The Ellsworth Trail Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  APACHE CUNNING

  The onrushing Apache’s last cry was torn from his throat as Jock’s bullet smashed into his chest, ripping through arteries and heart like some metal fist.

  Jock levered another cartridge into the rifle’s chamber and got to his feet, expecting more Apaches to rush him. Instead, he saw a gaggle of ponies racing off to the south.

  “Looks like you chased them off,” Beeson said.

  “I didn’t chase them off, Amos. This one came after me and I shot him. I think he sacrificed his life so that the others could escape.”

  “Them murderin’ bastards knew they was outnumbered. If we’d have got here in time, we’d have turned all of them cowardly savages into wolf meat.”

  “I don’t think they ran because of cowardice,” Jock said. “I think they had other things on their mind.”

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, December 2005

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17749-5

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2005

  All rights reserved

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cow boy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling, allowing me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Chapter 1

  The smoke from his cigarette scratched at his eyes, burning them like shaven onions would. His tear ducts welled up and spilled over, washing away some of the grit, the fine dust that rose off the land like tiny insects that lived with the Texas wind and died on his flesh, on his lips, in his mouth, under the faded blue bandanna around his neck, and in the fluted scallops of his ears. The cigarette dangled from his dry and cracked lips like some limp brown cocoon, the once-white paper as scorched and dusty as the land he rode upon, a dangling appendage burning like a fuse attached to a stick of dynamite.

  The anger had not lessened in him since he rode out of Del Rio and followed the meandering course of the Nueces River south toward Corpus Christi. His rage was fueled by memories of what he had lost, what he was leaving behind, and by the poignant ache inside him for the land, all of it, all that was now gone, and all that lay ahead. Each mile he put behind him reminded him of the land that had once been, the land that had once been his. For it was the same land, most of the way. It did not change that much, not in that dimension of mind where memory’s universe resides, not in the depths of his heart.

  But the land did change after he forded the Nueces and rode into high grass and the smell of sweet clover and lespedeza, and the musty aroma of alfalfa, the wildflowers gone or smothered by green blades of X8 grass planted long ago by his far-seeing friend with the green thumb.

  He saw the horseman long before the lone rider saw him. He knew somehow that the man was waiting for someone because he did not move from his spot on a knoll, but sat his standing horse like a sentinel, some guardian of an invisible gate to a kingdom beyond sight, beyond the comprehension of a man who had ridden a trail through desolation and emptiness of both sky and land.

  The man had turned away to swat at a fly or some other winged creature, but when he turned his head, he looked directly toward the ford where a man would come from the west if a man were to come to these vast grasslands.

  The man stood up in his stirrups and pushed his hat back as if to give his eyes more scope. Beyond him, longhorns grazed in bunches, their
sweeping horns glinting like slashing sabers in the sun. The cattle smell mingled with the other scents and tugged at the rider’s heart, pulling on memories like wet leather thongs tied there, drying and tautening until they would twang if plucked.

  “Ho there,” the sentinel called. “You yonder.”

  The man waited as the rider from Del Rio approached, the cigarette stuck to his lips gone to ash and dead in the wind because he had not puffed on it for those moments when his horse was picking its way across the river, his legs quivering in the current until the hide rippled over the bones.

  “Are you Jock Kane?” the guardian asked.

  “I am.”

  “Mr. Becker told me to look for you. He said you’d be coming.” The man glanced at the black armband on Kane’s left sleeve, then averted his gaze as if he had violated some privacy.

  Jock spat the stub of the cigarette from his mouth and licked the stuck paper on his lips until it loosened. He wiped his lower lip and reached into his left-hand shirt pocket for the makings. He pulled out the sack of tobacco, cranked one leg up and draped it over the saddle horn. He fished a packet of cigarette papers from the same pocket, slid one free of the sheaf, then stuffed the packet back into his pocket. He curled the single sheet of thin paper around his left index finger and loosened the string on the pouch, which opened into a small pucker. He poured the tobacco evenly into the paper, shook it slightly to even it all up, then, between thumb and index finger, rolled what he had into a tightly packed cigarette. He licked the top edge to seal it and stuck the quirly into his mouth. He pulled the string to close the pouch and stuck that back in his pocket.

