A Thousand Texas Longhorns

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “My name’s Story. I hang my hat in Virginia City, Montana Territory. The man with me I met in Virginia City, Montana Territory. We aim to get back to Virginia City, Montana Territory.”

  “What’s your business in Baxter Springs, Kansas, Mr. Story of Virginia City, Montana Territory?” The leader’s voice had lost much of its firmness.

  “My business . . .” Story nudged the black into a walk, but kept the Colt trained on the big man’s center vest button. “. . . is my own.”

  He did not holster the pistol until he had pushed past the riders, and he did not slouch in the saddle or increase the gelding’s pace. “Don’t look back,” he whispered to Boone.

  “Grangers,” Boone said softly ten yards later.

  Story looked straight ahead but nodded slightly. “I’d call them thieves.”

  Two horsemen galloped south.

  “They’ll be looking for the herd,” Boone said.

  “River’s too far. They won’t ride past the first herd we saw. Not without a dozen more men.”

  Another horse began walking slowly behind them.

  “What happens if they start shooting?”

  “We get killed,” Story replied.

  * * *

  After leaving both horses with the blacksmith for new shoes, Story let Boone outfit himself in the general store, bought enough smoking and chewing tobacco to satisfy the cowboys back at camp, posted a letter to Ellen, got a bath and a shave, and moved inside a place called the Jayhawker Saloon. The old man with the snowy whiskers and one of his riders, a red-mustached man carrying more revolvers than any of Quantrill’s bushwhackers, followed them from place to place, though never dismounting.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Story pointed at a table near the window.

  “Living,” Boone answered.

  “Let’s make it a beer.” Story moved to the bar and came back with two foaming mugs of pilsner. Story sipped. Boone stared out the window.

  “From what I’ve seen of Baxter Springs,” Story said after wiping suds off his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, “there’s not much worth seeing.”

  Boone found his mug. “I thought you don’t drink.”

  “I don’t drink much,” Story corrected.

  “Why are we here?” Boone downed about half of his beer.

  “Get you duds. You’ve borrowed something from just about every man I pay since . . .” He nodded at Boone’s mug. “What are they doing?”

  “Smoking a pipe and watching me.”

  “Still just two of them?”

  “As far as I can . . .” Boone’s eyes went past Story, who heard the footsteps. A moment later, a thin man in a plaid sack suit and bowler hat stepped to the table and smiled.

  “Evening.”

  Story nodded.

  “Name’s Cromwell. Brian Cromwell. I’m a correspondent for Robert Tracy, editor and proprietor at the Troy Reporter.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Fifty miles, thereabouts, northwest.”

  “Not enough news in Troy to fill Mr. Tracy’s pages?”

  “Well . . . more news down here.”

  Story nodded at an empty chair, and the correspondent from the Troy Reporter quickly sat between Boone and Story.

  “What brings you to town?”

  Story lifted his glass toward Boone. “He needed some clothes and gear. I needed a shave. Our horses needed shoeing.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Virginia City, Montana Territory.”

  Brian Cromwell had found a notebook and a pencil, but stopped flipping through his pages, and stared. “Honest?”

  Story nodded.

  “Where you bound?”

  “Virginia City, Montana Territory.”

  “Well . . . how do you like the salubrious climate of . . . ?”

  “Mr. Cromwell.”

  The reporter looked up from his notebook. “I don’t think the editor of a Troy newspaper wants to publish an article about what a wayfarer from Montana has to say about the sunshine and health one finds in Baxter Springs.”

  Cromwell let the grin brighten his face.

  “Are you cattlemen?”

  Story tilted his head toward the two men leaning against the hitching rail across the street. “Who are those two gentlemen?. . . Don’t turn your head, just nod again and move your eyes. There. Now . . . who are they?”

  “The ruffian is Will Ethridge. Rode with George Todd, or so they claim. Killed forty men during the war. Maybe half that figure since. But it’s Ben Fariss you have to watch, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Story. Nelson Story.” It made sense to give the inkslinger some information. “This is a hired hand, Mason Boone.”

  The reporter shook hands with both men.

