Panhandle (27 page)

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Authors: Brett Cogburn

BOOK: Panhandle
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I could tell Billy had lost whatever urge had moved him to talk, but I was too full of questions to leave it alone.
“The Law ain't still wanting you after all this time, are they?”
“I saw my given name a couple of years ago in one of those criminal books the Rangers carry.”
“East Texas might as well be in another state. That's been long enough ago that everybody, including the Law, probably forgot about you.”
Billy turned to me, and from his voice I knew he was giving me that faint, tolerant smile of the kind normal folks often grant the imbecile.
“Like I said, you're still new to Texas. We're taught here from birth never to forget a wrong until we get the chance to make things right. The Rangers won't forget a crime, they just ain't found me yet.”
We were five miles from home and it was getting time we headed back, but I couldn't bring myself to move if Billy had more to say without me pumping him. He didn't, and after several minutes he rose to his feet to walk to the horses. I followed him and we rode all the way home in silence, and turned the mules and horses loose in the corral.
I started with Billy to the house for supper, but he stopped at the edge of the lamplight spilling weakly out of the windows on the yard. He stood there and stared up at the full moon glowing bright in the sky above.
“I don't know why I told you all that,” he said.
I had no answer for him, because I didn't know why he had told me either, except maybe we were still good friends despite loving the same woman.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
SEVEN
T
imes were changing indeed, and I couldn't seem to keep up with the pace. It seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get ahead for going backwards. My teamster business was just enough to keep my family fed, and it was going to be a long time before I had enough cattle, if ever, to make my living with them. The interest rates that Caldwell banker was charging me threatened to put me under even before I got started as a cattleman.
I was too long getting over the pneumonia, and missed a lot of business that summer. I had a bank loan to pay off that fall, and didn't have one red cent set aside for it with only two months until it was due. Worry was riding me with the devil's spurs, and if I could have donated the time I spent worrying about money to more constructive thoughts, I could have solved half the world's problems in a matter of days.
To top things off, Barby told me she was pregnant again, and that I could expect another child in late winter.
That was just another big log thrown on the fire burning under me, and I cast my fortunes back on the prairie with my mules before the banker started sending folks by to see if I was going to work. As usual I cast one last glance back at my home before I drove out of view, and wondered if I'd ever make it look like I'd promised Barby it would. Maybe I had some long lost uncle who had died and left me a fortune that I didn't even know about yet. Or maybe it was just going to be one long, hard pull to get where I wanted to go.
Long and I were making a trip together down to the Tule Ranch when we heard a pack of dogs coming our way just north of the Washita. We stopped our wagons and studied the prairie for signs of the bawling animals, or for whatever they were chasing. Before long, six long-legged, grizzled mutts of a kind I'd never seen before came racing out of a canyon at speeds I didn't think a dog capable of. A coyote was running before them, and he was just managing to keep a lead on them.
A rider came loping behind them in the distance, and I soon could tell it was Billy. He rode up to us just about the time those dogs latched on to that coyote right in front of our wagons.
“Ain't those dogs something?” Billy was all smiles, and I noticed he was already toting a damned big coyote pelt across his saddle swells.
“Those ain't your dogs, are they?” I asked.
“No, they belong to Archie.”
I noticed for the first time that Billy was riding a horse with a Rocking Chair brand.
“When did you go to work for them?”
“Not long ago. It ain't a bad outfit.”
“Did Andy hire on too?”
Billy looked back the way he'd come. “He's back behind me somewhere. Archie's horse tripped in a prairie dog hole, and Andy stopped to help him.”
“I heard some Englishmen had bought that outfit.”
“Yeah.”
Word had already spread all over the country about the change in operation at the Rocking Chair Ranch. The new owner, or representative of the owners, was a fellow named Archibald. He didn't know a thing about cows and grass, but he ran a loose ship, and didn't get in his hands' way when they went about their work. What's more, he loved to gamble and drink, and thought nothing of his hands doing the same. He was confident that his foreman would see that the books showed a profit, and spent most of his time chasing coyotes with his dogs, or sitting at a poker table in Mobeetie.
