Texas Drive (7 page)

Johnny nodded.

“What’ve you got there, three, four thousand head?”

“More like twenty-seven hundred, why?”

Instead of answering the question, he turned to his cronies. “Man wants to know why?” he said.

The mounted men laughed, one even slapping his thighs in exaggerated enjoyment The breeze quickened, and Johnny got a whiff of the wolf pack on the hill. He was ripe himself, but this went beyond the pale.

The big man stroked the ends, of a full, ginger-colored beard, then scratched his jaw. “Seems like you need a little education. Texan, ain’t you?”

Johnny nodded.

“Thought so. Cain’t miss that drawl. I knew a few Texans my own self, once.”

“Once?”

“Dead now. All of ‘em. Secesh bastards, every last one. Kilt a few myself.”

“The war’s over.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Look, if you just want to chew the fat, I got work to do.”

“Chewin’ the fat? Is that what I’m doin’?”

“Seems like.”

“Maybe so, maybe it seems like it to you. But I got a different picture, see. I’m a tax collector, is what I am.”

“Then don’t let me keep you from your work.” Johnny turned and started down the hill. He heard the spurs jingle and turned as the big man’s hand landed on his arm. “Don’t do that, mister.”

“Don’t you walk away from me, cowboy. Just don’t, you hear me?”

“What I hear is a lot of hot air.”

“You think it won’t burn you, cowboy? That what you think?”

Johnny turned again. As he started down the hill, he spotted Rafe and two others sprinting toward him, carbines in their hands. Behind him, he heard several rifles cocked, and he turned back to the big man. At the same time, he waved Rafe off. If anything got started now, they wouldn’t stand a chance. They were outgunned, and the big man held the high ground.

“What do you want from me, mister? I’m just trying to make a living, that’s all.”

“I already told you, I’m a tax collector.”

“Tax collector? What kind of tax? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then you better listen real good, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this but one time.”

“Go ahead.” Johnny made no attempt to conceal his exasperation. It seemed to amuse the big man. He smiled broadly, revealing an uneven set of teeth the color of dead grass.

“You said you got twenty-seven hundred beeves, that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right, give or take.”

“Now, there you go. You got to give a little. I make it three thousand head, on the nose.”

“What’s the point, dammit?”

“I’m comin’ to that. Just shut up and listen. Cattle are going for forty to fifty dollars a head over in Abilene. Seems like you’re about to come into some pretty fat wallets, you and your hands.”

“So?”

“If you get to Abilene. And if you still got them beeves when you get there. See what I mean?”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t really give a shit. Now, if you can’t get to the point, I guess I’m gonna have to be rude and walk away. And this time, you put your hand on me, I’ll rip it off at the goddamned elbow. You see what I mean?”

“So, a regular Texas wildman, are you? You gonna give me some shit about how you eat Comanches for breakfast and wash them down with half the Pecos River? ‘Cause I got no patience for that kind of garbage.”

“You do me a disservice, sir.” Johnny grinned.

“That’s more like it.”

“Definitely. Because I wouldn’t even give you garbage.”

The smile on the big man’s face vanished. His features seemed to contract and stiffen, like plaster shrinking as it hardens. When he opened his mouth again, there was a razor edge to his voice. “Now you listen to me, cowflop. You want to take them cows any farther, you got to pay. And that’s a fact.”

“Pay?”

“You heard me. Four dollars a head. At three thousand head”—he paused for a brief flicker of his former smile—“I make that twelve thousand dollars, U.S.A. money. Give or take.”

“Are you crazy? Even if I was willing to pay, I don’t have that kind of money. Twelve thousand dollars?”

“On the button, cowboy.”

“No, sir, that just ain’t in the cards.”

“How much you got, then?” The big man seemed suddenly open to bargaining. But Johnny was not in the mood.

“For you, nothing.”

“We can always take us some beeves, instead. Hell, you give me three hundred head, I can unload them in Abilene myself. At forty, it comes to the same thing.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look, are you?” Johnny asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You can do arithmetic just fine. Now try and understand some plain, old Texas English. No way, no time, am I giving you one dime. Nothing, you understand. No cattle, no money, nothing. And that’s the last time I’m going to tell you. Now get out of my way.”

