The Taylor County War (7 page)

“Stop right where you are,
stranger. You don’t want fifty calibers of buffalo lead through
your guts, you’ll do what I say.”

“S’all right, Mr. Breedlove,” Billy
hollered. “Wesley Quaid’s here. Ira sent him. He’s got shiny
guns.”

“Don’t like no strangers coming
around. Them Rolling R rowdies have gone to taking pot shots at my
boys.”

“I know, Mr. Breedlove, I was
there. Ira sent us a gunman, your son thinks he’s gotta be good as
anything Rolling R has.”

Tobias Breedlove came around the
corner with a Sharps buffalo gun in the crook of his arm, cocked.
His old felt hat showed plenty of grease stains under the braided
leather hatband, and his homespun britches hung from a pair of
threadbare suspenders. The buffalo gun and the knife at his waist
were well cared for. His face showed at least two days worth of
white stubble. Billy knew Tobias Breedlove was pure whang-leather
tough, and that a man should never judge the owner of the T-Bar-B
by what they saw on the outside.

“Light’n set, gunman,” Tobias said.
“Got coffee on the stove. Vittles at sundown. Put yer gear in the
bunkhouse.” The old man stepped up on the porch that fronted the
house. “Thanks for coming,” he said, then opened the front door and
disappeared into the ranch house.

After the door closed, Quaid spoke.
“She-it. He’s what I’m supposed to protect?”

“You’re just an extra gun, Quaid.
Don’t get no bright ideas about your importance around here. Rest
of us’ll be right there when the lead starts flying. Bunkhouse’s
around back.” Billy chucked the raggedy brown with his boot heels
and the horse shuffled around the ranch house. Quaid followed. They
dismounted by the corral.

“All of us? Don’t seem to be no one
around.”

“They was four of us,” Billy said.
“But Lanny Taggart and Lige Henry went down. Jimmy Spotted Owl
should be around, unless he’s still back at the line shack with
Marcus and the kids.”

“You, and me, and a shit-kicking
Injun?”

“And Mr. Breedlove. He may be old,
but he shoots awful straight with that Sharps.”

“Damn.”

“You any good with them guns,
Quaid?”

“I get paid to use ‘em.”

Billy went to the trash pile and
got an empty can. He set it on a fence post and came back. “Whatta
we got? Thirty feet? ’Bout as far as a man can hit with a short
gun.” He pulled his Colt and lined it up on the tin can. The gun
bucked and the can jumped into the air.

Before it could hit the ground,
Quaid’s gun was out and his shots kept the can jumping three times.
“About that good,” he said as he shoved the spent cartridges from
the shiny converted .44 and reloaded.

“You’ll do, Quaid. Don’t know what
Ira pays you, but it probably ain’t enough.”

Quaid grinned and patted his lean
stomach. “Man can’t be too choosy,” he said, “if he wants to
eat.”

Billy grinned. “Chuck’s good here,”
he said. “And it don’t come outta your pay. Put your horse in the
corral and throw your saddle over the rail.” Billy let the raggedy
brown into the corral, removed the saddle and bridle, which he put
on the corral’s top rail. “I’ll get some hay.”

With the horses taken care of,
Billy and Quaid made for the bunkhouse. Of the six bunks, four were
obviously taken. “Your choice,” Billy said, waving at the empty
bunks.

Quaid dropped his saddlebags on the
nearest. “When’s chow?” he asked.

Before Billy could answer, the
clang of iron bar hitting triangle sounded. “Come get or I throw to
hog.”

“That’s Sen Yung,” Billy said. “He
cooks mighty good, for a Celestial. We’d better go chow down.” He
dug a shirt from his possibles bag and put it on. “Can’t run around
in my union suit all day. Let’s go.”

At the back door to the ranch
house, Billy stopped at a washbowl. “Gotta wash up. Rules.” He
slopped water from a jug into the washbowl, wet his hands, soaped
them, scrubbed his hands across his face, swished the suds from his
hands in the basin, wiped his face, and then dried everything with
the old flour sack hanging on a peg. Quaid followed Billy’s
lead.

Tobias Breedlove sat at the head of
the table. The Sharps stood against the wall within easy reach.

“Evening, Mr. Breedlove,” Quaid
said. “I don’t know much about cows, but I do all right with guns,
just about any kind. And that’s what Ira sent me for.”

“Sit and eat, boy. We’ll talk on
full bellies.” Tobias hollered at the cook. “Hey, Sen Yung.
Bring’um eats, chop chop.”

