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Authors: Brett Cogburn

BOOK: Panhandle
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“Two to one on four hundred dollars and we run at a quarter of a mile,” Billy offered.
The colonel thought he knew his business and was quick to counter offer. “Five to three on your horse, and we run at three hundred fifty yards.”
“What's five to three figure out at, Tennessee?”
“We put up four hundred and he puts up roughly six-sixty.” I glared at him for calling me that, but he was too caught up to notice.
“Call it six-fifty.” The colonel's white teeth shone in an oily smile, and he looked like the devil himself by the firelight.
Billy was counting money in his head. “Call it five hundred your end, and we run at four hundred yards.”
“Six hundred my end and we run at three-seventy-five, catch weights, ‘ask and answer' start.”
“Who steps off the distance and picks the course?”
“You and I will step off the distance in a matter equally agreeable to each of us, and the course will be laid out here along the creek to both of our satisfaction.”
Billy rose to his feet, and we followed suit. The colonel once more stood and offered his hand to Billy.
“When?” Billy asked.
“Day after tomorrow at noon.”
Billy nodded his head.
The colonel lifted an exaggerated eyebrow. “We have a deal?”
Billy took his hand and shook. The colonel seemed pleased, and turned to his bottle on the tailgate.
“Shall we have a drink to seal our agreement?”
“You already shook on it,” H.B. said.
“Ah yes, but a drink is a much more enjoyable format. Don't you agree?”
That Mexican boy was there lickety-split with some cups, and once he had poured us all a round, the colonel lifted his glass high in a toast. “Here's to honorable men and fast horses.”
Just like honorable men, we all showed our agreement by tossing them down our funnels. That liquor was smooth, but it burned like fire once it got where it was going. Looking at that slick dude again through teary eyes I was sure we had just taken a drink with old Lucifer himself, and made a pact with him to boot.
H.B. must have been worried that we hadn't gone far enough to consummate the deal, because he held out his cup for more. The boy poured him another, and he hardly had time to pull the bottle back before H.B. was holding out another empty glass.
“That's damned good whiskey.”
The colonel nodded in agreement. “I bought that off a man I met down the trail.”
“Well, they sure know how to make it where he comes from.” H.B. downed the third one.
Three glassfuls were enough, and Billy finally shepherded him off. We waved good-bye to our hosts. There was some grumbling and attempts by their crowd to get us to stay and let loose of a little of our money, but we wisely let on that it was a long ride back to camp.
H.B. was already feeling his liquor, and I had to pull him out of the clutches of some old snaggle-toothed, swaybacked hag that was hanging on him. It was all I could do to keep him from squealing and rearing up on her right then. For an old codger—he must have been at least fifty—he sure was a randy demon when he got to drinking.
We tightened our cinches and mounted up. Billy turned his horse to face us. We parked nose to nose to talk.
“How do you think we made out?” he asked.
“The distance is too short. That mare looks like she could jerk a stump out of the ground,” H.B. slurred.
“I agree she looks like she ought to have early speed, but we got some odds.” Leave it to Billy to paint a pretty picture.
“All in all, I'd say you done well,” I threw in.
“That fellow back there doesn't race for a hobby,” said H.B.
“Do you believe that filly is really out of the Denton Mare?” I asked.
“No. He's full of shit.” Billy was adamant.
“Might be true, you never can tell.” H.B. was getting so drunk, he was merely a singsong in the background.
“I know one thing. That filly of his may not be out of the Denton Mare, but I bet that we're going to find out if Little Paint can run.” Billy only reiterated what we all knew. We were worried and excited at the same time.
We let it go at that, and for sheer orneriness Billy took off at a lope. H.B.'s horse was too coldbacked to be jumped right up to a lope like that after a long rest, and he set in to bucking again. H.B. was too tipsy to have thought to shorten his hold on the horse, and the bronc-riding exhibition was on right there.