“Isn't Archie some kind of royalty?”
Billy just shrugged. “He's all right. He says he's Duke Archibald or something, but the boys all call him Archie.”
A duke must have his vassals, retainers, and men-at-arms, so without regard to efficient payroll, Archie traveled with a cavvy of cowboys everywhere he went. It wasn't long before just about every cowboy in the country wanted to work for the Rocking Chair. The pay was no better, but the allotment of fun sure seemed abundant.
A lot of the boys working for Archie were a little on the wild side, and rumors soon sprang up that many, if not all of them, were taking advantage of the loose management of the ranch and rustling cattle. Not just Rocking Chair cattle, but everything they came across. The Mobeetie crowd loved Archie, but a lot of folks were beginning to think that it wouldn't be long before the Association was sending word back to England notifying them to check their books, talk to their man here, and look over their operation in Texas.
I watched the growling pack of dogs wool that coyote around from several directions. It was a vicious game of tug-of-war. An especially big, yellow dog latched on to the varmint's chest and crouched over his victim while looking up at us with proud eyes and a bloody muzzle. His tail was wagging, and I heard bones crunching in his massive jaws. The last breath went out of that coyote in a ragged wheeze. Despite the fact that he was dead, the excited wolfhounds continued pulling at him.
“That yellow dog's a tough one,” Billy said.
“I've never seen dogs like those.”
“Archie gave a lot of money for that set. That lean, silky-haired red one is a Saluki cross. They're fast as greased lightning, and supposed to be all the way from Egypt.”
“It sounds like he's a man that likes his dogs.”
Billy lifted the fresh pelt from his saddle. “Look at this. We caught a damned wolf about an hour ago. This big old lobo was too much for the dogs to finish off, and I had to shoot him.”
“I ain't seen a wolf in a while.”
“That's because somebody is beating you to them. That five-dollar wolf bounty has half the cowboys in the Panhandle ruining good horses chasing wolves.”
“I thought all you had to show to claim a bounty was their topknot with the ears on.”
“I would have scalped him, but Archie wants to have his hide tanned to hang on his wall.”
“I heard you sold your racehorses to some rich sugarcane man from Louisiana.” Long was keeping an untrusting eye on the dogs, as if they might jump on him when they were finished with the coyote.
“That fool loved a fast horse even more than I do. He gave me three thousand for War Bonnet alone, and another two for the rest of my racing string.”
I knew from Billy's own mouth that the sale of the trail herd he had driven the summer before had netted him a tidy sum, despite the troubles and delays he'd experienced.
“That's a lot of money,” Long sighed.
Billy was once again a mere cowboy, albeit one with a gambler's roll of bills big enough to choke a horse stuffed inside his boot top. His name was going to be the toast of many a cowboy bellied up to a bar by that fall.
“What about you, Long? Are you still making whiskey?” Billy rode his horse among the wolfhounds, hoping he could scatter them and retrieve the coyote.
“No, Fawn made me promise to quit selling the stuff over in the Indian Nations.”
“That must be hard on your pocket.”
Long still ran just the wagons he could operate himself, but he contracted his own loads. He might have been a one-man gang, but he continued to make money hand over fist.
“I've got me a new line of business.” Long said.
“Is that so?”
“Long's going to be the biggest farmer in the Creek Nation before too many more years,” I said.
“I thought you had to be a tribal member to own land over there.”
Long grinned like a wolf himself. “I've got a cousin who married into the tribe and that got him a big chunk of fine farmland. I put up the money for him to plow it in and seed it.”
“Sounds like you've been busy,” Billy said.
“I also hired me a white lawyer out of Kansas City to act as my front man. He formed me a little company and got me a contract supplying Fort Reno and Fort Sill with corn.”
“You old black devil.” Billy sounded truly impressed.
“If the white folks knew half of what I'm doing they'd come string me up.”
Billy looked back again for Andy and their employer. There was still no sign of them. The dogs were finally done with the coyote, and he stepped down and grabbed it up by the hind legs. He tied them with a thong and hung the animal on his saddle horn.
“I'd best go find the rest of my bunch.”
