Rustlers

by Orrin Russell

  He pointed the roan south again and followed their backtrail. The signs repeated themselves. They took pains not to be seen, and occasionally would stop from a safe distance to watch the cattle pass by.

  Farther down the way the tracks turned and crossed over the path of the cattle. If they had come from the eastern side that meant they had most likely come from Fort Sumner.

  Balum recalled the three men at the tavern. There was nothing to say they were the owners of the tracks he followed, but the feeling nagged at him nonetheless.

  The Pecos was only a few miles further east. He left the tracks of the men he had been backtrailing and turned northeast. He didn’t expect to find much in the way of game, but his hackles were raised now.

  It wasn’t long until he pulled the roan up again and studied the ground. More tracks. Two horses this time. Their trail also originated from the direction of Fort Sumner. They had ridden behind the herd, keeping several miles between them.

  Balum turned up the tracks and followed them north, back towards the herd. He had ridden a fair distance from the herd, and the trail he followed was a day old. When he reached the rider’s campfire remains from the previous night he dismounted and studied the area. Clearly only two men. They had built a very small fire on one side of a hill with the other side eroded away. Positioned as it was, there was small chance of the light being seen by anyone riding with the herd.

  He mounted up and trailed them for a few more miles. The trail was getting fresher; he was into the same day’s tracks now. These men did not want to be seen. They were turning often to check what was behind them and Balum did not wish to ride into any waiting guns. He crossed back over the plains where the herd had been driven through.

  Several hours later he rejoined the men. It was late afternoon and they had stopped the cattle on good grazing with plenty of water nearby. The men had started an early supper and were gathered round the fire.

  ‘Oh, he’s back!’ said Charles. ‘I thought maybe you’d left us and gone back down to Mexico for that pretty little señorita .’

  ‘I thought you said there weren’t any women down there,’ said Dan.

  ‘None for you boy,’ Charles laughed. ‘So where’s all that antelope backstrap we’ve been waiting for Balum?’

  Balum had dismounted and walked to the fire. He told the men about the two sets of riders. He shared his opinion that they were two distinct parties, but that both had an interest in their herd.

  ‘I can’t see doing anything more than we already are,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll ride alert, and handle what comes. Now grab yourself a plate of beans. Night’s coming on.’

  15

  The rains started shortly after. They began with a drizzle. The men donned their slickers from the chuckwagon and rode with their heads down. A couple times Balum cut wide to the west to check for tracks. The set of three riders had apparently seen all they wanted and had ridden on ahead. Their tracks filled with little puddles of water and were gradually erased back into the land.

  To the east Balum saw nothing. Wherever the two riders were, they had not ridden ahead. If they had not turned off by now there was no doubt their intention was to follow the herd.

  The cattle did not like being pushed in the rain. Their instincts told them to huddle together. It was uncomfortable work for the men, dealing with ornery cows, the slow drizzle creeping up inside their slickers. They were wet and tired, and for three days the precipitation stayed with them.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day it broke and the sun shone again. They took their hats off and let the heat warm their faces. The sunshine lasted throughout the day, long enough to raise their hopes that just maybe the worst was behind them.

  But as the sun began to set over the Rockies, the darker clouds appeared. They came in fast; massive grey sheaths, rolling and churning in the sky. They erased any remains of the closing day and turned the world into a sea of blackness.

  With the clouds came the rain. It was not the drizzle of the days prior, but a frenzied downfall of water. The drops were driven sideways by the wind. They would hurtle into the men’s faces like small liquid bullets, biting into exposed skin and creating countless explosions of sound wherever they hit.

  Lightning came with it. Sporadic relief from the darkness, followed nearly immediately by the wicked crack of accompanying thunder.

  The cattle became anxious. In the brief windows of light the men could see them standing, their heads jerking right and left. They could see their bodies flinch in response to the thunder cracks. Mounted on their horses, the men encircled them.

