The Ellsworth Trail Page 12

  “What would you do without me, Jock?” Chad said.

  “I wouldn’t have this first smoke of the morning, that’s for sure.”

  To the west, the pall of dust seemed to hang in the air, while near them they could see it moving like a toxic cloud, turning transparent in the blaze of the sunrise.

  Later that day, Jock saw the destruction and now knew the source of the wind that was already subsiding as the dark clouds disappeared and broke up. In their path there was a wide swath of grassless ground that was littered with broken tree limbs, mangled ovals of prickly pear, limp, dead remnants of wildflowers, and bits of cloth and rope carried from some faraway place.

  “A twister plowed through here,” Jock said to Chad. “Probably hit some poor rancher first.”

  “What a mess. It would have played hob with the cattle if it had hit us during the night.”

  “The cattle and us.”

  Jock had sent the scouts out after he was satisfied that the herd was settled down and they were making good time across the plain.

  “One of you—I don’t care who—ride east and check on the Cross J bunch. I want to know if we’re ahead of or behind them. Any volunteers?”

  “I’ll go,” Beeson said.

  Jock nodded. “Report back when you know, Amos,” he said.

  They made fifteen miles that day, and found a good place to bed down the cattle late in the afternoon.

  “Fifteen thousand head sure do tear up the country,” Jock said when he and Chad were alone after supper, a few yards from the chuck wagon.

  “Grass grows back fast.”

  “I guess if you run cows over it only once a year or once every five years, they do no harm.”

  “Yeah,” Chad said.

  Jock steeled himself for his boss to have another spell, but Chad had eaten lightly that night and didn’t seem to be in any discomfort.

  “What is this ulcer thing you got, Chad?” Jock asked, as if to sound out Chad about another vomiting episode. “What is it, exactly?”

  “Doc Ford says it’s like a sore in my stomach.”

  “An open sore?”

  “I don’t know how open. Maybe like a boil, or maybe like a burn hole. He says the stomach acid when I eat, the stuff that digests food, makes it act up. He said I could cure it myself if I changed what I eat.”

  “Change what you eat?”

  Chad laughed. His laugh was somewhat strained. “Yeah. Boiled chicken. Peaches. Oatmeal mush. Anything soft and tasteless, I reckon.”

  Jock thought about what Chad had said. “We ought to be able to corral some chickens along the way. Jubilee can boil ’em up for you. I don’t know about the peaches. He might have some in an airtight.”

  “Nope. I’m not going to eat chicken when I raise beef. And there’s not a peach this side of Georgia.”

  “Well, what does Doc Ford say about getting well if you don’t eat chicken?”

  “I’m not going to talk about that, Jock. Because I don’t know and Doc Ford probably doesn’t either.”

  “You’re a stubborn bastard, Chad.”

  “The medicine helps. It might clear up once we get this herd to Ellsworth.”

  Jock shook his head and rolled a cigarette while Chad looked off into the sunset, a spectacular spray of shimmering golden light through gilt-edged clouds. Just above the horizon the sky looked like the banked fires of Vulcan himself, all deep red topped by soft salmon.

  “Which reminds me, Jock. Been meaning to talk to you about something the whole time we’ve been out. Just never had the chance before.”

  “What’s that?” Jock lit his cigarette, grateful that the wind had died away. He had burned his fingers more than once during the night, when he couldn’t sleep and his craving for tobacco had a grip on him.

  Chad waited until Jock had taken a couple of puffs on his cigarette.

  “Rachael and Victoria are taking the stage to Ellsworth in a couple of months. I plan to meet them there,” Chad said.

  “That will be nice for them, and for you, Chad.”

  “You haven’t seen Victoria in a couple of years, have you, Jock?”

  “Little Vicky? No, I reckon not. Been about three years, maybe.”

  “She’s not ‘little Vicky’ anymore. She’s all grown up.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “She always liked you. Talks about you all the time.”

  Jock was flattered, but he wondered where Chad was going with all this talk about Vicky.

  “What is she now?” Jock asked. “About eighteen or so?”

