by Short, Luke;
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War on the Cimarron
Luke Short
Chapter I
The spring dusk of the Indian Nations was settling swiftly, and behind him Frank Christian could hear the uneasy bawling of the thirsty trail herd. Here, three days west of the Chisholm and Fort Reno and deep in the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation’s vast grasslands, there were no familiar landmarks, and Frank was as lost as the cattle he was leading. Otey Fleer, sent ahead this afternoon to scout the country and locate Morg Wheelon’s place, their destination, was not yet returned; and back on the swing Beach Freeman’s young voice, rising in wild curses at the uneasy herd, gave a clue to the temper of the whole crew. Frank stood up in his stirrups to scan the rolling plain again for sight of Otey.
An idle stirring of wind touched his right cheek and lifted the mane of his buckskin gelding, and immediately the situation was taken out of his hands. The lead steer, a mossy-horned old coaster from the Nueces delta, paused in his stride, lifted his head and sniffed the wind and then quartered off to the north at a run. The herd broke then, smelling water, and Frank lifted both hands as a signal to the crew to let them go, and then pulled aside and lifted his horse into a canter. Over to the left the chuck wagon pulled abreast of him and passed him, the horses at a dead gallop, and then the land broke away to show a willow-fringed creek ahead.
In the half dark Frank saw a rider angling up the slope from the creek and he pulled over toward him, letting the cattle stream past on their blind way to water.
Otey Fleer called “Frank?” in the dusk, and Frank answered and they met.
“Was this shack of Morg’s set on the hairpin bend in the creek, with a stand of live oaks behind it?”
“That’s what Morg wrote. Where is he?”
“I never went up,” Otey said. “I figgered to come back and catch you before dark.”
“How far is it?”
“Four-five miles. I reckon we better bed down the herd here and not try to make it,” Otey said.
Frank looked sharply at his segundo, sensing the caution and lack of enthusiasm in his voice, and then pulled his horse around and headed for the creek and the fire that was already built beside the chuck wagon.
Samse Benson, the horse wrangler, already had his rope corral built for the night herder’s mounts, and the rest of the crew of four men was drifting wearily toward the campfire and late supper.
They were waiting the word to offsaddle when Frank rode in among them. Seen in this dusk, he was unmistakably Texan, tall and bleach eyed and narrow hipped. Without dismounting he leaned wearily on his saddle horn, thumb-prodded his Stetson back off his forehead and scrubbed a lean, browned and beard-stubbled jaw with the flat of his hand. His glance was directed at the cattle beyond, who had tramped down the willows in their thirst and crowded the creek on both banks. He seemed to concur with Otey’s opinion and called to the horse wrangler. “Turn out the whole remuda, Samse. No night herdin’ tonight. We’re on home ground.”
A whoop of joy lifted to the lowering night sky, and Frank Christian suddenly grinned. Immediately he seemed younger than his twenty-seven years. There was a kind of rash and friendly derisiveness in his gray eyes as he laughed at the relief of his crew, for the drive had been a long and hard one. But when he caught sight of Otey Fleer, still mounted, utterly silent, his grin faded and was replaced by a troubled frown. Beach Freeman, youngest man in the crew, walked over to him and said, “You ain’t hoorawin’ us, Frank? This is really home ground?”
“You’d be ridin’ night herd, all right, if it wasn’t.”
“I just wondered,” Beach said. “I choused thirty head of strange beef away from the creek tonight.”
A scowl creased Frank’s forehead for a moment, and then he pulled his horse around. “I’m headin’ for Morg’s shack tonight, Beach. Bring the horses and the wagon up the creek to the shack tomorrow, and day after we’ll scatter the herd.”
Afterward he rode over to Otey and said, “You come with me, Otey,” and his segundo pulled in alongside him and they rode out of the faint circle of firelight. Otey was a wry little man, wrinkled and unshaven and untidy and profane, and seldom given to enthusiasms. But in all the years he had punched cattle in Texas Otey had never seen grass like this, and Frank was irritated at his silence. He asked presently, “How does it look, Otey?”
