violent
contortions
by the scything bullets.

By then men and women were running out,
bewildered
by the sudden and unexpected attack. Children screamed and fled in panic – only to be ridden down by the first wave of attackers charging in on mane-flying, wild-eyed horses, guns hammering mercilessly. Morg O’Day sat astride his big Arab black, shotgun thundering, buckshot shredding two braves who ran at him with tomahawks raised. He flung the gun from him, wanting something he didn’t have to stop and reload every couple of shots, slid his Henry repeater from the saddle scabbard. Lever and trigger worked in a blur and he moved the barrel from red man to red man, killing without thought or feeling.

By now the horsemen had been joined by the men who had been shooting from the ridge and there were hand-to-hand fights with muscular Indians, using stone clubs, hatchets, butts of heavy but empty trade rifles to attack or defend. The blood of white and Indian stained the ground. Men roared their death-cries to the morning sun as it flooded over the Saltlicks.

Morgan leapt from the saddle, having seen a bunch of women running into teepees built in a half-circle around one that was taller and more decorated with commemorative battle pictures than the rest. There was a yellow wolf’s head painted on one of the sloping sides above the entrance flap.

Morg glanced around. He was flanked by grim-faced men from the valley, looking for Indians to kill
– but also, hopefully, for some sign of family members or loved ones who had been taken in that treacherous raid five years before…. They began calling names.

‘Edith! ’Tis Zeke, my love! Are you here …?’

‘Lila Henderson! Lila Henderson! D’you still remember your old pa …? Little Lila….?’

‘Donny! Donny, boy! It’s Renn, your brother! I’ve come to take you home, Donny … Ma’s pinin’ for you….’

The men were shouting, some with sobs in their voices, making so much noise it was hard to
understand
their words. But Morgan O’Day’s bellow drowned out the others:

‘Katy Blaine! Katy Blaine! – I’ve come for you, dear Kate! And I’ll not leave without you – nor without seein’ your tormentor on his way to hell! You know who it is, Katy! I kept my word! I said I’d find you no matter how long it took, and here I am! Where are you? Give me a sign!’

He was surprised to hear a woman’s voice weakly call his name from the door flap of the big tent with the wolf’s head painted on it. He glimpsed a
sun-browned
arm and a buckskin fringe and then he was charging through, discarding his emptied rifle, snatching out his Colt pistol as he dived in,
somersaulting
and rolling, hoping the percussion caps hadn’t come adrift from the cylinder’s nipples.

He glimpsed her – torn buckskin dress, dark with blood, flung in a heap against one wall like discarded laundry. She was sobbing and her hair was matted and—

Yellow Wolf came hurtling across the dim interior, hatchet raised in one hand, knife in the other. If he had been able to stifle his roar of triumph, he might have killed Morgan O’Day. But the big rancher heard his choked-off cry, whirled, and the massive Indian with the wolfskin headgear spilling its cape over his wide shoulders was no more than a yard from him, tomahawk already descending. A giant of a man who had led his warriors on bloody raids ranging far and wide for ten years – magnificent and murderous…. Morg ducked and twisted, fell awkwardly. But his gun hand was free and as the Indian reared above him, he put four shots into him. The bullets climbed from the man’s breechclout, up across his belly and into his barrel chest. He dropped to his knees, still trying to use the hatchet. The woman hurled herself onto the Indian’s back, clawing at his eyes with broken,
dirt-clogged
nails. Yellow Wolf thrust her from him and twisted towards Morg. The rancher triggered his last two shots. One misfired, but the other smashed into the Indian’s head, exploding it like a rotten melon.

The rancher kicked the body aside, knelt beside the woman, cradling her against his chest, wincing when he saw her wounds: knife-slashes and two bullet holes. He groaned in anguish:
What kind of a God did this to a man?
his reeling mind screamed inside his head, as her blood soaked through his shirt.

‘M-Mor-gan!’ she whispered, skeletal fingers
clawing
weakly at his sweat-soaked shirt. ‘You – came….’

‘Gave you my word, Katy!’
Christ, she was hard to understand, almost like she’d forgotten how to speak English.

He glanced at the dead Yellow Wolf and curled his lip:
too bad the bastard was past suffering!

But, now, after all this time! Just when he had found her again, had her in his arms – she was dying. It would be all over in a few minutes…. It had all been for nothing. The years of torment and worry, the endless searching that had seen a dozen fine horses die under him, ridden into the desert sand or the sun-baked canyons, the killer alkali wastes … and a score of good men had found lonely graves in the forlorn, wind-scoured canyons of Yellow Wolf’s home country – now, all-for-nothing!

