the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) (3 page)

She herded them down to the horse corral in their long Johns, where she picked out two rawboned nags with every bone showing. "How much for them?"

"Ma'am," the dealer shook his head, "I'd not lie to a lady. Those horses got no teeth to speak of, an' both of them are ready for the bone yard."

"I'll give you ten dollars apiece for them, just as they stand."

"Taken," he said quickly, "but I warned you, ma'am."

"You surely did," Ma agreed. Then she turned to the cow thieves, shivering in the chill air. "You boys git up on those horses .. .git !"

They caught mane-holts and climbed aboard. The backbones on those old crow-baits stood up like the tops of a rail fence.

She escorted them out of town to the edge of the Red Desert. We rode a mite further and then she pulled up. "You boys steal other folks' cows, but we ain't a going to hang you ... not this time. What we're goin' to do is give you a runnin' start.

"Now my boys an' me, we got rifles. We ain't goin' to start shootin' until you're three hundred yards off. So my advice is to dust out of here."

"Ma'am," the short one with the red face pleaded, "these horses ain't fit to ride! Let us have our pants, anyway! Or a saddle! Those backbones would cut a man in two, an'--"

"Two hundred and fifty yards, boys. And if he talks any more, one hundred yards!"

They taken out.

Ma let them go a good four hundred yards before she fired a shot, and she aimed high. That old Spencer bellowed, and those two gents rode off into the Red Desert barefooted and in their underwear on those raw-backed horses, and I didn't envy them none a-tall.

That was Ma, all right. She was kindly, but firm.

Chapter
3

We drove our cattle home, but Ma never forgave or forgot the man we knew as Henry. He had betrayed a trust, and to Ma that was the worst of sins. Now he was here, across the table from me, blind and only a shell of the fine-looking big man we remembered.

Without a doubt, his hired hands had no idea of the kind of man he had been and still might be. As cowhands they were typical. When they took a man's wages, they rode for the brand, for loyalty was the keynote of their lives. They would suffer, fight and die for their outfit at wages of thirty dollars a month ... if they ever got them.

They did not know him, and could be forgiven their ignorance. I did know, so what was I going to do? It was a question I did not consider. It was Balch who had made my decision for me, back there at our first meeting. For there was something about such a man, prepared to ride roughshod over everybody, that got my back up.

There was range enough for all, and no need to push the others off.

"I'll stick around, Rossiter," I said. "Hinge tells me you're going to round 'em up soon?"

"We are. There are only six ranches in the Basin, if you want to call it that, but we're going to round up our cattle, brand them, and drive to the railhead. If you want to stay, we can use you. We'll need all the hands we can get."

There was a checker game going in the bunkhouse when I walked in. There were not enough checkers, so Hinge was using bottle corks--of which there seemed to be an ample supply.

Hinge threw me a quick, probing glance when I came in, but offered no comment. Roper was studying the board, and did not look up. Danny was lying on his back in his bunk with a copy of a beatup magazine in his hands. "You stayin' on?" he asked.

"Looks like it," I said, and opened up my blanket roll and began fixing my bed on the cowhide springs.

Hinge made his move, then said, "You'll take orders from me then, and we'll leave the stock west of here until the last.

"We've got one more hand," he added. "He's away over east tonight, sleepin' in a lineshack." He glanced at me. "You got any objections to ridin' with a Mexican?"

"Hell, no. Not if he does his work. We had four, five of them on my last outfit. They were good hands ... among the best."

"This man is good with stock, and a first-class man with a rope. He joined up a couple of weeks back, and his name is Fuentes."

Hinge moved a king, then said, "We start rounding up in the morning. Bring in everything you see. We'll make our big gather on the flat this side of the creek, so you'll just work the breaks and start them down this way.

"There's grub at the line-shack, and you and Fuentes can share the cooking. You'll be working eight to ten miles back in the rough country most of the time."

"How about horses?"

"Fuentes and Danny drove sixteen head up there when he went, and there's a few head of saddle stock running loose on the range."

Hinge paused. "That's wild country back in there, and you'll run into some old mossyhorn steers that haven't been bothered in years. You're likely to find some unworked stuff back there, too, but if you get into thick brush, let Fuentes handle it. He's a brush-popper from way back. Used to ride down in the big thicket country."

At daybreak the hands scattered, but I took my time packing. Not until I had my blanket roll and gear on a packhorse and my own mount saddled did I go to the house for breakfast. Henry Rossiter was not in sight, but there was movement in the kitchen. It was Barby Ann.

"You weren't in for breakfast, so I kept something hot."

"Thanks. I was getting my gear ready."

She put food on the table, then poured coffee. She filled two cups.

"You're going to the line-cabin?"

"Is there only one?"

"There were two. Somebody burned down the one that was west of here, burned it down only a few weeks ago."

She paused. "It's very wild. Fuentes killed a bear just a few weeks ago. He's seen several. This one was feeding on a dead calf."

"Probably killed by wolves. Bears don't kill stock as a rule, but they'll eat anything that's dead."

She had curtains in the windows and the house was painfully neat. There must have been at least three more rooms, although this seemed to be the largest.

"You met Mr. Balch?" That 'mister' surprised me, but I nodded.

"He's got a fine big ranch, he and Mr. Saddler. He brought lumber in from the eastern part of the state to build the house. It has shutters and everything."

It seemed to me I detected a note of admiration, but I could not be sure. Womenfolks set store by houses and such. Especially houses with fixings.

She should see our house up in Colorado, I thought. It was the biggest I'd ever seen, but Pa had been a builder by trade and he designed it himself--and did most of the work himself. With Ma helping.

