A Tale Out of Luck (20 page)
“That’s a damn fine sight,” Poli said to his horse. “But wait till they see us carry in that buck!” He reined away from the happy scene back at the ranch and struck a canter toward the place along the Colorado River known as the Narrows, where two bluffs on opposite sides of the river pinched it into a gorge like the wasp waist of an hourglass. The buck rubs he had seen were on top of the near bluff, and something told him that he’d spot that old deer there this very evening.
A few minutes later, arriving at the divide between the Colorado and Pedernales rivers, Poli paused to take in the long, open view to the northwest. He squinted. Good heavens, that looked like a dark line of ink on the skyline! A norther was coming. A true Texas blue norther. The first of the fall. Oh, this was good! A coming norther always stirred the wild animals. They could
feel
it approaching somehow. He could kill that buck and make it home just about the time that norther struck, sometime after dark. This was perfect! He could hang the deer carcass to cool in the freezing-cold blast that he knew was coming. Venison always tasted better and chewed easier if you could hang it a few days.
The boys would be safe and warm at the ranch. El Grullo had come to the Broken Arrow. And Poli was going to bag a trophy buck. This was going to be a damn fine night.
“Where’s Daddy?” Jay Blue asked after taking the saddle from Steel Dust in the corral.
“He’s been in town for days,” Long Tom replied. He and the rest of the Broken Arrow ranch hands had gathered around the corrals to get a look at the legendary stallion.
“We can still get to town before dark and give him the good news. Mr. Hayes has offered to breed Steel Dust to some of our mares in exchange for us helping to break him.”
“Took y’all long enough,” Long Tom replied. “But he sure seems to handle good.”
“Mr. Hayes doesn’t believe in rushin’ a horse,” Jay Blue said.
“Hey, Beto, what’s for supper?” Skeeter asked, noticing that the cook already had his apron tied on.
“Fried chicken,” Beto growled back.
“Fried chicken! This is the best day of my life!”
“Skeeter, we don’t have time for supper!” Jay Blue scolded. “We’ve got to get to town and tell Daddy.”
“I’m hungry!”
“You can get fried chicken in town.”
“Not like Beto makes it.”
Beto stood a little taller and stuck his chest out.
“You can piddle around here if you want,” Jay Blue said. “I’m goin’ to town to tell Daddy I rode the Steel Dust Gray home to the Broken Arrow.”
“Hey, some of the credit’s mine,” Skeeter argued.
“If you want to voice your braggin’ rights, you’d better ride to town with me.” He turned to the mustanger and his woman. “Mr. Hayes, you and Luz ought to come along. My daddy wants to meet you.”
“I don’t know . . .” Jubal answered.
“Come on, I’ll introduce you to some good folks in town.”
Jubal looked at Luz and found her waiting hopefully for his decision. He knew she wanted to go. Still, he shook his head. “We left a lot of mares at home that need to be fed tomorrow.”
“Daddy keeps a guitar in the saloon. Mr. Collins has a banjo I can use, and there are two or three fiddles in town.”
“Do tell?”
Luz started clapping her hands. She hadn’t been to a town in a long time.
Jay Blue grabbed his saddle from the top corral rail, still hot from having been cinched onto the back of Steel Dust. “Let’s put these old hulls on some fresh mounts and light a shuck for Luck!”
Beto turned back into the cook shack as Skeeter sighed and slid down from his saddle. He stalled as much as he could, but soon the four riders were mounted on fresh horses and ready to move out. Skeeter’s stomach growled. He looked hopefully toward the cook shack and saw Beto coming with something wrapped in a cloth napkin, which he handed up to Skeeter. The warmth and aroma pleased Skeeter as much as a kiss from Jane would have thrilled Jay Blue.
Opening the napkin, he said, “
Muchas gracias
,
Beto!” There, still too hot to eat, lay two fried drumsticks, golden brown and steaming. “Oh, my God, I can’t wait for these to cool off!”
“I rushed them for you,” Beto announced.
“Hey, you’ve got two,” Jay Blue said. “Why don’t you share?”
“Oh!” Skeeter said, his tone a clear mockery. “You can get fried chicken in town!”
Jay Blue reined away from the laughter of the ranch hands, who were still leaning on corral rails admiring El Grullo. “Oh, just come on, will you?”
