Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) Page 9

  “If you think that,” she replied sharply, “others will think it. Respect begins with self-respect.”

  “You know you’re right?” I told her. “You’re damned right.”

  At the shed I led out the horse I was riding today, giving my mule a chance to rest. The mule was tough and seemed willing to go for hours on little food and less sleep, but nothing can stand up to that, and I must be in shape for a fast and long run, so the mule took turns now with a spare horse of Bickerstaff’s.

  When I reached Jack English who waited in the lane, we rode to the highway to join Bill Longley. We had agreed on a meeting with some of the others, and had gone but a short distance when Bob Lee came up to us with Matt Kirby.

  There was news. Barlow had been riding again, and in the north. A farmhouse near Linden had been looted and burned and the stock driven off, but then there was an exchange of shots with some farmers who banded together and Barlow retreated, unwilling to fight when there was loot to be had without fighting. And the troops when called out had found nothing.

  Three men had ridden up to Lacy Petraine’s house and had ridden around drunk and yelling, but when they tried to force a way in a man suddenly appeared around the corner of the house and spoke to them. Turning to look two of them died in a blast of gunfire, and the third was carried away, seriously wounded.

  “And you know who it was? John Tower is working for the widow.”

  Three men downed in the dark, and two of them killed outright. It was good shooting. And by John Tower.

  He was a man to remember.

  While they talked that over I walked away from them. Back in the field out of sight I waited until a frog croaked and then drew. The heavy Colt snaked out in a swift, fluid motion and was there in my hand, hammer eared back and ready to shoot. Lowering the hammer I tried it again. Yes, I was fast. Was I fast enough?

  Gloomily, I strolled back to where they sat under the trees within a step or two of the road. What were we doing here, hiding in the brush like animals? Weary, unwashed and beat, rarely a chance to sleep in a bed, rarely a well-cooked meal like today. They were always telling the foolish romantic stories of outlaws and men on the run…the writers of such stories should try it some time; they should try living in swamps, living with sweat, dirt and death.

  “I believe,” I told them, “that Chance Thorne is getting information to Barlow.”

  “Who would believe you?” Bob Lee asked. “They were saying today that you were raiding fifty miles south of here.”

  “Then we’ll go into town and show them we’re here, and raiding nowhere. We’ll make liars of them.”

  Colonel Amon Belser was the first man we saw. “They say I am out raiding,” I told him. “You see me here, and an unlathered horse.”

  Belser was stiff with anger, for he knew the townspeople were watching, secretly amused. They did not like me, but I was one of their own, and they liked him even less.

  “I shall live to see you hang, Cullen Baker!” Belser said. My being here in town made him furious. It was a challenge to the authority he was proud of. “I shall be the first to put a hand on the rope!”

  He might be, at that. These days in my dark moods I’d have bet no man that I’d not stretch rope before it was over, only the ones who took me for the hanging would leave some dead behind.

  “Colonel,” I put both hands on the pommel of my saddle. There were a dozen townsfolk within the sound of my voice, and I wanted them to hear. “Colonel,” I said, “if you are in this county or any county that borders it one week from today you’ll get what you deserve. It’s time we ran all you carpetbaggin’ rascals out of here.”

  “Now see here!” Belser protested. “I—”

  “You heard me, Colonel. One week.”

  He stood there, his face white and he was a mighty worried man. “You’ll come to nothing, Cullen Baker,” he said. “The very people who think you a hero now will be hunting you down as soon as we are gone.”

  And when we rode out of town I knew what he had said was true. Folks had never liked me here, and they did not like me now, although because they thought of me as resisting the carpetbaggers they were making me a talked-of man, but once it was over…well, they’d be the same then, and they’d start remembering that I’d been a tough lad to deal with.

  With the word I’d given Belser I could expect an all-out hunt for me, and no matter what I did I was going to need money. Living in the swamps I’d needed little. A man could hunt himself a living out there, and the boys who had many friends were always coming back with supplies, but the money I’d brought home with me was about gone. Now, if ever, was the time to go after those wild cattle.

