The Man From The Broken Hills Page 2

  "We can use a hand. You ready for war, son?"

  "I was born ready," I said, "but I ride peaceful unless crossed."

  "You can ride out if you're of a mind to," Rossiter said, "and if you ride west or north you'll ride safe. You ride south or east in this country and your chances of getting through are mighty poor ... mighty poor."

  Hinge explained what had happened with Balch and Saddler in a slow, casual tone that made enough of it but no more, leaving nobody in doubt.

  Barby Ann ate in silence. Twice she looked at me, worried-like, but that was all. Nobody talked much, as it was not the way of ranch folk to talk much at supper. Eating was a serious business and we held to it. Yet at my home there'd been talk. Pa had been a man given to speaking, an educated man with much to say, and all of us had the gift of gab. We talked, but amongst ourselves.

  When we were down to coffee and had the pie behind our belts, Rossiter turned his dead eyes toward Hinge. "There will be trouble?"

  "Reckon so. I just figure he aims to keep us this side of the cap-rock, no matter whose cattle run up yonder. Unless we're ready to fight, we just ain't a-goin' to get 'em."

  Rossiter turned his eyes in my direction, and he wasn't off-center one whit. "Did you see any Stirrup-Iron cattle?"

  "I wasn't keeping count. I'd guess fifteen, maybe twenty head along where I rode. Probably twice that many Spur."

  "There will be trouble then. How many hands does he have?"

  Hinge was careful. He thought a minute, then shrugged. "No tellin'. He had eight, but I hear he's been hirin', and there was a man with him I'd never seen before."

  The boys finished off and headed for the bunkhouse but Danny lingered, sort of waiting for me. I held on, then gave it up and stood.

  "You," Rossiter said. "You set back down. You're a new hand and we'd better talk." He turned his head. "Good night, Danny."

  "Good night," Danny said grudgingly, and went out.

  Barby Ann went to the kitchen, and he said, "What did you say your name was?"

  "You know what it is," I said.

  "Are you hunting me?"

  "No, I was just drifting."

  "Seven years ... seven years of blindness," Rossiter said. "Barby Ann sees for me. Her an' Hinge. He's a good man, Hinge is."

  "I think so."

  "I've got nothing. When we've made our gather and drive, there won't be much. Just what I owe the hands, and supplies for a new year ... if we can round up what we have and get to the railhead with the herd."

  He put his hand to the table, fumbling for his pipe and tobacco. Just when I was about to push it to him, his hand found it. He began loading his pipe.

  "I never had anything. It all turned sour on me. This here is my last stand ... something for Barby Ann, if I can keep it."

  "She'd be better off in some good-sized town. There's nothing here for a girl."

  "You think there is in them towns? You know an' I know what's in them towns, and her with nothin' put by. This here is all I got, an' it's little enough. You could take it all away from me right now, but you'd still have a fight on your hands."

  "You borrowed trouble, Rossiter. I don't want your outfit. You cheated your friends and you've only got what you asked for."

  "Ssh! Not so loud! Barby Ann don't know nothing about them days."

  "I'll not tell her."

  "Your ma? Is Em still alive?"

  "Alive? Em will die when the mountains do. She runs the outfit since Pa died, and she runs it with a tight hand."

  "She scared me. I'll admit to that. I was always afraid of your ma, and I wasn't alone. She put fear into many a man. There was steel in that woman ... steel."

  "There still is." I looked across the table at him. He was still a big old man, but only the shell remained. I remembered him as he was when I was a boy and this man had come to work on the Empty.

  He had been big, brawny and too handsome, a good hand with a rope. And he knew stock. We had been shorthanded and he did the work of two men. But the trouble was, he was doing the work of three, for at night he'd been slipping away from the ranch and moving cattle to a far corner of the range.

  Pa had been laid up with a badly injured leg, and Ma was caring for him, and this big young man had been always willing to help, but all the while he was stealing us blind. Yet he had helped us through a bad time.