  The cowhand searched his pockets for a match to light Jock’s cigarette. When he looked up, Jock was striking a lucifer on his trousers leg. The match burst into flame and Jock touched it to the end of his cigarette. The paper fumed and the spark ignited the tobacco as he pulled air through it.

  “And where is Chad?” Jock asked, blowing out a plume of blue smoke from one corner of his mouth.

  “I’ll take you to him. He ain’t at home.”

  Jock looked at the cattle, turning his head so that the smoke didn’t burn his eyes. There were cattle grazing in herds that stretched to every horizon. He couldn’t see the brands from that distance, but he would bet good money, if he had any, that they all bore the X8 brand. It was well past spring roundup, so what was Chad doing out in the field counting head?

  “Do it, then,” Jock said. “You got a name?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m Jesse. Jesse Boyd.”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  Jock snorted. Boyd’s pale face was mottled with freckles that stretched from cheek to cheek over the bridge of his nose. His blue eyes had no clouds of age in them—innocent eyes that could still light up with wonder at the sight of a calf birthing, or a morning glory opening its petals to the sun.

  “Almost,” Boyd said. “In a couple of months.”

  “Lead on out, Boyd.” The cigarette in Jock’s mouth bobbed up and down when he spoke, like a flagless semaphore staff. Boyd’s eyes fixated on it so that he stared like someone hypnotized by a snake.

  “Yes, sir. Follow me.”

  Boyd turned his horse and rode down off the knoll, his small, thin body bobbing in the saddle so that he looked as if he were made of straw—a skinny scarecrow of a boy in man’s clothing.

  More and more cattle appeared before them as they rode. Jock got the distinct impression that the herd was thickening in size like something growing before his very eyes. The grass shortened, and disgruntled longhorns stood disconsolate on overgrazed earth, looking forlorn and mean, with their brown eyes glaring at him as he passed, as if inflicting silent blame on him for something he’d done, or hadn’t done. These cattle, he thought, are going to kill something, anyone on two legs stupid enough to get close to those deadly horns.

  Jock’s uneasiness increased as the young man led them through milling longhorns and he saw riders circling them, so far off that he could not see their faces. They were just dark figures that looked like centaurs, each half horse, half man, with no definition that might have separated them. Men controlling a huge herd of cattle, getting ready for something, something that Jock dreaded knowing about, even in the hollow recesses of his heart where so much had been torn out, smashed, thrown away like dead meat.

  “Mr. Becker’s just up ahead,” Boyd said, looking back at Jock. “That’s him about to throw his loop.”

  Jock saw Chad chasing after a steer, swinging a manila rope over his head as he closed the gap between his horse and the moving target. He might have sprung from some olden tableau, painted during the early days of Texas when the longhorns were as wild as lions on an African veldt, rulers of a kingdom where they were the dominant animal, un-challenged except for a few Apaches with a taste for beef.

  Becker threw his loop and it encircled the neck of the steer, falling gracefully over its head despite the longhorns that made such a feat remarkable. Chad’s horse skidded to a stiff-legged stop and began to back up, taking the slack out of the rope. When the steer hit the end of its tether, it gyrated and flew to the ground as the horse backed down to a sitting position on its haunches—a rock holding a thrashing fish on the end of a line.

  Boyd and Kane rode up as hands rushed to pin down the steer, while another waddled bowlegged up to it with a hot branding iron.

  “I see you haven’t lost your touch, Chad,” Jock said. “You rope pretty good for an old man.”

  Chad looked over at Jock as he urged his mount toward the downed steer, pulling in the slack so that he could retrieve his lariat once the hands were finished burning the X8 into the steer’s hide. Jock smelled the acrid fumes of hair and flesh, heard the soft hiss of the iron as it blazed its owner’s mark on the cow’s hip.