“Oh, the range looks all right,” Otey said grudgingly.
Frank looked over at him, but coming darkness hid the little man’s face. “Well, what don’t you like about the rest of it?”
Otey said sulkily, after a minute’s pause, “Nothin’,” and they lapsed into silence. This creek, Paymaster by name, was a landmark in his life, Frank thought—the end of one part of his life and the beginning of another. Morg Wheelon, his partner, was waiting for him at the shack up ahead, and the prospect of that meeting gave him a small excitement.
Last year he and Morg had thrown in together as partners, pooling all the money they had earned as trail bosses and all they could borrow in Texas. That money had gone toward a scheme that most men thought fantastic. The Chisholm Trail, when it left Texas, passed successively through the Comanche-Kiowa, the Cheyenne-Arapaho and the Cherokee reservations, the vast land of the Indian Nations that stretched from Kansas to Texas and had a “no trespassing” sign on it for white settlers. It was a country filled with not-too-friendly Indians policed by the U.S. Army and with outlaws wanted in every state and territory of the West; but above and beyond that, it had grass belly deep to a horse. A few hardy cattlemen, incorporated into companies, had come onto the reservations and had leased hundreds of thousands of acres from the Indians. On these acres, which they protected by the sheer toughness and size of their crews, they wintered their herds of Texas beef and sold them at top prices at the near markets in Dodge City and Caldwell. It was no place for the small rancher, cattlemen opined. The big companies didn’t need sheriffs, juries, jails and the protection of the law; they were their own law. The little rancher, on the other hand, didn’t have a chance. And Morg Wheelon and Frank didn’t agree.
Morg had stayed in the Nations this past winter while Frank went back to Texas to scrape together a trail herd. Two months ago Morg had written that he had leased fifty thousand acres on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation from the Cheyenne chiefs, had built a shack and corrals and was waiting for the herd. Tonight, then, they were ready to begin proving that the Nations was a country for little men too.
Interrupting his own reverie, Frank said, “Otey, wait till you see what our herd looks like next fall.”
“I wisht I could,” Otey said sourly.
“Why won’t you?” Frank said.
“It don’t look like I’d be here.”
Frank didn’t speak for a moment, and Otey said in sulky distaste, “Dammit, Frank, you and Morg should have got together better on what you planned.”
“Why’s that?” Frank asked.
Otey looked at him in the darkness. “When you hired me you told me I was to stay on as foreman of the crew on the lease here, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“You told them other boys—cook, Samse, Beach, Phil and Mitch—that they was hired permanent, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. They are.”
“Then what’s Morg doin’ with a crew a’ready?”
Frank glanced swiftly at him, but it was too dark to see the small man’s face. He pulled up his horse and Otey pulled his up, and Frank said quietly, “What are you talkin’ about?”
“I thought you didn’t go up.”
“I never. When I come in sight of it there was five men and a hell of a lot of horses in the pasture. I took a pasear back into the live oaks and watched the house, and I’m tellin’ you, Frank, I counted eight men and a cook!”
“Morg never hired them, I know. He wrote me to bring the crew.”
“Them riders belonged there,” Otey said bluntly. “They wasn’t just stoppin’ off to pass the time of day.”
Frank didn’t say anything but put his horse into motion. Presently Otey said, “All day long ridin’ the creek I been seein’ cattle that don’t carry a brand you or Morg ever registered anywheres.”
Frank said in sharp disgust, “Hell, Otey, you’re spotted the wrong place, I reckon.”
“Frank, pull up. I want to talk to you,” Otey said.
There was an urgency in his voice that made Frank obey. Otey went on in his tough, wry voice, “You know and I know that we’ve followed Morg’s directions from Fort Reno. We’ve hit the right creeks, we’ve seen the right landmarks, and this here creek is Paymaster Creek. We’ve passed that red limestone outcrop that Morg wrote about, and that shack is in a hairpin bend of the creek. And just to make sure I took a pasear over to the north and spotted them salt licks that Morg wrote about. I got the right place. Now you tell me what Morg is doin’ with strange cattle on your range and a crew to punch ’em.”
