by Bill Dugan
He woke up just as the sun came up. Rubbing his eyes, he watched the red light in the east fade away. It grew white, and he could no longer bear to look at it. Even the water of the Arkansas turned white as milk.
As soon as he felt the sun’s warmth on his skin, he walked downhill and rebuilt his fire. The last of his coffee went into the pot, barely enough to make a cup, but it would have to do. Gnawing on a hunk of dried beef, he waited for the coffee to brew, then washed the salty taste of the meat down with the scalding liquid.
Kicking the fire out, he saddled his pony and secured his relief horse to the saddle horn, using a longer rope than usual for the crossing. Swinging up into the saddle, he felt light, almost cheerful. Whatever lay ahead of him was something he had to confront. The sooner the better, he thought.
As his pony eased into the river, he braced himself for the first burst of current. The pony started to swim, straining to keep its head above the swirling waters. He could feel the animal reaching for the river bottom, its legs churning like windmills.
And when he got close to the opposite bank, the pony exploded out of the water, as if frightened of something beneath the surface. Ted looked back, wondering if he would live to cross it again. Then, as if Texas were someplace he never expected to see again, he turned away from the south and kicked the pony up the slope. He wondered where the herd had crossed, and tugged Rafe’s map from his shirt pocket. He’d examined it so many times, it was falling apart at the creases. Mud-stained, some of the pencil marks rubbed away by his fingertips, it could barely be read in spots.
But he was close now, and in a day or two, he’d no longer need it at all. There were no maps leading to Ralph Conlee. He’d have to find the bastard on his own.
But he was ready.
He would find him.
14
THE FIRST TASK was to find the herd. According to Rafe, the hands were going to camp in the area until Ted decided what to do. Rafe had negotiated permission from the sheriff, on the condition that the beeves be kept under close guard and not allowed to wander freely. The farmers had been unhappy with the decision, but they had agreed. Conlee’s raiders had visited more than a little grief on them, and Rafe thought they harbored the secret hope that somehow, working with the cattlemen, they could rid themselves of the scourge once and for all.
A mile from the river, Ted hit a road and headed west. So far, he had seen no sign of human life, no fences, no tilled fields, no buildings of any kind. There was only the road, which started on the eastern horizon, in the middle of nowhere, and stretched out toward another nowhere in the west.
When he’d gone four miles, he spotted a plume of smoke ahead. It appeared to be just off the road, and he broke his pony into a trot. A half hour’s ride brought him in sight of a chimney. As he continued on, a roof rose above the flat ground, hovering like a platform in the air. Slowly, the roof rose and the house beneath it appeared. Ten minutes later, he could see a fence, running straight off the road, and he galloped toward it.
Turning into a narrow lane, lined with split rails on either side, he approached the house, not knowing quite what to expect. A barn, fifty yards from the house and surrounded by trees on three sides, sported a large railed pen, in which he could see half a dozen horses.
Beyond the barn, a fenced field contained more than two dozen head of the strangest-looking cows he’d ever seen. Instead of the long, lean lines of the Texas longhorns, these animals were blocky, more like buffalo than cows at all. Reddish brown with white faces, he thought they might have been built to the blueprint of a child’s crayon sketch.
He entered the broad yard, slowing his horse as much out of uncertainty as courtesy. A figure appeared in the barn doorway. The man ducked inside for a moment, then reappeared with a shotgun and ran toward the house. By the time Ted reached the hitching post by the porch, the man was planted in the doorway, the shotgun none too casually aimed in his direction.
“Howdy,” Ted said. “Mind if I get down?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“Information, mostly. And some fresh water.”
“Water we got. Information, maybe.”
Ted slipped from the saddle. “Mind if I tie up?”
“Long as you don’t knot it.”
Walking toward the porch, Ted held out his hand. “Name’s Ted Cotton.”
“Cotton?” The man seemed to relax a little. “Texas, right?”
Ted nodded. “That’s right. How’d you know?”
“You Johnny’s brother?”
