The Dodge City Trail Read online

  “Damn you,” Ledoux said, reaching for his Colt. He froze at the snick of a hammer being eared back.

  “That is not wise, Senor Ledoux,” Montoya said in a dangerously calm voice. “You are covered under the table. Per’ap we talk in a civilized manner, or must I keep the pistola in your belly?”

  “Put the gun away,” Ledoux said wearily. “What do you want of me?”

  “You need men, Senor Ledoux, fighting men. I ‘ave them, but there is a price.”

  It was Ledoux’s turn to laugh. “Twenty men and their horses are gone, vanished. I’d be a fool to send you and your men to the same fate, and you’d be fools to go.”

  “Ah, senor,” Montoya said, “you do not understand. We do not ride on your foolish raids. We ‘ave, as you Tejanos would say, a proposition. Do you wish to hear it?”

  “I’m listening,” Ledoux said.

  “We will not disturb the Tejanos who gather the vaca for a drive to the north,” Montoya said. “When they are ready, you will ride with me and my companeros, and we will follow the herd. Before we ‘ave reach the railroad to which they go, we kill them all, taking the vaca “Then you bastards will gun me down and take it all for yourselves.”

  For Dios,”Montoya said, eyeing Ledoux sadly, “you misjudge us, senor. We want only the caballos and fighting wages for the months on the trail.”

  “Misjudging you, hell,” Ledoux said, almost sober now. “Gun pay’s fifty dollars a month, and these damn ten cow outfits are short on horses. The few they have will be skin and bones by the end of the drive, if they make it at all. Now you tell me what you really want out of this, or get up and get the hell out of here.”

  “Ah,” Montoya said, “that I cannot tell you, senor, without revealing information I will not give you for nothing. I ‘ave nineteen riders, senor, and when you ‘ave agreed to fighting pay while we are on the trail, then per’ap I tell you. For now, I tell you only that the vaca is yours and that there be many caballos across the Rio Grande, awaiting the start of the Tejano drive.”

  Ledoux pondered the situation. It seemed the bunch of shirttail ranchers were determined to complete the gather and take the drive north to the advancing railroad. From what he had seen of the gather, they seemed to be averaging at least a thousand head for each of the ranchers involved, and that could result in a drive of more than twenty thousand head. If they went for only thirty dollars a head—and they might bring even more —the eventual pot would be more than half a million dollars! Ledoux was by no means poor already, and the fighting wages this Mejicano was demanding would be a pittance when weighed against the vast herd of Texas cows.

  “It’s a deal,” Ledoux said, “but you and your men will be paid at the end of the drive, when I’ve taken over the herd and sold it. Now, damn it, tell me what you’re really getting out of this, and the information you refused to give me for nothing.”

  “Ah, senor,” Montoya said, again adopting his sorrowful look, “but I ‘ave second thoughts. For one to take his life in his hands, fifty dollars is a paltry sum. Per’ap we could raise the ante to, ah, twice that?”

  “A hundred dollars?” Ledoux bawled. “Hell, no!”

  Montoya kicked back his chair and stood up. “My regrets, senor.”

  “Sit down, you thieving bastard,” Ledoux snarled.

  “Senor Ledoux, if you ever call me that again, I will kill you.”

  Ledoux looked at the Mexican’s clenched teeth, his hand hovering near the butt of his Colt, and swallowed hard. Montoya sat down, but on the edge of his chair, tense.

  “I’ll pay,” Ledoux said, “but if you double-cross me, or even look like you’re thinkin’ of it, I’ll do some killing of my own.”

  “Ah,” Montoya said, with a grin that had no mirth in it, “we understand one another, senor. Now I shall begin by telling you what ‘ave become of your men and their caballos. The men are dead, senor, and the cabal-los ‘ave found new homes across the Rio Grande.”

  “I’d have been a fool, Montoya, not to have figured that out on my own.”

  “Per’ap,” said Montoya, “but you would not know of that bastardo, Chato Guiterrez. Him and his riders ‘ave kill your men, senor. With a cuchillo they kill quietly, swiftly. They are Mejicano Indios, diablos de el noche.”*

  “I can believe that.” Ledoux said. “But why? What did they have against my riders?”