We all shook hands and watched him ride away with the worn-out dogs following on his heels. The dead coyote bounced against his leg with its tongue hanging out and flopping in time with the horse's stride.
 
 
It seemed that while I followed rutted trails to an uncertain fortune, Billy and Long were rapidly outpacing me up the financial ladder. While Billy was chasing coyotes, playing poker, and no doubt adding to his wallet, I just kept chugging along, determined that hard work would see me through. A month before the interest on my note was due I paid a visit home to spend a few days with my family. I tried to let on like all was well, but Barby pried my worries out of me. No black-hooded torturer of the Inquisition ever made easier sport of a man's mind than that woman did with me.
She suggested I borrow the money from Long, as he was our friend, and we could have him paid back by mid-winter if I kept the road hot. Long would have loaned us the money, but he was gone to the Creek Nation delivering his first government contracts, and besides, he was bound to be strapped from the investment in his farming operation, or so I told her. It wasn't right of us to lay our troubles off on him every time he turned around. Ashamed as I am to say it, it bugged me some that a black man was doing far better than I.
My pride was getting in the way of common sense, and I hated for Barby to believe I couldn't provide for us like I should. I quickly regretted having been unskilled enough to let her discover my worries. We had quite a fight about the matter, and I ended up sleeping in the tepee that night.
It took two days for me to settle the matter with her, or at least I thought I did. She had wanted to visit her father in Clarendon for a good while, and I had a load going that way. I would take her with me and leave her to visit there while I worked to make the loan payment. It was going to take a Herculean effort to make enough money by the payment deadline, but I assured her I would get it done. I felt not one bit of the confidence in myself that I showed to her.
Fawn assured us that she would be all right alone until Long returned, and we packed Barby and Owen for the trip. The two women hugged like departing sisters, and I came to realize just how close they had grown. I knew Barby was worrying about Fawn having to be by herself as we were traveling south.
My troubles left me for the trip to Clarendon, and I enjoyed the camping along the trail with my wife and boy. My son was growing like a weed, and already tottering about on his hind legs and getting into everything he wasn't supposed to. He had his mother's green eyes, and he reminded me of her when he smiled. That child was the light of my life, even if I sometimes looked at him and thought he was going to look just like Billy.
I left Barby and Owen with Mr. Allen, grateful that I had good excuse not to tarry too long. Father and daughter seemed to have patched up any rift our marriage had caused, but he and I still didn't see eye to eye on anything. He promised to send my family by stage to meet me in Mobeetie one month from the day I left them. I headed for that same town to pick up a load of telegraph poles I was to drop off at intervals along a stretch of the government trail north of the stage stop on the Canadian.
My plan was to drop off the last of the poles, and hurry down to a place east along the Canadian within the Cheyenne Reservation where I knew of a stand of unusually big cedar. I would cut a wagon load of posts, and deliver them back to sell to the soldiers at Ft. Elliott in time to meet Barby there as she arrived by stage. With pay from my two freight trips, and money from the sale of the cedar posts the government was buying, I should have enough to pay my loan. As I traveled I tried not to remind myself of the good chance that what I was doing probably wouldn't work.
I made short work of dropping off my telegraph poles, and cut a beeline for the stand of cedar I had located. Neither the Cheyenne nor government troops on patrol caught me cutting reservation trees. It took me two weeks with an axe to do what a man who knew how to use one could have done in one. But by the end of that time I was headed back to Mobeetie with a wagon load of posts to sell and hands covered in bloody blisters. If nothing else, the trip had taught me that a cowboy's hands don't fit an axe handle.
Triumphantly, I made town the night before Barby arrived, and was waiting for her when she stepped down off the stage with Owen on her arm. I hugged both of them and quickly told them of my success. Optimism had taken a hold of me and I splurged on a meal for us at O'Laughlin's that set me back most of the jingling money I had. I didn't think a thing of it, as I had money coming to me as soon as I made my way up to the fort.
Owen was tired from his trip on the stage, and I rented a room for them with what I could scrape from my pocket. While she lay Owen down for a nap, I hitched my team and went up to the fort to sell my posts.

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