Matagorda (1967) Read online

  He turned. “Tap Duvarney, this here’s Johnny Lubec. And that’s the Cajun … a good man, right out of the Louisiana swamps.”

  Lubec was a small, wiry man, scarcely more than a boy, but a boy with old eyes, a boy who had seen trouble. The Cajun was tall, thin, angular, sallow of face, with dark, lank hair and a gold earring in each ear.

  “What about the cattle?” Tap asked. “That was every cent I had in the world, Tom.

  I gambled on you.”

  “And you won’t regret it, Tap. I’ve had troubles-I suppose you’ve heard about that?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “When we talked I thought the feud was a thing of the past. It was just a matter of rounding up some of Dad’s cattle. I didn’t have any money, so with your money, our cattle and know-how, we could drive to Kansas and make some money. That’s what I planned. The trouble was, the cattle had been stolen. Most of them, at least.”

  “So the drive is off?”

  “Not on your tintype! We’re rounding up cattle now. Fact is, we’ve got a good part of a herd stashed away. But that’s a small part of it. Somehow we’ve got to slip three thousand head of cattle out of the country without the Munsons gettin’ wind of it.”

  They walked back and sat down around the fire, and the Cajun disappeared into the darkness. “He’ll keep watch, so don’t you worry none. He’s one of the very best.”

  “I met Mady Coppinger on the boat.”

  Tom Kittery shot him a quick glance. “Came back did she? I wouldn’t have bet on it.”

  “I thought you two had an understanding.”

  Tom shrugged. “We have, sort of. Mady’s fed up with Texas, fed up with dust, cows, bronc riders, and cookin’ for ranch hands. She fell heir to a stack of Godey’s Lady’s Books, and since then all she does is pine. I keep tellin’ her I ain’t no city man, but she won’t listen.”

  With another glance at Duvarney, he said, “How’d she look?”

  “Great. She’s a very pretty young woman.”

  Tom filled two cups with the hot coffee. “Did you see any Munsons? I mean, around Indianola.”

  Tap ignored the question. “How did you know I’d arrived? Or did you know?”

  “Cap’n Wilkes. He dipped the flag when he passed the point. We’d agreed on the signal.”

  He paused a moment. “You’re drivin’ the rig … where’s Foster?”

  “They killed him. He was killed just about the time we were coming up to the wharf.

  I buried him in your family lot.”

  “You what?”

  “You didn’t want him buried there? Didn’t seem that I had much choice.”

  “They let you bury him? Of course, we’d want him in our lot, or anywhere we could manage, and the best. But Indianola is mostly a Munson town. There’s two or three of the clan live there, and always some of them are circulatin’ about.”

  Over coffee, Tap Duvarney told about the burial and the brief encounter with Shab, or Shabbit. Of the brief fight on the wharf he said nothing at all.

  “Tom,” he said abruptly, “let’s get the herd together and get out. The feud is none of my business, and I don’t intend to make it mine. Every dime I’ve got in the world is tied up in that venture.”

  Tom Kittery looked at him, his eyes suddenly hard. “That’s right. It isn’t none of your affair, and I’m not expecting you to take a hand in it. Nonetheless, you may have to before we get those cattle out of the state.”

  Johnny Lubec got up angrily. “I thought you said he was a friend of yours? He sure don’t sound like it to me!”

  Kittery said nothing, but stared into the fire. Tap Duvarney looked at Lubec. “I consider myself Tom’s friend, but that does not involve me in a shooting war that began God only knows how-and years ago, from all I’ve heard. If I were a member of his family, I might feel otherwise, but I am not. Furthermore, Tom and I made an agreement, and I expect him to live up to it.”

  “Don’t count yourself any friend of mine!” Lubec responded, his tone harsh. “Far as I’m concerned, them as ain’t for us is against us.”

  Tap turned to Kittery, “Tom, if you don’t like the sound of this, just give me back my money and we’ll forget it.”

  Kittery looked up. “You know damn well I can’t give that money back. I spent it.

  I bought cattle.”

  “Then we’ve got a deal.” Tap reached across the fire for the coffeepot. “I’ll be ready to go after those cattle in the morning.”