It was pitch black and all I could make out was a vague shadow twisting before me. I could hear that horse bawling and thumping the earth with all fours. Soon I heard a different thump, a string of cussing, and the sound of a horse running off.
“I'll go get his horse,” Billy called out of the night.
I eased up to where I thought H.B. had gone down. He was moaning something awful, and I thought I could make out the shadow of a man down on all fours. He sounded like he was dying. He sounded worse than that—like he was dying slow and terrible.
I dug around in my vest pocket until I found my matches, and struck a couple of them to see by. Sure enough, H.B. was down on the ground. He had gotten up on hands and knees and was still moaning. There was a string of slobber hanging out of his mouth danged near to the ground, and he was covered in grass and dirt. He set in to cursing and wheezing, and I was worried that he was hurt bad.
“Are you all right?”
“Hell, yes, I'm all right,” he growled.
“Well, why are you bawling so? What's the matter?”
He cussed a bit more before answering me. “What's the matter with me? Hell's bells! Can't you see I've lost my damned pipe?”
C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
E
arly in the morning on the Fourth we hitched up the wagon and headed out to meet our destiny and write our names in the immortal granite of racing history. Little Paint traveled jauntily behind the wagon, and we could hear money jingling every time his feet hit the ground.
There were at least ten of us traveling together, and about three times that many were still back on the roundup grounds awaiting the opportunity to come and see the show. A rotation had been worked out whereby all of the hands could get a little time in Mobeetie for the holiday. Those left on guard with the herd would be relieved by others who had already spent their allotted time enjoying the sights. The only problem was that, no matter what, somebody was going to have to miss the race, and nobody wanted to. They say a good cowboy never left the herd, but I had a feeling that there were going to be some cattle in a certain neighborhood left unattended for at least the duration of an afternoon.
A hundred yards from the gamblers' camp we were hailed by a chorus of drunken yells and pistol shots. From the looks of things their camp had quadrupled in size. Half of Mobeetie and Ft. Elliott must have turned out to see the show, and we could see more folks coming down the river from the northwest.
As we neared the camp we passed a wagonload of Bill Thompson's dance hall girls trying to string up a tarp between two trees. A few of the boys naturally stopped to help, but the rest of us rode on.
Not all of the people were Mobeetie's night crowd. A couple of Army officers and their wives were spreading blankets on the ground and breaking out a basket of goodies in preparation for a picnic. Down around the gamblers' tents a pack of wild kids ran screaming and laughing in and out of the melee'.
Colonel Andrews's Mexican boy met us and guided us under the trees to where they'd roped off a little area for us. H.B. tied Little Paint up, using the rope strung around the trees as a picket line. About twenty yards separated us from the colonel's big tent, and we could see his racing string tied side by side in the shade, eating from the feedbags tied to their heads.
The little Mexican untied the Baby filly and led her over to a helper to hold. He wove his way through the crowd of men gathered 'round her and dug out a brush and a rag from a large wooden tack box. He returned and began to work over the horse's coat. The filly seemed to take notice of our horses and raised her head and nickered long and loud. Little Paint twisted and faunched around on his lead and answered her as if it was a challenge.
Folks were naturally curious to see what kind of horse we had brought. They all stopped to gather in small groups to visit. Little Paint was still a touch on the wild side, and he spooked back on the end of his lead rope several times as the crowd pressed close. Billy had Carlito take a position alongside the horse to act as a guard. He was there to ward off the kids who threatened to run under Little Paint's belly, the women who would offer him sweets, and those who just naturally wanted to touch what they had come to see.
I wondered if we shouldn't have kept the horse back away from the crowd, and kept him as quiet and stress free as possible. Billy had considered that earlier, but decided that this might give the animal time to acclimate to things before the race. Besides that, we doubted if we could avoid a crowd around our camp anyway.
Billy soon strode off to find Colonel Andrews and lay out the race course. Andy and most of our crowd had followed H.B. over to look at Baby, and Carlito assured me he had things under control. Our Mexican cook was about half bandit, and he patted the pistol and knife at his belt. I figured Little Paint was safe enough.
