Panhandle (7 page)
Authors: Brett Cogburn
The other hand besides Billy and I was Dale Martin, a sandy-headed young man with a quick wit. He was a good hand and would put in a day's work here and there, but seemed a bit shiftless. He had a habit of disappearing from time to time, and despite his popularity among the hands I couldn't find it in me to like him. Card playing was rampant at the wagons at night, and he always claimed, after his absences, to have found a game and just stayed on to work with that crew the next day. Hell's Bells Gruber didn't seem to mind; he didn't seem to mind anything.
The rough breaks and canyons of that country had slowed the winter's drift, but we still had a lot of cattle wearing brands from far-off places. All cattle not belonging to the range that we were on were placed into the cut herd. The cut herd was driven along with us as the roundup moved, with individual owners' cattle to be relocated back to their ranches when and where it pleased them. The main herd, or herds belonging to the range we were on, was left behind when we moved to a new piece of country.
The country south of the Salt Fork and along the Pease and Tongue rivers was filling up fast. The Matadors and the ShoeBars held most of the range we were on, but there were several other smaller operators with crews working.
We worked our way east, and then north through the Diamond Tail range. As we left the home ranges of certain outfits, their main crews fell out to work their own country and prepare for market drives. However, many of them left a man or two to stay on and follow the general roundup and represent their brands. Our wagon became sort of a pool outfit, and camp continued to grow. We were far off from our home outfits, away from oversight, and we tended to have the rowdiest camp going. We did our work, but it was often after a long night of merrymaking.
One day, after one of the roundup bosses had “told us off,” or gave us our working orders to gather a piece of country, Billy and I were working parallel to each other. It was broken country, and we had to ride closer to each other in order not to overlook any stock. We both topped out on opposite sides of a steep, narrow little canyon at the same time. Billy waved at me and continued along the far side of the canyon rim.
As I ambled along watching the canyon floor below me, I spotted a small pen of cattle in a little cedar thicket at the head of the canyon. From above I could just make them out through the trees. I looked across the canyon for Billy. He was passing right on above without seeming to notice the cattle.
Whistling to get his attention, I motioned at the cattle below us. Billy studied it a minute, and then began looking for a way down. I found a cattle trail, washed out and running to the canyon floor. I put my horse to it, and hit the bottom in a stir of dust.
I beat Billy down, and made my way up into the thicket. Sure enough, somebody had built a brush fence across the canyon, the sides and back being so sheer as to form a natural fence. There was a good trickle of water running through the pen from somewhere above.
The cattle penned were all two- and three-year-old steers. There must have been about thirty of them lying in the shade of the trees. At my approach they all rose to their feet and fled toward the head of the canyon. I recognized several of the brands, and in fact, the majority of them wore our own Lazy F or Hat brand burned into their hides.
I rode over to the improvised gate and studied the ground. It was tore up with horse and cattle tracks, all coming from down the canyon to where it emptied into a bigger one about a half a mile away.
“What have you got, Nate?”
“Somebody's penning steers, and I'd swear I recognize a couple of them from the cut herd.” I pointed out a white steer with a crazy patch over one eye.
Billy studied the setup a moment. He took the time to roll himself a cigarette, and only when he had it lit did he reply. “Looks like some of the boys are making up a little herd.”
He eyed me carefully, as if measuring what my response would be. There were hands who thought it no big deal if someone drove off a few head, but I wasn't one of them. I guess a lot of them felt that with so many big outfits forming up, that it didn't hurt to cause the rich a little loss. I figured stealing was stealing.
For the past year, most of the big ranchers in the Panhandle had been squawking about an increase in rustling, and they soon had old Cap Arrington poking his nose over the lip of every gully in the country looking for someone to hang. There were all kinds of stories about organized rustlers stealing cattle and driving them off to New Mexico, or Colorado. Folks loved to use the word “ring” along about then. Anything shady or illegal that was supposed to be going on, but couldn't be proved, was said to be done by some shadowy, mysterious “ring.”
The newpapers could talk all they wanted about a “rustlers' ring,” but from what I saw on the range, cattle theft was overblown. Granted, Billy the Kid and some of his like ran off some stock, but a lot of the rustling was done by cowboys here and there looking for a little spending money. The large losses of cattle reported were often the result of piss-poor management, or inaccurate counts to begin with.
“Help me tear down this fence.” I started to do just what I said. Billy held up a hand to stop me.
“Hold on there. Let's think this out.”
“There ain't anything to think out.”
“You've got to live in this country. Think about that.” He drew deep on his cigarette.
“You ain't in on this, are you?”
“Hell, no. I've never rustled cattle,” Billy said testily.
“Well, what's holding you up? You ain't one to scare easily.”
“I don't care to make this my business. You butt your nose into something like this and you won't ever ride easy without worrying about some jasper taking a potshot at you when you least expect it.”
Billy made sense, but he was wrong. I couldn't figure him. He was no saint, but everything he ever did since I had known him was only in the spirit of a little devilment. He was a six-shooter man, and not a cheap thief.
“What's gotten into you?” I asked.
“I don't recall you complaining when we ran off those Cheyenne ponies.”
“Stealing from Indians is different. They steal enough stock that you can't tell who their horses really belong to.”
“So stealing from a savage or a thief doesn't count as stealing?”
“We're taking wages to do a job, and I've got enough pride to ride for the brand. You do too, or you used to.”
