Range War (9781101559215) (18 page)

“I wish you hadn't of come,” Billy-Bob said.

“Mr. Trask is powerful mad at you,” Hank remarked.

“I have to see him,” Fargo said. “It's important.”

“Oh, we'll take you to him, all right,” Griff Wexler said. “But you're goin' to wish we hadn't.”

Ben Trask wasn't one of those ranchers who let their hands do all the work. He was riding flank.

As Fargo was escorted around the herd, other cowboys joined them, so that by the time they reached Trask, he was surrounded by eleven punchers.

Trask leaned on his saddle horn and waited. His expression didn't give anything away. But the first words out of his mouth did. “I should thank you, scout. You've spared me the trouble of huntin' you down.”

“If it's about Shorty—” Fargo started to say.

“I warned you,” Trask said. “No one hurts my men except they answer to me. Hurt one, and you get hurt. Kill one, and you're as good as dead.”

“Damn it, Trask. Listen.”

“I'm through listenin' to you, mister. You and your talk about bein' reasonable, about lettin' those mutton lovers share the valley with us. And then you go and shoot one of my hands.”

“He was trying to shoot me.”

“So Billy-Bob and Hank told me. But Shorty was under orders not to cause trouble and that boy always did exactly what I told him. No, you shot him to protect the worst of the sheepmen, that Carlos.”

Fargo was losing his patience and his temper. “I shot Carlos, too.”

“What?”

“He killed Porfiro and I killed him and now the sheepherders don't want anything to do with me.”

“Carlos is dead?” Billy-Bob said, and laughed. “I reckon it couldn't happen to a nicer feller.”

“Amen to that,” Hank said. “If I wasn't so peaceable by nature, I'd have shot him my own self.”

Trask hadn't taken his eyes off Fargo. “It doesn't change anythin'. You still have to answer for Shorty.”

“And you have to answer for Antelope Springs.”

Ben Trask stiffened. So did Griff Wexler and several of his punchers. They all looked at one another.

“What's Antelope Springs, boss?” Billy-Bob asked.

“It was before you hired on,” Trask said gruffly. Abruptly reining away, he snapped over his shoulder, “Fargo, you come with me. We need to talk.”

“I should go too,” Griff said.

“No. Keep drivin' the herd. We're not stoppin' until this whole valley is our graze.”

Fargo followed, his hand on his Colt. If the rancher went for his revolver, there'd be another body to bury.

Trask rode to the tree line, swung around so his back was to the forest, and drew rein. Taking a crumpled bandanna from a pocket, he moped at the sweat on his face and said thickly, “All right. How in hell do you know about Antelope Springs? More to the point,
what
do you know?”

“I know you didn't learn your lesson,” Fargo said. “You're doing the same thing here you did there.”

“So? Antelope Valley has been part of the Bar T for years now.”

“And has come back to bite you on the ass,” Fargo said. “Igmar Rolf is still alive.”

The rancher's amazement was almost comical. “That's impossible. We shot him to pieces.”

“Then you admit it? You killed his wife and then you gunned the old man down.”

“Old man, hell!” Trask practically roared. “He might look old but he's as spry as you or me. And the most stubborn coot who ever drew breath.” Trask swore luridly. “Is that what he told you? That I was to blame?”

“You had your men throw torches on their cabin.”

“To drive him and his wife out. But the son of a bitch wouldn't come. I could hear his wife yellin' at him to throw down his rifle and step out with his hands in the air, like I told him to do, but he refused. He waited until the cabin was fallin' in on itself, and then he came out with his rifle blazin'. We had to shoot to defend ourselves.”

“The same with me and Shorty.”

If Trask heard him, he didn't give any sign. He had gone on. “I'll bet that bastard didn't tell you all of it. How I offered him twice what his homestead was worth but he wouldn't take it.”

“A man has a right to live where he wants.”

“Not when he's killin' and eatin' my beeves, he doesn't. He was too lazy to go off into the mountains after game and took to eatin' my cows. Back then my range was near the valley he lived in but I didn't need it and left him be. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you how my punchers kept findin' slaughtered cows? I had a suspicion it was him so to stop the killin' I offered to buy him out and he told me to go to hell.”

