Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  For all their curiosity about the unseen critter, both Lonesome and Animal were reluctant to leave the little island of green grass on the rock ledge. Cain had to remind Lonesome that he was boss with a very light rake of the rowels just under the quick. The touch made Lonesome crow-hop twice, which Cain rode easy, and then the horse settled into a steady swift single-foot with Animal following patiently along behind. After a bit, Cain slipped on his left glove again.

  Once more rock rang under iron horseshoes, like notes struck from stone bells with brass clappers. They brushed around a thrust of light green rock. Again ponderosa pine crowded around them. Lonesome’s hooves whispered across thick carpets of pine needles. The scent of rosin was sticky, cloying; it awakened memory of spilled molasses. Lupine bloomed purple in the open parks. A fallen old cottonwood, growing in too high an altitude and dying early, lay off to the left. Brilliant red paintbrush grew near it. Aspen trembled.

  They passed through a sloping patch of greenish-gray mahogany brush. Next came a field of deep green juniper. Here and there individual bushes, both mahogany and juniper, had been threshed to bits by bull elk trying to rub velvet fuzz off their new horns.

  Mahogany brush made great feed for elk, deer, sheep; they favored it the year round. A black butterfly with yellow trim fluttered around Cain for a ways. Petrified logs lay scattered to all sides. The sweet smell of morning rain rose from the ground; it made a man want to hug something.

  Silently they rode down, down. The near footslopes of the valley rose toward them. The upthrust cliffs and peaks climbed behind them, rose into distant blue pinnacles frosted over with snow and cloud mist at the very top. There were touches of autumn on the high flanks: yellow and ocher and gold mixed in with the deep green of the pine. Swallows banked steeply over dark abysses. Swift fleeting mirages, like cities seen between eyeblinks, winked over the forests. They rode down into warmth and summer. It became easier to breathe. More and more the flittering leaves of aspen began to show. Buckbrush replaced juniper. And at last, as they rode into the head of Red Fork, sweet spring water welled out of the rocks on all sides and the medicinal smell of sage came up on the wind. The short-grass plains lay below. Both Lonesome and Animal quickened to it.

  Cain couldn’t help but croon the chorus of his favorite song to himself:

  “When the Riders of Judgment come down from the sky

  And the Big Boss fans wide his great circle drive

  And critters come in from low and from high

  And critters rise up both dead and alive—

  Will you be ready for that Roundup of Ages?”

  The lower end of Red Fork Canyon, where it widened out into a cozy valley, was beautiful. Bluebells and lupines grew thick and tall. Wild primroses and white purple clematis nodded on the low grassy benches. Most fragrant were the larkspur and lobelia. The orange berries of wild rosebushes tossed in the wind. And off in the sidedraws the chokecherries hung a ripened deep red, and the wild plums a turning red, and the wild raspberries a maidenlip red, and the gooseberries an opal blue. And all the while singing meadow larks and scolding magpies threaded through the trees.

  Through some cedars Cain spotted the first cattle, most of them whitefaces, a breed of beef with a Texas Longhorn foundation, crossed with Shorthorn and topped off with Hereford bulls. This high on the footslopes of the Big Stonies the cattle were saucy and fat. Grass in the canyons at the base of the mountains was always good and the water was plentiful. During the summer months it was favorite grazing ground. Grass might be as nutritious down on the plains but cattle had to travel too far for water. The color of the cattle before him was deep, rich even, a blood-red with matted white, with sometimes the darker brown of the old Texas base showing through. It was easy to see, though, that the Hereford strain was going to win out. Money spent on the Hereford bulls had not been for nothing.

  Cain examined the brands, burnt high on the shoulder so a rider could spot them from horseback, to see if maybe some of his cattle were among them. All he saw, however, were the various brands of Peter Caudle, the Earl of Humberwick: the Derby, ; the English pound, ; and the . There were no Mark-of-Cain cattle, as he jokingly called his own brand, . He also looked to see if any of brother Harry’s stuff was around. But look as he might there were no Rocking Hell, , cattle either. Good thing too. With someone looking for him he’d hardly have the time to throw them back toward the hills of Hidden Country to the south, where Harry lived.