  “She’s nineteen and she’ll be twenty this year. In December.”

  “I remember. Right around Christmas. She was a cute little jigger.”

  “Cute as a speckled pup. But that was then. She’s a raving beauty now. Looks like her mother. Only prettier.”

  “Well, Rachael’s top drawer in the looks department,” Jock said.

  “I thought . . . you being alone now, and Twyla gone, you might be looking for a helpmeet. Rachael thinks so, too. So does Victoria.”

  “A helpmeet?” Jock knew what Chad was driving at, but it was too soon. The memories of Twyla were still too strong, too vivid in his mind. Anyway, he had never thought of Vicky like that. In his mind, she was still a little freckle-faced girl with pigtails.

  “You know. A wife. Someone to help you build up your ranch back to where it was, better than it was. You’ll have money after this drive.”

  “Chad, I haven’t even thought about remarrying. And maybe I never will.”

  A silence built up between them.

  After a while, Chad stopped staring at the sunset. The sky in the west was all ashes now.

  “Well, there it is, Jock. Something to ponder over. Victoria will be right glad to see you again. She’d make you a fine wife.”

  “I’ll ponder over it, Chad.”

  Chad started to walk away, back toward the campfire, when there was a ruckus off to the east. Men were lifting their voices and cattle bawled as a rider made his way to the fire.

  “What the hell?” Chad said.

  He walked around the wagon, and Jock followed him a moment later. He recognized the rider as Quist, who was weaving his way through the herd, leading a horse. There was something atop the other horse, slung across the saddle. At first Jock thought it was a calf, but as he walked up behind Chad, he heard what the men around the fire were saying.

  “That’s Burt’s horse all right,” Earl Foster said.

  “Where’s Burt?” a man named Ernesto Sandoval said. “I ain’t seen him all day. He was supposed to be riding swing with me.”

  “There’s a dead man on that there horse,” Mac said.

  “Sure as shootin’,” Jubilee said. “Dead or conked out cold.”

  “Help Quist get through,” Jock ordered, and some of the hands rose up and started moving cattle out of the way, swatting them on their rumps and twisting their tails.

  Quist threaded his way through and rode into camp, his features drawn, his eyes invisible in the dim light beyond the campfire.

  “He’s naked,” Mac said, his voice stricken with shock.

  Men rushed up to help pull the body off the horse. Jock walked over, along with Chad, as the men laid the dead man out on the ground, faceup.

  “He was shot in the back,” Quist said. “I found him after I saw two men ride off and the buzzards start to gather.”

  “Where’s his shirt?” Chad asked.

  Quist dismounted and shrugged. “Damned if I know. That’s how I found Stubbins. Don’t make no sense, if’n you ask me.”

  “Did you see if either of the men riding off had Burt’s shirt with them?” Jock asked.

  “Yeah, come to think of it, one of them was waving something.”

  “Recognize the men?” Jock asked.

  Quist shook his head.

  Burt Stubbins was stone cold. There was dried blood on his chest where the bullet had exited. It was plain that he had been shot in the bac
k. The men all gathered around for a look. Some of them took their hats off out of respect.

  Chad looked at Jock, a questioning look in his eyes. “Torgerson?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Jock said. “Likely. And those two men Lou Quist saw might have been Fogarty and Clutter.”

  “Yeah. I forgot about those two. They were spotted just before that dust storm hit us.”

  Jock walked away from the body of Burt Stubbins. He spit out the remnants of his cigarette and rolled another one. He was thinking. Burt’s death could not go unavenged. He was worried about the morale of the X8 hands at this latest development. If Clutter and Fogarty were ordered by Torgerson to kill X8 drovers, the hands might figure the drive wasn’t worth it and just ride off back home.

  Chad walked over as Jock was lighting his cigarette.

  “What do you make of this, Jock?” he asked.

  “I think,” Jock said, “that Torgerson just declared war. And we have to track those bastards down and teach Curt a lesson.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Chad, I know how to fight a war. Just leave it to me.”