It was still a good three hours before the race was to be run, and with time to kill I wandered my way along through the crowd to see who I could see.
Just past the colonel's tent somebody had set up a refreshment stand. A wagon tarp was laid over a rope between two trees, and staked at the ground on either side, forming a tent. A large wagon was parked at the back opening, thus blocking admittance from that side, and the front opening was blocked by a plank laid over a couple of wooden kegs. This makeshift bar lay just far enough back into the tarp roof to allow customers at the bar a narrow strip of shade.
I made my way up to the bar, and it was already doing enough business at that time of the morning that I had to wait for a gap at the plank to appear. Two men and a woman were tending drinks, and they had to hoof it to keep up with the orders. It seemed like there were a lot of gentlemen set on getting the morning off to a good start.
I tossed down a half-dollar whiskey, and then bought a beer, which cost me another fifteen cents. I took my beer and continued to walk down through the camp. Just past the tent bar they had a long mess table set up, and every chair was full. Behind the table they had a barbecue pit and the smell of smoky beef filled the air. I wondered whose beef it was, but it was like an old Texas cowman once told me. The best eating beef always belonged to someone else.
Nursing the lukewarm beer I ambled my way along, greeting many I didn't know, and stopping from time to time to visit with some old acquaintance. I looked back over my shoulder and observed two young boys following in my wake. I stopped and they stopped. They stared at me intently, as if expecting something of me.
“What do you two want?”
The boldest of the lot said, “Your bottle. That barman is giving a penny for every bottle we find for him.”
I stared them down a bit, and one of the boys lowered his head and went to digging at the ground with one bare foot. The bottle was just about empty, and rapidly losing what little cool and refreshing qualities it once had. I turned it up and drained the last of it, and then tossed the bottle over the top of the boys' heads and out into the grass.
They whirled in an instant and dashed for the bottle. I was reminded of stepping out of the door of a house with a plate load of table scraps for the hounds. Both of the boys spied the bottle at the same time, and those two kids went after it root-hog-or-die. They rolled around in the grass, and a punch or two was thrown before the bigger of the boys jumped to his feet and took off in a run with the bottle waving proudly in his grasp. The smaller boy raced at his heels, matching every turn as the other sought to dodge and evade him. They zigzagged away like a pair of mad hornets.
“Boys will be boys,” a deep voice sounded behind me.
I turned around, and who should I see but Long Tom standing there with a smile on his face. He was looking a lot more prosperous than the last time I saw him. A new felt hat, not even yet broken in, sat atop his head. He wore a white shirt tucked into duck pants held up by suspenders, and a pair of tall topped boots with long, flapping mule ear tugs.
“Looks like times are changing,” I said, and offered my hand.
“Slowly, slowly.”
“How's the freighting business?”
“Better than I'd hoped.”
We took us a walk to catch each other up on what had been happening during the past summer. It seemed like Long had latched on to a good deal. He was then running not one wagon, but three. He had his original wagon and three yoke of oxen, and had purchased another large wagon about the same. He had also acquired a smaller wagon with four big mules to pull it. The ox rigs could handle about four thousand pounds of freight apiece, and the mule rig between two and three thousand.
“Sounds like you have been doing real good and real quick.”
“There's a lot of business, and the money's good, but not that good. I've been busy, and a banker up at Caldwell offered to loan me some money to, what he called, ‘expand my operations.' ” Long hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and rocked back on his heels as he was speaking.
“You're going to get rich if you ain't careful.”
Long smiled even bigger and took me by the shoulder to tell me about his business as we walked along. “My freighting business ain't all that I've been expanding.”
There was a cousin of his back in the Chickasaw Nation who, it seems, was equally talented where the making of whiskey was concerned. Long was hauling some government supplies periodically down to Ft. Reno, and as of late he'd been going on down into the Chickasaw Nation to load out corn. The hiding of a few boxes of whiskey in a load of ear corn was a simple matter.
