Killoe (1962) Read online

  Rose was a mighty pretty woman and she kept a good house, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off other men. Worst of all, she had what it took to keep their eyes on her, and she knew it. “She’ll get somebody killed.”

  “She’ll get Tom killed.”

  Zeb got up. “I’ll ride by about sunup. Help you with that young stuff.” He paused.

  “I’ll bring the dogs.”

  Zebony Lambert had worked cattle over in the Big Thicket and had a bunch of the best cattle-working dogs a man ever did see, and in brush country a dog is worth three cowhands.

  He went to his horse and stepped into the saddle. I never tired of watching him do it. The way he went into the leather was so smooth, so effortless, that you just couldn’t believe it. Zeb had worked with me a lot, and I never knew a better coordinated man, or one who handled himself with greater ease.

  He walked his horse around the corral so he would not have to pass Tap Henry, and just as he turned the horse Tap looked up.

  It was plain to him that Lambert was deliberately avoiding him, for around the corral was the long way. Tap laid his eyes on Zeb and watched him ride off, stepping around Karen to keep his eyes on him.

  The smell of cooking came from the house, where Mrs. Foley was starting supper.

  Karen and Tap were talking when I approached the house. He was talking low and in a mighty persuasive tone, and she was laughing and shaking her head, but I could see she was taken with him, and it got under my skin. After all, Karen was my girl—or so everybody sort of figured.

  Tap looked up. “You know, Karen, I can’t believe Danny’s grown up. He used to follow me around like a sucking calf.”

  She laughed, and I felt my face getting red. “I didn’t follow you everywhere, Tap,”

  I replied. “I didn’t follow you over the Brazos that time.”

  He looked like I’d slapped him across the mouth, but before he could say something mean, Karen put a hand on his sleeve. “You two are old friends … even brothers.

  Now, don’t you go and get into any argument.”

  “You’re right, Karen,” I said, and walked by them into the house.

  Mrs. Foley glanced up when I came in, and then her eyes went past me to Tap and Karen.

  “Your brother is quite handsome,” she said, and the way she said it carried more meaning than the words themselves.

  For three days then we worked sunup to sundown, with Tap Henry, Zeb Lambert, and Aaron Stark working the breaks for young stuff. Pa rode over to have a talk with Tom Sandy about a swap, and Tim Foley worked on the wagons, with his boys to help.

  Lambert’s dogs did the work of a dozen hands in getting those steers out of the brush and out of the overhang caves along the Cowhouse which gave the creek its name.

  Jim Poor, Ben Cole, and Ira Tilton returned from delivering a small herd to San Antonio and fell in with us, and the work began to move faster.

  Every time I had the chance I asked Tap questions about that route west. The one drive I’d made, the one up through Kansas and Missouri into Illinois, had taught me a good deal about cattle, but that was a sight better country than what we were heading into now.

  The corn grinding was one of the biggest jobs, and the steadiest. We had a cornmill fixed to a post and two cranks on it. That mill would hold something around a peek of corn, but the corn had to go through two grindings to be right for bread-baking.

  We ground it once, then tightened the mill and ran it through again, grinding it still finer.

  We wanted as much corn ground as possible before the trip started, for we might not e able to use the grinder on the road without more trouble than we could afford.

  Between grinding the corn and jerking beef, there was work aplenty for everyone.

  None of us, back in those days, wore store-bought clothes. It was homespun or buckskin, and for the most part the men dressed their own skins and made their own clothes, with fringe on the sleeves and pants legs to drain the rain off faster. Eastern folks usually thought that fringe was purely ornamental, which was not true.

  For homespun clothes of either cotton or wool, the stuff was carded and spun by hand, and if it was cotton, the seeds were picked out by hand. Every man made his own moccasins or boots, repaired what tools or weapons he had, and in some cases made them from the raw material.

  Down among the trees along the Cowhouse the air was stifling. It was a twisty creek, with the high banks under which the cattle took shelter, and it was hot, hard work, with scarcely room to build a loop.

