the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) (11 page)

He looked at my hat. "That wasn't no Kiowa," he commented. "If it had of been, he'd a-kept comin'. Chances are, there'd have been more of them."

"The tracks I saw were shod horses."

"This here's a white man," Ben decided. "One that doesn't want to be seen."

"Brindle's around," Fuentes commented.

"Leave him be," Ben said. "Joe told me to tell you that, if Brindle showed up. He ain't worth a ruined horse or a busted leg."

"I'd like to put a rope on him," I said. "Be something to tie on to."

"You leave him alone. Be like ropin' a grizzly."

"We used to do that in California," Fuentes said. "Five or six of us. Put two or three ropes on him, snag him to a tree and then let him fight a bull. Makes quite a scrap."

"You leave Brindle alone," Ben got up. He glanced over at me. "You want to trail those cattle?"

"When there's time. I've got a feeling they aren't far off, and that the thief is somebody around here."

"Balch?"

I shrugged. "I don't know anything about Balch other than he's hard to get along with, and seems to want to have the range all to himself."

Ben Roper got up. "Got to get back. We're pullin' 'em in. But like you say, it's mostly old stuff."

He rode off toward the home ranch and Fuentes and me crawled into the saddle. Both of us had our Winchesters, because even if they were in the way sometimes, you'd better have one in case of Kiowas.

We cut off due south into a wide plain, bunches of mesquite here and there, with enough catclaw and prickly pear to keep it interesting. We found a few head, all pretty wild. "They've been hustled," I told Fuentes. "Somebody has been down here hunting calves."

Several times we saw tracks ... cow-pony tracks, a shod horse. We rounded up eight or ten head and started them back toward the ranch, adding a couple more, who joined the drive of their own free will. I'd cut off into some rocks to see if any cattle were holed up in the breaks along the foot of a cliff, and suddenly come into a little hollow, wind-sheltered from three sides by the cliff and partly sheltered by mesquite on the other. It was a nice, cozy little spot, and like all other such spots, somebody else thought so, too.

There was a seep ... nothing very much ... and the ashes of old fires. When I saw the ashes, I pulled up and stopped my horse where he was, not wishful of leaving more tracks. From the saddle, I could see that somebody had left a pile of wood back under the overhang of a rock, where it would stay dry. So whoever had been here expected to come back.

"Makin' himself to home," Fuentes said, grinning at me.

We drove on. I rousted an old steer out of the brush, and a couple of range cows in surprisingly good shape. We corraled the cattle and it was shading up to dark when we rode up to the cabin.

There was a saddled horse tied to the corral bars, and a light in the cabin.

Fuentes glanced at the brand. Balch and Saddler. We both stepped down. "I'll have a look," I said. "Be right back to care for my horse."

"Watch yourself."

It was Ingerman. He had a fire going and had made fresh coffee. He looked up from under light eyebrows whitened even more by the sun. His old gray hat was pushed back, and he had a cup in his hand.

"You sure stay out late," he said. "Figured you'd developed cat eyes to see in the dark."

"We're shorthanded," I said. "Everybody works hard."

He tried a swallow. "Better have some. I make a good cup of coffee."

Taking a cup from the shelf, I filled it. He watched me, a hard humor in his eyes. "Milo Talon," he said. "Taken me a while to place you."

I tried the coffee. "It is good. You want a job as cook? We can't pay much but the company's good."

"You got a name along the Trail," he commented, looking into his cup. "They tell me you're pretty handy."

"Just enough," I said, "I don't hunt trouble."

"But you've handled some boys who did." He took another swallow. "Sure you don't want to work for us?" He looked at me, his eyes hard and measuring. "You may not know it, but there's some boys noosing a rope for the Stirrup-Iron riders."

"Be a long time using it," I said, casually. "What they upset about?"

"Losing cows ... Losing too many cows."

Fuentes came in the door and looked at Ingerman, then at me. "He makes a good cup of coffee," I said. "Have some."

