The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (3 page)

We walked out of the haze of the battle and
settled down to await the coming of the next day.
I didn’t sleep and I don’t think Arm did, either. It
seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been
more than a couple of hours.

We stood and stretched at the very first light.
The corpses were covered with flies—where the
sonsabitches came from, beats me, but there they
were. A half dozen vultures were circling high
above us—as it got lighter they’d come lower.

The attackers’ horses stood in a cluster, trying
to gouge some grazing out of the dull brown buffalo
grass. Armando looked them over and then
unsaddled and unbridled each, dropped the gear
and the ground, and slapped him on the rump.

“Nothin’ there worth havin’,” he said.

I picked up the Sharps from next to one of the
bodies. “This is sure worth havin’, though,” I
said. “Ever fired one?”

“No—an’ I ain’t gonna fire that one. That’s a
dead man’s rifle, Jake. Is evil to take it, to use it.”

“Yer ass. The Sharps is the best rifle in the
world, regardless of who owned it or used it.” I
held the rifle to my shoulder and swept the landscape
with it. It was fairly heavy but easy to
handle, and it’d had good care. I could smell gun
oil on it. I plucked a round from the bandolier
around the dead man’s chest, chambered it, and
took a vulture out of the sky as easy as spitting in
the dirt.

“Shoots good—but ees still a dead man’s rifle.”

“That vulture didn’t seem to notice the difference,”
I said.

Armando grunted. After a moment he said,
“You wan’ to stand ’round here burnin’ daylight
or get ridin’?” In twenty or so minutes we’d filled
the canteens, let the horses drink, and were on
our way. The vultures were lower. Arm tried a
shot with his 30.30 but missed. I blew apart the
bird he’d aimed at with the Sharps, which pissed
him off. He didn’t say anything for quite some
time, which wasn’t unusual behavior for him.

Later in the day, he said, “’Course a rifle don’t
know if it was owned by a dead man. It’s only a
damned gun an’ they don’t know nothing, right?”
He held his hand out to me. I handed the Sharps
to him. He looked it over carefully and then
raised the stock to his shoulder and fired. A rabbit
so far away I couldn’t see anything but a tiny
brown
blur exploded when the thumb-size bullet
hit it, like a fountain of pink and red and gray bits
and pieces.

“Damn,” Arm said. “Ees good gun.” He handed
the rifle back to me.

We got lucky later that day. A slow, warm rain
began and continued through the night and into
the next day. We covered good distance. On the
second day of the rain the temperature had moderated
delightfully. The horses became frisky,
dancing, trying to get under the bit to run. We
held them in, but rode at a slow lope throughout
the balance of the day.

The next day we were back to inferno temperatures
and scalding sun.

“How far you think we come?” Arm asked.

“I dunno, but we did good the last couple
days. I figure we’re a bit better’n halfway to
Hulberton.”

“Shit,” Arm grunted. “I thought more. Theese
long ridin’ is a pain in the ass, no?”

I grinned at him. “Sometimes a cigar an’ a nip
of red-eye helps out,
mi
amigo.”

It did help out. It was hotter’n a wolf bitch in
heat, but we made good distance and even crossed
a large spring-fed puddle that was icy cold and as
sweet as water could ever be. We drank and led
the horses in and out until they’d had enough. We
filled all the canteens and mounted up. It was
coming dusk by then.

“We have more whiskey an’ cigars, no?” Arm
said.

“Sure.”

He looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud
in
sight. “We have good moonlight tonight. What
say we keep on ridin’?”

“Fine idea,” I said. We each lit another cigar,
passed the bottle back and forth, and kept on moving.
We did so well that night we rode through the
next day, using the same booze an’ tobacco system
of travel. About midafternoon we came across a
sort of small oasis, with water, a few desert pine,
and some blessed shade the small trees yielded.
We stripped down the horses, gave them each a
hatful of water, hobbled them, and slept until the
sun was rising the next morning.

We started seeing free-range cattle. These beef
were never handled by man, and, in fact, most of
them had probably never even seen a human.
They were strong, fast, and wild as hawks. “Is
our first good meal at our ranch when we get
there,” Arm announced, watching a longhorn
standing a couple hundred yards off. He was
right. I doubted that any of the free-rangers had
ever seen a branding iron; they were the offspring
of other free-range beef, putting them another
step away from an owner. So, we had as much
right to shoot and butcher one as we did a rabbit.