  “They are being paid fighting wages, senor, just as you are paying us.”

  “I see,” Ledoux said, “and I suppose they’ll be riding with the trail drive to the railroad.” wish, and that is to get them out of the wilds of Mexico and kill them to the last man.”

  “Am I allowed to ask the reason, without you raising the ante again?”

  “Madre mia,”Montoya said with a pained expression, “we are fair men, senor. They are renegades who plunder and kill. Every man in my company ‘ave lose hijo or hermano, *and they steal our women.”

  His words had the ring of truth, and Ledoux believed him. The more he thought of the dastardly scheme, the more it appealed to him. The ranchers had beaten him with a bunch of knife-wielding Mexican Indians. By God, he would fight fire with fire. He had gone about it all wrong, fighting this damned gather. He would adopt Montoya’s plan, but take it a step further. Once the ranchers abandoned their spreads, he could buy them all up for the taxes due. However, he couldn’t risk having the state take possession while he was away in Kansas. Slowly a plan began to evolve in his devious mind, and he was brought back to reality when Montoya spoke.

  “We will know when the drive is to begin, senor. Where are we to find you?”

  “I have a place near Uvalde,” Ledoux said. “I’ll get my horse from the livery and take you there.”

  Maverick County, Texas. Saturday, May 28, 1870.

  “We gained another day,” Sloan Kuykendall said as they branded the last of Wolf Bowdre’s gather.

  “Yeah, if we can just keep doin’ it,” Garret Haddock said. “You’re next, Cash. Number six.”

  “That’ll mean almost a third of the gather’s done,” Connolly said, “but we’re just a month and two days away from Ledoux’s tax deadline.”

  “I think we got the varmint buffaloed,” said Walt Crump. “What do you think, Dan?”

  “We’ve put a stop to his night raids,” Dan said, “but don’t underestimate him. Remember, he’s got the law behind him, and if he’s a mind to, he can force us to get permission to leave Texas. I think when his tax deadline has come and gone, we’ll learn something. Not so much from what he does as what he fails to do. If we’re allowed to finish the gather undisturbed, then we can look for trouble after we start the trail drive.”

  “We have taxes due in a month,” Wolf Bowdre said. “Taxes we can’t pay, and Ledoux damn well knows it. He knows we’ve abandoned our spreads, because we’re takin’ our families with us. If he wants our land, why can’t he let us go in peace and foreclose after we’re gone?”

  “As I understand it,” Dan said, “the law says you have to be off your place for a year before it can legally be sold for taxes. That means you could take the drive to Dodge, sell your herds, and return to Texas with gold in your pockets.”

  “Well, hell’s bells,” Chad Grimes said, “we’re takin’ our families with us. That don’t sound like we’re comin’ back to Texas, does it?”

  “Suppose you did aim to come back to Texas,” Dan said. “Would you leave your family on a spread with the taxes past due, at the mercy of Ledoux’s riders, while you take a trail drive to Dodge City?”

  “Lookin’ at it that way,” Grimes said, “no. I’d take my family with me, and I’d have to agree with you. Even after we start the drive, we may still have that varmint hounding us.”

  “That’s what I expect,” Dan said, “and that’s why we’ll have Chato and his riders with us. Before this drive is done, I think they will have more than earned their fighting wages.”

  San Antonio, Texas. Thursday, June 2, 1870.

  Bu
rton Ledoux was shown into the office of Judge Haynes Blackburn. The judge owed Ledoux some favors, and he greeted Ledoux without much enthusiasm.

  “Judge,” Ledoux said with feigned respect, “I need to talk to you.”

  “Quickly, then,” Blackburn sighed. “I must attend a meeting.” Actually, it wasn’t until the afternoon, but Ledoux needn’t know that.

  “There are some ranchers who can’t pay their taxes coming due July first,” said Ledoux, “and I’m requesting extensions. Here are their names and their counties.”

  Blackburn took the list, regarding Ledoux with suspicion. The man was not known for his compassion. Blackburn quickly read the names and turned back to Ledoux.

  “Hellfire and damnation, this is everybody from San Antonio to the Rio Grande. Why don’t you just file for an extension for the whole damned state?”

