The H&R Cattle Company (21 page)

Finally, the fat lady had put the “accident” story to rest when for the first time ever, the boy asked her a direct question concerning his father: had the man been hung for cattle rustling?

Bess Remington was John Human's older sister and had known him as few people did. She hugged her nephew to her breast for a few moments, then began to answer his question: “Yes, Bob, your daddy died at the end of a rope. Now, your Aunt Bess don't want you to go feeling hard at none of the kinfolks for lying to you. Everybody just thought it was the best thing to do at the time.”

She kissed the youngster's forehead and tousled his hair. “You're pretty soon gonna be eight years old, Bobby, plenty old enough to understand grown-up truth talk. Now, you just listen, 'cause what I'm gonna tell you is exactly that, so help me God.” She kissed his cheek.

“Your daddy was a thief, son. He stole back home in Virginia and kept right on stealing when he got to Texas. He even did some of his stealing with the Bible, carried one everywhere he went. Now, he wasn't no real preacher, just had a good strong speaking voice and learned to quote a few verses of Scripture. I've seen him stand up in a chair right in the middle of the street and shout till a crowd of people gathered, then make your mother pass a collection plate. He never failed to laugh about it when he counted the money.”

Aunt Bess talked to her nephew for more than an hour, ending with a suggestion that she thought might put an end to the taunting by his classmates. In his classroom the following morning, young Robert Human stood and asked the teacher's permission to address the class. When it was granted, he walked to the front of the room. Looking as many of the children in the eye as possible, he began to speak loudly: “My daddy was a cattle rustler, and got hung. I ain't like him. I ain't no thief.”

As he headed for his seat, a loud round of applause reverberated throughout the room, led by some of the same children who had been taunting him. His teacher joined in the applause, then commented about what a brave little boy he was. The taunting ended that very day, and most of his classmates began to seek him out on the playground, eager to be his friend.

The start of the Civil War was the end of Bob Human's formal schooling. With most of the men away at war, boys his age were expected to fill the void: farming, tending cattle, whatever it took to keep the homesteads afloat. Young Bob chose to go to work for wages, and paying jobs were easy to find during the first year or so. As the war continued, money became scarce, however, and few people could afford a hired hand. Many was the time when Human put in a day's work in exchange for nothing more than hot food and a bed.

The year he was thirteen he went to work on the Kettle Ranch in South Texas, and stayed there for the next five years. By that time, he was an accomplished ranch hand and could almost choose the outfit he wanted to work for. He was also an accomplished gunman who had spent half of his life around weapons, becoming especially proficient with the single-action revolver. The forty-five-caliber Colt he wore buckled around his waist nowadays was widely known as the “Peacemaker,” and Human's own name became well known after he shot three gunslingers to death in South Texas a few years earlier. Talk of Human's quick hand spread rapidly, and most men who kept track of such things gave him a wide berth.

Human's first cattle drive had been up the Chisholm Trail in 1872. Oddly enough, Jesse Chisholm, the man for whom the trail was named, never traveled it. Nor did he ever work as a cowboy, or own a cow. He was a trader, and the only cattle he ever owned were the oxen that pulled his trade wagons. On occasion, he used the upper section of the trail to reach his customers: the Indians and the buffalo hunters. When the cattle herds came up from Texas to Abilene, the drovers followed Chisholm's Trail from the Cimarron River to the present-day site of Wichita, Kansas, a distance of less than a hundred and fifty miles. The entire trail, however, was given the trader's name, even as far south as San Antonio.

Traffic on the Chisholm slowed after 1873. Most drovers moved to the Western Trail, a practice that would remain constant throughout the remaining years of the trail-drive era. The well-defined and well-marked trail was followed by virtually all northbound herds for the next twenty years, for even if there had been a need to vary from the relative safety of the established trail, few men had the guts and determination of a man named Nelson Story.