  It was of no use. The cattle could not see the riders through the canopy of darkness and could not hear their calming voices over the noise from the deluge.

  Balum rode his grulla along the western edge of the herd. Some of the cattle had begun to scatter. There was a moment of stillness. Out of the dark a bolt of lightning flashed. The massive rod of light hurtled out of the sky above him and slammed into the ground not thirty feet to his right.

  It exploded upon touching down. He felt the shock ripple under the roan’s hooves, and a thump in his chest. The next sliver of light illuminated the scene before him long enough to see the cattle running. There was no order to it; they ran in every direction away from the spot of the lightning strike.

  Balum also scattered. The only thing to do when cattle stampeded was to get out of the way. He rode west, careful not to push his horse too fast in the darkness.

  Once safe from danger, there was nothing to do but wait out the storm. He stuck an arm beneath his rain slicker and fished out his tobacco. He put a plug in his cheek and talked to the grulla, soothing its nerves with his voice.

  After the brunt of the storm had passed he rode back to camp. Joe had taken some dry kindling out of the wagon and gotten a fire going. One by one the men filtered back in. They recounted their stories to each other. Each had been in danger of being run down, and every one of them had had their nerves rattled.

  With nothing to do in the darkness they crawled into the back of the chuckwagon. They slept cramped against the sideboards, the supplies piled in their laps and spilling over them. They had not slept well in several nights and prefered to sleep in any position as long as it was dry.

  The sun rose through clear skies in the morning. They made hot coffee and threw saddles over their horses.

  Cattle were scattered across the plains. They roamed in small groups as far as the eye could see. Rounding them up was relatively easy. They had become accustomed to the herd, its familiarity, and the perceived safety it offered. They let the men group them together without a fight.

  Balum had taken the southern end. Fortunately, many of the cattle had run eastwards. With the Pecos only five miles from camp, they had been stopped at its banks. It made the round up that much easier.

  He gave them a prodding towards the main campsite and drifted further south for a couple strays he spotted in the distance. When he reached them he fixed his gaze further south. He saw nothing. Looking down though, it was obvious the grass had been heavily trampled.

  The direction of the tracks and the way the grass was bent told him the cattle were moving southwards. He dismounted and walked over the terrain. With the rainfall the ground had turned to slop. Tracks were mixed together, but here and there he swore he could pick out horse tracks mixed in.

  He rode another mile south, following the trail. The cattle were moving quickly and remained bunched together. Almost like they were being driven.

  Balum sat for a minute and let his mind work it over. Something wasn’t right here, and it wasn’t his imagination running wild. He wasn’t the quickest thinker, but he could put the cards in order. Two riders had been trailing them, keen on keeping out of sight. Cattle had stampeded, scattered far and wide, and now a good forty or fifty were bunched up tight headed back south like they had a fire on their tails.

  He turned and rode north again. As he neared the round-up site he could make out who
was who by the horses they rode and they way they sat in the saddle. He rode straight to Joe. They talked, their horses side by side, then rode south together.

  Joe was far and away the best tracker of the group. He didn’t just read sign, he could tell you the story behind it. As they rode over the ground Balum had previously covered, Joe slowed down and crossed back and forth over the terrain.

  ‘They’re still pulling them in at this point,’ said Joe. ‘See these over here? That’s a couple more added in. And right there are horse tracks. Not any of ours either.’

  ‘I figured as much. How many riders?’

  ‘Two that I can see,’ Joe looked southward over the empty grasslands. ‘Want to ride back for Charles or the boys?’

  ‘Even if we did we can’t leave fewer than three of us with the cattle. There’s still plenty of rounding up to do, and there’s still that other group of riders that concerns me. Looks like it’s just you and me.’

  ‘Anything to keep me off the seat of that buckboard.’

  16

  The two rustlers were moving those fifty head fast. They had pulled in what they could see in the darkness after the stampede and now wanted to put some distance between themselves and the herd as quickly as possible.