  The stream of the Red Fork deepened in the slowly opening canyon, at last became a noisy brook galloping from one red boulder to the next, surging up over and around, green over gray fieldstone and pink over slabs of scarlet scoria. The air was sweet with the smell of mountain water. Both Lonesome and Animal fluttered nostrils at it, loud.

  “You sure got rollers in your nose today, ain’t ye, boys? Well, all right, let’s all have a drink then.”

  Cain threw over a leg and got down. He slipped out of his slicker and folded it up and tied it behind the cantle. He stretched, stretched long, stretched until with a jerk Lonesome, in a hurry to get at the water, pulled him out of it. Cain shifted his gun around and tightened his cartridge belt. He untied Animal’s hitch from Lonesome’s tail. Then all three went down for a drink, the horse and mule from high shoulders, Cain on his knees. Lonesome and Animal drank on the high side of the stream; Cain on the low. Cain didn’t mind. There wasn’t a sweeter mouth in all creation than a horse’s or a mule’s. That was because they ate grass, not meat boiled or rotten.

  Cain drank thirstily, mustache touching water, throat tight on each swallow. The water was cool with night. Pebbles rolled downhill under his nose. He could taste the onionlike flavor of the minerals. The cool water restored the throat. It healed bone ache. He drank deep and long, the swallows clicking in his neck.

  Finished, water-loggy, he rocked back on his heels. He brushed dirt from the knees of his leather chaps, wiped drops from the tips of his mustache.

  Lonesome and Animal went on drinking. Cain liked to watch Lonesome drink. Swallows shot up the underside of Lonesome’s long curving neck like rising birds.

  After a bit Lonesome had his fill too. Yet he hated to give up the luxury of cool spring water. He continued to lip the rippling water lovingly, an old sage smile wrinkling up his whiskered mug. He played with the water, sucking up a little and letting it run out again.

  The three lingered beside the stream, Lonesome switching his tail slowly, Animal still sipping, Cain casually scratching a leg.

  Steel chinked on a stone behind them. Cain stood up and whirled around all in the same motion, left hand near the handle of his .45.

  Lonesome turned too, nickering, while Animal reared up a long-eared head.

  Two men on horseback waited not thirty feet away: Jesse Jacklin and Mitch Slaughter. Jesse was the general manager of Peter Caudle’s cattle empire; Mitch was a foreman. And behind them, almost hidden in a fringe of chokecherries, waited a dozen armed cowboys. Lonesome and Animal had been right

  Jesse spoke first. “Hammett, from the rear you and that horse of yours look like a pair of partners in flytime.” Jesse had the mocking drawling voice of a Texan, soft yet edged. Jesse was a tall large-boned man, and in blue clothes and wearing a mustache was handsome in a darksome way. He had a red face, of a hue that almost matched the ruby on his left ring finger. He was very high-headed in everything he did and liked running men. When his hide was full of booze he was as touchy as a teased snake. Cain had little use for him, feeling that if a man was a devil and a bastard when drunk he was a devil and a bastard when sober too, no matter how he tried to make up for it with winning talk later on. Booze boiled what was in a man to the top. Jesse added, “Switching each other down like that.”

  Cain was easy. He allowed a smile to lift a corner of his mustache. “Well, I’m thankful this is a country where a man can switch his tail when he feels a bite.”

  “Hah!” Jesse spat.

  Cain said, “Besides, I always did like
hosses better than I did a lot of men.”

  Jesse leaned an arm on his saddlehorn. “How about she-stuff?” Jesse’s horse kicked at a fly under its belly and Jesse rose and fell with the motion.

  “Now that’s close.”

  Mitch laughed. Mitch was a blond, had a pocked face of slanted ovals suggesting the Mongoloid, and was somewhat round-shouldered. He wore brown leather boots, stiff leather chaps, cowhide vest, cowhide cuffs on his wrists, and tan gloves. A six-shooter showed; a rifle hung ready from the pommel. He was known as a sneering bully to his hands and a braggart to his bosses. He would never admit wrong. When someone brought up a point, Mitch either knew all about it already or didn’t consider it worth knowing. Over a drink a man might tell a windy that nobody would much question, but if Mitch were present he’d be quick to come up with a windy that was bigger, better, and windier. Mitch laughed again, and said, “Outside of your cousin Rory, you mean.”