As the party started toward town, Skeeter paused between breaths blown from his lips to cool the fried chicken. “Hey, later—when y’all are strummin’ and fiddlin’ in town—I can play the drum. I got two drumsticks!” He laughed as if he had just said the funniest thing in Texas history.
P
OLI LOPED
to within a mile of the place where he had seen the buck rubs days before. He decided to sneak ahead on foot from there. He loosened his cinch, tied his reins, slid the long octagonal barrel of the Winchester from the saddle scabbard, and slipped through the timber “like a wisp of smoke,” as the old-timers would say.
He approached downwind of the line of buck rubs, looking for a vantage point from which he could watch and wait for the heavy-horned trophy to show up and work his rubs. It was the way of the big bucks to leave their scent on the trees their antlers thrashed. The smell would attract does ready for breeding, and Poli understood the lure of a female who wanted to be chased.
Coming up on top of the southern bluff that formed one side of the Narrows, he finally caught sight of one of the buck rubs, an easy rifle shot away. The wind was in his favor here, and there was a deadfall leaning against a live oak where he could sit comfortably, his rifle propped on his knees. He settled in and resolved to wait until shooting light had faded, hoping the buck would show.
His world suddenly got very quiet. Gone were the hoofbeats and the crunch of dried grass under his boots. He heard his own breath, the breeze, the occasional birdsong. This was one reason he loved hunting. It was the antidote to the rigors of cattle work. Oh, he loved the noisy business of chasing and roping a wild brute, turning a stampede, or riding a green-broke pony. But here, sitting quietly, waiting and watching, he could hear his own thoughts clearly, sort things out, get right with the Great Creator.
His brow bunched between his thick, black eyebrows when he thought about the scalped man full of arrows, and all the Indian troubles likely to come with the next full moon. But he felt safe here, alone, sitting quietly. He was the hunter, not the hunted.
He smiled when he thought about those boys saddle-breaking El Grullo. He wished he had had time to wait and congratulate Skeeter. He’d have to make a big deal of that tomorrow. Skeeter needed it more than Jay Blue. The rancher’s son knew where he fit into the picture on the Broken Arrow. Skeeter was forever unsure.
Mañana
, he thought,
I’ll get Izquierdo to tell me the whole story while Jay Blue is not around to interrupt.
In his reverie, he suddenly heard the scamper of deer hooves—light compared to that of a horse, but running fast and accompanied by snapping branches and rattling stones. He looked right and saw a doe running full tilt in his direction, and behind her the buck, carrying his crown on his head, pursuing with singular resolve. The hunter’s eyes bulged at the great rack of antlers waving atop the running monarch’s head.
Poli raised the rifle butt to his shoulder, knowing the deer would not see his movement while they were running so hard. Thoughts shot through his head:
One chance! Here he comes! Too much timber! There’s an opening!
But just as he prepared to fire, the doe dodged away from him and dove off into a draw that branched out from the Narrows. The buck followed her, never having provided Poli with a clear shot.
Damn, damn, damn!
Every expletive he knew in two languages went mumbling in whispers past his lips. There was only one chance. Run to the place where the deer had disappeared, and maybe— probably not, but maybe—he’d catch sight of them running up the other side of the draw.
He sprinted across the top of the bluff to where he had seen the buck’s waving white tail vanish. He slid to a stop and tried to listen over his own gasps for breath. He saw no sign of his prey in the draw below. As he caught his breath, he heard nothing that sounded like scampering deer. But he did hear a cow bellow.
Poli cocked his head. The sound was coming from down in the draw, toward the Narrows. Now he heard more than one cow, just barely audible, but unmistakable nonetheless. Hearing cattle low in cow country was not unusual, but Poli knew the plaintive sounds of beeves the way a mother knew the voice of a child in distress. Those cattle sounded harassed, as if someone had them bunched or penned or otherwise held at bay. The fall cow work should have been done by now. This bore investigation.
He picked his way silently into the draw toward the sound of the bovine gathering. He stopped every few yards to listen. As he crept closer, he smelled smoke and burnt hides, and knew someone was branding. Now he really got suspicious.