Frank said quietly, “Let’s find out,” and moved on. Otey didn’t say anything. They forded the creek at a place he had picked out that afternoon and followed the creek on the other side until it swung abruptly north. And then, up the gentle slope, a small pin point of light appeared.
“There’s the bend and there’s the light,” Otey said.
They rode on, turning up the slope. Presently they had to detour for a pasture fence, and then they were beside the corrals. Frank rode straight on toward the house. When he was a hundred feet or so from it the lamp suddenly winked out inside, and a voice from under the dark gloom of the porch said, “Sing out, boys!”
Frank pulled his horse to a stop. “Where’s Morg?”
There was a long pause. “Morg who?”
“Morg Wheelon. This is his place.”
“Who’s talkin’?” the voice asked.
Frank’s voice took on an edge. “Mister, I’m comin’ over there, and I’m comin’ peaceable. I want to talk.”
He dismounted and walked slowly toward the house. He heard the man on the porch say softly, “Light the lamp, Chet,” and then say to him, “Wait’ll there’s light, and then come slow, both of you.”
A match flared and then the steady glow of the lamp replaced it, and Frank walked onto the porch and paused in the doorway. Five riders had been interrupted in their game of cards. They stood around a big table that filled the center of a bunk-lined room. The light from the lamp brought out the sharp planes of their suspicious faces, and Frank picked out the biggest man and said, “Where’s Morg Wheelon?”
This man shifted his feet gently and rammed both thumbs in the waistband of worn levis. He was a huge man, heavy and tall, with a thin saddle of sandy hair across his nearly bald head, and he had a broad, hard-bitten face that was utterly placid in front of deep-set alert eyes.
“Morg Wheelon?” he murmured. “Don’t recollect the name. This is a line camp of the Reservation Cattle Company, though.”
Frank stepped slowly into the room. He might have been an ordinary puncher, for his clothes—checked cotton shirt, faded levis, black silk neckerchief, dust-colored Stetson and scuffed half boots—were common enough for Texas men. But there was something in his big-boned six feet of height and in his slow-moving manner that told of authority. He looked carefully about the room, at the cluttered gear on the dirt floor, at the ten bunks piled with blankets and clothes, at the door that let out to the cook’s lean-to.
His gaze finally settled on a group of pictures cut out of magazines that was pasted on the log wall over a single bunk. A hunch prompted him to stroll across the room and examine the pictures. One was a drawing of a pacing horse, tail out, mane streaming and feet daintily lifted.
Frank turned slowly to the five men and then nodded at the pictures. “Who owns them?”
“I do,” the heavy man said.
“Nice picture of a horse. What horse is it?”
“I dunno. I just cut it out.”
Frank said evenly, “You’re a liar. That’s a picture of a pacer, Lady St Clair, from San Francisco. She made a record for five miles at Frisco in seventy-four, and Morg saw her do it. I’ve looked at it a hundred times. That’s Morg’s picture and he pasted it there.” His gray eyes were suddenly sultry, and his glance bored at the big man. “Where’s Morg?”
The man in the doorway, gun still trained on Otey’s back, said, “Don’t talk, boss.”
“I got nothin’ to hide,” the heavy man said firmly, his glance fixed on Frank. “Morg Wheelon is dead.”
There was a long, long pause.
“Dead?” Frank echoed blankly.
“That’s right. Talk to Major Corning in Fort Reno. The army investigated it. About three weeks ago one of my riders called in here to pass the time of day, and Morg was lyin’ in the yard by the horse corral. Somebody had fist-fought him and then let him have it with a load of buckshot.”
After another long pause Frank said, “And you’re who?”
“Chet Milabel. I’m foreman for the Reservation Cattle Company.”
“And what are you doin’ in Morg’s place here?”
Milabel shook his head slowly. “It ain’t Morg’s place. After he was murdered the company leased this chunk of land from the Cheyennes. We paid good hard money for it too. This shack was on the lease, so we moved in.”
