Cherokee (27 page)

Even as I said the words I became aware of something to my right. I shifted my eyes. Just off to my right side a man was coming up in the grass to one knee. He was no more than ten yards away. He had a gun in his hand. I started to draw, and I heard gunshots from behind me. The man, a man I'd never seen before but who looked vaguely familiar, stood up, and then dropped his gun and fell over. I heard someone from behind me yell, “Justa!”

And then the gelding suddenly reared up, and I felt something
thunk
into the pommel of the saddle, and then a burning on my leg and I had my revolver out and was leaning down and to the right, keeping a tight hold on the gelding, keeping him reared up, and firing under his neck at Shay Jordan. I thumbed and fired as rapidly as I could because it was difficult to aim with the gelding dancing around like he was. I thought the first shot hit Shay, but on the second I saw him go backwards, throwing his revolver in the air. I got off one more shot as he was going over the end of his horse.

Then the gelding was settling back to all fours. I sat there for a second, the sound of the gunfire still ringing in my ears and the smell of the gunpowder all through the air. There was a man standing to my right with his hands in the air. It wasn't the man I'd seen aiming at me. This man was Rex Jordan.

After a moment I bolstered my revolver and stepped off the gelding. He was trembling a little. I looked at my saddle. The slug from a bullet was embedded in the pommel. I looked down at my leg. My pants were torn midway down the inside of my thigh. A little blood was trickling out. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure why the gelding had reared up. But if he hadn't, Shay's bullet might have found me instead of my saddle. I'd probably never know what had spooked the gelding. It could have been a snake, it could have been an insect, or it could have been Providence. I didn't figure I'd ever find out. All I knew was that I'd been lucky as hell.

I looked over to my far right. Ben and Ray Hays and Lew Vara were coming toward me, though Lew was veering off more toward where Rex Jordan was standing with his hands in the air.

They came up and stopped. I looked at them for a second, and then I walked over to where Shay was laying on his back in the tall grass. He was dead. He'd taken one bullet in the chest and one in the face. I figured he'd gotten the last as he was going off his horse. The third shot had caught him in the right arm. I didn't know if it had broken the bone or not. I turned around and walked over to where Lew was holding Rex Jordan under guard. The man I'd seen go down was laying on his side a few yards away. He looked like he'd been shot to pieces. I said, “Who's that?”

Lew said, “That's Luther, Luther Jordan.”

I turned to Rex Jordan. “Well, ya'll wouldn't have it any other way except the hard way. This is the result.”

Rex had his head down. “I was not here to shoot you,” he said. “I never drawed a gun. I come to try and settle this matter with words.”

Lew said, “That don't mean you ain't going to jail. You and your brother and your son set up a bushwhack. I was here and I seen it.”

I said to Lew, “Let it go, Lew. He's lost enough.”

Lew said, “Yeah, but does he know it?”

Jordan was still staring at the ground. “Yes, I know it. I don't want no more trouble.”

I looked around. “You'll need help getting your dead home. I'll ride back to my headquarters and have a buckboard sent.”

Lew said, “Justa, I ought to put him in jail.”

I said, “Did he ever draw his revolver? Did he ever fire?”

Lew shook his head. “No, but maybe that was because he never got a chance to. When Luther come up out of that grass we cut down on him before Rex could do anything. Who knows what he might have done if we hadn't been here, if you'd been alone.”

I looked at Ben, who hadn't said anything. I said, “I was wrong.”

He give me a little smug look like he knew it, had known it the day before, and was always going to know it and never let me forget. “Yeah,” he said.

Hays said, scratching under his shirt, “W'al, if this ain't worth a bonus I don't know what is, and I don't mean the shootin'. We had to tie the horses near two mile from here an' then
walk
all the way to here. An' had to start early so's to git here ahead of these bushwhackers. Had to lay in the goldarn weeds for better'n a hour waitin' fer these sonsabitches to show up! Bugs bitin' me an' snakes crawlin' around an' I don't know what all. Lordy!”