  He left suddenly, without a word to anyone, and it had been two days before we knew he was gone and almost a week before we knew anything else was wrong. It was Ma who got suspicious. She took to scouting, and I was with her when we found the corral where he'd been holding the stock. By that time he had been gone nearly two weeks.

  It was a box canyon with a stream running through it, and Henry, as we knew him then, had laid a fence of cottonwood rails across the opening. There were indications there had been four men with Henry when he drove the cattle away. We knew the hoof tracks of Henry's horse, and they were all over the place. Ma sent me back to the house after Barnabas and one of our hands, as well as a pack horse.

  "Tell your pa we're going after the cattle. It may take us a while."

  When we got back, Ma was long gone down the trail, so we taken off after her. Them days, she mostly rode a mule, so her tracks were mighty easy to follow.

  We found where the four extra men had camped, while wating for Henry to tell them to come in and drive the herd. Judging by the tracks, they had five or six hundred head. It was a big steal, but on a place the size of ours—and us shorthanded—it hadn't been so difficult. All he'd done was to move a few head over that way each time he rode out, and then gradually bunched them in the canyon.

  On the third day we caught up with Ma, and on the fifth day we caught up with them. We'd no cattle to drive, so we'd come along fast. Ma was from Tennessee mountain stock, nigh to six feet tall and rawboned. She was all woman, and where she came from women were women. She could ride as well as any man and use a rifle better than most, and she'd no liking for a thief. Especially one who betrayed a trust like Henry had done.

  She wasted no time. We came up on them and Ma never said aye, yes, or no, she just cut loose. She had left her Sharps .50 at home but she had a Spencer .56, a seven-shot repeater, and she let drive. Her first shot emptied a saddle. Coming down off the hill, we stampeded the herd right into them.

  Henry, he lit a shuck out of there. He knew Ma would noose a rope for him and he lit out of there like somebody had lit a brushfire under his tail.

  The other two taken off up a canyon and, leaving a hand to gather the stock, we taken out after them. We run them up a box canyon and Ma, she throwed down on them with that Spencer and she told it to them.

  "You can throw down those guns an' come out with your hands up, or you can die right there. An' I don't care a mite which it is. Also, you might's well know. I ain't missed a shot since I was close on five year old and I ain't about to start now."

  Well, they'd seen that first shot. She was nigh three hundred yards off and in the saddle when she pulled down on that moving rider, and she'd cut his spine in two. They only had their six-shooters and there was Ma with her Spencer, and Barnabas an' me with our Winchesters.

  Where they stood, there wasn't shelter for a newborn calf, whilst we were partly covered by the roll of the hill and some brush. They decided to take a chance on the law, so they dropped their guns.

  We brought them out and hustled them to the nearest jail and then went to the judge. We were a hundred miles from home then, and nobody knew any of us.

  "Cow thieves, eh?" The judge looked from Ma to me. "What you think we should do with 'em?"

  "Hang 'em," Ma said.

  He stared at her, shocked. "Ma'am, there's been no trial."

  "That's your business," Ma said quietly. "You try them. They were caught in the act with five hundred of my cattle."

  "The law must take its course, ma'am," the judge said. "We will hold them for the next session of court. You will have to appear as a witness."

  Ma stoo
d up, and she towered above the judge, although he stood as tall as he was able. "I won't have time to ride back here to testify against a couple of cow thieves," she told him. "And the worst one is still runnin'."

  She walked right down to the jail and to the marshal. "I want my prisoners."

  "Your prisoners? Well, now, ma'am, you—"

  "I brought them in, I'll take them back." She took up the keys from his desk and opened the cell doors while the marshal, having no experience to guide him, stood there jawing at her.

  She rousted them out of their bunks and, when one started to pull on his boots, she said, "You won't need those," and she shoved him through the door.

  "Now, ma'am! You can't do this!" The marshal was protesting. "The judge won't—"

  "I'll handle this my own way. I'm the one who made the complaint. I am withdrawing it. I'm going to turn these men loose."

  "Turn them loose? But you said yourself they were cow thieves!"