“So you decided to drive him out and his wife died.”

“As God is my witness,” Trask said solemnly, “I never meant for her to come to harm.”

Fargo believed him.

“Now you say he's back?”

“And he has two pets,” Fargo revealed. “Part wolf, part dog, and all mean. It's them we've been hearing at night.”

“Hold on, now,” Trask said. “If Rolf is after me, why have his pets been killin' the sheepherders and their sheep?”

“He can't control them as much as he'd like to.”

“Oh hell. That sounds like somethin' that addlepated old bastard would do.”

“It's what I came to tell you,” Fargo said, “and to ask you one last time to let the sheepherders alone.”

“I can't. The Bar T has grown so much, I need this graze. I'm sorry, but there's nothin' you can do.”

“Yes,” Fargo said, and loosened the Colt in its holster, “there is.”

Trask's eyes became twin points of flint. “Are you threat-enin' me? Because if you are, you'll find that I don't kowtow to anyone. I'm not scared of you and I'm not scared of that old buzzard, either.”

Fargo glimpsed movement in the woods over Trask's shoulder.

A buckskin-clad figure materialized with the Hawken to his shoulder. Before he could shout a warning, the Hawken belched lead and smoke.

Ben Trask's face burst in a gout of flesh, bone and blood.

Fargo started to draw but as he was clearing leather a piece of flesh struck him on the right cheek near his eye. In reflex he recoiled and grabbed at it, and Igmar Rolf melted into the vegetation.

Trask's heavy body keeled from the saddle and hit the ground with a thud.

Fargo went to rein around Trask's horse and go after the mountain man. He heard shouts from the cowboys and then he was in the forest. To the north came the crash of brush to the passage of a large animal. He caught sight of Rolf on a mule, flying at a gallop, and gave chase.

With all the trees and thickets and boulders, Fargo couldn't gain. He became aware of streaks of gray-brown on either side of the mule: Goliath and Esther, the wolf dogs.

He wondered why Rolf was fleeing north instead of east. For half a mile the mule proved remarkably fleet. Unexpectedly, Rolf reined to the west, toward the valley floor—and the herd.

Fargo angled to cut the mountain man off but he was too far behind. By the time the Ovaro pounded into the open, Rolf and the wolf dogs had reached the cattle.

Punchers were farther back and up ahead but none were close enough to stop him.

Fearsome brays pierced the air. Goliath and Esther sprang in among the cows, biting and clawing and wreaking havoc.

Igmar Rolf whooped and waved his Hawken.

Fargo raised his Colt to shoot. The mountain man's intent was obvious, and he had to stop him. But the harm had been done. The savage howls of the wolf dogs, the mooing and bleats of stricken cows, the whooping and the hollering and the commotion, sent a wave of fear through the herd. As if possessed of one mind, they broke into motion.

“Stampede!” a cowboy hollered. “My God, the critters are stampedin'!”

Fargo had witnessed stampedes before. Docile herds were turned into raging rivers of destruction, their hammering hooves leveling everything in their path.

“Stop them!” a puncher screamed.

“Turn the leaders!” another cried.

It was too late for that. The thousands of head were fleeing pell-mell up the valley.

Fargo was fortunate that he was twenty yards from them when they broke. Or so he thought until he glanced to the south and discovered that the tail of the herd was stampeding, too, and sweeping wide as they came. A spreading line of heads and horns was coming straight at him.

Hauling on the reins, Fargo made for the timber. A cowboy south of him was trying to do the same but the leading wave of beeves slammed into him and his horse like a storm-tossed breaker on the Pacific shore. Fargo would never forget the squeal of the puncher's horse and the man's death wail.

The din assaulted Fargo's ears. He rode for his life, the ground under the stallion quaking. He still had the Colt in his hand; he could shoot one or two but what good would that do? He jabbed his spurs and prayed.

