The Amarillo 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

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Teaser chapter

  RUSTLING UP REVENGE

  Doc saw a man waving a horse blanket and chasing cows out of the herd. He was struck by the brazenness of the rider, rustling cattle in broad daylight in front of witnesses.

  There were two other riders cutting cattle out of the herd, driving them off in three separate bunches.

  He rode down on one of them, who had just run off twenty-five or thirty head and was angling toward the west, his shirt flattened against his chest by the wind, his hat blown off and hanging by a thong between his shoulder blades.

  The rustler saw Doc charging at him and drew his pistol.

  Doc felt a sudden rage that boiled up from inside him and heated his face. The rustler fired off a shot and Doc heard the bullet sizzle past him like a whirring hornet.

  “Damn you,” he yelled, and cocked his pistol as he raised it to eye level.

  Doc lined up his sights on the Colt .45, held the front blade tight against the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger as he held his breath.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51460-3

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, May 2011

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2011 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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 Cowboy.” 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 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

  Delmer Jasper Blaine bent over the pommel of his saddle, bracing himself against the brunt of the fierce Amarillo wind. Riding alongside him, a red bandanna pasted against his face from nose to neck, was the agent from Salina, Kansas, Alvin Mortenson, his hat brim pulled down over his slitted eyes so that he resembled a highwayman or a bank robber.

  “Is it always this windy, Mr. Blaine?” Mortenson yelled into the teeth of the wind.

  “Call me Doc. Nope, some days it blows real hard here.”

  Mortenson snorted as he looked at the rippling grass, the white-faced cattle grazing, their rumps to the wind. He was a lean, wiry man in his forties, with a bristly mustache, close-set hazel eyes, and a chiseled face with high, sharp cheekbones and a thin, elongated nose that came to a point just above his upper lip. He wore a pale yellow chambray shirt and light corduroy trousers tucked into a pair of worn cowhand boots. A knotted bandanna ringed his throat and his small Stetson crowned a slightly balding pate.

  “If I’da knowed it would blow like this, I’d’ve carried a couple of bricks in my pockets.”

  “Last feller what done that wound up being stoned to death when the bricks were plucked from his pockets and follered him clear to Palo Duro Canyon at better’n a hundred miles an hour.”

  “All your cattle that fat, Doc?”

  “These are the lean ones,” Blaine said.

  “I don’t see three thousand head,” Mortenson said.

  “I got three ranches. My two sons run the other two. You got a month to spare, I’ll show you ever’ head.”

  “I got a long ride, Doc. First to Wichita to report to Mr. Fenster, then back to Dallas, where I live.”

  “So you’ll take my word on this deal?”

  “I’m leanin’ that way. I see cattle in the distance and you say you�
�ve got better’n three thousand acres here. The other ranges are bigger’n this one, I take it.”

  “Yep, my son Jared runs a spread up to Perryton, and runs better’n two thousand head. Miles, my other son, is down to Dumas with more’n five thousand acres and he’ll run in another fifteen hundred head for this drive.”

  “So your whole family is in this,” Mortenson said.

  “My sons will make the drive with their hands. I got a sick sister to tend to. They’re good hands themselves and growed up with Herefords.”

  “Quite a family, Doc. Okay, let’s go back to your house and I’ll draw up the papers. Can you guarantee delivery by the first of June?”

  “Sure can. It ain’t but a hop, skip, and a jump to Salina. Plenty of water along the way.”

  “You’ll be the first from this part of the country. Most of the cattle drives have been over the Goodnight-Loving Trail from deep down in Texas.”

  “Then we’ll call ours the Amarillo Trail, Mortenson.”

  Mortenson laughed. “Good name for it,” he said.