 

I bought Jordan out to give him a way out of the country. We didn't need the extra deeded acreage, but it was a way to end the matter and end the lawsuit and get his kind out from underfoot. It was an easy enough purchase since our bank held the loan on the ranch he'd bought, so I just gave him back his down payment and five hundred dollars on top of that to smooth his path out of the country. It was all handled through the bank, so I never saw the man again.

The wound in my leg was caused by a little brad that had been popped out of my saddle by the force of Shay's bullet. It had actually had enough force to bury itself about a quarter of an inch under my skin. I'd had Nora dig it out so she could see what it was and see that it wasn't no bullet. But she'd still been suspicious. She'd said, “I have never heard of a piece of hardware coming out of a saddle with enough power to go into a man's leg. There is something fishy going on here, Justa Williams.”

I'd said, “There you go. Always doubting me. Now I'm responsible for how they make saddles and what can happen when you rope a two-thousand-pound steer going full tilt and the rope hits the saddle horn. That's right, I'm trying to put something over on you. Actually, Nora, I was in a gunfight and this here brad you'd just dug out was what he was using for bullets.”

She'd given me a look. “Now you are trying to act the fool. I swear, Justa, if I could ever get a straight answer out of you I'd probably drop over.”

A few days after Norris got home I got hold of Ben, and he and I walked a ways out into the pasture from the headquarters house. We stopped at a place where the sound of the bay could come softly to us, and lit cigarillos. As simply as I could I told him everything I knew and everything I'd learned from Charlie Stevens and Howard. When I was through he just stood there for a moment staring off. Then he turned around and started back towards the house. I was not at all sure how he was going to take it. I said, “Well, what do you think?”

He shrugged. “It's kind of sudden. I don't know what to think. I'm going to have to study on it.”

“That's the way I was.”

“Explains a lot, though, don't it? I mean about how different me and you are from Norris.”

“Yeah.”

We kept walking. About halfway back he stopped. He looked at me. “But it really don't make a hell of a lot of difference, does it?”

“Not to me.”

“It ain't like we was kids. We're grown men. And both of them mothers is gone. And Howard will be gone soon enough. Then it will just be the three of us. Have you told Norris?”

I hesitated a moment. I wanted to tell Ben how I felt, and I wanted to tell him in such a way that he'd understand it and maybe feel the same way. I said, “The truth be told, when I found out up in Oklahoma that Norris was my half brother I was kind of glad. There was so much difference between us. I didn't want us to be full-blood. But then . . .” I hesitated again.

Ben said, “Then you saw him in that sickbed.”

I looked at him and nodded. “Yeah. Then he could never be anything but my full brother.”

Ben smiled slightly. “I reckon you don't think we ought to tell him anything about this.”

“I don't see the point. You know Norris has always felt like he wasn't as much a part of us as he should be. If he knew this, I think it would hurt him bad.”

Ben said, “Then let's don't tell him. Like I say, what difference does it make? He's gonna act like a horse's ass anyway. What about Howard? You ever going to break down and let him know you know?”

I shook my head. “What for? He'll probably come around you trying to act sly to see if I've told you.”

Ben laughed. “I know you don't think I can look innocent, but I can.”

I punched him on the shoulder and we started back for the house. Just before we got to the steps Ben said, “One damn thing that pisses me off. You know when you left you give me permission to buy twenty-five thousand dollars worth of new blood for the horse herd? Well, you told Norris to transfer some money into the horse herd account on account of it was empty. Well, the sonofabitch got hisself shot before he could do it. An' that auction is due up damn quick and he's laid up in bed.”

I stopped and reached in my hip pocket and got out my wallet. I found the deposit slip on the First U.S. Cherokee National Bank for the $25,000 and handed it to him. I said, “I'll endorse that and you take it down to the bank in Blessing and draft on that Cherokee bank for the money. You don't need Norris for that.”

He looked at the slip for a second and then he smiled. “Hell, why not. We got Cherokee blood, we might as well have some of that Cherokee money.”