The timber was thick down in the draw. Not the kind of place you’d want to work cattle, unless you were hiding something. Slipping from tree to tree, he inched closer, until he could see the cattle milling around. Someone had built a hidden pen down here, the workmanship of the cedar posts and rails ugly, but functional. Inside the post-and-rail construction, hundreds of slim cedar pickets had been fixed vertically to the rails, more as a visual barrier to discourage escape, rather than a structural addition. The cedar picket fence ambled about in a rough oval, its shape and size determined by what little bit of flat terrain there was down in the bottom of the draw. Beeves were bunched tight inside the pen—at least twenty of them, and maybe more.
Inside the pen, on the other side of the cow herd, a mounted man heel-roped a long yearling and dragged it to a branding fire where men afoot flanked and tailed it down, penning it to the ground with practiced holds. Poli couldn’t see the men on the ground clearly through the milling herd. The man on horseback was more visible, but a long way off, and wearing a bandana over his face against the thick, stirred-up dust. He decided it wasn’t as important to identify the men, and risk being seen, as it was to see the brand they were using. If he could sneak close enough to read that, he’d slip back out of the draw and ride hell-bent for leather into town to tell Captain Tomlinson.
The men at the branding fire released the big yearling they had roped and thrown. It jumped up, bawling and kicking against the sting of the fresh brand. It ran frantically headlong into the fence, trying to break through, but only cracked some cedar pickets and bounced back in. The agitated yearling continued to work the fence line, looking for a way out, moving around the perimeter of the pen.
Good
, Poli thought. He snuck close to the pickets, hiding behind them. He removed his hat so he’d have a lower profile. When the fresh-branded yearling arrived on the opposite side of the fence, he raised up high enough to let his eyeballs peer over the pickets and he got a clear look at the brand. An inverted V over a capital T.
He’d never seen or even heard of that brand in these parts.
He shifted his eyes to the left hip of another nearby brute. Broken Arrow! Now, quickly he saw in his mind how the Broken Arrow could be converted to a “rafter,” with the T added below. They were rustling the captain’s stock and doctoring brands—and on a fairly large scale. He sank safely back behind the pickets and replaced his hat on his head. He began his retreat, watching over his shoulder for trouble as he shrank back into the timber, carrying his rifle in one hand.
Poli heard the commotion of the cattle fade in the distance as he climbed up the steep slope, out of the draw. Confident he had made his escape unseen, he quickened his pace. He climbed up to the bluff where he had seen the deer. Looking around, he saw no one, so he sprinted across the open bluff top, back to the place where he had waited for a shot at that big buck. A thought occurred to him. Thank God he hadn’t shot at that buck! The rustlers would have heard him and come gunning for him.
Winded, he slowed to a walk as he came up on his saddle pony, still waiting tied. The mount grumbled at him and shifted nervously. Poli looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The horse must have smelled a coyote or something. They would both be happy to get out of here.
“Whoa,” he said, patting the horse’s neck and slipping his Winchester back into the boot. He pulled in on the latigo, tightening the girth. The cow pony’s nostrils were flared, his eyes rolling. This horse did not like this place. Then, just as Poli finished wrapping the end of the latigo around the saddle ring, slick as a Windsor knot, the horse snorted and tried to shy away.
A look into the pony’s eye told Poli he had seen something. He turned, drawing his revolver. His eyes searched, but his ears collected. A strange thump. All he had time to see was the arrow shaft sticking out of his chest, and he knew the point had gone all the way through him and stuck his horse in the withers, right in front of the saddle, for the animal squealed and jumped aside. Still standing, Poli railed against the painful intrusion of the projectile, and cocked his pistol, but another arrow came in a blur. He had little time to glimpse his murderer before he fell back on the ground. The stabbed pony had broken his reins and run away.
Poli knew he was dying fast. Two things occurred to him. He was grateful that he would be dead before he felt the knife scalp him. And he regretted that he would never get to congratulate young Izquierdo for breaking the Steel Dust Gray.
H
ANK HAD SPENT DAYS
in town, expecting the replies to his telegrams to arrive. Waiting tested his patience, but the time was far from wasted. He owned or had financed most of the businesses in town. Times had been lean around here since before the war, but he never had any intention of foreclosing on any entrepreneur truly trying to make an enterprise float. So there was a lot of renegotiating to accomplish around town, and there were a lot of grateful hands to shake.