Goodnight's Dream (A Floating Outfit Western Book 4) (14 page)

The clock in the corner of Goodnight’s
comfortably furnished living room chimed eleven as he and his
guests gathered before the fireplace at the conclusion of their
belated meal. Dusty and Dawn had not reached the ranch until
shortly before ten, due to the small Texan assisting the sheriff in
trying to discover how the prisoners obtained the weapons used
while making their escape bid. Settling in the comfortable chairs
in front of the glowing log fire, Dusty told his uncle, the Kid,
Mark and the girl about the investigation.

‘
Seems that Keck and his pards waited
for Sheriff Kater to leave the office and hoped he’d be down to his
home before they made their move,’ Dusty explained. ‘Then Keck
called the deputy over and asked him for a match. Only as he was
taking it out, Keck threw down on him. It was a choice of opening
the door or getting shot, so the deputy opened up. Keck whomped him
over the head as soon as he’d done it. The other two helped
themselves to the deputy’s Colt and one of the office scatterguns,
their own being locked in the safe, and headed for the tall
timber.’

‘
And walked out of the front door to
find us riding along the street towards them,’ Dawn went on. She
gave a slight shudder. ‘That Keck sure looked mean when he saw
us.’

‘
It must’ve been a helluva shock for
him,’ Mark said.

‘
Depends on how you meant that,’ Dusty
drawled.

‘
Where’d Keck get the gun he used to
make that deputy open up?’ inquired the Kid. ‘He for sure didn’t
have it on him when he went into the cell.’

That’s for sure,’ Goodnight agreed. ‘Ward
Kater’s too smart a peace officer to make a mistake like that.’

‘
It was KeCk’s hide-out
gun. The one he tried to use on us
at the Demon Rum,’ Dusty replied.
‘Did any of you see who picked it up?’

‘
I was watching Chisum,’ Goodnight
excused himself.

‘
It’d already gone when I looked for
it,’ Mark went on. ‘But there’d been a fair slew of folks moving
around and Targue was pushing to get them three yahoos tossed into
the pokey, so I didn’t take time out to ask who’d got it. Maybe
somebody at the saloon saw who took it.’

‘
If they did, they’re not admitting to
it,’ Dusty answered. ‘The sheriff asked about it.’

‘
Targue went around the back of the
jailhouse after we’d seen them put into the cells,’ the blond giant
remarked. ‘Allowed he was headed for Sadie’s place to pick up
Chisum’s men and take them out to the herd.’

‘
That’d be the shortest way for him to
go from the sheriff’s office to Sadie’s,’ Goodnight said,
anticipating the question which had sprung to Dawn’s
mind.

‘
Now me,’ Mark grinned. ‘I wouldn’t
know where a place like Sadie’s’d be.’

‘
You sure you’re Big RanCe’s son?’
Goodnight sniffed. ‘Anyways, I reckon we can leave it in Ward
Kater’s hands. He’ll get to the bottom of it, if anybody can. And I
didn’t have you boys come out here to run around playing at being
lawmen.’

Watching Dusty, Mark and the Kid, Dawn saw
them sit just a little straighter in their chairs and show a mite
more interest. She stirred restlessly on her seat and the movement
brought the rancher’s attention to her.

‘
If you’re tired, Dawn—’ Goodnight
began.

‘
I am a mite,’ she admitted, wondering
if he would use it as an excuse to get her out of the
room.

‘
It’s late all right,’ the rancher
said. ‘But I’d like you to stay a while longer if you will. What I
have to say to Dustine might interest your pappy.’

‘
I’m not all that sleepy,’ the girl
smiled, knowing the matter must be important and ought to be worth
hearing. ‘It’s not my first late night.’

‘
Bueno,’
Goodnight grunted and turned towards his nephew.
‘Do you know why Ole Devil sent you here, Dustine?’

‘
I only know what you
said in your letter,’ Dusty replied. ‘That you’re making a big
drive to Fort Sumner real soon
and figured Uncle Devil might want to
send the floating outfit along to see how it’s done.’