  “We ran into . . . I don’t know if you’d call it a welcoming party or a road block outside of town,” Story said, “and exchanged a few pleasantries with Ben Fariss.”

  “Then you have a herd of cattle.”

  Story started to explain that no cattle had been anywhere near them, but the reporter’s head kept shaking and then he mumbled, “No, no, you wouldn’t be here if you had cattle.” He stared at his notes, tried to think of another question. Brian Cromwell, Story decided, was no Professor Thomas Dimsdale.

  “Why don’t you explain why your editor, fifty miles from here, sent you to Baxter Springs,” Story said, and looked at Boone. “Walk up to the bar and bring Mr. Cromwell a . . . ?”

  Cromwell blinked. “Rye. If . . .”

  “Rye’s fine. Two more beers, too.”

  They called themselves the Granger’s Association. Like a number of Kansans and Missourians on the Shawnee Trail, they had grown sick and tired of losing cattle to Texas fever every time a herd of Texas longhorns came through. Now, quarantine laws were being enforced, keeping Texas beef out of the states from April through October. But Ben Fariss was no cattleman, no farmer.

  “What about the Neutral Lands?” Story asked.

  Cromwell shook his head. “They won’t let you go through.”

  “Even if a toll were agreed upon?”

  The reporter scribbled in his notebook, and Story reassessed the man. He had a way of finding out a few things even without asking questions.

  “You can’t afford a toll.”

  “My understanding is that the Neutral Lands aren’t Kansas or Missouri, but Cherokee land.”

  Cromwell’s pencil moved. Actually, Story knew that, years ago, the Neutral Lands, running about twenty-five miles east to west and fifty north to south, had served as a buffer, so to speak, between civilized white folks and the Osage Indians. These days the Neutral Lands were . . .

  “It’s more of a no-man’s-land,” Cromwell said. “Run by Ben Fariss.”

  “James Harlan might have something to say about that.”

  The reporter stopped writing. “James Harlan as in . . . the secretary of the interior?”

  Boone delivered the beers and rye. He had made a quick exit out the back door to the privy, and as he set the drinks on the table, he said, “Two more men out back.”

  Story shrugged.

  “Secretary Harlan . . . ?” Cromwell coaxed.

  “We chatted when I was in our capital earlier this year.”

  The writer wrote furiously. Well, Story had shaken hands with the secretary, and both men had commented on the beauty of an actress as she sashayed down the aisle of a theater, but what Story had learned was that Harlan was working out a deal with some land company to sell the Neutral Lands. Cheat the Cherokees, probably. One of the reasons Story had paid Percy Gunter a hundred bucks for the right to pass through Cherokee lands. That would, the way Story figured it, put his herd fifty miles north into Kansas, past the grangers, quarantine laws, rustlers, and gunmen like Will Ethridge. But now?

  “There were two herds camped south of town,” Story said.

  The reporter gulped down half of the rye, wiped his mouth, flipped to another page. “They gave up.”

  “Gave up?”
Boone asked.

  Cromwell sipped the rye this time. “Yeah. This is how the Granger’s Association works. They’ll demand a toll that only a fool would pay. Then stampede your herd. Then offer you the same toll. Or they stampede your herd and say, Want your beef back? Here’s what it’ll cost you.” He smiled. “It’s a pretty good story. If I can get it. Mr. Tracy thinks a lot of newspapers in the East and maybe even San Francisco would pick this one up. Harper’s, too, perhaps.”

  Boone had finished about half his beer. “I don’t think most Texas outfits would like that.”

  The rye disappeared. “You’d be right. And if you go to our cemetery, you’ll find five new graves. That’s what it cost the last crew that tried to drive a herd without paying the Granger’s . . . ransom?” He pushed the glass toward Story and wet his lips.

  “Barkeep,” Story called out. “A bottle of your best rye.” His eyes bored through Cromwell.

  “Some crews just turn east. Try to make Sedalia. But the farmers in eastern Missouri are fed up with Texas fever, too. They just don’t have the . . .” He paused, looking for the right word.