"Losing cattle," I said. "All young stuff?"

Ingerman nodded. "Somebody wants to get rich three or four years from now. Balch figures its Rossiter."

"It isn't," I told him. "We're losing stock, too. I don't think there's anything on the place younger than three years. What did you come over for, Ingerman?"

"First, because I remembered you. Want you riding with us." He grinned at me. "I could kill you if I had to, but you're good. You'd probably get some lead into me and I'd rather not have it. We'll pay you more than you'll get here, and you'll have better horses to ride."

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "And you'll be on the right side when the hanging starts."

"How about Fuentes?"

"Roger Balch doesn't take to Mexicans. Never seen any harm in them, myself."

"Forget it. I ride for Stirrup-Iron. You might tell Balch he should have a talk with me before he starts swinging that loop of his. If hanging starts and the shooting begins, we'll take Balch and Saddler first, but there need be no shooting. Something's going on here, but it isn't us, and I don't think it's your outfit."

"Then who is it?"

I shrugged. "Somebody else."

He emptied his cup. "You been told." Then he added, "You watch your step. Tory Benton wants your hide."

"His knife isn't big enough to take it," I said. "If he says that again, you tell him to go to Laredo."

"Laredo? That where you bury your dead?"

"No," I replied, "that's where I tell men to go whom I don't want to bury. It's a nice town, and he'd like it."

When he had gone, Fuentes sliced some bacon into a pan. "What do you think, amigo?"

"I think somebody steals their cows, somebody steals our cows, and somebody plans on the two of us killing each other off. I think somebody wants both outfits, and all the range. And in the meantime he's gathering stock for his ranch to have when the shootin's done."

Fuentes left me in the morning to work a small valley north of us by himself. The wind had died down and I took a cold bath in the water tank, then shaved and dressed, and all the while I knew I was stalling. For my mind kept returning to the trail, and mixed with it were thoughts of Lisa.

Who was she? Where did she live, and with whom? I was not in love with her, but she offered a puzzle that kept gnawing away at my mind. Maybe there was more of Barnabas in me than I had thought. He was the scholar of the family, but we shared some traits in common.

Which brought me around to thinking of myself and just where I was headed. Barnabas seemed toknow . He had gone to school in Europe, living part of the time with relatives we had in France. I'd been content with wild country and lonely trails, but I kept asking myself if that was going to be enough?

Just being a good cowhand took a hell of a lot of man. It also took a lot out of a man, and I was too restless to stay put. As a cowhand I wasn't as good as either Fuentes or Ben Roper. They knew things by instinct that I'd never learn, and the best thing I had going for me was uncommon strength, endurance and some savvy about stock. And most of all, the willingness to get in there and work.

Maybe the thing wrong with me was that back there in Colorado we had the Empty ... the MT outfit that had more cattle, more water and better grass than any of the outfits since.

This was good country, and I liked it. But two weeks of riding would put me right back on land that belonged to me, and that made a difference in my thinking.

Rossiter knew who I was, and so did Lisa, whoever she was, but I didn't want anybody else to know. Henry Rossiter wasn't apt to talk, and somehow I didn't think Lisa would either. Just for luck I threw a saddle on a buckskin, tied him to the corral and then, taking my rifle, I walked up on the highest knoll around.

A man can ride a lot of country without really knowing it until he gets up high and gets a good picture of how it lays. There are always some areas that will fool him by their position in relation to others. I'd noticed that when I was a youngster back at the Empty, and recalled how surprised I'd been when I first saw an accurate map of the ranch layout.

What I was looking for now was cattle. If I could see a few head I could save a lot of riding, and I'd combed too many likely spots to be confident. Also, I had some thinking to do.

There were too many things that made me uneasy. In the first place, blind or not, Henry Rossiter had stolen cattle before and might be doing it again, with help.