"Roger says--"

"Roger?" I interrupted.

"Roger Balch. He's Mr. Balch's son. He says they are bringing in breeding stock from back east, and they will have the finest ranch anywhere around."

Her tone irritated me. Whose side was she on, anyway? "Maybe if you're so friendly you should tell him to leave your father's hands alone, and to let us gather our cattle where they happen to be."

"Roger says there's none of our cattle up there. His pa won't have anybody coming around his place. I've told father that, and I've told Joe, but they won't listen."

"Ma'am, it's none of my business yet, but from the way your Mr. Balch acted, I'd say your pa and Joe Hinge were in the right. Balch acted like a man who'd ride roughshod over everything or anybody."

"That isn't true! Roger says that will all change when he tells his father about--"

She stopped.

"About you and him? Don't count on it, ma'am. Don't count on it at all. I've known such men here and there, and your Mr. Balch doesn't shape up like anyone I'd want any dealings with. And if he has any plans for that son of his, they won't include you."

She went white, then red. I never saw a woman so angry. She stood up, and her eyes were even bigger when she was mad. And for a moment I thought she'd slap me.

"Ma'am, I meant nothing against you. I simply meant that Balch wouldn't want his son tying up with anybody he could ride over. If he wants somebody for his son, it will be somebody big enough to ride over him. The man respects nothing but money and power."

Riding away from there I figured I'd talked out of turn, and I'd been guilty of hasty judgment. Maybe I'd guessed wrong on Balch, but he seemed like he didn't care two whoops for anything, and had I not been there to more or less even things up he might have been a whole lot rougher.

I wondered if Hinge and the boys knew that Barby Ann was seeing Roger. Somehow, I had an idea they knew nothing about it, nothing at all.

Riding over the country, I could see they'd had a dry year, but this was good graze, and they had some bottoms here and there where a man could cut hay.

Riding over country I was going to have to work, I took my time, topping out on every rise to get the lay of the land. I wanted to see how the drainage lay, and locate the likely spots for water. Fuentes would fill me in, but there was nothing like seeing the land itself. Terrain has a pattern and, once the pattern is familiar, finding one's way about is much easier.

As I went east, the hills grew steeper and more rugged. Turning in the saddle I could see the cap-rock far off against the sky. What lay behind me was what was loosely called the Basin, and far off I could see the tiny cluster of buildings that was Stirrup-Iron headquarters.

It was midafternoon before I sighted the line-shack. It lay cupped in a hand of hills with a patch of mesquite a few yards off and a pole corral near the cabin. A rider's trail came down off the hill into the trail to the cabin--a trail that looked fresh. In the corral were a number of horses, yet not more than a half dozen, one of them still damp from the saddle.

The cabin was of logs that must have been carted some distance, for there were no trees around. They had been laid in place with the bark on, and now, years later, the bark was falling off. There was a washstand at the door and a clean white towel hanging from a peg.

Tying my horses to the corral bars, and with my Winchester in my right hand and my saddlebags and blanket roll in the left, I walked up to the cabin. Nothing stirred. A faint thread of smoke pointed at the sky. I tapped on the door with the muzzle of my rifle, then pushed it open.

A lean Mexican with a sardonic expression was laying on his back on a bunk, with a six-shooter in his hand. "Buenos dias, amigo... I hope," he said smiling.

I grinned at him. "I hope, too. I'm in no mood for a fight. Hinge sent me up to watch you work. He told me he had a no-account Mexican up here who wouldn't do any more work than he could help."

Fuentes smiled, rolling a thin cigar in his fine white teeth. "Of all he might say, that would not be it. I was sent to gather cattle. Occasionally, I gather them, and occasionally I lie down to contemplate where the cattle might be--as well as the sins of men. More often I just look for cattle to gather. I am trying to figure out," he swung his boots to the floor, "the number of miles to catch each cow. Then if I figure the wages they pay me, the expense of keeping horses for me to do the work, I should be able to figure out whether it is good business to catch cows."

He paused, brushing the ash from his cigar to the floor. "Moreover, some of these steers arebig , very, very big, and very, very mean. So I lie down to contemplate how to get those steers out of the canyons."

"No problem," I said, "no problem at all. You send back to the ranch for one of those screw jacks. If they don't have one there, go to town. If you go to town you can always have a drink and talk to the senoritas.

"You get one of those screw jacks ... You know, the kind they lift buildings with when they wish to move them? All right. You get one of those. Better yet, get several. You go back of the east rim of the country, and you stick them under the edge and you start turning. You turn and turn and turn, and when you get the country tilted high enough, the cattle will just tumble out of the canyons. And you wait here with a big net and you bag them as they fall out. It is very simple."

He picked up his gunbelt. "I am Tony Fuentes."

"And I am Milo Talon, once of Colorado, now of anywhere I hang my hat."

"I am of California."

"Heard of it. Ain't that the land they stacked up to keep the ocean from comin' in over the desert?"

Fuentes pointed toward the coals of a dying fire, and the blackened pot. "There are beans. There are also a couple of sage hens under the coals, and they should be ready to eat. Can you make coffee?"

"I'll give it a try."

Fuentes stood up. He was about five-ten and had the easy movement of a bullwhip. "Did they tell you anything down there? About Balch?"

"Met him ... along with Hinge and some others. I didn't take to him."

We ate, and he filled me in on the country. The water was mostly alkali or verging on it. The country looked flat, but was ripped open by deep canyons in unexpected places. Some of these canyons had grassy meadows, some thickets of mesquite. There was also a lot of rough, rocky, broken country.

"There are cattle back in those canyons that are ten years old and never been branded. There's even a few buffalo."

"About Balch," I said.