  “Four counties, damn it,” Ledoux said, “and not a ranch that can raise enough cash to buy a sack of Durham. They’re gathering cattle, but they need some time to get their herds to market.”

  “Six months,” Blackburn sighed. “That’s all anybody’s getting. The word just came down from Fort Worth. Now get out of here. I have work to do.”

  Ledoux left the office satisfied. The ranches he expected to purchase for taxes were safe until the end of the year, and there was virtually no chance of his scheme being uncovered. The reconstruction authority was spread much too thin, and the military had its hands full with the Comanches. Ledoux had covered himself by telling Judge Blackburn the ranchers were taking a drive north. When they failed to return, their lands would be confiscated for delinquent taxes, and Burton Ledoux would be ready to purchase them.

  Kinney County, Texas. Friday, July 1, 1870.

  “This is the day,” Spence Wilder said. “None of us has got a spread, and accordin’ to law, I reckon we’re ropin’ cows that belong to the state.”

  “I dispute that,” Dan Ember said. “According to range law, unbranded cows belong to the hombres that rope and brand them. It’s always been that way, and no bunch of Yankee jaybirds is goin’ to change it.”

  “By my tally,” Wolf Bowdre said, “we got 10,540 head. Tomorrow we start our eleventh gather, at Hiram Beard’s place. Give us two more months of decent weather and no trouble from Ledoux, and we’ll be ready for the trail to Dodge.”

  But the weather didn’t hold. The heat became unbearable, and by late Saturday a dirty gray bank of clouds hung heavy on the western horizon. The sun was swallowed early, and forked lightning did a silent, frenzied dance along the crest of the thunderheads.

  “We could use the rain,” Silas said, “but not the thunder and lightnin’ that’ll come with it.”

  “Every man in the saddle tonight,” Dan said. “If this bunch of longhorns run, we’ll be a week roundin’ ‘em up, and maybe not even then. If somethin’ sets ‘em off, look for ’em to run east, away from the storm. Head them if you can, but don’t get caught in the stampede. We’ll have supper early and try to bed them down before the storm comes any closer.”

  It soon became evident there would be a storm, and as the thunderheads came closer, so did the lightning. Soon there was a distant rumble of thunder, and a rising wind from the northwest brought the distinct smell of rain.

  “There’s rain comin’, anyhow,” Silas said.

  The rain came first, gray sheets of it, driven by the wind. Lightning caressed the thunderheads with jagged fingers of gold, then flicking serpent tongues of fire toward the murky heavens. Thunder boomed in succession, each new rumble sounding like an echo of the last-Sensing the coming storm, the cattle had never settled down, nor did they intend to. A few began bawling uneasily, and like an eerie chorus, the others joined in. Their backs to the wind and driving rain, they began to drift. Dan got ahead of them, but his shouting was to no avail, the wind whipping the sound of his voice away. But the rest of the outfit could see what was coming, and following his lead, they galloped their horses ahead of the uneasy herd. Their one chance lay in turning the herd upon itself, to start the longhorns milling. But the herd was of a single mind, awaiting that terrifying something they knew must come, sending forty thousand hooves thundering across the prairie.

  Thunder shook the earth and lightning leaped from low-hanging clouds. A hundred yards to the west, a giant oak exploded in a fury of fire and brimstone as the lightning struck. With a unanimous bellow the long-horns began running eastward, ignoring the riders trying to head them. Forced from the path of the charging herd, Dan and his cowboys rode alongside the lead steers, trying to head them. Repeatedly, riders drove the shoulders of their horses into the bodies of the stampeding longhorns, but the brutes refused to yield. Finally, the hard-riding cowboys fell back, knowing the cause was lost. They sat their saddles in the driving rain, watching the tag end of their herd disappear in the gathering darkness.

  “Damn it,” Rux Carper said, “come spring, we’ll still be lookin’ for them spooked varmints.”

  “Maybe not,” Tobe Barnfield said. “After that one big blast, there wasn’t that much lightnin’. They won’t run that far.”

  “However long it takes, we’ll have to round them up,” Dan said, “but there’s nothing we can do until morning. Settle down and get what sleep you can. Come first light, we’ll go after them.”