Dust filled his nose and he tasted it on his tongue. Somewhere a man shrieked. He hoped it was Igmar Rolf, that the mountain man had been killed by his own hate.

The living wall of death was almost on him. Another jab of his spurs, and the stallion plowed into the forest heedless of the limbs that scratched and tore.

Behind Fargo a raging phalanx of cows thundered past. He stopped and turned in the saddle and watched the brutes streaming up the valley. They would run for miles, maybe clear to the north end.

The thought jarred him.

“God, no.”

Fargo reined north and came to a gallop. He stayed in the trees. He had no choice. The valley floor was covered with cows. There was no way he could get ahead of the herd and try to turn them.

His horsemanship was put to the test. Constantly reining right and left to avoid oaks and pines and boulders, he paralleled the herd. They passed the midway point and thundered around a bend. Terror-struck sheep fled.

The sheepherders would hear the stampede, Fargo told himself, and head for the high timber. If not—he refused to think about that.

From the front of the herd came shots, a cowboy making a desperate bid to stop the dreadnought of hooves and horns, Fargo reckoned. He wasn't surprised that it didn't work. Nothing would stop these cows short of exhaustion.

Since he couldn't stop them it made no sense to ride the Ovaro into the ground. And he had to see for himself if his worst fear came true.

Fargo angled up the mountain. He had to climb a quarter of a mile before he could see the wagons in the far distance. He drew rein, and swore.

The campfires still burned, and figures were moving about.

Half a mile or more separated the onrushing herd from the camp. There was plenty of time yet for the sheepherders to flee. He could just make out the horse string and saw two or three people running to mount. The rest formed at the south end of the camp and stood there.

“What the hell are you doing?” Fargo said out loud. The glint of sunlight on metal gave him the answer.

Men with guns were going to try to turn the cows. They moved in front of the rest and formed a skirmish line.

“Damn it to hell, you fools,” Fargo railed at the wind. There weren't enough of them. But they didn't know that. They were used to dealing with sheep and a sheep stampede was nothing like a cow stampede. It was akin to comparing a flowing stream after a gentle summer rain and the same stream in raging flood. “Get out of there.”

The herd had reduced the gap by a quarter mile when several of the wagons lurched into motion, heading for the woodland that rose to the north. But they moved so slowly, they were turtles on wheels.

Fargo imagined Delicia on one of the wagons. He clenched his fists so hard, his nails dug into his palms.

The cattle were running flat-out. Nothing could stop them; nothing could stem the inevitable.

A lot of people were about to die.

The line of men with rifles and revolvers moved farther from the wagon, no doubt thinking that they should turn the herd a safe distance from their loved ones.

The flowing legion of hooves and horns was almost on them when the sheepherders fired a volley. From Fargo's vantage, it appeared that they shot in the air. It had no effect. The cattle swept down on them and Fargo heard the crack of several more shots. He heard faint screams, too, as the men went down under the crushing weight and failing hooves.

Until the last instant Fargo hoped against hope that the cows would go around the wagons. They didn't. They engulfed them. Wagons buckled or were smashed onto their sides.

Stick figures tried to run but they were much too slow. In a twinkling the bovine tide washed over them. Screams rose.

Thick smoke coiled from the trampled fires.

Fargo could only imagine the bedlam, and the blood. He saw one of the fleeing wagons veer sharply toward the woods in a bid to escape destruction only to be overtaken. The lead cows parted to go around on either side but the press of numbers forced those behind them to crash into the wagon. A wheel came off and the wagon canted. Faint above the rumble rose a shriek of terror. With a tremendous splintering of wood, the wagon broke apart.

The cattle reached the forest at the valley's end and in a massive sweep of motion, they flowed to the west along the forest's edge and on toward the south again. They only went a short way when they started to slow, their fear and panic subsiding at long last.

Fargo had seen enough. Descending to the valley floor, he used his spurs. He hadn't gone more than a few hundred yards when he came on a puncher who had been caught in the stampede—or what was left of him. The puncher's clothes were ripped and shredded; the man in the clothes was a scarlet sack of bones and ruptured skin.