“Present from your momma,” I said.

We went on into the house to drink some whiskey and give Norris and Howard a hard time. Just before we went through the door Ben said, “Damn palefaces, drink Injun's whiskey. Maybe Injun take scalps.”

I said, “Damn right, brother.”

 

When Justa's brother lands in a Mexican jail for protecting his land, Justa has no choice but to take the law into his own hands.

 

I read the telegram twice and then I said, “Why this is crazy as hell! That land wouldn't support fifty head of cattle.”

We were all gathered in the big office. Even Dad was there, sitting in his rocking chair. I looked up at him. “What do you make of this, Howard?”

He shook his big, old head of white hair. “Beats the hell out of me, Justa. I can't figure it.”

Ben said, “Well, I don't see where it has to be figured. I'll take five men and go down there and run them off. I don't care what they're doing. They ain't got no business on our land.”

I said, “Take it easy, Ben. Aside from the fact you don't need to be getting into any more fights this year, I can't spare you or five men. The way this grass is drying up we've got to keep drifting those cattle.”

Norris said, “No, Ben is right. We can't have such affairs going on with our property. But we'll handle it within the law. I'll simply take the train down there, hire a good lawyer and have the matter settled by the sheriff. Shouldn't take but a few days.”

Well, there wasn't much I could say to that. We couldn't very well let people take advantage of us, but I still hated to be without Norris's services even for a few days. On matters other than the ranch he was an expert, and it didn't seem like there was a day went by that some financial question didn't come up that only he could answer. I said, “Are you sure you can spare yourself for a few days?”

He thought for a moment and then nodded. “I don't see why not. I've just moved most of our available cash into short-term municipal bonds in Galveston. The market is looking all right and everything appears fine at the bank. I can't think of anything that might come up.”

I said, “All right. But you just keep this in mind. You are not a gun hand. You are not a fighter. I do not want you going anywhere near those people, whoever they are. You do it legal and let the sheriff handle the eviction. Is that understood?”

He kind of swelled up, resenting the implication that he couldn't handle himself. The biggest trouble I'd had through the years when trouble had come up had been keeping Norris out of it. Why he couldn't just be content to be a wagon load of brains was more than I could understand. He said, “Didn't you just hear me say I intended to go through a lawyer and the sheriff? Didn't I just say that?”

I said, “I wanted to be sure you heard yourself.”

He said, “Nothing wrong with my hearing. Nor my approach to this matter. You seem to constantly be taken with the idea that I'm always looking for a fight. I think you've got the wrong brother. I use logic.”

“Yeah?” I said. “You remember when that guy kicked you in the balls when they were holding guns on us? And then we chased them twenty miles and finally caught them?”

He looked away. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“Yeah?” I said, enjoying myself. “And here's this guy, shot all to hell. And what was it you insisted on doing?”

Ben laughed, but Norris wouldn't say anything.

I said, “Didn't you insist on us standing him up so you could kick him in the balls? Didn't you?”

He sort of growled, “Oh, go to hell.”

I said, “I just want to know where the logic was in that.”

He said, “Right is right. I was simply paying him back in kind. It was the only thing his kind could understand.”

I said, “That's my point. You just don't go down there and go to paying back a bunch of rough hombres in kind. Or any other currency for that matter.”

That made him look over at Dad. He said, “Dad, will you make him quit treating me like I was ten years old? He does it on purpose.”

But he'd appealed to the wrong man. Dad just threw his hands in the air and said, “Don't come to me with your troubles. I'm just a boarder around here. You get your orders from Justa. You know that.”

Of course he didn't like that. Norris had always been a strong hand for the right and wrong of a matter. In fact, he may have been one of the most stubborn men I'd ever met. But he didn't say anything, just gave me a look and muttered something about hoping a mess came up at the bank while he was gone and then see how much boss I was.

But he didn't mean nothing by it. Like most families, we fought amongst ourselves and, like most families, God help the outsider who tried to interfere with one of us.