  Even the families who hadn’t brought wagons had brought extra canvas, and there was shelter for sleeping. But when the sodden riders returned to camp, everybody was awake, most of them discouraged by the stampede.

  “Damn fool cows,” Denny said in disgust. “We ain’t never gonna get to the trail drive.”

  “Denny,” Adeline said, “watch your language.”

  “Sorry, Ma,” Denny said. “I shouldn’t of said ‘ain’t.’ I’ll watch it.”

  Dan and Lenore laughed. From somewhere came the lonesome sound of a mouth harp, and thunder rumbled far off.

  By daylight Dan and his riders were in the saddle, riding in the direction their stampeded herd had gone.

  “This purely gets on a man’s nerves,” Kirby Wilker-son said. “Today we was to start Hiram Beard’s gather. Now it looks like we’ll spend a week on his range roundin’ up the same varmints we’ve already roped and branded.”

  “Won’t take that long,” Hiram said. “Not if they kept runnin’ straight. The Anacacho Mountains is to the southeast, and the Balcones Escarpment is to the north. If the varmints kept runnin’ to the east, there ain’t no place for ‘em to hide but the breaks of the Nueces.”

  “In the mesquite, live oak, and cedar thickets,” Spence Wilder said.

  “God,” Skull Kimbrough said, “I never knowed the Nueces was so long. No matter where the cows run, we always end up in the thorns and thickets along the Nueces, lookin’ for the longhorned bastards. We lose this bunch one more time in the thickets along the same damn river, and I’m thinkin’ we got a hex on us.”*

  “At least we have some idea where they are,” Dan said. “This may not be so bad. When we take the trail with the full gather and they stampede, then we’ll all have something to swear about.”

  Dan was right. Most of the herd hadn’t run as far as the Nueces River, but they hadn’t been part of the gather long enough to overcome their wild ways. They had been roped and branded, but had no desire to become part of the gather. More than a thousand had to be roped and hog-tied. Finally, when they had thrashed about and exhausted themselves, they were led meekly back to the herd. Working from daylight till dark, it took the riders five days to gather the stampeded herd. Dan had Wolf Bowdre, Monte Walsh, and Kirby Wilkerson running separate tallies.

  “Still short at least thirty head,” Bowdre said, “but we can afford to lose ‘em. We’re still five hundred head beyond what we set out to gather.”

  “Then we’ll consider it finished and go on to Hiram Beard’s gather,” Dan said.

  The weather continued hot and dry, but without disrupting thunder and lightning. By August first Rux Carper’s gather—the fourteenth—had be
en completed. The outfit moved on to Kirby Wilkerson’s range.

  “We got to finish these gathers in four days,” Boyce Trevino said. “We got so damn many cows already, we got to keep movin’ ‘em, so’s they’ll have graze.”

  It was true. Arranging graze and water for the existing gather became more difficult with each passing day. But Daniel Ember had looked ahead, making allowances.

  “We’re in Uvalde County now,” he said, “and we’re working our way south to Zavala. We’ll wind things up with the DeVoe gather in Maverick, and take the drive west along the Rio Grande to Eagle Pass. From there we’ll go north. Once we’ve crossed Maverick and Uvalde counties, it should be new grass all the way.”

  Without having to contend with Ledoux’s unexpected night raids, nights around the supper fire became peaceful, a time to talk. Only occasionally was there a message from Chato, passed along through Palo Elfego, and as the enormous roundup drew to a close, excitement and optimism ran rampant. They moved south through Zavala County, finishing Spence Wilder’s gather, the nineteenth. Finally there was only the DeVoe ranch, in Maverick county, along the Rio Grande. The gather was begun on August 25, and with the branding five days later, was over. There was jubilation around the supper fire, and Dan had to shout them down so he could speak.

  “Tomorrow the drive begins. The wagons will take the lead, followed by the horse remuda, and then the herd. The men will take the flank and swing positions. Everybody else—ladies included—will ride drag. I realize it’s the dirtiest of all, but it’s also the safest. Palo, have you spoken to Chato about the horses he promised?”

  “Si, senor,” Palo said. “The caballos will be here at dawn.”

  “Wolf,” Dan said, “do you have a final tally on the gather?”

  “Twenty thousand, six hundred and ten,” Bowdre said.