  They would know what it meant to get discovered. Rustlers in any part of the country were given few trials when caught red-handed. They would be checking behind them frequently, and anyone coming up on their backtrail was liable to catch a bullet.

  It didn’t require any heavy thinking on Joe and Balum’s part to spell out what the rustlers had in mind. Fort Sumner was the only spot around where cattle might fetch a quick dollar.

  Not eager to come charging up on their backside, Balum and Joe turned off from the trail and swung wide to the west. With the recent rains there would be no dust, which would make finding the cattle from a distance that much more difficult. But it would certainly be easier for them to spot the cattle than the other way around.

  They rode their horses hard. The rustlers had gotten a good head start, but they could only drive those cattle so fast. They aimed to catch up with them before nightfall, and they did just that.

  The rustlers had taken the cattle thirty miles that day, and they were beat, men and animals both. They’d set up camp only a few yards from the banks of the Pecos. They had made a small fire, which both Joe and Balum thought was quite foolish considering the illegal nature of their business.

  They waited for the last light of the setting sun to disappear, then walked their horses over the grassland back towards the Pecos, well north of the rustlers. At a grove of cottonwoods they tied the horses. From there they walked along the riverbank.

  The ground was soft and gave no sound as they moved across it. Balum had had many occasion to walk softly, and he knew he could move in near silence. Joe, though, was like a ghost. Several times Balum looked behind him, wondering if Joe had fallen behind, but he was right there behind him at every step.

  As they neared the small campfire they kept their bodies low against the riverbank. The two men had a kettle on the fire. The breeze brought the smell of coffee drifting out towards the river. The men sat next to the fire on a flat rock. They warmed their hands and sat staring into the flames.

  It was yet another foolish thing to do. Once they looked away from the fire they would be blind in the darkness.

  Balum stopped his crawl and waited for Joe to catch up. He turned but Joe was already beside him. They looked at each other, nodded, and left the edge of the riverbank. They moved slowly, silently, walking on hands and knees.

  They crawled within thirty feet of the fire, just outside of its radius of light, then stood, and Balum spoke. His voice boomed like a cannon out of the mute darkness.

  ‘Unbuckle your gun belts and let them drop. Put a hand on your guns and we’ll put a bullet in you.’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘The owner of those cattle you’re stealing.’

  The men turned to face the voices, but could see nothing.

  ‘Go on, drop those guns.’

  They unclasped their belts and let them fall to the dirt.

  ‘Is that coffee done brewing?’ asked Balum.

  ‘The coffee?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s about done.’

  ‘Take it off the fire and set it to the side where it’ll stay warm.’

  ‘You gonna hang us?’

  ‘We can shoot you if you prefer it.’

  Balum and Joe walked towards the fire. They held their guns in their hands. As they approached, their faces were illuminated.

  ‘Aw shit. It’s that goddamn Indian.’

  Joe and Balum had seen these men before. It was the same two that had knocked into Joe’s chair in Fort Sumner.

  ‘I ain’t gonna be hung by no half-breed. You should be on a goddamn reservation, you know that? Just like a fucking savage to sneak up on a man and not give him a chance. In a fair fight I’d kill you, you dumb half-breed.’

  Joe stood looking at him, his face blank. He holstered his gun and moved his fingers to the buckle of his gun belt. He unlatched it, letting it fall to the ground. His fingers then moved to the knife sheath slung over his hip. He slipped the loop and drew the blade free. It glinted in the light of the fire.

  ‘You have a knife?’ asked Joe.

  ‘I got a knife. Hold it right there, I got a knife,’ said the man. He turned to his saddlebags strewn on the ground a few yards away.

  ‘Move easy,’ said Balum.

  ‘What are you doing Ed?’ the other man’s voice quivered.

  Ed had fished an army knife out of his bags and held it, the blade horizontal. ‘I ain’t gettin hung by no red-skinned nigger.’