In the second place there was that girl Lisa. Where did she belong? Who was she? Nobody at the dance and box social seemed to have any idea of who she was, and strangers didn't stay strangers very long in the western lands.

Suddenly I caught a flicker of movement and saw a big steer come up out of a draw, followed by several others. I watched, waiting until six had appeared. The big steer was in the lead, and they were a good half mile away. They paused to sniff the air, then moved on into a hollow I remembered visiting a few days before. There was grass there, but no water.

Walking back to the corral I stepped into the saddle. The weather was changing. The air was still, yet great black thunderheads were looming up along the horizon. Rain? It seemed doubtful. Too often in this west Texas country I'd seen the clouds pile up and just hang there, sometimes with lightning, but not a drop of rain.

Riding out of the hollow, I cut across the slope of the hill toward the brush where I'd seen the cattle. Now there's some stock that will drive easy enough. You get them headed the right way and maybe one or two will try to cut out, but generally speaking that bunch will walk right along. There's others you couldn't herd for sour apples. No matter which way you try to head them, they decide that isn't the way they want to go. With luck this bunch would be of the first kind.

The closer I got, the more I began to wonder about that big steer who'd been leading them. Even at that distance he'd looked mighty big ... too big.

Brindle? Maybe ... and if so I wanted no part of him. When an outfit is in a rush to gather cattle, there's no need to cripple a horse, or a man trying to get one mean steer. He isn't worth the trouble, and no doubt that was why Ol' Brindle had gotten along so far ... he was just too mean to handle. I wanted no part of him.

So I eased down into that tree-filled draw where I'd seen those cattle go, and right away spotted several of them. I sat my horse a bit, studying the layout. There was no sign of the big steer. Once I thought I detected a spot of color back in the brush, but sunlight on a tree trunk seen through the brush might look like a steer. They'd seen me, but I was bothering them none at all, and they paid me no mind. Finally, I walked my horse kind of angling toward them with an idea of taking them up the draw and onto the plain behind it.

An old, half-white range cow started away from me, and that buckskin I was riding knew what he was about. He already knew what I had in mind, and we started that cow toward the draw. We came up on another and another, and they started off, pretty as could be. They got right to the mouth of the draw before one of them suddenly cut left, and another right, and the seven head we had by that time scattered, going everywhere but up the draw where I wanted them to go.

My buckskin took out after the first one and we cut her back toward the draw. Slowly we began to round them up again, but they had no notion of going up that draw at all. Well, there was another down the creek a ways, and there was a chance I could ease them up on the plain without them knowing it, so I commenced pushing them downcreek, ever so easy.

I'd made a couple of hundred yards with them when something spooked that old half-white cow and she cut out, running, and the others after her. Before I finally got them rounded up again, my buckskin was worn to a frazzle and so was my patience, but I did get them together and headed for the plain.

There was a place where the creek bed narrowed down between some bluffs, with maybe fifty yards between them, with a lot of deadfalls and brush in there, some of it blackened by an old fire. Off to one side there were several big old cottonwoods, one pecan and a lot of willow brush mixed with catclaw and wait-a-bit. I was right abreast of it when I happened to glance right, and there was Ol' Brindle.

He was standing in thick brush, his head down a little, looking right at me. It had been said he weighed maybe eighteen hundred, but whoever said that hadn't seen him lately. He was bigger ... and standing there in that brush he looked as big as an elephant and meaner than anything you ever did see.

I don't know what possessed me but I said, "In, fella!" And his head came up like he'd been stuck with a needle. He glared at me, showing the whites of his eyes, and those horns of his were needle-sharp.

If he charged me in among those deadfalls, that dry creek bed and the brush, I'd have no more chance than a hen at a hoboes' picnic. But he didn't. He just stood there glaring at me, and I turned my head to watch my stock. And for the second time I got the break of my life. As I turned my head there was a flash, a sharp concussion, and the echoes of a shot racketing away against the bluffs.