  “You got to wait.” Lubec spoke with cool triumph. “We’re goin’ after them as killed Foster.”

  Tap Duvarney sipped his coffee, and when Kittery did not speak he said quietly, “I’ll be ready at daybreak, Tom. If necessary, I’ll get the cattle out and make this drive on my own; but if I do, I’ll sell the cattle and keep every dollar of the money.”

  “Like hell you will!” Kittery was suddenly angry. “Half those cattle are mine!”

  Tap grinned at him. “Don’t be a damn fool, Tom. Our deal was my money and your savvy.

  If you aren’t in there working and telling us how, what part can you have? I’m here.

  My money is in the pot. I made an agreement, and so did you. I understood that in Texas men lived up to their agreements.”

  “Are you sayin’ I don’t?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the kind. I am only saying that the Munson feud is your personal affair, but I can’t let it interfere with my business.”

  “You’re right,” Tom said glumly. “Damn it, I am sorry. I got no right to expect you to horn in on my fight.”

  Johnny Lubec leaped to his feet. “Tom? You hackin’ down for this-this-”

  Tap Duvarney looked up. “Johnny, if you finish that sentence it better be polite or you’d better be reaching for a gun when you say it.”

  Lubec backed off. “On your feet, damn you! I’ll-”

  “Johnny!” Kittery’s voice rang with authority. “Stop it! Tap would kill you before you got a gun out. I’ve seen him work.”

  Lubec hesitated, still angry but suddenly wary. Tom Kittery was as near to a God as he could recognize, and if Tom said this stranger was good, he must be good. Abruptly, he turned his back and walked away into the brush.

  Tap finished his coffee and got to his feet. “I’m tired. I’m going to turn in.”

  “Sorry, Tap. Losin” Foster like that-We’re on edge, all of us.”

  “Forget it.”

  Tap walked back into the brush and unrolled his bed. He folded his coat neatly, then pulled off his boots and placed them for a pillow. He put his Winchester beside him, and also his gun belt. His spare gun he placed under the blanket and near his hand.

  The Cajun came in from watch, drank coffee and ate without talking, and disappeared again. Tom Kittery sat alone by the fire. After a while Lubec returned and crawled into his blankets.

  The fire sank low, and Tap slept.

  What made him awaken he did not know, but a dark figure loomed above him. The fire was only a few red coals, the columns of the trees against the stars were dark and mysterious. A faint light gleamed on the gun held in the man’s hand. The gun was not aimed, it was simply hanging at arm’s length against the man’s leg. The man was Tom.

  Tap’s own hand held his gun, pointed up at Kittery through the blanket. “Go to sleep, Tom. You’ll feel different in the morning. Besides, this Colt I’m holding on you would rest mighty heavy on your stomach.”

  Tom Kittery chuckled. “Damn it, Tap, I never knew anybody like you! Nowhere! All right, to hell with the feud! We work cattle.”

  Tap Duvarney’s eyes opened on daylight. For a moment he lay still. The fire had been built up, and he could smell coffee. Lifting his head, he saw the Cajun was slicing bacon into a frying pan. Tap slid out of the blankets and into his boots. Standing up, he slung his gun belt around his lean hips and settled the holster into place against his leg.

  He felt good. The air was fresh and cool off the Gulf, not many miles away
to the east, and he was a man who had lived most of his life in the open.

  The War Between the States had been a blood bath, a desperate, bitterly contested war in which he had been constantly in action, often on secret missions behind the enemy lines. He had been born in Virginia, and his southern accent was a distinct advantage on such jobs. But it was the frontier that honed him down, made keen the edges of his senses, his will to survive. For he had faced the American Indian-a wily, dangerous adversary, a fighting man of the first rank, and one familiar with every aspect of wilderness warfare and survival;

  The Cajun glanced up as Duvarney approached the fire. Tap gathered a few sticks for additional fuel and placed them close at hand. It was evidence that he was expecting nobody to serve him. He was here to pull his own weight, no matter what the circumstances.

  The future looked bleak enough to him. Every cent he’d owned was tied up in the cattle; a feud and the violent hatreds it generated hung over them. When such a fire burned no man within range was free from it, and the very fact that he was riding with the Kitterys would make him a target. The Kittery faction, too, was filled with hatred.