I don’t know how many days we rode, and I
didn’t much care about that. The thing is, we
were making good progress. Some days were
harder an’ hotter than others, but we kept on rolling.
When we came upon the wide wooden board
nailed to a fence post with hulberton hand-lettered
on it, we felt like we’d arrived at the
promised land.

The sign, like all such signs, was riddled with
pistol bullet holes and shot scars.

“We might just as well do it right,” I said, and
pulled the Sharps out of the sheath that’d once
held my 30.30. That rifle was snugged down over
my bedroll. I put a round into the sign from about
fifty yards out, blowing half of it spinning away,
leaving the sign reading hulb.

We rode into town as the sun was beginning its
downward journey. The tinkling of the honky-tonk
of the piano in a gin mill was the first thing
we heard. Hulberton was much the same as all
the West Texas towns: four saloons, counting the
bar in the restaurant, a church, a rather small
mercantile, a cabinet maker and funeral man, a
doctor’s office, a bank, a whorehouse, and at the
end of the main—and only—street, a stable and
blacksmith operation. There were a few private
homes strewn around the outskirts of the town—
shoddy-looking affairs with chickens, pigs, or
both wandering around them. The usual town
dogs came snarling and snapping at us. Arm
gave his horse all his rein so he could drop his
head—a horse can’t kick out unless he drops his
head far down—and the horse nailed what
looked to be a critter with more than a little timber
wolf blood running through its veins. The
dog sailed maybe ten feet in the air before hitting
hard and rolling along another few feet. He slunk
off into an alley, lips curled back over his fangs,
but it was obvious he was finished for the day.
The others followed into the alley.

The stable looked like a tight operation. The sale
horses were decent, and the corral had two large
troughs, both of which were almost full of water.
The smith was working at his forge and anvil,
turning
shoes from bar stock. Blacksmithing isn’t
a job for a weak man, and this fellow had forearms
as big as hams and arm muscles larger yet.

Arm and I swung down and stood back until
the smith finished the shoe he was working on
and tossed it into a large bucket of water, where it
hissed and sizzled for a moment.

I held out my hand. “I’m Jake,” I said. “This
here’s my pard, Armando—Arm, usually.” The
smith shook with each of us. Grasping his hand
was like squeezing a brick. He was tall—taller
than me and I’m pushing six feet, and much of
his face was hidden by a thick black beard.

“I’m called Tiny,” he said, grinning. “As a kid I
beat the shit out of anyone who called me Tiny,
but they all kept it up—adults, too—an’ I got used
to it. Anyway, my real handle is Forsythe Dragonovich,
so I figure Tiny beats that all to hell.” He
paused. “What can I do for you boys?”

“How about new shoes all the way around on
both of our horses an’ a trim on the packer?
Maybe put some crimped oats in front of them
and kinda look them over—make sure they’re in
good shape. We’ve covered some ground lately.”

Tiny glanced at our horses. “They don’t look
the worse for it,” he said. “I’ll take care of them,
get some oats into them.”

“Ees good,” Arm said. “I’m wonderin’—are
you a man who’d maybe drink some beer?”

The blacksmith’s grin flashed again. “You can
bet your eyes on that, Arm,” he said. “You boys
stayin’ the night?”

“I figured we would—get a decent meal an’
some rest,” I said.

“Good,” Tiny said. “I’ll finish up your horses
an’ be along directly to suck some beer. Go on
over to Donovan’s”—he pointed at a saloon—
“their beer is cold ’nuff to freeze yer nuts off.”

“The food at the hotel any good?” I asked.

“Decent. Beats jerky, anyway, an’ the plates ’re
big. Fair to middlin’ steaks.”

“We’ll give it a try later. Right now we’re gonna
walk on over to Donovan’s an’ drink beer while
we wait on you.”

Cold beer is a real luxury and cost another
nickel a mug over the warm because the saloon
had to cut ice in the winter an’ warehouse it under
sawdust ’til it’s needed. Best nickels I ever
spent, to my way of thinking.