  Cain moved easy. He decided he’d be better off aboard Lonesome if they were going to throw a gun down on him. He retied Animal’s hitch to Lonesome’s tail. He put a boot in a stirrup and rose and threw a leg over Lonesome and settled easy in the saddle. He slipped off his left glove, finger by finger, finally the thumb, and stuck the glove in a pocket of his vest. All the while he was very aware that the two, and the cowboys hidden in the brush, were watching him narrowly. Then, when he was set, he looked up. “So it was you my hoss smelled up there. What am I supposed to have done this time, Jesse?”

  Jesse’s mustache twitched. “Trailed you up there? Nope, not us.”

  Cain said, “Cut the guff, boys. What’s it this time?”

  Mitch said, “You in a rush?”

  Cain jerked his head at the bighorn behind on Animal. “Meat’s heatin’.”

  Mitch said, lips curling sly, “Lucky for you that thing’s got horns like a trumpet. Or some sheepherder over Ten Sleep way might’ve plugged you.”

  Cain studied Mitch, and remembered that Mitch, like himself, was left-handed all the way too. Fact was, Mitch was insanely jealous of Cain’s prowess as a left-handed shot. Cain said quietly, “Well, it ain’t slow elk.”

  Mitch’s round shoulders squared some. “Meanin’ what?”

  “That nobody can cry thief at me claimin’ one of Lord Peter’s steers was slow on the getaway.”

  An eagle broke off of a cliff point, wapping a long trail across the sky, very slowly, its great wings beating like a pair of overbig flags.

  Jesse said, “See any Caudle beef on the high meadows?”

  “Not on the high. But there’s some just back there along the Red Fork.”

  “How many?”

  “Didn’t stop to count.” Cain settled back in his saddle. “Well, seeing as you don’t want me, boys, me and my critters will be moving on.”

  “Wait up,” Jesse said. He touched his horse, a bay with a star, and in a few clopping chinking steps was beside Cain. Mitch and his horse, a chestnut, moved too and circled around on the other side.

  Cain could feel dirt under the fingernail of his trigger finger.

  “Well, throw down. What is it?”

  “That proposition I made you last month. How about it?”

  “Riding for you and the earl again? Never.”

  “Why not? The pay is good. Sixty a month and keep. That’s already twenty over the usual.”

  Cain held his horse. “What kind of a tight are you boys in this time?”

  Jesse leaned back from his pommel. “This time?”

  Cain had once ridden for Jesse Jacklin and he knew his man. He’d even helped Jesse skin Lord Peter. Had been obliged to. When you worked for a boss like Jesse, you followed orders or rolled your tail for home. The skinning of Lord Peter had been quite easy. At the time Jesse owned most of what was now known as the Derby outfit and the earl wanted it the worst way and was willing to pay through the nose for it. That was more than all right with Jesse, since it was also the earl’s intention to keep Jesse on as general manager at a good salary. But before shelling out his English money, the earl decided he wanted a rough tally. So Jesse took the earl all across Bighorn County to show him the Jacklin spread. They found Jacklin cattle thick in Lodgepole Canyon and they found Jacklin cattle thick in Red Fork Canyon. What the good earl didn’t know was that while Jesse was taking him the long way from Lodgepole to Red Fork, foreman Mitch and his boys, Cain and brother Harry among them, had quick hustled the cattle through a cross canyon, the very cross canyon Cain had just now taken down the mountain, so that the same bunch of cattle was counted twice. Some time after the sale, the very next fall roundup, Jesse, hired on as general manager as agreed upon, reported a shortage of some five thousand head. This he promptly blamed on cattle thieves, mostly Harry Hammett and his Red Sash waddies who’d quit the earl’s outfit in the meantime. It was true that brother Harry had forcibly parted a few stray calves from mothers that didn’t belong to him, and that the Red Sashers had orphaned others, but not to the extent claimed by Jesse. It was more that Jesse, seeing independent cowboys and incoming homesteaders take over the choice land along the streams, knew that his way of life was doomed if he didn’t make everybody out a rustler who wasn’t working for the earl. And blaming rustlers, Jesse got away with it for a time. The earl believed Jesse readily, since the earl had a low opinion of American cowboys in the first place.

  Up on the cap rock, a magpie suddenly began to scold behind them; then broke out, black and white, tail heavy and dipping, and sailed out of sight behind some aspen above them. Ah, Cain thought, so Jesse has more of his boys out that way.