  A big brindle steer cut out of the trees ahead of me, and went through them, running like a deer, with me and that steeldust gelding right after him. Ducking a heavy branch that would have torn my head off, I took a smaller one smack across the face, making my eyes water. The steer lunged into a six-foot wall of brush and that steeldust right after him. Head down, I went through, feeling the branches and thorns tearing at my chaps. The steer broke into the open and I took after him, built a loop, and dropped it over his horns.

  That old steeldust sat right back on his haunches and we busted that steer tail-over-teakettle and laid him down hard. He came up fighting. He was big, standing over sixteen hands … and he was mad … and he weighed an easy eighteen hundred.

  He put his head down and came for me and that steeldust, but that bronc of mine turned on a dime and we busted Mr. Steer right back into the dust again.

  He got up, dazed but glaring around, ready for a fight with anything on earth, but before he could locate a target I started off through the brush at a dead run and when that rope jerked him by the horns he had no choice but to come after us.

  Once out in the open again and dose to the herd, I shook loose my loop and hazed him into the herd.

  It was heat, dust, sweat, charging horses, fighting steers, and man-killing labor.

  One by one we worked them out of the brush and up onto the plain where they could be bunched. Except for a few cantankerous old mossyhorns, they were usually content as long as they were with others of their kind in the herd. That tough old brindle tried to make it back to the brush, back to his home on the Cowhouse, but we busted him often enough to make a believer of him. Tap, like I said, was a top hand. He fell into the routine and worked as hard as any of us. We rolled out of our soogans before there was light in the sky, and when the first gray showed we were heading for the brush. We wore down three or four horses a day, but there are no replacements for the men on a cow outfit. Breakfast was usually beef and beans, the same as lunch, or sometimes if the women were in the notion, we had griddle cakes and sorghum … corn squeezings, we called it. Morning of the third day broke with a lowering gray sky, but , I we didn’t see that until later. We had two days of brutal labor behind us, and more stretching ahead. Usually, I slept inside. Pa and me occupied one side of the Texas, Tim Foley and his family the other side; but with Stark’s wife and kids, we gave up our beds to them and slept outside with the hands. Rolling out of my soogan that third morning, it took me only a minute to put on my hat—a cowhand always puts on his hat first—and then my boots and buckskin pants. The women had burlap and we could hear dishes a-rattling around inside. Tap crawled out of his blankets and walked to the well, where he hauled up a bucket of water and washed. I followed him. He looked sour and mean, like he always did come daybreak.

  With me it was otherwise–I always felt great in the morning, but I had sense enough to keep still about it. We went up to the house and Mrs. Foley and Karen filled our plates. That morning it was a healthy slab of beef and a big plate of beans and some fried onions. Like always, I had my bridle with me and I stuck the bit under my jacket to warm it up a mite. Of a frosty morning I usually warmed it over a fire enough to make it easy for a horse to take, and while it wasn’t too cold this morning, I wanted that bronc of mine to be in a good mood.

  Not that he would be … or ever was.

  We sat on the steps or squatted around on the ground against the wall, eating in silence. Karen came out with
the big pot and refilled our cups, and took a mite longer over Tap’s cup.

  None of us was talking very much, but Zebony moved over beside me when he had finished eating and began to make one of those cigarettes of his.

  “You been over to the Leon?”

  “No.”

  “You and me … we take a pasear over there. What do you say?”

  “There’s plenty of work right here,” I said. “I don’t see—” “I do,” Tap interrupted.

  “I know what he means.”

  Zeb touched a delicate tongue-tip to his thin paper. “Do you think,” he said to me, “they will let you drive your cattle away?”

  “They belong to us.”

  “‘Sure—there are mighty few that don’t. Those others … the newcomers … they have no cattle, and they have been living on yours. By now they know you are planning a drive, and are cleaning out the breaks.”

  “So?”

  “Dan, what’s got into you?” Tap asked irritably. “They’ll rustle every steer they can, and fight you for the others. How many men have we got?”