“I was, yes.” Ted swallowed hard.
The man on the porch shook his head and let the shotgun rest on the floor, butt first. “That was a damn shame, Mr. Cotton. I sure am sorry.”
When Ted didn’t answer, the farmer said, “Kevin O’Hara’s my name. Come on inside. You must have had a long ride. Seems like Rafe didn’t leave that long ago.”
“You met Johnny, then?”
O’Hara nodded. “I did. I wish things could have worked out different. But …”
“They will,” Ted said. “I can promise you that.”
“You don’t mean you’re gonna take Conlee on, do you?”
Again, Ted was silent. O’Hara turned to step through the door and held the screen open for Ted to follow. Inside, Ted saw a large room, with a big wooden table and a coal stove in one corner. Half a dozen chairs lined the table, three on either side. “Have a seat, Mr. Cotton. Let me get Millie.”
O’Hara disappeared through a doorway hung with a blanket, and Ted could hear low voices beyond it for a moment. O’Hara reappeared and pulled a chair out from the table. “Have a seat. Millie will be right out.”
O’Hara dropped into a chair, and Ted sat across from him. The farmer looked at him directly, as if he were trying to place him in memory somehow. “You favor your brother a bit. He was bigger, but…”
Ted shook his head. “It’s alright. I don’t mind talking about it.”
O’Hara sighed. “I should have seen it comin’, but everybody here was so worked up about your herd, all we could think about was ourselves.”
“I gather Conlee is a problem for you folks, too.”
“Problem? Oh, yeah, you could say that, but it don’t go half far enough. He’s got everybody on the border for two hundred miles in either direction shaking in his boots. Good reason, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s a savage, worse than any Indian. The man has no shred of human decency or compassion. He doesn’t just take what he wants, he kills who he wants, and tortures people for the fun of it. Why, not three months ago he …”
O’Hara stopped when he heard footsteps just beyond the suspended blanket. “Here’s Millie.”
A slender young woman, her sandy hair pulled back in a bun, stepped through the doorway and smiled. “Mr. Cotton,” she said, “would you care for something to eat?”
“No, thanks, I just …”
“Come now, you must be hungry, and it must be weeks since you’ve had any decent food.”
“Don’t want to be any trouble, ma’am.”
“No trouble, I assure you.” She didn’t wait for him to argue any longer. Turning her attention to the stove, she got a fire going under a huge iron cauldron. “I made this soup this morning. I just have to heat it up.”
O’Hara watched her fondly. “No point in arguing with Millie. She gets a fire under her, there’s no turning back. You’re bound to eat something whether you want to or not.”
Ted smiled. “I guess I better get my bib, then.” He laughed. “Now, Mr. O’Hara, what were you about to tell me?”
Millie canted her head slightly. O’Hara noticed and shook his head. Signaling with his eyes that he didn’t want to talk in front of Millie. “No need to bother about that right now. Plenty of time to talk. Listen, I got to finish up in the barn. Care to give me a hand?”
“Man ought to earn his keep,” Ted said, pushing back a chair.
The men walked outside
and O’Hara glanced back once or twice at the house, as if to make sure that Millie hadn’t followed them.
Once they entered the barn, he turned to Ted. “I don’t want Millie to hear any of this. She’s already nervous about being out here. What I’m gonna say would just make things worse.”
“It’s that bad, is it?”
“Worse. The sheriff’s a good man, but we might as well be without the law. Conlee and his animals know nobody will help Tom Mitchell. They can go anywhere and do anything. Not just around here, but all up and down the border. There’s not enough law. The army don’t seem to care. Maybe it’s too much trouble for them, or maybe they worry too much about the wrong kind of savage. I don’t know. But what I do know is that Conlee has to be stopped. But I don’t know how.”
“He will be.”
“Can you count on your hands?”
“I don’t know.”