  The cattle drive, Tap was quite sure, had been put aside because of the feud; and had he not come along might never have been carried out. They could think of nothing now but striking back, striking hard.

  When the coffee was ready, he filled his cup and squatted on his haunches by the fire. Tom Kittery was tugging on his boots. Lubec was nowhere to be seen.

  “We got our work cut out for us,” Kittery said. “If we round up cattle now we’ll be likely to lose ‘em. The Munsons will stampede them some night, scatter ‘em from hell to breakfast.”

  “Then we’ll find a place where they can be guarded, and hold them there until we’ve completed the gather.”

  “You got any idea what you’re gettin’ into?” Kittery asked. “Most of those cattle are back in the brush. It won’t be easy to get them.”

  “And you’re holding some on Matagorda Island? All right, we’ll ^ just round the others up and push them out to the island. Or hold them on Black Jack Peninsula.”

  Tom Kittery looked over his cup at him. “You said you’d never been in this country before.”

  “I can read a map,” Duvarney answered dryly.

  By the time the sun was over the horizon they had pulled out, Duvarney riding the buckboard with Tom Kittery, whose horse was tied behind. The others rode on ahead, or scouted off to one side or the other.

  “They’re hunting us,” Tom said matter-of-factly, “and one day they’ll find us. All we’ve been hoping to do was thin them down a mite before the showdown.”

  “How many can you muster?”

  “Mighty few. Eight or ten at most. We’re outnumbered, four or five to one.”

  “Tough.”

  They rode on, and from time to time they saw cattle grazing, and several times saw the tracks of horses.

  “Comanches raided clear to the Gulf coast some years back,” Tom commented, noticing some tracks. “We don’t see them any more. At least, I haven’t. Back around 1840 they burned Linnville and attacked Victoria. My folks were at Linnville, and nobody expected any Indians. When they came, everybody who could climbed on a barge and pushed out on the water. Saved their lives, but lost everything they had but the land.”

  “Was Indianola a port then?”

  “No … not until sometime around 1844, I think. It was started by a German prince, and he called it Carlshafen, after himself, I guess. His name was Prince Carl Zu Solms-Braunfels. He brought a colony of immigrants into Texas.

  “Back in those days they came from everywhere-Germans, French, Swiss … we still have a lot of them. Castroville, DHanis, Fredericksburg, all those places were settled by foreigners. Over by Fredericksburg half the talk a body hears is in German.

  “Indianola picked up for a while, then about 1846 the cholera hit the town-nearly wiped it out. I’ve heard tell of it. I was too young to remember it.”

  “Where’s Shanghai Pierce’s outfit?”

  “You’ve heard of him? I guess ever’body has. He’s north of here, up on Tres Palacios Creek. He’s got the biggest outfit around here, unless it’s Cap’n King.” Tom Kittery glanced at Tap. “You two should get along, you going to sea, and all. He was a steamboat captain before he settled in this country. A mighty good man, too. I met him a couple of times.”

  After this neither man spoke for several miles, and there was no sound but the clop-clop of the horses’ hoofs and the jangle of the harness. Johnny Lubec had pulled off and ridden away into the brush. When he returned an hour or so later, he was leading a saddled horse, a tough-looking buckskin with a black mane and tail.

  “We’ll leave the rig,” Tom said to Duvarney. “You’ll ride the buckskin.”

  Tap Duvarney looked doubtfully at the horse, which rolled an inquisitive eye at him as if it had already been informed who its rider was to be, but Tap pulled up and swung down.

  “What about the team?”

  “We’ll take off the harness and turn ‘em loose. The buckboard can stay right here in the brush until we have reason to pick it up.”

  Taking the reins, he drove the buckboard into the brush. Tap took his gear from the wagon, then gestured at the supplies. “I’ll need those,” he said.

  Kittery noticed the ammunition boxes for the first time. “You figure on usin’ all that? What you goin’ to do? Fight all the Indians in the Nation?”

  Tap shrugged. “They told me you were in a feud. It isn’t my fight, but if somebody starts shooting at me I want to be able to shoot back as long as I’m in the mood.”