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Move over,’ Balum motioned to Ed’s companion. ‘Give ‘em space.’

  The two men circled each other. They held their blades out above their waists, their free hands hanging in the air as if counterbalancing their weight on a tightrope walk.

  Balum had worked with Joe day-in and day-out for over four months. He had seen him herd cattle, tend to horses, and repair tools. He had watched him walk through a field and stalk an antelope, had seen him work a knife to scrape a hide and cut an onion while holding it in the palm of his hand.

  The man could move like a switch on a willow tree. He moved in such a way now.

  Ed lunged forward and Joe’s hand shot out. He slapped the man’s arm across his body and stepped forward. The edge of his blade touched Ed’s chest and slid down and back across his ribs, cutting through the intercostal muscles and slicing the front edge of his latissimus dorsi.

  The right side of Ed’s body contracted involuntarily. Joe continued his forward momentum, moving past Ed and ducking behind him. He ripped the knife blade downward, landing on the back of Ed’s knee. It cut through the hamstrings just above the knee joint.

  Ed’s leg went out from underneath him and he fell to his knee. Joe continued in a circle around Ed’s posterior and returned to his frontside again. The man’s arm holding the knife was rigid, reflexively contracted due to the severed connective tissue below his armpit. He held his elbow against his ribs with the forearm protruding outwards at a ninety degree angle.

  Joe clasped the man’s forearm with his free hand and slashed across the rectus sheath of his abdomen. He immediately returned the stroke with the back edge of the knife in an arc that created an oval cutout in the man’s belly.

  As soon as the knife reached the end of its return stroke Joe plunged it hilt-deep through the external oblique and pried open with the handle.

  Ed let out a soft cry, scarcely heard above the crackle of the fire. The knife had pierced through the ascending colon and into the small intestine. Prying the knife handle towards the center of his stomach had opened a hole through which the man’s entrails began to seep.

  Joe stepped back. Ed remained on his knees. His hands reached down to catch the viscera pooli
ng out of the gash in his belly. He raised his eyes to his companion.

  ‘Ed?’

  But Ed did not respond. As the initial burst of adrenaline slowed, his breath began to come in quick gasps. Each abrupt inhalation sent more of his innards creeping out of the wound. He turned his head to Joe.

  ‘Just finish…’

  ‘Aw Jesus,’ pleaded his friend. ‘Can you just kill him already? Jesus. I’m sorry Ed. I’m sorry.’

  Ed’s mouth hung open. He looked confused.

  Joe walked behind him. He took a wad of Ed’s hair in his left hand and arched his neck back. With his right he drew the knife blade along the man’s throat. He let go of the hair and the body fell sideways to the ground.

  They hung his friend from the branch of a cottonwood. His neck did not snap when he dropped from the back of the horse, and Joe and Balum had to wait for him to asphyxiate. When he finally died and his body stopped jerking they untied him and rewound the rope and hung it on one of the men’s saddles.

  They laid the two bodies out under the cottonwood and returned to the fire. Balum picked up the two empty tins resting in the mud and filled them with hot coffee. They sat next to each other on the flat rock by the fire and drank in silence.

  17

  It took them a day and a half to return the cattle to the rest of the herd. Charles and the boys had re-grouped the scattered animals, seemingly without losing a single head. In spite of their curiosity they kept their questions to a minimum. Much of the story was there in plain sight; Balum and Joe returning with fifty head of cattle and two saddled but riderless horses.

  The herd had enjoyed plenty of grazing time. They were fat and healthy, and with the men several days behind schedule they pushed them at a firm pace.

  They had by now entered into the Colorado Territory. Denver lay somewhere ahead, and with each passing day a greater part of William and Dan’s conversation was taken up with their plans for when they reached the town. They had been disillusioned by Fort Sumner, and rested their hopes on stories and bits of information they had heard in passing on the only decent sized community in the Colorado Territory.