After finishing his answer,
Dusty looked expectantly at his uncle. So did Dawn, realizing that
there must be something more than that behind the rancher’s
suggestion. It seemed hardly likely that Ole Devil Hardin would
send his
segundo
and members of the OD Connected’s floating outfit all the
way to Young County merely to witness something they had already
gathered experience in doing.

Dawn’s father did not run a
large enough spread to need the services of a floating outfit, but
she knew what the term meant. On the big ranches like the OD
Connected a group of four to six men, top hands every one, were
employed to work on the distant sections of the range. Taking along
food either in a chuckwagon, or ‘greasy sack’ on the back of a
mule, they spent long periods away from the main house and acted as
a kind of mobile ranch crew. During the ride from Graham, Dawn had
learned that Ole Devil had not only sent Dusty, Mark and the Kid,
but that two more of the floating outfit were following with
their
remuda.
Taken with Goodnight’s request that she stayed up to
listen, Dawn felt certain that something of exceptional interest
must be forthcoming.

‘
Who do you sell your cattle to at the
OD Connected, Dustine?’ Goodnight inquired when sure he had his
audience’s attention.

‘
The Army take a few,’ the small Texan
replied. ‘But most go to the hide-and-tallow factories at Brazoria
or Quintana.’

‘
We’ll sell to anybody who’ll buy,
Colonel,’ Dawn answered when Goodnight repeated the question to
her. ‘Which means the hide-and-tallow buyer, mostly.’

‘
And you’re getting paid—?’ Goodnight
went on.

‘
Three dollars a head. At that price,
pappy has to sell all he can to keep us going.’

‘
It’s the same all across Texas,’ Dusty
said. ‘We get around the same price, four dollars tops. Or eight if
we trail them to the factory. We did it one time, took five hundred
head along. When we’d paid off the trail hands and other expenses,
we figured it wasn’t worth the trouble of doing it.’

‘
Did you ever see one of them
factories, Colonel Charlie?’ Mark asked.

‘
Can’t say I ever did,’ the rancher
admitted.

‘
They’ve got gangs of Negroes killing
the cattle, bulls, steers, cows and calves, skinning them,
stripping out the tallow and sending what’s left, including the
meat, down chutes into the Brazos,’ Mark told him
grimly.

‘
There’re catfish so well fed they’re
bigger’n Mississippi alligator-gars downstream from the factory at
Brazoria,’ the Kid went on. ‘And folk daren’t go swimming in the
sea below Quintana because of the sharks that come in after the
factory leavings.’

‘
There’s no other place to sell the
stock,’ Dawn reminded the men bitterly. ‘I’ve heard that it’s been
tried and didn’t come off.’

‘
Feller called Kil Vickers thought he’d
got the answer,’ Dusty remarked. ‘Took two hundred and fifty head
to Rockport and shipped them by coast-boat to New Orleans. Time
he’d finished paying for their feeding on the boat and all, he
found he’d lost two dollars-fifty a head on the deal.’

‘
Shanghai Pierce did a mite better
though,’ Mark pointed out. ‘Just after the War he drove a big bunch
of his “sea lions” clear across Louisiana to New Orleans and sold
them for a fair price.’

‘
Trouble being that those
“sea lions”
^xvi
of his’re raised in swamp country,’
Dusty objected. ‘Open-plains beef like we handle’d never make
it.’

‘
Could, happen we knowed
how to train
’em
to swing across the bog-holes like Shanghai’s stock done
it,’ argued the Kid, keeping a straight, sober face.

‘
Swing over the
bog-holes!’ Dawn snorted, sensing that the comment had been
directed her way. ‘You’ll never get
me
to believe
that!’

‘
I’m only telling you what Mark allows
Shanghai telled him,’ protested the Kid. ‘That’s what he told you,
wasn’t it, Mark?’

‘
Why he crossed his heart
and hoped to vote Republican if it wasn’t true,’ Mark agreed. ‘Then
he told me how his old “sea lions” went through the cypress swamps
by jumping from root to root. And when they come to a real deep
bog-hole, they’d swing across it by hooking their horns in a
wisteria
or mustang grape-vine. He allowed that
that
was some sight to see.’