O’Hara seemed surprised at the answer. “They seemed to worship your brother. I would have thought …”
“They did worship Johnny. But they’re not so sure about me.” Ted debated whether to tell O’Hara about the last few weeks in Texas, before Johnny had come north with the herd, but decided there was no point in it. “Johnny was always the boss. Cowhands are funny. They don’t transfer loyalty so easy. Just because you’re related to the boss doesn’t make you the boss. You got to earn their trust. I haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“I wish I could tell you folks around here would pitch in, but I can’t.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Will you pitch in?”
“I don’t think so.”
Ted shook his head. “No wonder Conlee gets away with murder.”
“Look, Ted, you have to understand something. Conlee is like a force of nature around here. He was here before I got here. He’ll be here long after I’m gone, most likely. But as long as I’m here, I got to be here. You can just saddle up and ride away. You get him riled up, he won’t chase you but so for, because he knows this area, and he knows the people. It makes him feel secure. But if you get him riled up, he’ll take it out on somebody, whether you’re here or not. That means me and folks like me. Our whole lives are here. We have to stay.”
“If you call it a life, letting somebody like Conlee keep you scared of speakin’ your mind, scared to stand up for yourselves, then I guess you’re welcome to it.”
“Look, Ted, I can understand you being angry, disappointed even, but that’s the way it is. I’d be lyin’ if I said it wasn’t. But look at it from our point of view. Hell, it was your brother he killed, among others. If Johnny couldn’t beat him at his game, how can you expect a bunch of farmers to do it. Hell, I never even saw a gun until we packed up to move out here, much less own one. Even now, I don’t know whether I’d trust myself to use it. I can stand up to any man in a fair fight, with my hands. But that’s not what this is. This isn’t hands, and it sure as hell ain’t a fair fight. Unless you get that through your head, we might as well get your headstone ready, right next to your brother’s. Because that’s what it’ll come to.”
“Look, O’Hara, I’m not here to make the world safe for nobody. I’m here for one reason, and one reason only. Ralph Conlee killed my brother. I think he ought to pay for it. If I can do anything to make that happen, then I’ll do it. I don’t care how, either, as long as it happens.”
“You might as well figure on working alone. If your boys help out, you still got a chance, but not much of one. I reckon some or most of you boys were in the war. But Conlee’s got hisself a unit. That’s the difference. They’re used to workin’ together; they know they can depend on one another. That gives them a big edge, mighty big. You want to buck them odds, you go right ahead. But don’t look to nobody around here for help. Like I said, I wish it could be different, but it ain’t. And it won’t never change, as long as Conlee is around. Maybe, if he had come after we were already here, it might’ve been different. But the fact is, he was already tearin’ hell out of the countryside before most of us got here. We either didn’t know about him or didn’t care. Either way, it’s his countryside, not ours.”
“You seem to think he’s not human, like he can’t be hurt, can’t be beat.”
O’Hara shook his head. “You got that right. You ever seen some of the things he done, you’d think the same. I seen three men, brothers, their heads on a row of stakes, like goddamn pumpkins. I saw a woman slit from chin to belly, laid open like a trout. And that was only after they were done with her. You can imagine the rest of it. He’s killed more’n a half-dozen children I know of. You ride out of here fifty miles in any direction, you see a burnt-out wreck of a farmhouse, a barn turned to cinders, you can bet it was Ralph Conlee lit the match. If he wants somethin’, he takes it. If he don’t want it, he makes sure it ain’t no use to nobody else. Butt heads with him, you get yours broke. And your neck to boot.”
Ted was quiet for a long time. When he finally broke the silence, he whispered, “I still got to do it. I can’t let him get away with it.”
“It’s your funeral, I’m tellin’ you, Cotton. It’s your funeral.”
“Maybe so, but I’d rather die tryin’ than walk away knowin’ I didn’t give a damn. I couldn’t live like that. Not for long, anyhow.”
“Folks do what they got to.”
“Not always, O’Hara, not always.”
“Mr. Cotton’s right, Kevin.”
O’Hara whirled. “Damn it, Millie, how long you been sneakin’ around out there?”
“Long enough.”
15
“IT’S OVER THE next hill,” O’Hara said. “Or should be, anyhow.”