  Cain said aloud to Jesse, “Yes, this time.”

  Jesse swallowed. He forced on a smile, put such effort into the smile that it showed fierce under his mustache. “Plus the ten we’ll pay for every loose calf you brand for the earl. Instead of the usual five.”

  Cain laughed at him. There was another reason why Jesse wanted him back. Cain had caught Jesse in a fast one the past summer. The earl had been thinking of quitting America altogether, and getting wind of it, Jesse had decided to repurchase his old outfit. So he and Mitch choused some of the Caudle beef over the low passes onto the high meadows back in the Big Stonies, so that later, at fall roundup, they could report a low tally. A month before, Cain had found such a bunch high on a ridge, some two hundred unbranded yearlings. Seeing through the scheme, he’d jokingly told brother Harry and his boys about it, and they in turn had promptly put their brand, the Rocking Hell, on them, and had driven them across to their hideout in Hidden Country. In a way Harry had that right, since it was unwritten law on the high plains that unbranded calves without mothers belonged to the first man who could slap his iron on them. Harry and his boys had put Jesse and Mitch in a bind. Jesse and Mitch couldn’t very well claim the two hundred as the earl’s, since then they’d have to explain how they’d let two hundred mavericks, all in one bunch, get away unbranded.

  “Ten bucks? Not enough.”

  Mitch sneered out of his slanted Mongoloid ovals, “See you left your running-iron home this time.” Mitch’s horse moved and Mitch jerked it back on its heels, pulling viciously on the reins. The horse huled, once, like a kicked dog.

  Anything Mitch said or did just naturally rubbed Cain the wrong way. Especially so when Mitch was mean to his chestnut. Cain warned himself to sit tight, hold tight. That old Hammett ire which he’d inherited from Gramp Hammett was about to get out from under again. What men, and broncs, couldn’t throw, it did. Cain said, “I’ve never made orphans out of calves for myself.”

  Jesse threw Mitch a look to shut him up. “Cain, your brother Harry bought him twenty cows last winter. That we admit. But now all of a sudden he’s got him two hundred and twenty-some calves.”

  Cain laughed. “Maybe Harry topped his heifers out with a bull jack rabbit last winter.”

  “The hell you say!”

  “Well, now, Jesse, you know how Harry is, a good-hearted kid, and how he hates to see calves wandering around naked without
a brand.”

  “Cain, them two hundred yearlings was our’n.”

  “The earl’s, you mean. Where’s his mark on them?”

  Mitch said, “Do you know where your brand-changing brother is?”

  Jesse threw Mitch another fierce look.

  Cain held tight. He looked down at his bare left hand.

  It was also true that ornery brother Harry had on occasion altered brands and had done it knowing that to an old cowman a brand was as sacred as a wedding ring. Altering a brand was about the same thing as getting in bed with a cowman’s wife. After helping Jesse cheat the earl, and then quitting the earl’s outfit, Harry had pulled Jesse’s leg a few times by changing the earl’s brand to one he had invented for himself, making the Derby, , over into the Rocking Hell, . This had infuriated Jesse, and acting for the earl Jesse had ordered his branders to use the English pound sign, . Harry in turn altered it to the American . When Mitch suggested they use the letters , Harry again in turn altered the brand to . In every case Harry’s altering had been perfect. Harry used two tools, a piece of telegraph wire and a short running-iron. The first could be bent to fit any letter or sign, the second was used to touch up the old brand. Jesse had to kill a cow and skin it and look on the underside of the hide before he could tell if the brand had been altered. Harry had been devilish inventive.

  “Well?” Jesse finally barked. “Do you join us? Or what?”

  When Cain looked up, he found that left-handed Mitch had pulled his gun on him. Looking down the barrel of the .45, Cain could almost see the blunt-nosed bullet getting ready for the jump. The muzzle of the blue six-shooter looked like the entrance to the tunnel of hell itself. Cain said, “Sorry, boys, but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear.”

  Jesse gestured with a high toss of the head, the front of his big hat tipping up. “Mitch, put that hogleg away. Not yet.”

  Mitch did, slowly. He’d been ready.

  “No, boys,” Cain said, “I’m throwing in with the little man.” Jesse said, “You’re making a mistake, Cain.”