  Jock blew a plume of smoke into the air. The expression of dismay on Chad’s face did not fade. It bloomed in the firelight like a death mask.

  Chapter 21

  Amos Beeson came back into camp late the next morning. The herd was already up and heading north.

  “He looks like the wrath of God,” Chad said to Jock.

  Jock had been worried about Beeson, wondering if he had met the same fate as Burt Stubbins. So he was relieved to see Beeson, no matter that he looked like a man who had slept on a bed of cholla cactus all night.

  “You’re late, Amos,” Jock said, half joking, his smile a wispy shadow under the smoke from his dangling cigarette. “Long ride?”

  “Torgerson’s behind us by at least a half day,” Beeson said. His lips were cracked from dryness and the sun. “You got some water? I plumb run out.”

  Chad handed over his canteen to Beeson, who drank noisily for four or five seconds.

  “God that tastes good.”

  “Anybody see you?” Jock asked as Beeson wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  He drank again and then handed the canteen back to Chad. “I don’t reckon,” Beeson said. “But I seen plenty. Heard more.”

  “What?” Jock asked.

  “Saw Torgerson,” Beeson said. “He was chasing after strays and found them in a creek that run through a little gully. I was up top when two fellers came riding up with a bloody shirt. One of them told Torgerson he got it off an X8 hand and they’d get him more. Torgerson said he’d pay them for each shirt they brung in. I like to froze plumb to death just shivering with the chilblains. I got the hell out of there.”

  Chad and Jock exchanged looks.

  “It’s like you figured, Jock.”

  “That bastard Torgerson has put a bounty on X8 hands,” Jock said.

  “He’s lower than a skunk,” Chad said.

  “Why, what happened?” Beeson asked.

  Jock told him about Burt Stubbins. Beeson’s face drained of color when he heard about the shirtless body.

  “Mr. Becker,” Beeson said, “you’re going to lose every hand on this here drive if you don’t put a stop to those two killers. I swear.”

  “Take it easy, Amos,” Jock said. “I’ll get those two, and Torgerson will hang for what he did to Burt.”

  “That’s mighty damned comforting, Mr. Kane,” Beeson said, a sarcastic twang to his already twangy voice. “Mighty damned comforting.”

  “I’ve already issued orders that no man on this drive is to ride alone, Amos,” Jock said. “So, you find a partner and get back to work.”

  “What about the Apaches we saw?” Beeson asked. “You figured Torgerson made a deal with them, too. Looks like we got a whole passel of killers just waiting to pick us off. One by one.”

  “We can deal with the Apaches,” Jock said. “Torgerson, too.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Beeson said.

  “Get yourself some grub and pick out a partner, Amos,” Jock said. “We’ve got a good lead on Torgerson now. I don’t want to lose it.”

  Every rider for the X8 was on the alert from then on. The herd made its fifteen miles that day, and the next. Not only did the drovers keep each other in sight, they all had itchy trigger fingers. They jumped at every jackrab bit, every roadrunner, every rattle of a side-winder. Every drover’s senses were honed to a fine keenness, sharp as a Toledo blade.

  Jock had spoken to Vic Cussler, right after Beeson’s return from his scouting job.

  “You’re going to have to be trail boss for a few days, Vic,” he said. “Think you can handle it?”

  “I don’t know, boss. I don’t know this country much. It’s a lot of responsibility. Why? You going someplace?”

  “I might have to track those two killers working for Torgerson. I need a good man to mark the trail, find the water and the good bedding ground. You’ve been watching me. You should be able to handle the job.”

  “Well, I reckon I could. I can try anyways.”

  “That’s all I ask. Just keep the herd heading north and avoid trampling any ranches along the way. You’ll do fine.”

  “I appreciate your confidence in me, boss.”

  “You’ll have Chad with you. He can help.”

  “That poor man is sick most of the time. He won’t be much help.”

  “He knows the country. But it’s best if you can rely on your own judgment, Vic.”

  “Right, boss.”