Frank shuttled his glance to Otey, whose face was stiff with dismay, and then he looked back at Milabel.
“There’s only one thing wrong with the way that shirt hangs, Milabel. Morg Wheelon had a partner, and I’m that partner.”
Interest quickened in the foreman’s eyes. He studied Frank with a careful unhaste and then said, “I’d want proof of that before I believed it, and it wouldn’t change things much if I did believe it.”
“You’re goin’ to believe it. You’re goin’ to hear Chief Stone Bull tell you—after I’ve moved you out of here.”
A slow smile broke Milabel’s heavy face. He shook his head and murmured, “You’re green to these Indian politics, I can see.” He gestured to a bunk. “Sit down.”
“No.”
Milabel spread his legs a little wider and rocked back on his heels. He talked now with a slow and wicked relish. “There ain’t anybody going to help you. All a man has to do to lease graze on this reservation is to hunt up ten Indians, any ten Indians, and give ’em some money. Then he squats on a piece of land and holds it if he can. That’s what Morg Wheelon did. He hunted up Stone Bull, an old chief and a good one, and give him some money and then picked this piece. But I can hunt up four other chiefs who’ll say they never saw the color of Morg Wheelon’s money. And I can hunt up a dozen white men, whisky peddlers to the Indians, who claim to be lease agents for the Indians, and they’ll say Morg Wheelon didn’t pay them.” He shook his head slowly. “You ain’t got any claim on this land, my friend—not unless you got plenty men with guns behind you to back it up. Have you?”
“I don’t reckon,” Frank said, studying each man’s face, “I don’t reckon I’ll need that many.”
“I wouldn’t try it with less,” Milabel murmured.
“I’ll try it.” Frank hitched up his levis. “I’ll give you a week to pull off this lease. Move your cattle and your gear. No, I’ll give you two days, just forty-eight hours. I don’t like your face.”
Milabel’s faint smile vanished, and Frank went on in a low, wicked voice, “There’s just one thing I want out of you,
Milabel. Who killed Morg Wheelon?”
“I know the Reservation Cattle Company didn’t, and that’s all I care.”
Frank said, “After I kick you off this place I’m goin’ to find out if that’s so.”
The man in the door swore softly, and at the sound of his voice Milabel stirred himself and tramped slowly across to Frank and hauled up facing him. He said gently, “You talk like a hard case. Are you one?” and suddenly drove his fist into Frank’s face. Frank tried to dodge, and the blow skidded along his jaw, but there was force enough in it to send his head back against the wall with a sharp and savage rap that about split his skull.
His knees hinged and he sat down loosely on the floor, and Otey’s hand made only the faintest flicker of a movement toward his gun before he felt a gun barrel rammed in his back.
Otey said bitterly, “You’ll be sorry for that, Milabel.”
“Tote him out of here and keep him out,” Milabel said.
Otey walked over to Frank and stood him on his feet and then ducked under his arm and half dragged, half walked him out into the night.
When he reached his horse he felt Frank take up some of his slack weight, and Otey put Frank’s hands on the saddle horn. For a half minute, perhaps, Otey held him there, and then Frank took his weight and shook his head slowly from side to side.
When he raised it he looked around him and then over his shoulder at the house. He shoved away from the horse, striding toward the light.
Otey grabbed him roughly and swung him around. “Stay out of there, Frank!”
Frank wrenched his hand free and swung up his gun and started again, and then Otey knew he would have to do it. He whipped up his gun and brought it arcing against Frank’s head, and then Otey caught him as he was falling on his face.
Afterward Otey loaded him across the saddle and led his horse toward the creek and their camp.
Chapter II
With his self-imposed deadline less than two days away there were a lot of things Frank had to do and do quickly, and when he rode into Fort Reno the next noon there was naked temper in his gray eyes. One of those things was to find out what he could about Morg’s death. This morning he had remembered a line in Morg’s last letter to him. Morg had said that if everything went right for them during the coming year there was a girl at the agency, Edith Fairing by name, whom he was going to marry. She was the one to see first.