  The two men rode back to Blaine’s house, their backs peppered with grit from the strong western Texas wind. Doc was a square-shouldered man with a broad-beamed chest and powerful arms. He wasn’t a tall man, but was all muscle, with fierce blue eyes, shoulder-length hair, a prominent nose the size of a hammerhead, and a dripping blond mustache that matched his curly hair. He rode a steeldust gray horse named Sandy. Mortenson rode his own horse.

  Blaine turned his horse off the path they had taken to view the cattle.

  “Where we goin’?” Mortenson asked.

  “Somethin’ I got to see,” Blaine said. “Promised the boys I’d stop by.”

  He headed Sandy toward a grove of oak and hickory trees standing just beyond a shallow arroyo. Voices drifted toward them on the wind, and as they drew closer, Mortensen saw some men on horseback, two standing on the ground, looking their way.

  Blaine rode up, nodded to the men who raised their hands in greeting.

  One man was seated on a bareback horse, his hands tied behind his back. There was a noose around his neck, the knot nestled against his neck. He looked Hispanic and scared.

  “We’re ready, boss,” one man said to Blaine.

  “What is this?” Mortenson asked.

  “Horse thief,” Blaine said. “We caught him late last night. He stole three horses from me.”

  “You goin’ to hang him?” Mortenson said.

  “That’s the law,” Blaine said. “We caught him red-handed.”

  “But shouldn’t you take him to Amarillo, let him stand trial, speak his piece before a judge?”

  “No need,” Blaine said. “We caught him red-handed. Stealin’ horses is a hangin’ offense.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts about it, Mortenson.” Blaine looked at a man standing behind the saddleless horse.

  “Okay, Freddie,” he said.

  Freddie, who was holding a quirt, lifted it high above his head and came down with it, hard. The three strands of leather smacked the horse’s rump and it jumped, then bolted out from under the Mexican horse thief. Another hand caught the horse by its bridle and brought it to a halt.

  There was a crack as the hangman’s knot broke the man’s neck. He was dead within seconds, his body swinging back and forth, twirling slowly beneath the live oak that had served as the hanging tree.

  “My God. May God save his soul,” Mortenson said, bowing his head.

  Blaine lifted his head.

  “Cut him down after a minute or two, Freddie,” he said. “Cut him down and bury him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Freddie said, and joined the other men in conversation. Blaine turned his horse.

  “Now we can go to the house and look over those agreements, Mortenson.”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “Well, it’s never too early for liquor when there’s business to be done.”

  “No, I reckon not,” Mortenson said.

  He looked back over his shoulder. Two men on horseback were cutting the rope while two others stood waiting for the body to fall. Another pair of men stood by, leaning on shovels.

  Mortenson shuddered.

  He knew it was the law, unwritten probably, all over the West. But he had never seen justice meted out in that fashion. It was all so impersonal, so final.

  And he couldn’t get the image of that Mexican suddenly jerked off the horse and dangling there, his legs kicking with futility as his neck snapped.

  He shuddered and looked at Blaine.

  There was no change in the man, no visible sign that he was disturbed by the hanging of a living man. In fact, Doc Blaine was smiling and waving to his wife, Ethyl, who stood on the porch waiting for them. She was smiling too, and Mortenson wondered if she knew about the hanging.

  “Did you send the horse thief on his way, Delmer?” she said as they rode up to the hitch rail.

  “Done and done,” Blaine said.

  “I made a pot of coffee for you boys,” she said. “And the liquor cabinet’s open.”

  She went into the house as the two men dismounted. Sandy snorted and stood hipshot. The horse switched his tail, swiping at small squadrons of blowflies.

  It was not yet noon and the sun beat down as the wind gusted and ebbed like some invisible spirit, whipping up whirligigs of dust and whining in the eaves of the house like some lost Mexican soul.

  Chapter 2

  Mortenson sat at the kitchen table with Doc Blaine, legal papers spread out between them. Ethyl hovered over them like a cowbird in a herd of cattle, hopping between them with offers of more coffee or more fresh-baked cookies. The two men took what she offered, but kept their whiskey glasses filled as if to ward her off the small domain they had staked out for themselves.