This time Johnny didn’t turn back. He heard the jingle of spurs, but he continued on down the slope. This time, Rafe and the other hands waited, their carbines pointed vaguely in the direction of the big man, who stood there with his mouth open, as if he didn’t believe what had just happened.

As Johnny approached the bottom of the hill, Rafe jumped forward to meet him. “What in hell was all that about? What’d he want?”

“Said we got to pay him to bring the cattle through.”

“
Pay
him?”

“Four dollars a head.”

“What the hell for?”

“Said it was a tax. Permission to bring the herd through.”

“Who is he?”

“Didn’t say.”

The three farmers scrambled down the hill to join the two men. Rafe glared at them, but they ignored him. One of the men grabbed Johnny’s arm. “I was you, mister, I’d pay him.”

Johnny whirled on them. “That part of your
plan, boys? A way to put pressure on us, that what that was?”

The farmer who had spoken shook his head. “No, sir. He ain’t one of us. Man doesn’t know how to grow nothing. To him, crops are for burning. We have our own share of trouble with him.”

“Then who in hell is he?”

“That was Ralph Conlee.”

Johnny looked blank.

“Jayhawkers, mister, they was Jayhawkers. You rebels had Quantrill; Kansas had Jayhawkers. Still does.”

“What’s a Jayhawker?”

“A pirate in uniform, I guess. They started out during the war as irregular cavalry. Now, who knows what they are. All I can tell you is any one of them would as soon kill you as look at you. They take what they want. You’d best get your herd moving, better yet, give him what he wants, because he’ll follow you until he gets it anyway, and he’s not likely to settle now. You showed him up in front of that pack of wolves. He’s sure not gonna forget it.”

“What about the sheriff? He’s still coming, isn’t he?”

TED SAT ON
the ridge, looking down at the Wilkins spread. In first light, the place looked peaceful, almost deserted. Wilkins lived alone, and it was unusual for him to be asleep when the sun had been up for more than an hour. Nudging his horse down the steep grade, he angled across the slope. He froze for an instant when a glint of orange slashed past him. The burst of light momentarily blinded him, and he twisted away from it.

Looking through his fingers, he realized it was just a window, catching a few rays of sunlight. As he reached the flat, he kicked the pony once, then clucked to him. The horse broke into a trot, and he covered the last two hundred yards in short order. At the front of the house, he dropped to the ground, wondering where Wilkins was. It wasn’t like the big man to ignore visitors. He was supposed
to have ears like a rabbit, and stories about his hearing were legendary. Most of them were almost certainly exaggerated if not outright false, but this still was odd.

Ted stepped onto the porch and rapped on the screen. He heard the echo of his knuckles, but nothing moved inside. He rapped again and turned to look across the yard, toward the barn and the corral. He wasn’t even sure why he was here, but it was something he felt he had to do.

“Jack?” His voice seemed to bounce around the yard, then stop dead. Not even an echo from the barn. He rapped a third time, then pulled the screen open. He tried the door, and it swung open easily with a press of his fingers.

“Jack? You in there?”

Wilkins still didn’t answer. Ted felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, a sensation he hadn’t had in three years, not since he’d left the front as the war was winding down. Inside, everything looked normal. He went to the bedroom and stood in the doorway.

The door was half open, and Ted could see the lower half of the bed, but it was empty and, from the looks of it, unslept in. Wilkins never took pains with the ordinary domestic details, so there was no way to be sure.

The bedroom was empty. Ted shook his head and walked back to the front room, which tripled as kitchen, dining room, and living room. Wilkins
had planned to add another room, but when his wife, Mabel, caught typhoid, he hadn’t bothered. When Mabel died, there was no reason. Jack’s Winchester was missing from over the fireplace, but it was the only thing out of the ordinary.

Ted stepped off the porch and crossed to the barn. The barn door was open, and he walked through cautiously, convinced that something was seriously wrong. Jerking his Colt free, he ducked to the left, just inside the dark barn.

“Jack, you in there? Jack Wilkins?”

His own voice came back at him, and something skittered across the loft, but no one answered him. Rather than search the barn on his own, he thought about riding for help, then pushed the idea aside. If Wilkins needed that much help, it was already too late for him.