The sun was standing a hand’s-breadth-and-a-half above the western peaks of the sawtooths when Blaine rode upriver and found Hardesty asleep under a tree.

Not ten yards away, the cattle in his charge were bellowing and snorting and struggling in quicksand that was already up to their bellies.

Hardesty’s awakening was not gentle.

A hard, scuffed-toe riding boot bent in his ribs on his left side, rolled him out of the shade into the burning sun. Grunting and already swearing, he came abruptly out of his doze and crouched, hugging himself as he blinked up at the tall
man-shape
standing over him.

‘What the hell …?’

Blaine kicked him again alongside the ear, not hard enough to put him out, but with plenty of force to send him sprawling off the bank into the shallows.
Clem Hardesty roared and erupted out of the muddy water, clambering up the bank, running in at Blaine, head down, arms out-stretched, eager to grapple and fight.

But Blaine had other ideas. He twisted aside, slapped one reaching arm away, grabbed Hardesty’s long black hair and threw him against the tree. He cannoned off and went down to one knee, holding his throbbing head. He snapped it up quickly enough when he heard the whisper of gun metal against leather. Blaine, dark, wolfish face totally deadpan, those grey-green eyes looking almost dead, thrust the Colt’s muzzle against Hardesty’s teeth as he cocked the hammer.

‘We’ll settle our differences later – right now, you get your rope and mount up. We’re gonna save as many of those cows as we can.’

Clem Hardesty’s thick lips curled, but then he frowned, shifted his gaze past the long, rangy shape of Blaine. He noticed the cows’ predicament for the first time and his jaw dropped.

‘Judas priest! I – I never …’ His words were slurred because of the gun pressing against his lips.

‘You never did the job you were s’posed to,’ cracked Blaine coldly, grinding with the gun muzzle. Hardesty wrenched his head aside, spitting a little blood.

‘Get that thing outta my face!’

Blaine tapped him across the temple and Hardesty swayed, cursing, crabbing away on all fours, fear showing in his eyes now. Blaine’s boot found his backside and as Hardesty sprawled, the tall man
yanked the coiled rope off the saddlehorn and flung it at him.

‘Get going, Clem, or I’ll shoot you right here.’

Hardesty groped for the rope, standing slowly and unsteadily. His face was contorted with hate. ‘Yeah, we’ll settle this, all right!’

Between them, they saved seven out of the ten steers, tossing ropes over the long curved horns, using the range-trained mounts to help drag the beasts on to solid footing. Of the other three, one was already down to the chest and floundering in panic, driving its body deeper into the ooze. The other two were in too far to save.

Blaine’s Winchester ’66 blasted, just the three shots necessary, then he turned the smoking muzzle on to the sweating Hardesty who stiffened, wet rope dangling from one hand.

‘Wade out and put your rope on the nearest cow,’ Blaine ordered. ‘No sense in wasting good beef; we’ll butcher it on the bank and send out a buckboard to bring in the meat.’

‘S’pose you do it,’ Hardesty said slowly, face
challenging
. ‘I’m about plumb-tuckered.’

‘After the way you were sleeping when I found you?’ Blaine shook his head slowly, but he sheathed the rifle and swung down from his mount. ‘You’re just bone lazy, Clem. You’ve been warned. This time it’s the finish for you. Only you ain’t just going to ride in and collect your time and head on out, you’re gonna remember your time here at Broken Wheel.’

Hardesty bared yellow-stained teeth. ‘I sure will. But no damn breed’s gonna try to whip me….’

‘This one is gonna
do
it,’ Blaine murmured as he walked forward. The ‘breed’ part didn’t bother him: that’s what he was and there was nothing he could do about it and he had learned long ago how futile it was to go through life bristling and getting into fights just to protest. So he could live with being called a breed.

But what galled him was he knew Hardesty meant it as a bad kind of insult and he was damned if he’d let this lazy sonuver feel good at his expense for any reason.

Clem Hardesty tossed the wet coils of rope into Blaine’s face but the tall man batted the rope aside, stepped in as the other charged. Clem shuddered as a fist banged against his jaw and knocked him
sideways
. He staggered and came back swinging, found the blow blocked by an uplifted forearm and then felt the smashing impact of a fist driving into his midriff.