  Story gave it to him. “Balls.”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s right.” He laughed, the whiskey going to his head. “Don’t think Mr. Tracy would let me put that in the Troy Reporter, though. But, there’s the chance those herds will get stopped, too. Fariss has a good deal going here. He was a lieutenant under Senator Lane’s Redlegs during the war. They say he shot two of the men killed at Osceola.”

  Story sipped his beer, casting a sideways glance through the window at the two killers still leaning on the hitching rail.

  “They’ve flogged some boys. Hung two or three. Gutted and scalped one. That would be Will Ethridge’s doings, if you ask me, the Missouri ruffian. But here’s what Mr. Salzer and Mr. Quackenbush don’t know. They’ll sell their herds to Fariss, but the drafts Fariss’ll make out to both of them won’t be good for anything except, pardon my bluntness, wiping their asses.”

  The bartender put a bottle of rye on the table. Story handed him a note, took his beer, and lifted his glass at the reporter. “I don’t think Mr. Tracy will let you write that in his newspaper, either.”

  He drained his beer, slid the bottle to the reporter, and rose. “We best ride, Boone. I suspect the smithy has finished with our horses, and it’s a long ride back across the Neosho.”

  “Sir.” Cromwell was refilling his tumbler. “One last question, if you don’t mind?”

  Story waited.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Drive my herd west,” Story said. “Beyond the state’s quarantine lines.” And, he figured, a good way to get closer to Virginia City.

  “They might follow you.”

  “Who?” Though Story already knew.

  “Fariss. Ethridge. Not many herds have come through the past several weeks. Word’s reaching Texas.”

  “If word had reached Texas,” Boone said, “Baxter Springs would be rubble and ashes.”

  There might have been some truth to Boone’s Texas sentiments, Story realized, and most of the delay in herds coming into Baxter Springs had to do with swollen rivers, not Kansas cattle thieves.

  Cromwell emptied his rye and pushed himself up. He reached inside his sack coat and pulled out a newspaper. “Here. This is my paper. Well, Mr. Tracy’s Record. I don’t have anything in that issue.”

  Story shoved the newspaper into his coat pocket.

  “I’d like to ride with you,” Cromwell said.

  Story grinned. “I was hoping to hire some men, Mr. Cromwell. But I have no need of a scribe.”

  “I’d still like to ride with you, sir. I feel a great story will follow you.” He burst out laughing. “Story’s story. You get it?”

  “I’ve never heard that joke before.” Story glared, nodded at Boone, dropped another coin on the table, and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Can I ride with you?” the reporter called out.

  Story pushed through the batwing doors. “It’s a free country.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Setting his cup of tea down on the bench, Dr. Seth Beckstead walked to the pole he had nailed to the sides of the cabin and the privy. Shirtless, Thomas Dimsdale hung over the poll, wheezing.

  “I think that has been long enough, Professor,” Beckstead said.

  The Montana Post’s editor said something that Beckstead could not understand. He bent his knees. “Excuse me.”

  Dimsdale wheezed. “Help me . . . up.”

  Sweating profusely, clammy, pale, Dimsdale eventually stood in his stocking feet, leaned forward, and braced himself against “Beckstead’s Torture Chamber.”

  “What good . . . does this . . . do?” the newspaperman asked.

  “Professor, I’m not sure it does any good, but it might clear out your lungs.” Beckstead walked back, grabbed the journalist’s shoes and shirt from a rough-hewn chair, and returned. He held out the clothing. The doctor still worked his lungs.

  “Some doctors perform surgery that allegedly reduces your lung capacity. There has been success with . . .”

  “A cure?”

  Beckstead’s head shook.

  “Do you have backaches?”

  “I hurt everywhere, Doctor,” Dimsdale said. “I’m a journalist.”

  “And your back?”

  “When you bend over to read, and write, as much as one does in my profession, yes, your back hurts. So does my head. And my eyes.”

  “Bend over.”

  “Sir, I . . .”

  Beckstead began to push, and, after an arrogant blast about English dignity, Dimsdale leaned over again. The doctor’s right hand ran over the backbone, gently at first, stopping at each vertebra but focusing on the lower-thoracic and upper-lumbar areas.

  Dimsdale wheezed. “What . . . are you . . . doing . . . now?”