He backed out of the barn and walked around to the rear. On the way past the corral, he noticed rails were down on the back side. On the damp ground, he spotted half a dozen moccasin prints. They could have been from the day before, but he didn’t think so. A little water still sat in the center of each depression. If the prints were a day old, there would have been no such puddles.

Ted stared off through the stand of cottonwoods behind the barn. Then, for some reason he didn’t understand, he raced toward the trees, as if something were drawing him there against his will. The hair on his neck was standing out straight, now.

“Jack?”

Again, he got no answer. Pushing into the sparse undergrowth, he saw a smear of blood on some leaves. There was no mistaking it. It was fresh and glistened in the sun as the leaves rippled in the breeze. On the far side of the brush, he found Jack’s Winchester.

He picked it up and sniffed the muzzle. The sharp bite of gunsmoke told him the carbine had been fired recently. So there was hope the blood wasn’t Jack’s. Hope … but not conviction.

Ted started out into the saw grass, where he saw another smear of blood. A few yards ahead, he saw flies swarming around the tips of the grass blades. He sprinted for the spot, found even more blood, and a place where the grass had been pressed flat, probably by a human body. The long oval depression was smeared with fresh blood, and the flies were already busy.

He moved slowly now, brushing the grass away with his forearm. The grass was bent in a long, narrow channel winding off toward the creek bed another hundred yards away. An occasional smear of blood glittered on the grass. So far, there was no sign of Jack or anyone else. No sign, that is, except for the blood. It could even belong to a horse, but he didn’t think so.

Ted straightened, cocking his ears toward the gentle slope across the creek. He might have heard something, but wasn’t sure. He knew he didn’t
want to go any farther on foot. If someone was out there, he couldn’t risk being run down by a mounted man, whether white or Indian. He sprinted back to the house, Jack’s Winchester cradled in his arms.

Dashing into the house, he grabbed a box of shells for the carbine from the ledge over the fireplace, then ran back out to his pony. He sprang into the saddle and urged the horse around the barn. He picked up the trail almost where he’d left off, and slowed the horse to a walk. Keeping one eye on the ground ahead and one on the channel through the rough grass, he followed the pattern of bloodstains with mounting concern.

Down by the creek, he stopped and dismounted. The marshy edge of the creek was covered with prints, all fresh. Hoofprints and the depressions of moccasined feet intermingled. There was no doubt now that Jack Wilkins had had a second visit from the Comanches. The only question was, where was Jack?

Little swirls of mud eddied in the water, silt curling just above the creek bed, clouds of light brown in the clear water. He looked upstream, then remounted. The pony didn’t want to go, and he squeezed it with his knees until it stepped into the tepid water.

Fifteen yards later, he was sorry.

Jack Wilkins lay on the creek bank, his hands bobbing in the sluggish current. His throat had
been cut, and his scalp was gone. For good measure, a lance had been driven through his belly, pinning the body to the ground. Ted turned away, his stomach churning, a bitter fluid rising from his gut and filling his mouth with the taste of metal.

Torn between the desire to run away, and the need to do something about the horrible vision oozing the last of its blood into the sand, he kneed the pony ahead a few paces. The horse tossed its head and shied away from the body. Ted didn’t look, couldn’t look, and swallowed hard.

He took a deep breath, then jerked his canteen from the pommel and took a long pull on the warm water. He swirled it around, trying to wash away the taste of his own bile, and spat into the creek. He shuddered once, then took a second long swallow from the canteen. It changed nothing.

Pulling on the reins, he pushed the pony up onto the far bank. Ted followed the course of the stream, leaning far over to look for some sign that the Comanches had left the water. It was not uncommon for someone trying to elude a tracker to use a streambed to double back, but the little mud eddies seemed strong enough a lead to pursue them upstream.

He didn’t doubt they were paying the white man, any white man, back for their recent losses at the hands of the Cotton men. In one sense, he was directly responsible for the bloody corpse lying back there. And part of him wanted revenge. He
could hear Jacob’s voice as if the old man were riding at his side, warning him that revenge was not the way, but he wanted it anyway. Jacob wasn’t there, after all. And besides, what could Jacob know about the guilt he felt?