  Lubec merely looked at him, while the Cajun took the boxes from the wagon-bed and placed them on the ground. He went to the seat, and from under it he took the sack of oats and dumped what remained on the ground. Then he filled the canvas sack with the contents of the boxes.

  With all the packages and sacks loaded behind their saddles and the mustangs turned loose to go home, they took off through the scattered brush and trees. Several times they passed through extensive stretches of prickly pear, and twice they followed stream courses, keeping under the cotton woods and pecans for concealment.

  It was sundown when they rode into a small clearing. For several miles they had been moving through thick brush and timber, and the clearing came as a surprise. There was a small fire going, and three men were standing nearby, all with rifles.

  “Howdy, Tom!” A stocky, barrel-chested man with a black beard walked toward them.

  “Johnny? Howdy, Cajun.”

  He smiled as he saw Duvarney. “How are you, Major? I never had the luck to run into you during the war, but we came nigh it a time or two. I am Joe Breck.”

  “You’re Captain Joseph Breck? I remember your outfit, sir. I am just as glad we missed our meetings. You had some good men.”

  Breck smiled. “I’ve still got a couple of them, and one of yours.”

  “Mine? Who?”

  “Me, Major.” A tall, ungainly man with a large Adam’s apple stepped from behind a horse he was grooming. “Corporal Welt Spicer.”

  Duvarney grinned. “How are you, Spicer? I’m not likely to forget you.” He looked around at Kittery. “Did he tell you? He was in my outfit. We covered a lot of country together.”

  Kittery threw a sharp look at Spicer, but made no comment.

  The hide-out was a good, if temporary, one. It was on a small knoll in a dense growth of brush; tunnels through the brush showed their dark openings here and there. Obviously the thicket was a network of underbrush passageways and trails. A small spring was nearby, and although the water was brackish, it was potable.

  “What’s on the program, Tom?” Breck asked.

  “We hunt cattle,” Kittery replied shortly. “We start at daybreak. We’ll make up a herd and strike out for Kansas.”

  They looked at him, but nobody offered a comment. A few minutes later, Duvarney caught Breck studying Kittery with care. Obviously, Tap though
t grimly, he had altered their plans, and they didn’t like it.

  Tired from the long riding, he rolled up in his blankets. The last he remembered was seeing the others huddled around the fire, drinking coffee and talking in low tones.

  Well, he reflected, let them talk. Tomorrow they work cattle.

  Chapter Four.

  For three days they kept at it, daylight to dark, working the cattle out of the brush, branding them and bunching them at a clearing in the woods that consisted of several hundred acres of good grass, with a trickle of water running across one corner. A few of the cattle still wore the Kittery brand, but most were mavericks.

  The work was hard, punishing, and hot, yet they made time. Tap Duvarney had never worked cattle before except on the few occasions when he had hazed a small herd into an Indian camp that was being fed by the government, or when it was cattle to be beefed for the army itself. However, he had watched a lot of cowhands work on the range, and had listened to them warning over campfires. As he could match none of these men with a rope, he devoted his time to finding the cattle and driving them from the brush or the grassy hollows. By the end of the fourth day they were holding four hundred head of mixed stuff, and their horses were played out.

  Most of the cattle had been found within a few miles, but they were wild, some of them being old mossy-horns that had lived back in the brush for years. These made most of the trouble. At first it was not much more than a matter of riding around the cattle and slowly bunching them; but the older stock would have none of that.

  Time and again some of the mossy-horns would break for the brush, and it was hard work, and hot work, rousting them out again.

  There was no chuck wagon. Every rider carried a small bait of grub in a sack behind his saddle, and ate his noonday meal out on the range … if he had time.

  On the evening of the fourth day, Kittery said, “We’ve got to ride for horses. We’ll need about forty head, and the nighest place is over to Coppinger’s.”

  “Give you a chance to see Mady,” Johnny Lubec said, grinning. “Want I should go along to kind of cool you off after you leave there?”

  “I wouldn’t trust you. Ever’ time we get near the C-Bar, you head for those Mex jackals down in the wash. I think you’ve got eyes for that little Cortinas girl.”