  It would serve another purpose, too. They would be searching the swamps for me and I’d be down in the Thickets. But I must tell nobody my plans until the last minute.

  IT WAS HOT and still in the Thickets. In a week of desperately hard work we had rounded up but three hundred head of wild cattle. They were big and mean, most of them, and we’d had our troubles. A man doesn’t know how he can sweat until he starts working cattle in the brush. Sometimes for days there wouldn’t be a breath of wind, and they grow horseflies down there half as big as sparrows. We worked like dogs, nothing less, and now we had three hundred head together and we were talking it over.

  “Barlow’s holding about two hundred head of stolen cattle,” Longley suggested. “We could go take them from him.”

  That Longley. He was already ready for trouble. And he was a salty youngster, too.

  “We’ll take them, Bill,” I told him, “but that money won’t be ours. Some of the folks that lost those cattle will be wanting the money.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the money or the cattle,” Longley said. “I was thinking about taking them away from Barlow.”

  “Matt,” I asked Kirby, “do you know Lost River?”

  “Ought to, I fished along it as a youngster.”

  “Awhile back,” I said, “a fellow was making talk one night and he said there were a lot of wild cattle down there, and that almost nobody lives down there now.”

  Kirby thought that over. “Well, there’s a lot of big meadows down there, always ran to rich grass, and that’s mesquite country. I’d say it was top country for cows. But I ain’t been there since I was a boy.”

  We had word from the north. Belser and Chance Thorne were working the swamps along the Sulphur like they had never worked them before. Joel Reese was guiding them, but so far they’d found nothing but a couple of abandoned camps, unused for months. And not ours, either. But what bothered me was word they had been watching the home of Katy Thorne.

  One other thing we learned. Two men had come with a horse for the wounded man and had taken him away. She was not molested.

  We went back to work on the cattle around Lost River. It was rough country, but a mighty handsome land, too. We had better luck there.

  The first white men to come into Texas before the colonies’ fight for independence had found wild cattle in the thickets and along the river, most of them descended from cattle left behind by Spanish travelers in the area. Later, cattle had escaped from ranches and fled to the brush, and during the War between the States thousands of cattle had gone unbranded and had run wild to join the herds already there.

  Within the thickets there was grass, water and leaves for additional feed. The cattle had worn their own trails through the brush and had become wild animals, and some of them were as fierce as anything that walked, and incredibly huge. Why, down in those thickets I’ve seen many an old mossyhorn that stood seventeen hands and had a spread of horns better than six feet. Some have been found that I’ve heard tell of that were ten or eleven feet across.

  Kirby knew many of these trails, and I’d scouted around the thickets some on my own. Working that Lost River country we rounded up three hundred head of cattle the first week, and with six hundred head we started north. We had us a big corral spotted.

  This corral was in the brus
h itself, and had been made long since by some Mexicans who had interwoven the surrounding brush into a solid fence strong enough to hold an elephant. We drove our herd north and into that corral. There was water there, and grass enough for a while.

  We were on the edge of the Big Thicket now, and we knew exactly where we were going. We entered the Thicket again at a place where a big old cypress leaned above a stream, and we took a dim path, used by game and wild cattle. We rode single file with brush snagging at us on both sides, and we rode armed and ready. This here was going to be war, and believe me, we were ready for it.

  The air was stifling. A rabbit started almost from under the feet of the horse I was riding and several times we heard wild hogs grunting in the brush, but we didn’t see any. Right then I wasn’t wanting to meet a cross old boar right in that narrow trail—a wild boar can be a mean customer at close quarters.

  We made a fireless camp that night in a small glade, and we didn’t talk above a whisper. There was a hint of approaching thunderstorm in the air, and we spent the night cleaning guns and getting set. Sam Barlow had asked for trouble when he came north and now we were taking it to him.