  “Lordy, Mr. Mortenson, I never heard such a ruckus as what we had last night,” Ethyl gabbled as Mortenson pointed out clauses in the contract and places where Doc should sign. “I rousted Doc out of bed and told him something or somebody was gettin’ at the horses.”

  “That when the horse thief was here, Mrs. Blaine?”

  “Yes, sir, but it was Dusty’s barkin’ what woke me up. Now, Dusty was a one-man dog, you know, and he always slept on the floor next to Doc. But he was outside just a-barkin’ and I knowed there was somethin’ goin’ on out at the corral. More coffee, Doc?”

  “Not yet, sweet,” Doc said, waving the steaming pot away.

  “So, Doc got up and pulled on his britches and grabbed a rifle what was by the front door and walked outside in his stocking feet. I declare, it liked to scared me to death to hear them horses a-whinnyin’ and Dusty barkin’ like he’d treed a dozen coons.”

  “Mortenson don’t want to hear all this, Ethyl. Why don’t you look in on Sunny Lynn so’s we can finish up with these papers?”

  “No, that’s all right, Mrs. Blaine,” Mortenson said. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

  Ethyl set the coffeepot back on the wood-burning stove atop the firebox and floated back to the table, a birdlike woman with her hair balled up in a thick bun at the back of her neck, her loose-fitting print dress hanging on her bony frame like a scarecrow’s garb. Her sharp nose looked just like a bird’s beak.

  “Doc didn’t catch the thief right then. When I come out, he was sittin’ with Dusty and the boys were pouring out’n the bunkhouse like firemen runnin’ for the fire wagon. That thief had got plumb away and killed Dusty with an old wagon axle, just beat that poor dog to death. Doc was squatted down, with Dusty’s bloody head against his chest, cryin’ his poor eyes out over that dog. He didn’t care about the horses what the thief took, just that poor innocent dog.”

  “You didn’t tell me the Mexican killed your dog, Doc,” Mortenson said.

  “I’m still broke up about it,” Doc said.

  “Doc set great store by that dog,” Ethyl said.

  Mortenson was touched. This was a side of the cattle rancher he had not expected to see. Most of
the ones he had known over the years were a mercenary bunch without a trace of sentimentality. A dog was a dog, no more, no less. Mortenson wondered whether the Mexican had been hanged because he stole three horses from Blaine, or because he had brutally beaten a dog to death. One thing, sure. He wasn’t going to ask such a touchy question.

  “I think that’s about got it, Doc,” Mortenson said, showing him the final contract. “In barebones terms, you are to deliver three thousand head of white-faced Hereford cattle to the stockyards in Salina, Kansas, on or before June first of this year, 1879, whereupon, after inspection, ownership will transfer to one Mr. Albert Fenster, who will pay you the remainder of the money owed less that which I am advancing you today.”

  “I’m glad you cut out all that ‘party of the first part’ shit,” Doc said. “Names is better. Mr. Blaine delivers to Mr. Fenster three thousand head of white-faced cattle for twelve dollars a head, and so on.”

  “There is a bonus of a dollar a head if you deliver by the first of June.”

  “Fair enough,” Blaine said.

  “I must also point out that should you not meet that delivery date, a deduction of fifty cents per day per head of cattle will be imposed.”

  “I notice your talk leans to the elegant side when you mention them rattlesnake clauses, like you just did.”

  “I just want to make sure you understand the exact terms of the contract, Mr. Blaine.”

  “And when you turn lawyer on me, I’m Mr. Blaine. In my day, we made deals with a handshake. Now we got to write every blamed thing down.”

  “That is the way of the world, I’m afraid, Mr. Blaine. Commerce has its own language, and before money changes hands, men draw up contracts to ensure satisfaction and fair-dealing to all parties.”

  “Parties of the first and second parts,” Blaine said.