Arm strode directly to the bar, tugging a fistful
of ones and fives out of his pocket as he did so. I
gave him a few steps and moved off to the side a
bit, hands at my sides. They’re still lots of places
in Texas where a man’d rather shoot a Mex than a
rattlesnake.

Arm dropped the cash on the bar. “We weel be
at a table an’ Tiny is joinin’ us in a bit. See, we
wan’ to drink all the cold beer you got. Tell me
when we run outta money. We got more.”

The bartender laughed. “Hell, with Tiny sittin’
in, you might could do that.”

We walked to a back table and sat down. There
were a dozen or so other men in the bar and a
couple of poker games going on. Nobody paid us
any attention after a quick, cursory look. In a couple
of minutes the bartender came over with six mugs
on a tray, set the mugs on the table, said, “Have at
it, boys,” and went back to the bar with his tray.

We had at it.

The beer was teeth-shattering cold and had the
strong, yeasty taste to it that real beer drinkers
seek out but don’t find too often.

We’d been sitting there drinking for ten minutes
or so, yapping about the ranch. For a quick
moment, conversation in the saloon stopped—
not ours, but everyone else’s. I looked up at the
man who’d just pushed through the bat wings
and was walking over toward us. He was tall,
gaunt-looking, and his shirt and pants sagged on
him. His Colt was tied to his leg. He was clean
shaven although his hair reached his shoulders.
He stood at our table.

“My name’s Turner,” he said. “I work for Mr.
Dansworth—he runs this town. I don’t suppose
you boys would care to give me one of those fine
mugs of beer?”

“Help yourself,” I said. “Plenty more where
that came from.”

He did so and took a long, appreciative drink.

“Funny thing,” he said. “Somebody blew our
sign in half earlier. I stopped over to say hello to
Tiny and I saw the stock of a Sharps sticking out
of a saddle sheath in his shop. Strange coincidence,
no?”

“We buy nice new sign,” Arm said. “Any price.
Don’ matter.”

“Oh? That’s purely kind of you. By the way,
you boys have names?”

“I’m Jake—this is Armando. You need last
names?”

“No. But you can tell me what you’re doing in
Hulberton.”

“I just inherited a ranch from a fella named
Hiram Ven Gelpwell,” I said. “I got a document in
my shirt pocket. I’ll reach in and get it if you
want—or you can go after it to make sure I’m not
pulling a Derringer on you.”

“You get it,” Turner said. “If you shot me you’d
never get outta here alive.”

I retrieved the document and handed it to
Turner. He pulled out a chair and sat down to
read it. “One beer makes a man thirsty,” he commented.

“Like my partner said, there’s plenty more
where that came from. Help yourself.”

Turner drained his first mug and picked up a
second and returned to his reading. “Damn,” he
said, “you got six thousand dollars in this deal,
too? Was ol’ man Ven Gelpwell in love with you
or something?”

“I never met him. He was a friend of my mother’s
a long time ago.”

“Well,” Turner said, “all this legal horseshit is
in order, far’s I can tell. What’re you gonna do
with the place?”

I launched into my dissertation on how we were
going to breed, raise, and train the best working
horses in the West.

“You been out to look things over yet?”

“Nope. We figured we’d have a decent meal
and a decent sleep ’fore we rode out to it.”

“You won’t get a whole lot of hay or grain out
of it—it’s awfully rocky and the good soil is shallow.
You might better sharecrop it out an’ take
your cut in hay an’ oats. I know a couple families
who’d be right interested.”

“Fine. I’d like to talk with them.”

Turner nodded. “I’ll send them on out in a day
or so.” He took a long drink. “You got a good
number of free-range beef out there—you ain’t
gonna starve. But you watch yourself and your
horse around them. Those goddamn longhorns
would just as soon rip a horse’s gut as he would
graze sweet grass. I was you, I’d pick one off from
a good distance off with that Sharps an’ then
drag him in to butcher.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

Turner set down his empty mug and stood.
“One more thing. Like I said, Mr. Dansworth
runs Hulberton. He’s got me an’ a good number
of others to help him out. He’s a horseman—you
might both be lookin’ for the same thing.”

“Lotsa horses aroun’,” I said. “Enough for
everybody.”

“Sure,” Turner said. “Long as Mr. Dansworth
gets the best there won’t be no trouble. But don’t
ever mess with him. Hear? You’ll end up dead,
you do.”