  Later that same day, when Jock and Vic had ridden back from finding a place to bed the herd for the night, two rifle shots sounded from somewhere to the east. Close, but not too close—loud enough to make Jock stiffen as he sat up straight in the saddle. The sound waves faded into a silence that echoed in Jock’s brain long after they had wafted away from his ears. The herd lumbered on, unphased by the whip-crack of the rifles.

  Vic looked at Jock, his brows wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “What do you make of it, Mr. Kane?”

  “Let’s find out,” Jock said.

  “Somebody shooting at jackrabbits, maybe.”

  “Those were two different rifles, Vic. The shots close together. Big caliber. Henrys, maybe.”

  The drovers watched the two as they galloped past the front of the herd and headed in the direction of the rifle reports. Jock noticed that some of the drovers had pulled their rifles from their scabbards. He waved to them, then gestured that they should stay put and tend to the herd.

  Jock was not prepared for what he and Vic found. At first, they saw only two riderless horses standing next to each other, reins drooping like broken tethers. Both horses kept turning their heads, looking back at something neither he nor Vic could see.

  “I know those horses,” Vic said.

  “So do I. They’re from our remuda. Know who was riding them today?”

  Vic shook his head.

  A few moments later, the two men rode up to a grisly sight, some fifty or sixty yards from the riderless horses.

  Jock swore under his breath.

  Two men lay on the ground, one faceup, the other facedown. Both were naked to the waist, their shirts removed. Both had been shot in the back.

  “Sonofabitch,” Vic said aloud. “That’s Gil Fuentes looking up at us.”

  “The other one is Manny, unless I’m mistaken.”

  Vic got down out of the saddle and turned Manny over.

  “Yep, it’s Manuel Rivera all right. Neither one of them had a chance, Mr. Kane.”

  “I wish you’d start calling me Jock, Vic. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “I feel like crying, Mr. . . . I mean, Jock. These were good boys. Hard workers. They knew cattle.”

  “I know,” Jock said.

  “I wonder why the killers took their shirts,” Vic said.

  “That’s how they get their bounty for killing X8 hands.”

  “Huh?” />
  “Torgerson has put a bounty on every one of us. I think he looks at the bloody shirts with the holes in them for proof. Then he pays off the two men who murdered these two and any others.”

  “That no-good son of a bitch,” Vic said in his slow, even drawl.

  “Vic, I’m going to see to it that those two bastards never get to spend one cent of that blood money.”

  “How?” Vic asked.

  “Let’s get these two back up on their horses and take them back to the herd. That way, we can give them a proper burial tonight.”

  “You might have a mutiny on your hands, Mr. . . . ah, Jock. Once the boys see what happened to these two good, honest men, they’ll all want to light a shuck for home.”

  “What about you, Vic?”

  Vic didn’t answer right away. He bunched up his lips and squeezed both eyes shut as if struggling with the question, as if he were weighing possible death against loyalty to the brand.

  “I don’t know, Jock. I just don’t know. I ain’t made my mind up.”

  “Fair enough. You think about it, because we’re going to take these boys back to that big creek and I’m going to say words over them. Any man who wants to turn tail and run home to his mama can draw his pay.”

  “You’d let the hands go without a fight? Without an argument?”

  “You can’t buy loyalty, Vic. Either a man wants to ride for the brand, or he doesn’t. I can’t force men to do what they don’t want to do.”

  Vic turned away. He tried not to look at the dead men, but Jock walked over and laid Fuentes out, straightening his crumpled body, putting his heels together and folding his arms across his chest. Then he did the same with the body of Manuel Rivera. He showed Vic a reverence that touched him. Vic shook his head, as if shaking off his bad feelings, and walked back to where the two dead men’s horses were standing. Jock let him go to do it on his own. Let him have those few moments, just as the two dead men would have theirs, in a quiet state of repose, if only for a few minutes.

  When Vic got back, they loaded Fuentes and Rivera on their horses and tied them on securely. The ignominy of this was not lost on either Jock or Vic, but there was no other way.

  “Did you know these men well, Vic?” Jock asked as they were heading back to the herd.