He looked uncomfortable, sitting his horse as if it were a wagon. Ted felt sorry for him, but was angry at the same time. How could a man with so much to lose be so damned cautious, he wondered. Couldn’t he see what he was doing?
It was none of his business, but it made him mad anyway. And he knew that what lay ahead of him would be a little easier if he could have convinced O’Hara, and the others like him, to throw their weight to his cause. They had the same cause, after all, but as long as O’Hara refused to see that, Ted knew he might as well be hollering down a rain barrel, for all the good it would do.
As they broke up the slope, Ted nudged his horse a little ahead. He could hear O’Hara trying to convince his horse to keep up, but the big Irishman was no cowboy, and no horseman either.
Ted broke over the ridge, expecting to see the herd placidly munching at the rich Kansas grass. What he saw instead almost made his heart stop. Instead of three thousand beeves, he saw three, maybe four hundred.
The chuck wagon sat to one side of a broad meadow, a plume of smoke spiraling up from a rather tentative-looking campfire. He spotted a couple of the hands on horseback, keeping the meager herd under control, but they were under-worked. It wouldn’t have taken three kids on hobby horses to ride herd on what was left.
He almost came to a dead halt, stunned into granitelike immobility. He waited for O’Hara, turning in the saddle to watch the farmer cover the last two hundred yards. When the Irishman was abreast of him, he reined in. The look on his face was somewhere between sheepish and sorrowful.
“What in hell happened to my herd?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” O’Hara said. “Figured it would be better if you saw for yourself.”
“You mean to tell me Conlee made off with nearly twenty-five hundred head of cattle?”
O’Hara nodded. “That’s right.”
“Thanks for your help,” Ted said. “I’ll take care of it from here.”
“You sure you don’t want me to wait around?”
“For what?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” O’Hara struggled to get his horse to turn back down the hill. “You know where I am, if there’s anything I can do.”
“Thanks,” Ted said. He tried to keep the edge out of his voice, but didn’t think he succe
eded. When the farmer was gone, he charged down the hill, making straight for the mess wagon. He didn’t wait for his horse to stop, jumping off after tugging on the reins. The animal seemed confused to lose its rider so suddenly, and pawed the ground right behind him.
Cookie poked his head around the wagon. He made a quick stab at a smile, but it went nowhere. “Figured you’d be here before too long,” he said.
“Cookie, what in hell happened to the herd?”
“Oh, you mean them cows we nursemaided for near two thousand miles. That the herd you mean?”
“Damn it, you know what I’m talking about.”
“Well, we ain’t got too much left. Hung on to what we could. Hands and beeves, both. But we’re scrapin’ bottom, Teddy.”
“Conlee?”
“ ’Bout right. Sumbitch run ’em off a few hundred at a time. Never could stop him. Never knew when to expect him. He had us outgunned anyhow. And after Johnny … well, that kind of took the tar out of the boys. Lot of ‘em left right afterward. What we got left ain’t much to look at, and I reckon they’d have run off too, if anybody’d have ‘em. Which I surely doubt.”
“How come you hung around?”
“Thought somebody ought to stay and tell you what happened. Didn’t reckon anybody else would, so …” The old man shrugged.
“I don’t know whether to thank you or tell you what a fool you are.”
“You can do both, I think. Seems like I got both comin’. You want some grub?”
“Nope.”
“What are you fixin’ to do … to get even, I mean.”
“Don’t know.”
“You are fixin’ to get even, I hope. Else I hung on fer nothin’.”
Ted didn’t answer him. Instead, he turned to look at the sorry remnants of the herd. Cookie tugged on his sleeve. “I didn’t, did I?” When Ted turned, he continued, “Hang on fer nothin’?”
Until that moment, Ted didn’t know the answer. But there was no way to avoid it now. “No,” he whispered, “you didn’t hang on for nothing.”
“Good. I didn’t think so. You might be a mite slow, but you are a Cotton. Seems like you and me are the only ones who didn’t fergit that.”