  My Spencer and two Colts were my weapons, aside from a twelve-inch bowie knife I always carried. For the time and the job it wasn’t much to carry. Some of the Barlow men carried five and six pistols, for a cap-and-ball pistol can be a problem to reload, and a man needed fire power.

  When I was with the Quantrill crowd that time for a few days I saw many men who carried several pistols stuck into their waistbands, in holsters and on their horses. That young horse thief called Dingus who was with Weaver when I rode away from them had carried four or five pistols. He had red-rimmed eyes and nervous affliction that kept him batting his eyes like an owl in a hailstorm. Nowadays they are talking of him as an outlaw. His rightful name is Jesse James.

  It was past noon when we mounted up. The men we were hunting would have eaten and it was siesta time. When we got close to their camp I drew rein.

  “We ride in shooting.” I said.

  Somewhere in the brush ahead of us a woman screamed and a man laughed loudly. Somebody else swore at them to be quiet.

  We could see a corral filled with horses and there were a couple of cookfires going, and men lazing about in the shade. Mostly they were watching one man in the center of the group who had a young girl by the arm and a whip in his other hand. “Try gittin’ away from me, will you? I’ll give you a whuppin’ to remember me by. Nothin’ like a well-whupped woman, I always says.”

  There were nearer thirty men present than the fourteen our scout had led us to expect, but several of the horses were damp from hard riding so a party must have just arrived.

  “Quite a passel of them, Cullen,” Longley commented casually, “but we wanted ’em, didn’t we?”

  “One shot each,” I said, “and then we go in. Make the first one pay.” It was at least fifty yards from where we peered through the leaves to the opening into the clearing. “Looks like this will be all the Barlow men we get this time, so don’t waste any.”

  Touching my heel to the horse I started him walking. It was very still except for the laughter from the clearing and the bullying talk of the man with the whip. From each hoof-fall a tiny puff of dust lifted.

  It was very hot. Sweat trickled down my cheek and I dried a palm on my jeans. Somewhere off over the thicket a crow called, cawing into the still afternoon. Saddles creaked, and we swung into line opposite the opening, and we were a mere handful to the men inside, but we had wanted a fight, and there was such a thing as surprise. As we swung into line we were within view of at least a third of the men in the clearing, but they were intent upon the struggle between the man and the girl.

  Raising my pistol I dropped it dead center on the chest of the man with the whip just as he drew it back for a blow. “All right,” I said conversationally, and shot him.

  The sharp bang of sound was lost in the crashing volley that followed.

  The man with the whip dropped the girl’s arm and fell on his face in the dust. A man quicker of apprehension than the others rose up sharply from under the trees and dropped in his tracks in the volley that cut him down and several others, and then we went into the clearing at a dead run and swung into two ranks of four each and circled the clearing, shooting.

  Men broke and ran in every direction. One who grabbed a shotgun took a bullet in the teeth and fell. Longley leaned from his saddle and grabbed a burning branch which he hurled into the roof of the nearest brush shelter and it went up in a puff of roaring flame.

  We scattered out, firing at every target we could see, but the clearing had emptied as though spilled over the edge.

  Bob Lee caught up the girl who had been about to be whipped and swung her to his saddle and went out of the camp. Matt Kirby tore open the gate of the corral and stampeded the horses. A shot came from the edge of the clearing and three bullets smashed back a reply, and a man walked from the brush and fell on his face to roll over and stare up at the sun.

  And then we were gone, and running. Behind us the Barlow camp was a shambles. The place was a mass of roaring flame, and what cattle and horses they had we drove ahead of us down the trail. Surprisingly, another woman ran from the brush and called out for help. Held prisoner, she had seen her chance, and Bickerstaff held one of the horses for her and she swung aboard with a manner that showed she was not new at riding bareback.