‘
Yah! Any feller who’d
spin windies like them deserves to vote Republican,’ Dawn scoffed,
then looked pointedly at Mark and the Kid. ‘And anybody
fool
loco
enough to believe him most likely does.’

Chuckles broke from the men and Dawn rose in
their esteem by virtue of her reply. Dusty could see that she was
used to such verbal fencing, but wondered why his uncle had asked
her to stay and listen to his business.

‘
Shipping by sea, or trailing to New
Orleans and selling’s no answer for us,’ Goodnight pointed out when
the youngster stopped funning. ‘The costs of doing either would eat
up every red cent of the profits.’

‘
What’s the answer then, Uncle
Charlie?’ asked Dusty. ‘Go on selling to the hide-and-tallow
factories until the ranges are stripped bare of cattle. And that’s
what’ll come if the prices stay so low that folks have to sell off
breeding stock the way they’re being forced to do.’

‘
I know,’ Goodnight answered. ‘The Army
only want steers, which’s why I’m in favor of dealing with
them.’

‘
Trouble being the Army in Texas
doesn’t need much beef,’ Dusty pointed out. ‘And New Mexico’s a
mite out of the way for us ranchers down in the south-east. ’Sides
which, if everybody trails herds to Fort Sumner, they’ll flood the
market and the price’ll drop to nothing.’

Goodnight nodded soberly. As he had expected,
Dusty had formed the correct conclusion on the matter. Not only was
the small Texan a courageous fighter and capable leader, but he had
a sound business head on his young shoulders. He recognized the
significance of supply and demand upon prices.

‘
There’s another market that needs
beef,’ the rancher said and something in his voice warned the
listeners that he was approaching the important part of the
discussion. ‘In the East there are whole towns, villages and cities
full of folk itching to sink their teeth into beef-steaks, happen
the beef’s cheap enough for them to buy.’

‘
Mind me asking how we’re going to get
our cattle to these folks back East, Colonel?’ Mark put in. ‘Are
you figuring on trailing them there?’

‘
Not all the way,’ Goodnight replied.
‘My idea is to send them East on the railroad. It’s faster and a
train’ll tote a whole heap more cattle than any boat.’

‘
I’ll give you that, Uncle Charlie,’
Dusty said. ‘But we’re a mite shy on railroads from Texas to the
East.’

‘
There’s one goes clear across the
country, east to west, or will when it’s finished,’ Goodnight
pointed out and grinned bleakly as four young mouths began to open.
‘And, afore any of you smart buttons tell me, I know that
railroad’s up in Kansas not here in Texas.’

‘
And you figure on trailing the cattle
clear up to Kansas, Colonel?’ Dawn gasped.

‘
Why not?’ countered Goodnight. ‘Oliver
Loving and I’ve taken herds nearly as far. But to make it pay,
you’ll need a whole new conception of trail driving than’s been
tried so far. Bigger herds, two or three thousand head at
least.’

Nobody spoke for over a minute after
Goodnight completed his statement. Yet he could see that the girl
and three young men were impressed by his comments. Taking his eyes
from Goodnight’s face, Dusty turned them to meet Mark’s gaze. Both
of them were thinking much the same thoughts.

Cattle could be gathered and held in bunches
at least as large as those mentioned by Goodnight, their
herd-instincts keeping them together. The question, to both of the
young men’s way of looking at it, was whether so many half-wild
longhorns could be persuaded to go in a desired direction. If so,
crazy as it might seem at first hearing, the rancher’s scheme had
much to commend it. Certainly it offered the answer to the two
major problems facing Texas cattlemen: where to sell their stock
for a working profit and how to get the animals to the market.
Unlike sending the cattle by boat, trailing them would entail no
shipping costs other than necessities for the journey, food and pay
for the cowhands. The cattle would supply their own transportation
to the railroad and, by foraging as they did all their lives on the
open range, cut out the high cost of feeding them on the way to the
market.

There were, however, objections to
Goodnight’s scheme.

‘
Nobody’s ever tried to handle a herd
that size,’ Mark said. ‘Even buyers from the hide-and-tallow
factories don’t move bunches of more than a thousand at a
go.’