“Sen Yung come now, boss. Never
worry.” The Chinaman brought a steaming pot to the table and put it
down on a pad. “Stew,” he said. “Chinaman stew.”

Tobias Breedlove bowed his head.
“Lord,” he said. “We’re thankful for what we are about to receive.
Bless it to our health. Amen.”

Billy and Quaid looked expectantly
at Tobias. “Well,” the old man said. “What are you waiting on?
Grace’s been said. Dig in.”

While Tobias and the hands piled
into the stew, Sen Yung brought mugs of dark black coffee and set
one in front of each man.

As one, they put down their spoons
and reached for the mugs. “Damn,” Quaid said after a sip. “Ain’t
had coffee that good for a month a Sundays.”

“More where that came from,” Tobias
said. “Who was shooting outside?”

“Me and Quaid,” Billy said though a
mouthful of Sen Yung’s stew.

“What for?”

“Ah, nothing. Just shooting at a
can.”

“And?”

“Quaid shoots almighty good. Glad
to have him on our side,” Billy said.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Quaid
said, “way he rode me all the way out here.”

“Just joshing,” Billy said.

Tobias cleaned the last of the stew
from his plate with a piece of bread. “Billy’s one of the best
cowmen I know,” Tobias said. “He rides for the brand and he looks
out for the cows. Ain’t never heard him lie, but I hear he bluffs
good at cards.”

“Hello the house.”

The three men at the table were
silent. Tobias’s hand stole over and grasped the Sharps. Billy
stood, holding his chair so it wouldn’t scrape against the floor.
Quaid’s move was also silent, and quick as a cat. He held his shiny
Colt in hand and padded into the front room on silent feet.

“Hello the house.”

“Answer, Sen Yung,” Tobias said,
almost under his breath.

“Coming. Coming,” Sen Yung shouted.
He clomped from the kitchen to the front door. “Who there?” he
asked.

“Grub line rider,” a voice
said.

“Boss?” Sen Yung would not open the
door without a word from Tobias.

“Open up.” Tobias said. He stood in
the doorway with the Sharps in hand.

Sen Yung opened the door. The
self-proclaimed rider was a silhouette. “Mr. Breedlove? My name’s
Eddie Benton. Sure would like a bait of grub.”

“Come on in, son,” Tobias said.
“Never turned down a grub line rider.”

The man called Eddie Benton came
in. His hat, which was crumpled in his hands, had definitely seen
much better days, and his britches were patched in more than one
place. He wore a gun, but it hung over his crotch in a most
unlikely position. Hesitantly, he cast his eyes to where Sen Yung’s
stew sat on the table, mostly gone. Billy and Quaid’s dishes had
been put away.

“Sit anywhere,” Tobias said. “Help
yourself.”

Billy and Quaid quietly left by the
front door. Sen Yung shut it after them.

“I’ve seen that waddie before,”
Billy said, leaning toward Quaid so his voice wouldn’t carry. They
took a look at the man’s horse. Billy snorted. “Livery shit,” he
said. “Saw that horse when I got that raggedy brown. Why’s a grub
line rider using livery stock?”

“Where’d you see him?”

“Drinking at the Lucky Break.
Seemed awfully friendly with some Rolling R riders. Why’s he here,
now?”

“Maybe he’s really riding for the
Rolling R.”

Billy looked at Quaid, just able to
make out his face in the evening light. He nodded. “But,” he said,
“if that’s true, it might be better to have him here under our eyes
than off riding for them. Might be able to milk some information
out of him, too.”

They went around the house, made a
lot of noise scraping boots on the porch and slopping the water jug
and washbasin around, then barged in the back door. “Coffee still
on?”

The rider was diving into Sen
Yung’s stew. In fact, it looked like he’d taken it all.

Tobias looked up. “This here’s
Eddie Benton. Says he’s riding grub line.”

Benton scraped his chair back and
stood. “Pleased,” he said. No one offered him a hand. “I was hoping
there might be some kind of a riding job at the T-Bar-B. Really
would be good to get three squares. That there stew was almighty
tasty.”

Billy threw a glance at Quaid, who
made a tiny nod. “Boss,” Billy said. “Taggart and Henry being gone
and all, we sure could use another rider.” He turned his attention
to Benton. “You know anything about cows?”

“I come up the trail from Laredo,”
Benton said. “I’ve trailed my share.”