  “Look who’s calling who old,” Chad said, his grin widening to show his teeth. “Sur prised you ain’t got a gray beard, Jocko.”

  The two men had not seen much of each other since right after the war, but they had kept in touch by mail. They had both come home after serving in the Second Texas Regiment, built their ranches and started herds, then split up, with Jock going to Del Rio, where he was from, and Chad returning to Corpus Christi, where he had been raised. They had formed strong bonds with each other during the fighting in the War Between the States.

  “That’s why I shave, Chad. The hairs have started coming up gray for some reason.”

  The hands finished with the branded steer and turned it loose. The steer ran bawling into the sea of longhorns that seemed packed together as though they were in a loading chute with enormous dimensions. Chad coiled his rope and tied its garland to his saddle with a leather thong. The men around them all stared at Jock Kane, sizing him up. He looked at them but made no effort toward friendliness. He just returned their stares, one by one, and then looked back at Chad.

  “Come on, Jock. Follow me,” Chad said. “We’ve got some talking to do.”

  Jock nodded. He saw resentment gather on some of the men’s faces, like moss growing at the base of a tree deep in a forest. He understood that. He was the outsider, the stranger. They didn’t know him and he didn’t know them. They had their suspicions and he had his.

  The bunched cattle parted, reluctantly, to let the two riders through. When they were some distance away from the men and had a clear spot near some mesquite trees, Chad stopped, turned his horse. Jock’s cigarette tip glowed as he drew smoke into his lungs.

  “That was the last one we had to brand, Jock.”

  “You’ve built yourself quite a herd, Chad. I’m just wondering if you brought me out here to brag or if you had something else in mind.”

  “Jock, I’m damned sorry about Twyla. I see you’re still wearing crepe.”

  “It’s not crepe. It’s cloth.”

  “You know what I mean. I wanted to come to the funeral, but I had my hands full.”

  “That’s all right. I buried her, and I�
��ll wear this black band on my arm until I get the bastard who murdered her.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “I do.”

  “Vengeance is mine, sayeth—”

  Jock broke in. “I’ve heard it all, Chad, and wrestled with it. When the Lord doesn’t step in, then a man has to do the job. Vengeance will be mine. And Twyla’s.”

  “All right, Jock.”

  “I still don’t know why I rode all the way from Del Rio. You said it was urgent. I don’t see any urgent hereabouts.”

  “Jock, I’ve got fifteen thousand head of longhorns ready to drive up to Ellsworth. I want you to be my trail boss.”

  Jock took the stub of the cigarette out of his mouth and drew in a deep breath. He stared hard at Chad, eye to eye, a flexing scowl on his face as if he were ready to lash out with both fists and knock Chad from his horse.

  “You’re crazy, Chad.”

  “No. I’ve given it a lot of thought. You’re the only one I’d trust to get these cattle to the railhead in Ellsworth.”

  “The answer is no. I learned my lesson.”

  “When you fall off a horse, you get back up and ride it.”

  “Not this horse.”

  “Come to the house for supper. I don’t give up that easy.”

  “Neither do I, Chad. Good luck with your herd. I’ll ride on back home in the morning.”

  A look passed between the two men. They knew each other. They had been through hell together in a half dozen bloody battles.

  “Is it Twyla’s killer, Jock? You think he’ll go back to Del Rio?”

  “No, I don’t think he’ll go back there.”

  “Why not? Why are you so sure, Jocko?”

  “Didn’t you hear, Chad? Didn’t you hear who raped and murdered my Twyla?”

  Chad shook his head. “No, I reckon not. News travels slow down this way.”

  Jock pulled out the makings and built himself another cigarette. He lit it and blew smoke into the long silence. There was no expression on his face. It was like an empty sky, devoid of all life, just something that might have been painted with an undercoating, waiting for the painter to put life to it.