  “Now? Nine or ten.”

  “And how many of them? There must be thirty.”

  “Closer to forty,” Zeb said. “There’s tracks over on the Leon. They are bunching your cows faster than you are, and driving them north into the wild country.”

  “I reckon we’d best go after them,” I said.

  Tap got up. “I reckon we had,” he said dryly. “And if you ever carried a short gun, you’d better carry one when you go after them.”

  It made sense. This lot who had squatted around us had brought nothing into the country except some beat-up horse and wagon outfits. Not more than two or three had so much as a milk cow … and they had been getting fat on our beef, eating it, which Pa never minded much, and even selling it. And not one of them had done a tap of work.

  They had come over from the east and south somewhere–a bedraggled bunch of poor whites and the like.

  That did not make them easy. Some of that outfit had come down from Missouri and Arkansas, and some were from the Five Counties, where there had been fighting for years. Pa was easygoing and generous, and they had spotted it right off. “Don’t tell Pa,” I said. “He’s no hand with a gun.”

  Tap glanced at me briefly as if to say, “And I suppose you are?” But I paid him no mind.

  Tim Foley saw us bunched up and he walked over. That man never missed a thing. He minded his own affairs, but he kept an ear to the ground. “You boys be careful,” was all he said.

  The sun was staining the sky with rose when we moved out from the place. As we role away, I told Ben Cole to keep the rest of them in the bottoms of the Cowhouse and to keep busy. They knew something was up, but they offered no comment, and we trailed it off to the west, then swung north.

  “You know who it is?” I asked Zeb.

  “That Holt outfit, Mack, Billy, and Webb–all that crowd who ride with them.”

  Tough men, and mean men. Dirty, unshaven, thieves and killers all of them. A time or two I’d seen them around.

  “Webb,” I commented, “is left-handed.”

  Tap looked around at me. “Now that,” he said, “is a good thing to know.”

  “Carries his gun on the right side, butt first, and he draws with either hand.”

  We picked up their trail in a coulee near the Leon River and we took it easy. They were driving some twenty head, and there were two men. Following the trail was no trick, because they had made no attempt to hide it. In tact, they seemed to be inviting trouble, and realizing how the odds figured out, they might have had that in mind.

  We walked our horses up every slope and looked around before we crossed the ridges or hills. We kept to low ground when we could and just managed to keep the trail in sight.

  If we moved our cattle out of this country the rest of that ragtag and bobtail would have to move out or starve to death. Cattle were plentiful in most parts of Texas and it wasn’t until later that folks began to watch their beef. For a long time, when a man needed beef he went out and killed one, just as he had buffalo, and nobody paid it no mind.

  In those days cattle were good for their hides and tallow, and there was no other market. A few drives had been made to Louisiana, to Shreveport, and over into Alabama, but cattle were a drug on the market. However, this far west the wild cattle had begun to thin out, and fewer were to be found.

  This was the frontier, and west of us there was nothing but wide, unsettled country.

  In those days the settler furthest west in Texas was a homer who was about four miles west of Fort Belknap, and that was away off north of us, and a little west.

  Cattle liked the country further east or along the river bottoms where the grass was thick. Zeb Lambert told me he had seen a cow over on the Colorado, west of us, but they were strays that had somehow found their way there. Nobody lived in that country.

  The coolness remained in the morning, clouds were heavy, and there was a dampness as of coming rain. Despite the work we had to do, we hoped for it. Rain in this country meant not only water in the waterholes and basins, but it meant grass on the range. In a few days our lives would depend on both. Zeb Lambert pulled up. “Dan,” he said, “look here.”

  We both stopped and looked at the trail. Two riders had come in from the east and joined the two we were trailing. The grass was pushed down by their horses’ hoofs and had not straightened up—they could have joined them only minutes before.

  Tap Henry looked at those tracks. “It could be accident,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “Or it could be that somebody told them we were riding this way.”

  Zebony said nothing, but he started building himself one of those cigarettes he set so much store by.