His legs wobbled and he floundered, grabbing instinctively at Blaine. His wild, uncoordinated efforts fouled the tall man’s flurry of blows and although they landed, Hardesty was too close for them to do much damage. Blaine twisted and thrust him off, then pulled him back while he was still
off-balance
, snapped his head up and kneed him in the belly.

Hardesty bared his teeth, sucking in desperately needed air violently as a tattoo of punches mauled him. He managed to hit back, throwing two good blows into the hard-muscled midriff of Blaine. The tall man was in good shape and took them without
effect. Hardesty, a saloon brawler from way back, bored in, swinging confidently but wildly.

Suddenly his head snapped back on his shoulders and his view of the mountains and river and trees, was scrambled violently, tinged with red. He felt himself staggering as if falling off the world, then came up against a bunched fist at the end of an
iron-hard
forearm. He felt as if his spine had been driven through his back. He tumbled wildly into whirling space.

When he opened his eyes, groaning with even that small effort, his vision took a little time to focus and what he saw did nothing to make him feel any better. Blaine was sitting close by, broad back against the tree, smoking a cigarette down.

‘Ready to butcher that steer now?’ he asked,
stubbing
out the butt against a tree root.

Hardesty groaned, then, as he began to come slowly to life, he cursed, sat up stiffly.

‘Morg’s gonna hear about this,’ he gasped, swollen and split lips slurring his words.

‘Sure, when you go to draw your time.’

Hardesty froze, ‘You cain’t fire me!’

‘I’m doing it, Clem. We butcher that steer, then we drive the others back to the spread. Someone brings a buckboard out to collect the meat, and you ride on out. That’s twice I’ve told you. It better be enough.’

Hardesty thought about it. ‘We’ll see what Luke has to say!’

‘Don’t matter who you run to, won’t do you no good. Now let’s get this chore done.’

From the porch, Morgan O’Day watched the Mexican cookhouse roustabout, the one they called Fernando, harness a team to a buckboard and drive out of the ranchyard through the long shadows of late afternoon. But it was idle observation: his real interest was in Clem Hardesty, battered and moving mighty stiffly, talking earnestly with his son, Lucas, down by the barn.
Someone had been in a fight … a hard fight!
Morg observed silently.

His gaze wandered across to the corrals where Blaine was unsaddling his sweat-polished sorrel. He, too, was moving a little stiffly and his lean face showed a couple of signs of violence. Not as bad as Hardesty’s which told the old rancher plenty.

Then Lucas came hurrying across the yard while Clem Hardesty limped to the washbench at the rear of the bunkhouse. Lucas was medium tall, average build, and liked to dress in work clothes that others might figure were good enough to wear into town for a Saturday night on the tiles. He was twenty-seven years old, a good worker – if he had plenty of men he could delegate the manual labour to – and good with the ranch’s books. But he lacked something, always had….

Morgan, deep down, knew what it was, but wasn’t about to admit that his son was weak, bordering on being a coward, even to himself … But he was his son and so Morg was willing to overlook his faults. But he kind of wished Lucas O’Day had a little of Blaine’s steel in his backbone and the breed’s sense of right and wrong and …
Hell! A man had to love his children, didn’t he? No matter what.
…

Now Lucas came up onto the porch, his
handsome
, well-fed face flushed, clean shaven so close the skin gleamed and never seemed to sweat. He pushed back his hat, revealing tight black curls that sprang down on to his forehead as he turned worried brown eyes to his father.

‘Pa, Blaine’s in some kind of a tizzy over Clem. Told him he’s fired.’

‘What kinda tizzy?’

Lucas shrugged. ‘Nothing much – Clem had worked his butt off getting those steers out of the brush above the riverbend, turned ’em out to graze a spell while he took a smoke. He was that tuckered he fell asleep. Blaine come in like a high wind outta the north, cracked a couple of his ribs, then beat him up….’

‘For fallin’ asleep on the job?’ queried the older O’Day.

Lucas pursed his womanish lips and shrugged. ‘Couple of the cows’d wandered upstream a little and went into the river….’

Morg sat straighter in his chair. ‘At the
high
bend? Where the quicksand is …?’

Lucas nodded briefly, trying to play down the
seriousness
of this. ‘There was plenty of graze for ’em where Clem left ’em.’ Lucas licked his lips. ‘But, Pa, Clem can’t be blamed for that! He said it was hell busting those steers outta that brush in the sawtooths. You know what it’s like up there…. Pa, he’s a pretty good cowpoke. We can’t let him go just because he knocked himself out for the ranch and fell asleep. Hell, he only sat down for a smoke. He
never
meant
to doze off … And they saved seven cows outta the ten, butchered one of the dead ones … Fernie’s gone to collect the meat now.’