“Trailing and tending stock are not
one and the same, but at least you’ve herded cows a bit. If you
can, Boss, maybe you could hire Benton here, just to give him a
try. Start with a month, then keep him on if he pans out.”

Tobias looked hard at Billy, then
at Quaid. Both looked relaxed and easy, like they really
anticipated the extra hand Benton would make.

“All right,” Tobias said. “Get
Eddie set up in the bunk house, and get ready to ride out in the
morning. We’re gonna head for the north line shack. Find out what’s
going on with the teacher and his kids.”

Billy gulped his coffee. “Come on,
Eddie Benton. Let’s go get you settled in. Bring your nag around
back.” He left by the back door with Quaid at his heels. Benton
went out the front door to get his horse.

Billy showed him where to put his
horse and then offered him the only empty bunk. “Get your stuff
together,” he said. “We ride north at sunup.”

CHAPTER THREE

Clay More

The man’s final death throes had
been pitiful to watch. Yet after a week of ever-deepening delirium,
fever and excruciating pain, his death had been a merciful
release.

“He’s gone,” Dr. Logan Munro
announced with a sigh. “And I didn’t even know his name.”

The town doctor wound the tubes of
his stethoscope into a neat bundle and stowed it away in his
medical bag. The man’s death would be a release for Logan as well,
since he had been visiting him three times a day to administer
laudanum and check on the wound dressings. It had been a highly
unsatisfactory case, since he had felt well nigh powerless to
help.

The man had been found lying on his
side in an alley in Dogleg City a week before. He was unconscious,
having been struck on the back of his head, and he was losing blood
from an ugly knife wound to the abdomen.

“I must say, Doc, it’ll be good to
get him out of here,” said Declan O’Donnell, the stocky middle aged
Irishman who owned the building that he fancifully called
O’Donnell’s Lodging House. It was not the most salubrious flophouse
in Dogleg City, but Logan had always liked the Irishman, for he
seemed to have a heart and was not solely motivated by what he
could get out of life. There were many others in Wolf Creek who
would not have been so ready to let a dying man stink his place out
with the stench of rampant abdominal gangrene.

“You did a good thing in letting
him stay here, Declan,” Logan said. “Especially with him being
barely conscious all week.”

“Sure, the man had paid me for a
week’s board. It was the Christian thing to take the poor fellow
in. Anyway, apart from the smell he was no real bother.”

Yet it bothered Logan that he knew
next to nothing about his patient. Although he had been drifting in
and out of consciousness, he had volunteered no information
whatsoever, not even a few days ago when he had been well enough to
let Logan feed him some beef tea without vomiting it straight
back.

The man seemed to be in his early
thirties and looked to be the sort of tough, sinewy gunman that was
attracted to the kind of establishments that thrived south of Grant
Street and made Dog Leg City what it was. That he had paid for a
week’s board implied that he had some business to do, or perhaps he
had even been aiming to gain employment as an enforcer for one or
other of the local ‘businessmen.’ At any rate he had clearly upset
someone enough to become a victim himself. And it was more than
that, for whoever had struck him down had then cold-bloodedly
stabbed him in the abdomen and twisted the blade enough to do him
real internal damage.

That had puzzled Logan when he had
first examined the man. He had seen enough of violent attacks to
realize that an abdominal wound that resulted in a perforated
intestinal loop spilling out was indeed a murderous act, which had
been inflicted in such a way as to ensure a lingering, painful
death. Far easier to slit the throat and cause instant death. This,
however, was both vicious and cruel beyond belief. It was done so
that the victim would know that he was going to die and that no one
could help. Not even the town doctor.

Certainly all that Logan had been
able to do was patch up the wound and treat the pain as best he
could. As for the law, after cursory investigation no one seemed
worried about the man’s fate. Only Logan seemed to feel any remorse
for the man.

Declan pulled the window up and
then turned and waved his hand back and forth in front of his face.
“Damn! The poor sod was starting to stink worse than some of the
dead things that we used to dig out of the peat bogs back home in
good old Connemara.”

Logan had to agree. The smell of
putrefaction had been overpowering toward the end. “At least the
poor devil is out of his agony now.”

“An amazing thing, isn’t it, Doc,”
Declan went on as he pulled out a battered corncob pipe and
fingered the bowl thoughtfully. “One second he’s lying there
writhing and blabbering away, then the next moment he’s gone. It
was like his spirit suddenly left him.”