Billy turned his horse away from me, twisting in the saddle to keep from looking at me. “I've had my ear to the ground, and the rumor is that a bunch of foreigners are buying our outfit at book count. Further rumor has it that, as usual, the book count is a whole lot bigger than the actual range count would be.”
“So while the bigwigs are getting ready to shyster some foreigners, some of the boys figure to help themselves a little?”
“Looks like it.”
“And we should just mind our own business?”
“It's the best way.”
I studied him a long minute, and then cussed a blue streak. It was far from the best way, but I agreed. We rode up out of the canyon together, and I felt like a cow thief.
“We're going to have to live with this.”
“We've all got something to live with, Nate.”
We threw our gather on a big plain that evening. I unsaddled my horse, and turned him loose to saddle another. I had first guard that evening and had to hustle to get something to eat and my bedroll laid out. There were enough hands that we didn't have to stand guard every night like you did on a drive, and Billy wasn't on duty that night. He hadn't come in yet when I sat down to eat.
No sooner than I started to wolf down my food, Andy flopped down beside me. He precariously balanced a full plate of beans on his knees. Andy had been day-herding the cuts, and I hadn't seen much of him since we had finished the last work and moved to the present location.
“That Carlito's some cook,” Andy managed to blurt out between mouthfuls.
I had to admit that any man that could keep you from growing tired of eating beans seven days a week surely possessed a high level of culinary skill. There were good cow camp cooks and bad ones, but even the bad food didn't seem so bad when you had spent a day gathering cattle.
“You have a rough one?” I asked.
“Naaah. That black bucked me off again this morning, but I rode him the second time around.”
“You picked him.”
“He'll be all right.” Despite what he said, that horse would be the same the day he died, and for that matter, so would Andy.
“A new outfit came in today, and some of them gave us relief on the day herd.” He paused between mouthfuls. “We had a pretty good poker game under the wagon sheet.”
“Sounds like you had it rough.”
“We had it good until y'all started coming in with your gathers, and we had to quit before H.B. or one of the other big chiefs caught us.”
I mumbled something in reply, and got up to take my plate to the wash barrel. Andy followed. He was still following me as I went for my bedroll. One of the other outfits in our camp had brought out a hooligan wagon to carry along our beds, or any other miscellaneous items that wouldn't fit in the chuckwagon.
The cook or his helper had unloaded our bedrolls and piled them. While Andy buzzed around me telling of his day's adventure, I searched out my roll. Andy didn't like my disinterest in his conversation, but my attention was on the two men standing down at the end of the hooligan wagon.
It was Dale Martin, and one of the ShoeBar hands. They were in deep conversation, at first seemingly unaware that we were there. However, I soon noticed that they kept glancing our way. They didn't say anything, but something in their manner made me uneasy. I caught them looking our way again, and I muttered some greeting. Both men nodded their heads, but didn't seem as friendly as they should have been.
“You find much down your way?” Martin was a quirt man, and he restlessly slapped the braided leather against his leg.
It seemed like he was asking me more than how my gather had been. “We pushed a few head out of those brakes.”
He passed a quick glance to the freckle-faced Shoebar hand beside him before he spoke again. “There's some rough country north and west. It's easy to miss stock if you ain't looking careful.”
I waited until he was looking me in the eye. “I rode real careful, but I'm sure I could have gathered it a little cleaner.”
Martin slapped his leg again with that quirt and a little smirk was at the corner of his mouth. “A man's bound to pass by a few head no matter how hard he works, but a few head here and there ain't going to break any of these outfits.”
“I don't miss much.”
He shoved his Stetson back on his head with his thumb to reveal a curly little point of hair hanging down on his forehead that reminded me of a pig's tail. “No, I don't reckon you do.”
Before he could slap that quirt on his leg again I stepped past him close enough that my bedroll brushed against him and forced him to step to the side. I walked away more than a little on the prod. I wasn't fool enough to think that encounter was anything more than what it was, but I considered that maybe I wasn't being fair. Finding those penned cattle had me edgy, and something about that Dale Martin just rubbed me the wrong way, cow thief or not.
“That Dale is about the best damned card player I ever saw,” Andy said at my shoulder.
“I'd keep an eye on the deck.”
“What's that?”
“Nothing.” I tried not to trip on anything in the dark while I hunted for a spot to bed down.
Andy was still rattling on about his day as I found a likely place to roll out my soogan. We were about ten yards out from the fire, and I could see across it to the hooligan wagon. Dale and his buddy were gone.
“You seen Billy?” Andy asked.
“Not for a while.”
“I thought I saw him a bit ago. He and Dale were talking,” Andy added.
“Oh yeah?”
Andy had had enough of my poor company, and he headed off to find someone to jaw at. “See you later, Tennessee.”
“Dammit, Andy! Are you the one who spread that around?”
He didn't answer me. He just kept walking off.
To my own annoyance, it seemed that my nickname had stuck, and I would forever be known by it. From the first day of roundup, strangers came up and called me Tennessee. My mama might as well have named me that, because most of the men on roundup knew me by no other name.
The boys could come up with some of the most original nicknames. The bad thing was, once they stuck them on you it was next to impossible to get rid of them. And often times they might be of a nature that reminds everyone of something you would rather they forgot. Just ask Dinky Dick Brown, or Smelly Smith.
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