  “Consumption can destroy the spine,” Beckstead said. “Have you heard of Pott’s disease?”

  “No . . . haven’t you tortured . . . me . . . enough?”

  “The lung illness can spread to other areas, usually the spine. Eventually, the vertebrae will collapse.”

  “So . . . I’ll be a . . . crippled cougher.”

  “You may stand, Professor.” Beckstead lifted his hand. “The good news, Professor, is that I find no protuberance or depression. So far, I feel I am able to say that Pott’s disease has not taken root. You may put on your shirt.”

  * * *

  “Your prognosis, Doctor?” Dimsdale asked as Beckstead found the bottle of brandy and began to pour.

  “You have consumption.” The doctor brought two cordials to the office desk.

  “Astute.” Dimsdale lifted his drink, the glasses clinked, and he sipped. “My parents had consumption. My grandfather had consumption. I was born to suffer and eventually die from consumption. It’s in my lungs and my blood.”

  Beckstead sighed. “I am not certain of that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A professor said that his belief is that our preconceived notions to this illness are wrong, that one does not inherit this disease, but it spreads from a contagion.”

  Dimsdale’s head tilted to one side.

  “Others agree with him, but . . .” Beckstead shook his head. “There is so much about consumption that we do not know.”

  “But there is no cure.”

  “Exercise and—”

  Dimsdale laughed. “And go to the West. Fresh air. Yes, Doctor, that is what brought me to Montana. And might I inquire as to what brought you here?”

  “I desired to become a doctor.”

  “My understanding, sir, is that you were a doctor.” He pointed his cordial at the red surgeon’s box on a shelf. “In the late war.” Dimsdale finished the brandy.

  “I was no doctor, sir, no surgeon. I worked in construction. Deconstruction. A sawmill.” Beckstead refilled his glass, shot down the brandy, and shook his head. “The number of limbs I removed could have filled a boxcar on a t
rain. Possibly more than one.”

  Beckstead had lost control. He sucked in a breath, embarrassed, and slowly exhaled. Dimsdale stared at him, through him, as Beckstead tried to think of a way to apologize, to explain. The editor tried to do it for him.

  “Which needed to be done to save lives, Doctor.”

  “Yes, certainly.” Beckstead wanted to stop, but couldn’t. His anger, frustration, boiled over. Thomas Dimsdale wrote about death. Thomas Dimsdale admired vigilance committees—murderers like Nelson Story. “Ask my associate, Dr. Sparhan, how his life was saved . . . when he sobers up, sir, if you have that much patience.” He rose, bowed, and moved toward his black satchel. “I must rush off, Professor. I have a house call.”

  “Missus Story, I presume.” Dimsdale rose, withdrew a billfold from his pocket, and dropped a note on the table. He grabbed his hat and jacket and moved toward the door.

  The comment, but more the way in which the journalist spoke it, gave Beckstead pause. Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe he should not have had that second brandy. He dropped his hat, stooped to pick it up, but by then Dimsdale was outside, about to close the door.

  “I am her physician, sir. And the baby’s.”

  “Of course.” The door shut, and Seth Beckstead brushed the dirt off the brim of his bowler. Dimsdale was another one of his patients, he figured, about to return to Dr. Justice. But at least the professor had paid his bill.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  He hired three men at Salzer’s outfit, but only one at Quackenbush’s. Four men. He had ridden to Baxter Springs hoping to find one man to replace Jimmy Titus, but the inkslinger’s revelations made Nelson Story reevaluate what he was up against. Especially when he saw the leader of the Granger’s Association, white-bearded Ben Fariss, following Story, the reporter, and Boone.

  Austin Bell, from Quackenbush’s drovers, was the youngest, wasn’t even a Texan, but he packed a Sharps. 50-caliber rifle with a brass telescopic sight, which trumped the kid’s age. Luke Price’s face still bore welts from the beating he had taken from Farris’s men, and the other two Stan Salzer riders—one-eyed Andrew Shaps and the gimpy Drew Finley—looked pissed off at Salzer for not fighting to the last man. “I got a full crew of cowboys,” Story had told them. “I’m not looking for cowboys. What I want . . . are guns.” They knew what they were getting into.