Morgan looked down to where Blaine was hanging his saddle across the top corral rail. ‘Tell Blaine I want to see him.’

Lucas smiled. ‘Sure, Pa! Can I tell Clem he’s still drawing pay?’

‘Send Blaine up to me.’

Lucas went away whistling. He knew he had talked his father around – hell, he’d had plenty of practice over the years. Why, he was even better at swinging things his way than was Kitty, and she could turn many a man to water with just a roll or two of those hazel eyes with the fluttering dark lashes….

‘The Old Man wants you up to the porch,’ Lucas said as Blaine headed for the wash bench.

The tall man turned and looked soberly at his
half-brother
. ‘You wag your tail and let your tongue hang out on behalf of that son of a bitch Hardesty?’

Lucas flushed. ‘No need for that! I’m the one has to see the ranch makes a profit and we can’t do that if we start firing our top hands in the middle of round-up.’

Blaine looked hard at Lucas. ‘You figure Hardesty for a top-hand and I’m Governor of California.’

Lucas flushed, moved uneasily. ‘Anyway, you don’t have the clout to fire the men here without first referring to me or Pa, Blaine!’

Lucas swung away, flushing but smiling to himself, too: that was as good a chance as he’d ever had of putting that damn breed in his rightful place…!

Blaine paused at the foot of the porch steps, one boot on the bottom tread. He thumbed back his hat, showing sweat-darkened hair. The sun threw a shadow of his hawklike nose across one bruised cheek.

‘You beat up on Clem pretty bad, looks like,’ opined Morgan. ‘But I see he got in a lick or two.’

Blaine shrugged. ‘He riled me. Seems to think he can do what he likes – him and that pard of his, Clint Rendell. They’re both pains in the butt.’ He squinted at O’Day. ‘I’ve seen you favour ’em from time to time, too.’

Morgan’s face hardened and he shook a stiff finger in Blaine’s direction. ‘You watch it! You don’t talk to me like that!’

Blaine said nothing, his face unreadable. Morg let his breathing settle and said in a milder tone, ‘Clem’s a good man, even if he is a mite lazy. He’s worked for me for ten years. Likely feels he has a right to cut a few corners.’

‘You’re the one pays his wages.’

O’Day’s mouth tightened into a thin slash beneath his drooping frontier moustache. He sighed. ‘You just don’t give a damn, do you?’

‘I give a damn – where it matters.’

‘And who decides that?’

Blaine merely held the old man’s gaze. ‘So what happens? Hardesty stays?’

Morg hadn’t really made up his mind when he had sent for Blaine but now he nodded curtly:
Damn
,
Blaine! The man was just too hard for his own good at times. If he hadn’t given his word all those years ago, he might’ve.
…

‘Yeah, I’m willin’ to give him another chance. And that means you are, too. He’s just another cowboy, but I’d watch him if I was you, Blaine. Clem Hardesty’s got a long memory – and one of the things he won’t forget is that you beat-up on him, and left him marked for all the others to see.’

‘Luke tell you we saved seven, and butchered one of the downers?’

‘He told me. You keepin’ pace with the round-up times? We can’t miss that drive or we’re in real
trouble
– Bank’s puttin’ on the pressure for a mortgage payment. I held out last time, borrowed more money to fence in them extra acres takin’ in Fool’s Canyon. But Hayden won’t stand for it this year.’

‘Use your influence. He’s Marsh Kilgour’s
brother-in
-law, ain’t he…?’

Morg’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t make no nevermind – Marsh, I get along with. His sister, Abigail, never forgave me for marryin’ Gracie instead of her. She’ll influence Miles Hayden if it means makin’ things hard for me.’

‘You’ve made too many enemies over the years, Morg.’

He never called O’Day ‘Pa’ like Lucas and Kitty, Morgan’s blood children, did. When Morgan had told him he was only part of the O’Day family because of his benevolence, he had specifically said,
‘Now you know your place, you can quit callin’ me “Pa”. You’re twelve year old, no real kin, so you can call me 
Morgan … I ain’t your real father: he’s dead. And you might’s well know, I was the one killed him.
…’

Blaine had never called O’Day ‘Pa’ since that
landmark
day, thirteen years ago.