In the spring of 1866, Story came into Dallas, Texas, with a thirty-thousand-dollar stake he had accumulated in Alder Gulch. He bought six hundred head of cows for ten dollars a head, then undertook the longest and most arduous cattle drive in history. With a hard-bitten crew that eventually numbered twenty-seven hired hands and himself, all equipped with the latest rapid-fire rifles, Story moved the herd through some of the most dangerous, Indian-infested country on the frontier and arrived in Virginia City with all six hundred of his cows. The cattle had traveled more than fifteen hundred miles and seemed no worse for the wear. Story sold part of the small herd for a hundred dollars a head, but kept most for breeding purposes, thus becoming one of the leading stock producers of the area. Nobody tried to duplicate Story's feat for many years, for most men continued to hang on to the conventional wisdom that said it could not be done.

Bob Human had been up the Western Trail twice, accompanied each time by Jolly Ross. Sometimes Zack would ask one of the men questions about the trail when he was out of earshot of the other, wanting to see if he got the same answers from each man. He usually did. Once when Human had just answered a question about the trail, he asked one of his own: “Do you intend to make the drive yourself when you get ready to part with the longhorns, Zack?”

Hunter did not answer for a while. He had long been interested in the cattle drives north to the rails, had even read books about them back in Tennessee. “I don't know, Bob,” he said finally. “I suppose it depends on what kind of scheme Mister Rollins has on his mind when the time comes. One of us should try to stay close to the ranch at all times, but knowing Bret, I'd say that he's liable to have something entirely different going by then.”

Human seemed happy enough on the ranch, and just as Ross had said, appeared to be capable of handling whatever needed doing. Zack had even discovered while cutting firewood that he was an excellent man to have on the opposite end of a crosscut saw. Though he let it be known that he preferred to work from the back of a horse, Human was not shy about exchanging his boots for work shoes and digging into whatever chore was pressing.

Hunter had decided to hire some full-time farmers. He was fully convinced that two men who were dedicated to growing things would more than pay their way. He wanted a large garden that would supply food for the cookshack, and several acres of corn for horse feed. Today he was in town to spread word of his needs. When he found his farmers, all hands would go to work fencing in the acreage that would be cultivated.

They would first tear down the fence Zack and Jolly had built down at the old home place. They would haul the poles and posts north to the new place, then go about cutting and splitting rails, for they would need much additional material. Zack intended to quadruple the size of the plot he had originally intended to cultivate. Though he had been on the ranch for only a few months, he was already tired of buying horse feed.

Shortly after noon, accompanied by Jolly Ross and Bob Human, Hunter walked into the White Horse Saloon. “Good to see you again, Ed,” he said to the bartender, then motioned toward his men. “You already know Jolly, and this long-legged drink of water beside him is Bob Human.”

“Bob … Bob Human?” A look of surprise, then of admiration, crossed the bartender's face as he extended his right hand for a shake. “I've heard the name plenty of times,” he said, “and it's a pleasure to finally meet you. My name's Ed Hayes, and I'm at your service.” Continuing to stare with his mouth half open, the bartender was completely awed by Human's presence, and actually seemed a bit startled when Zack spoke again.

“Give us a bottle of that good whiskey,” Zack said, pointing to one of the lower shelves, “and pour the first drink for yourself.” Hayes set the bottle and three glasses on the bar. Then, just as he had been told, he poured a drink for himself before serving the others.

When each man had a drink in his hand, Hayes clinked his glass against the bottle and offered a toast. “Here's to the three of you,” he said, and upended the glass.

Zack picked up the bottle and got to his feet. “We'll be sitting over there at that corner table for a while, Ed. If a good man comes in that you think might want a full-time job farming, you can tell him that I might be a source of steady employment.” He headed for the table, and his men followed.

They sat drinking for a while, then Ross offered his own view of the farming situation: “I don't think you're gonna find what you're looking for in here, Zack. Every farmer I've ever known who was worth a shit was a teetotaler. Men of the soil just don't hang out in saloons like us cow people do.”

Zack nodded, then sipped his drink. “I suppose you're right, Jolly. I'll put out word at the hardware store, the feed store and the livery stable. Farmers patronize all of those places.”