There were a lot of Indians who dearly loved to get hold of a little of Satan's Tonic, and a growing number of cowboys filling the Cherokee Strip and other parts of the Territory who approached the stuff with equal enthusiasm. It seemed that Long had the business acumen, the good sense, and the moral depravity to take advantage of such a ready and lucrative market.
He was picking up most of his freight out of Kansas and covering a big swath of country. His deliveries covered several of the various forts and Indian agencies in the Territory, and many ranches in the Texas Panhandle. The trade in whiskey was strictly prohibited in the Indian Territory, but that made for a good market. There is nothing like a little illegality to create demand.
As I later learned from Long, there were a few rules to operate by when you were peddling whiskey. The first one was to be on the lookout for John Law. The government was hell bent and set on keeping liquor away from the Indians, and probably just as set on collecting taxes on liquor made and sold to its citizens. A man had to keep on the lookout for tribal Light Horse, Federal Deputy Marshals, and even the U.S. Army at times. The only thing that stopped a man from peddling a little whiskey in the Indian Territory was the law, and there were too few of its representatives working a whole lot of country.
Second, a man always collected his money before the goods were handed over, and you never gave more than a sip for a sample, or you would soon have more friends than you had liquor.
Third, and last, you never stayed around too long after selling Indians a bunch of whiskey. Given their warlike nature, and the fact that, to white men, they were considerably unpredictable at best, they were liable to get drunk enough to scalp you and take the rest of your makings.
Some might think that it was prejudicial to suppose that liquor had any worse of an effect on the Indians as a whole than it did on white folks, but it was the truth. I've heard people talk about how we whipped the Indians by killing their buffalo, and the Army burning out their winter camps. To my way of thinking, formed by a life lived in that time and country, we whipped them because we brought three things that the Indians were lacking—smallpox, lawyers, and whiskey.
We continued our rounds while Long questioned me thoroughly about Billy, Andy, and myself. I filled him in as best I could, and he was especially curious when I got to the part about our racehorse.
“Are you boys the ones that are going to run against Colonel Andrews's horse?”
And when I nodded in affirmation he asked, “That little old pinto of Billy's is your racehorse?”
I again confirmed, and he shook his head and whistled in disbelief. “Is he fast, sure enough?”
“You ain't the only one that's come into good fortune.”
“Y'all had better watch your money. Do you know this Colonel Andrews?”
“We've met him.”
“But you don't
know
him.”
“We ain't foolish enough to believe he ain't a professional if that's what you're asking.”
“He's sure enough a professional. You had better be careful not to bet all you've got with that man and expect to win.”
“How is it that you know him?”
“I met him coming up the trail a week ago and sold him some whiskey.”
“And you know all about him now?” Long was trying to rain on our parade, and it was making me a little testy.
“No. I was just starting my story and you interrupted.”
“Go ahead then.”
“I'd already heard about the colonel a long time back. It seems like your bunch is the only ones that don't know about him.” Long flopped down in the grass and picked a stem to play around with in his mouth while he talked. I could tell I was in for a story and sat down with him.
To hear Long tell it, Colonel Andrews was darned near famous for his sporting ways from the Gulf to Denver. He traveled the roads and trails of the West dragging a team of racehorses, fighting roosters, a few pit dogs, and even a foot racer from time to time. He was a high-stakes man and there wasn't anything he wouldn't bet on, and even less that he hadn't won money on.
“All I'm going to say is you boys had better be careful with your money,” Long cautioned.
“You don't seem to have a very high opinion of our good senses, or our judgment, where horses and character are concerned, do you?”
“I've had more practice than you. White folks like him have been skinning me since I was knee high to a mule. When you're black you learn that white people don't make any attempt to cover up the fact that their only aim is to get something out of you, and no more. It's just natural that over the years I've come to know their look.”

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