  "They are just that, but I haven't the time to go traipsing across the country as a witness, riding a hundred miles back home, then a hundred miles up here and maybe three or four such trips while you bother about points of law. These are my prisoners and I can turn 'em loose if I want."

  She herded them down to the horse corral in their long Johns, where she picked out two rawboned nags with every bone showing. "How much for them?"

  "Ma'am," the dealer shook his head, "I'd not lie to a lady. Those horses got no teeth to speak of, an' both of them are ready for the bone yard."

  "I'll give you ten dollars apiece for them, just as they stand."

  "Taken," he said quickly, "but I warned you, ma'am."

  "You surely did," Ma agreed. Then she turned to the cow thieves, shivering in the chill air. "You boys git up on those horses .. . git!"

  They caught mane-holts and climbed aboard. The backbones on those old crow-baits stood up like the tops of a rail fence.

  She escorted them out of town to the edge of the Red Desert. We rode a mite further and then she pulled up. "You boys steal other folks' cows, but we ain't a going to hang you ... not this time. What we're goin' to do is give you a runnin' start.

  "Now my boys an' me, we got rifles. We ain't goin' to start shootin' until you're three hundred yards off. So my advice is to dust out of here."

  "Ma'am," the short one with the red face pleaded, "these horses ain't fit to ride! Let us have our pants, anyway! Or a saddle! Those backbones would cut a man in two, an'—"

  "Two hundred and fifty yards, boys. And if he talks any more, one hundred yards!"

  They taken out.

  Ma let them go a good four hundred yards before she fired a shot, and she aimed high. That old Spencer bellowed, and those two gents rode off into the Red Desert barefooted and in their underwear on those raw-backed horses, and I didn't envy them none a-tall.

  That was Ma, all right. She was kindly, but firm.

  Chapter 3

  WE DROVE OUR cattle home, but Ma never forgave or forgot the man we knew as Henry. He had betrayed a trust, and to Ma that was the worst of sins. Now he was here, across the table from me, blind and only a shell of the fine-looking big man we remembered.

  Without a doubt, his hired hands had no idea of the kind of man he had been and still might be. As cowhands they were typical. When they took a man's wages, they rode for the brand, for loyalty was the keynote of their lives. They would suffer, fight and die for their outfit at wages of thirty dollars a month ... if they ever got them.

  They did not know him, and could be forgiven their ignorance. I did know, so what was I going to do? It was a question I did not consider. It was Balch who had made my decision for me, back there at our first meeting. For there was something about such a man, prepared to ride roughshod over everybody, that got my back up.

  There was range enough for all, and no need to push the others off.

  "I'll stick around, Rossiter," I said. "Hinge tells me you're going to round 'em up soon?"

  "We are. There are only six ranches in the Basin, if you want to call it that, but we're going to round up our cattle, brand them, and drive to the railhead. If you want to stay, we can use you. We'll need all the hands we can get."

  There was a checker game going in the bunkhouse when I walked in. There were not enough checkers, so Hinge was using bottle corks—of which there seemed to be an ample supply.

  Hinge threw me a quick, probing glance when I came in, but offered no comment. Roper was studying the board, and did not look up. Danny was lying on his back in his bunk with a copy of a beatup magazine in his hands. "You stayin' on?" he asked.

  "Looks like it," I said, and opened up my blanket roll and began fixing my bed on the cowhide springs.

  Hinge made his move, then said, "You'll take orders from me then, and we'll leave the stock west of here until the last.

  "We've got one more hand," he added. "He's away over east tonight, sleepin' in a lineshack." He glanced at me. "You got any objections to ridin' with a Mexican?"

  "Hell, no. Not if he does his work. We had four, five of them on my last outfit. They were good hands ... among the best."

  "This man is good with stock, and a first-class man with a rope. He joined up a couple of weeks back, and his name is Fuentes."

  Hinge moved a king, then said, "We start rounding up in the morning. Bring in everything you see. We'll make our big gather on the flat this side of the creek, so you'll just work the breaks and start them down this way.

  "There's grub at the line-shack, and you and Fuentes can share the cooking. You'll be working eight to ten miles back in the rough country most of the time."