A week passed before Zack found his farmers. He was in the cookshack eating an early supper when a man helloed the building. Dixie Dalton opened the door and took a look, then turned to Zack. “Two men out there sitting on mules,” he said.

Zack was in the yard quickly. The bearded men, both appearing to be somewhere around middle age, still sat their mules. “I guess you'd be Mister Hunter,” one of them said.

Zack nodded.

“Well, my name's Jed Peoples,” the speaker said, then motioned toward his companion, who appeared to be a few years younger, “and this is my brother, Tom. Oscar Land says you've been looking for some help.”

Zack had sized the men up at a glance. Both wore faded overalls and flannel shirts topped with blue-denim jumpers. Their brogans were run-over at the heels, and their battered hats had seen better days. “If you men are farmers, Oscar Land told you right,” Zack said, motioning for the men to dismount. “Get down and rest yourselves.”

Neither man made a move to dismount. They sat quietly for a few moments, then Jed Peoples spoke again: “Might not be no use in us dismounting, 'cause we might be heading right back down the road.” He took a sack of Durham from his coat pocket and began to smooth out a cigarette paper. “You see, Tom or me neither one don't like moving around from pillar to post. What we're hunting is a year-round job where the pay and the eating and the sleeping are all decent.”

Zack chuckled. “Well, we eat and sleep about as good as anybody else that I know of, and I intend to pay a decent wage, but I sure as hell ain't gonna promise you a year-round job. Somebody's gonna have the job year-round, but whether it happens to be you fellows or not depends entirely on how well your work pleases me.”

Jed Peoples put a match to his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke. “Well, I guess you made all that plain enough. How much you figure on paying?”

“Twenty-five and found.”

The brothers looked at each other for a moment, then nodded. “The money's all right,” the elder Peoples said, smiling for the first time, “and you sure don't look underfed. Since you say you're gonna keep some farmers year-round, I reckon me and my brother'll take the job, if you want us. You sure ain't gonna find nothing wrong with the way we work, so I guess you'd be keeping us all year.”

Jed Peoples dismounted, and his brother followed suit. Zack was soon shaking hands with his new hired hands. “Come into the cookshack and eat supper,” he said. “Then you can feed and take care of your mules.”

“These ain't our mules,” Tom Peoples said as they tied the animals to the hitching rail. “Oscar Land just loant 'em to us, and we promised to bring 'em back today. We left all of our stuff at the livery stable anyway. Got to pick it up somehow.”

“I'll lend you a team and wagon in the morning,” Zack said. “If Oscar wants to charge you for keeping the mules overnight, tell him I'll pay it when I see him again.”

The Peoples brothers shook hands with all three of the men in the cookshack, then began to eat like there was no tomorrow. Dixie, who always cooked more food than was needed to round out a meal, just smiled and continued to dish up the vittles. “Eat up, men,” he said. “If you eat it all up, you won't have leftovers for dinner tomorrow.” The newly hired farmers took Dixie at his word and did not stop eating till the pots were empty.

When the Peoples brothers had fed and watered the mules, Jolly Ross showed them to the bunkhouse. The farmers staked out a corner immediately, pulling a small table between their cots. Then, although it was not yet dark, the men nodded their thanks, stripped off their clothing and went to bed.

Ross left the bunkhouse quietly. He supposed that the farmers had just had a long day, or perhaps they had not even slept last night. One thing was for sure, he was thinking: if they went to bed this early every night, they were in for a hard time. Even now, Ross and Human kept the lamp lit for at least two hours every night. And in the very near future, the bunkhouse would be housing a full crew, which meant loud talking and poker games that sometimes lasted till midnight. Indeed, it could be that the farmers would have to build themselves a separate shack for sleeping—which would be easy enough to do; there was plenty of material in the lumber pile, and an extra heater in the toolshed.

The Peoples brothers left the ranch shortly after sunup, driving one of Zack's wagons. They were now on the payroll, and the cook had given them money and a list of supplies he needed from town. Tom Peoples sat on the seat waving his hat as the wagon rolled out of sight, Oscar Land's mules trotting along behind.