  By nightfall we were out of the thicket and headed toward the Louisiana state line. The girl pointed out three cows and a horse that had belonged to her father and we cut them out and gave them to her. Once started we swung up a creek and then went up a road and headed for Forth Worth and the corral enroute where we had left the rest of our cattle.

  The girl with her horse and three cows had started home, but she turned back. She had straight, proud eyes and a good, honest way of looking at a man. “Who shall I thank the Good Lord for?” she asked.

  “This here is Bob Lee,” I said, “and I’m Cullen Baker.” Then I named off the others, and she looked at each of them in turn.

  “Folks say Cullen Baker is worse than Sam Barlow.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Bill Longley said. “Cullen’s honest, but he’s driven. The carpetbaggers give us no rest,” he added, “and it was Cullen who brought us down here to teach Barlow to stay south of Caddo Lake.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “it’s most fittin’, what you done. I shall tell folks that it was you saved me.”

  “You get along home,” I said, “or make a new one if yours is gone. This trouble will pass,” I added.

  We rode to Fort Worth and some of our stock we sold along the way. But most of it we sold in Fort Worth itself.

  Several days it had taken us, but we rode careful and stayed shy of the traveled roads, but we traveled less fast than the news of what we had done. In Fort Worth there was already talk of it, and folks were telling that Cullen Baker with fifty men had wiped out a camp of Barlow men. And most folks were pleased.

  Actually, there were but eight of us charged the Barlows, and nary a man drew a scratch. We’d been less than three minutes inside that clearing and the surprise had been complete. It was the first time anybody had attacked a Barlow camp—or even found one.

  Nor did we wipe them out. Near as we could figure no more than seven were sure enough killed, but we must have wounded that many more. They lost a lot of supplies, clothing, blankets and weapons as well as what stock we drove off.

  “Must be a thousand people in Fort Worth,” Buck Tinney claimed. He was astonished, a body could see that. Buck, he had never seen a big town before.

  “There’s bigger towns,” his brother Joe said. “New Orleans now, she’s bigger. So’s Natchez, I reckon.”

  “Don’t seem possible,” Buck replied.

  We hired us rooms, and bought baths, shaves and haircuts. Comin’ into town we looked a likely bunch of curly wolves, but when we got ourselves fixed up we all shaped up lik
e a bunch of dudes.

  The fort on the bluff was inside a picket fence, but the building had been abandoned. The log structure that had been the commissary had been taken over by civilians, and the buildings around it had been surrounded by more than a hundred small camps, tents and wagons. There was a blacksmith shop, supply store, saloon, a livery stable and various other businesses. Several dozen wagons loaded with bales of cotton were drawn up in the courthouse square.

  We stopped on the corner by Haven’s hardware store and looked around. The Tinney boys watched the crowd with excited eyes, while Bill Longley went over to the window of Bateman’s grocery, nearby.

  “Come sundown we meet at the hotel,” I suggested. “If things look good we’ll stay over, otherwise we light a shuck.”

  There was something vaguely familiar about a man across the square and it worried me. We wanted to see nobody we knew, although with herds of cattle coming in or passing through any of us might be seen. There were more around who knew Bob Lee and the others than knew me, but they’d be apt to make a connection if they recognized any one of us.

  So when we scattered out Bob Lee went across the street with me for a drink. “I could use a decent meal and some clothes,” I said to Bob Lee.

  My clothes looked miserable and I’d been thinking of that. The cattle paid off in good money and I was feeling it. Also, good clothes would be a sort of disguise, for nobody had ever seen me in any, leastways not around here.

  “Ever think of going West?” I asked it suddenly, so it surprised even me.

  “My family are here,” Bob Lee said, after a minute, “and we’ve a difficulty with the Peacock family. No telling when it will end. Yes, I’ve thought of it, or maybe Mexico.”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “You’ve nobody here.”

  “Nothing but a tough reputation.”

  “Is that why you wanted this drive? To get money to go West?”

  He never got an answer to that one because right then I lifted my glass and looked down the bar into the eyes of John Tower.