  "How about horses?"

  "Fuentes and Danny drove sixteen head up there when he went, and there's a few head of saddle stock running loose on the range."

  Hinge paused. "That's wild country back in there, and you'll run into some old mossyhorn steers that haven't been bothered in years. You're likely to find some unworked stuff back there, too, but if you get into thick brush, let Fuentes handle it. He's a brush-popper from way back. Used to ride down in the big thicket country."

  At daybreak the hands scattered, but I took my time packing. Not until I had my blanket roll and gear on a packhorse and my own mount saddled did I go to the house for breakfast. Henry Rossiter was not in sight, but there was movement in the kitchen. It was Barby Ann.

  "You weren't in for breakfast, so I kept something hot."

  "Thanks. I was getting my gear ready."

  She put food on the table, then poured coffee. She filled two cups.

  "You're going to the line-cabin?"

  "Is there only one?"

  "There were two. Somebody burned down the one that was west of here, burned it down only a few weeks ago."

  She paused. "It's very wild. Fuentes killed a bear just a few weeks ago. He's seen several. This one was feeding on a dead calf."

  "Probably killed by wolves. Bears don't kill stock as a rule, but they'll eat anything that's dead."

  She had curtains in the windows and the house was painfully neat. There must have been at least three more rooms, although this seemed to be the largest.

  "You met Mr. Balch?" That 'mister' surprised me, but I nodded.

  "He's got a fine big ranch, he and Mr. Saddler. He brought lumber in from the eastern part of the state to build the house. It has shutters and everything."

  It seemed to me I detected a note of admiration, but I could not be sure. Womenfolks set store by houses and such. Especially houses with fixings.

  She should see our house up in Colorado, I thought. It was the biggest I'd ever seen, but Pa had been a builder by trade and he designed it himself—and did most of the work himself. With Ma helping.

  "Roger says—"

  "Roger?" I interrupted.

  "Roger Balch. He's Mr. Balch's son. He says they are bringing in breeding stock from back east, and they will have the finest ranch anywhere around."

  Her tone irritated me. Whose side was she on, anyway
? "Maybe if you're so friendly you should tell him to leave your father's hands alone, and to let us gather our cattle where they happen to be."

  "Roger says there's none of our cattle up there. His pa won't have anybody coming around his place. I've told father that, and I've told Joe, but they won't listen."

  "Ma'am, it's none of my business yet, but from the way your Mr. Balch acted, I'd say your pa and Joe Hinge were in the right. Balch acted like a man who'd ride roughshod over everything or anybody."

  "That isn't true! Roger says that will all change when he tells his father about—"

  She stopped.

  "About you and him? Don't count on it, ma'am. Don't count on it at all. I've known such men here and there, and your Mr. Balch doesn't shape up like anyone I'd want any dealings with. And if he has any plans for that son of his, they won't include you."

  She went white, then red. I never saw a woman so angry. She stood up, and her eyes were even bigger when she was mad. And for a moment I thought she'd slap me.

  "Ma'am, I meant nothing against you. I simply meant that Balch wouldn't want his son tying up with anybody he could ride over. If he wants somebody for his son, it will be somebody big enough to ride over him. The man respects nothing but money and power."

  Riding away from there I figured I'd talked out of turn, and I'd been guilty of hasty judgment. Maybe I'd guessed wrong on Balch, but he seemed like he didn't care two whoops for anything, and had I not been there to more or less even things up he might have been a whole lot rougher.

  I wondered if Hinge and the boys knew that Barby Ann was seeing Roger. Somehow, I had an idea they knew nothing about it, nothing at all.

  Riding over the country, I could see they'd had a dry year, but this was good graze, and they had some bottoms here and there where a man could cut hay.

  Riding over country I was going to have to work, I took my time, topping out on every rise to get the lay of the land. I wanted to see how the drainage lay, and locate the likely spots for water. Fuentes would fill me in, but there was nothing like seeing the land itself. Terrain has a pattern and, once the pattern is familiar, finding one's way about is much easier.