  “Who would do a thing like that?” I asked. “None of our crowd.”

  “When you’ve lived as long as me,” Tap said shortly, “you won’t trust anybody. We were following two men.., now two more come in out of nowhere.”

  We rode on, more cautiously now. Tap was too suspicious. None of our folks would carry word to that bunch of no-account squatters. Yet there were four of them now, and only three of us. We did not mind the odds, but it set a man to thinking. If they were tipped off that we were moving against them there might be more of them coming.

  Tap suddenly turned his head and saw Zeb cutting off over the rise.

  “Now what’s got into him?” he demanded.

  “He’ll be hunting sign. Zeb could track a coon over the cap-rock in the dark of the moon.”

  “Will he stand?”

  “He’ll stand. He’s a fighter, Tap. You never saw a better.” Tap looked ‘after him, but made no comment. Tap was riding tall in the saddle this morning, head up and alert, ready for trouble. And Tap Henry was a man who had seen trouble. There had been times before he left us when he had to face up to a difficulty, and no telling how many times since then. Suddenly, we smelled smoke.

  Almost at the same moment we saw our cattle. There must have been three hundred head bunched there, and four men were sitting around the fire. Only one of them got to his feet as we approached.

  “Watch it, Tap,” I said, “there’s more of them.”

  The hollow where they were was long, maybe a quarter of a mile, and there were willows and cottonwood along the creek, and here and there some mesquite. Those willows shielded the creek from view. No telling what else they might hide.

  The remuda was staked out close by. My eyes went to the staked-out horses. “Tap,”

  I said, “five of those horses are showing sweat.”

  Webb Holt was there, and Bud Caldwell, and a long, lean man named Tuttle. The fourth man had a shock of uncombed blond hair that curled over his shirt collar, and a chin that somehow did not quite track with his face. He had a sour, mean look about him.

  “‘Those cows are showing our brand,” I said mildly. “We’re taking them back.”

  “Are yo
u now?” Webb Holt asked insolently.

  “And we’re serving notice. No more beef–not even one.” “You folks come it mighty big around here,” Webb commented. “Where’d you get the right to all these cattle?

  They run loose until you came along.”

  “Not here they didn’t. There were no cattle here until my father drove them in, and the rest came by natural increase.

  Since then we’ve ridden herd on them, nursed them, dragged them out of bogs, and fought the heel-flies and varmints.

  “You folks came in here with nothing and you’ve made no attempt to get anything.

  We’d see no man go hungry, least of all when he has young ones, so we’ve let you have beef to eat. Now you’re stealing.”

  “Do tell?” Holt tucked his thumbs behind his belt. “Well, let me tell you something.

  You folks want to leave out of here, you can. But you’re taking no cows.”

  “If you’re counting on that man back in the brush,” I said, “you’d best forget him.

  He won’t be able to help you none.”

  Holt’s eyes flickered, and Bud Caldwell touched his tongue to his lips. The blond man never turned a hair. He kept looking at Tap Henry like he’d seen him some place before.

  “I don’t know what you’re figuring on,” I said, “but in your place I’d just saddle up and ride out. And what other cattle of ours you have, I’d drive back.”

  “Now why would we do that?” Holt asked, recovering some of his confidence. “We got the cows. You got nothing. You haven’t even got the men.”

  “The kind we’ve got,” Tap said, “we don’t need many.” Holt’s eyes shifted. “I don’t know you,” he said.

  Tap jerked his head. “]I’m Dan’s stepbrother, you might say, and I’ve got a shooting interest in that stock.”

  “I know him,” the blond man said suddenly. “That’s Tap Henry. I knew him over on the Nueces.”

  “So?”

  “He’s a gunfighter, Webb.”

  Webb Holt centered his attention on Tap. He was wary now. Bud Caldwell moved a little to one side, spreading them out. My Patterson revolving rifle lay across my saddle, my hand across the action, and as he moved, I let the muzzle follow him . it seemed to make him nervous.