Several times I saw him studying me, and whenever I was around, I noticed he knew where I was.
There was a young fellow standing near me and he whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “Wild Bill’s trying to figure out who you are.”
“Wild Bill? Is that Hickok?”
“Sure thing. He’s a fine shot.”
This fellow stood there listening to the talk of guns and shooting, and then he turned to me. “Have you eaten yet? I’m hungry.”
We walked along together. He was a buffalo hunter, he told me, and he had come into Kansas City with nearly three thousand dollars from his hides. “My name’s Dixon,” he said. “Billy Dixon.”
“I’m Ryan Tyler … lately from Colorado.”
We ate together, then went to see a show. Later we met a strong-built man, older than us, whom Dixon had known on the prairie. His name was Kirk Jordan.
Several days we hung around town, but my money was running short and I’d begun to think about leaving. When I was sitting on the Square one day, a sharp-faced man in a black coat stopped near me. Several times he looked me over carefully. Me, I’d hunted a good bit myself, and knew how a hunter looked. This man was hunting something.
He sat down near me, and after a bit he opened a conversation. After a while he mentioned poker … a friendly game.
Now, I’m not so smart as some, but Logan Pollard had taught me a sight of poker. And he taught me how to win at poker, and how a cardsharp works. Pollard was good.
He knew a lot, and being naturally clever with my hands, I had learned fast.
Moreover, poker isn’t a very friendly game. If you play poker, you play for money, and beyond a certain point there is nothing friendly about money. So when a stranger suggests a friendly game of poker … well, you figure it out.
This fellow had me pegged right. He figured I was in from the hills; had bought some fancy clothes, and was carrying a stake in my pocket. Only the last was a wrong guess.
“Don’t really play cards,” I said cautiously, “but if you’re going to play, I’d enjoy watching.”
“Come along, then.”
We started off, and, glancing back, I saw Hickok and Jim Hanrahan and some others looking after us with amused smiles. They were thinking that I would learn a lesson, and every man has some lessons to learn for himself.
There were five men in the game and one of them looked like a buffalo hunter. The others … well I didn’t know about them. But after a while, I sat in.
They let me win three out of four times. Each time the win was small, but it was enough to double what I had to begin with.
I played a blundering, careless game, sizing up the others. The way I saw it, all but two were cardsharps. The buffalo hunter was named Billy Ogg, and there was a man who had been a stage driver in Texas. A mighty fine fellow.
On the fifth hand they built the pot pretty strong and I stayed with them, and lost.
It was my deal then, and clumsily I gathered in the cards, having a hard time getting them arranged, but in the process I got two aces on the bottom. Shuffling the cards, I managed to get another ace to the bottom, and then I dealt the cards, taking my three aces off the bottom as I needed them. That is, I dealt myself two of them to begin; then when I drew three cards, one of them was the third ace.
Woods, the man who had roped me into the game, raised five dollars. I saw him and raised again. Wood s raised and I went along, and at the showdown my three aces took the pot.
Woods didn’t say anything, but he looked angry, and one of the others, a fat, dirty man, growled something under his breath. It was a good pot, more than seventy dollars, as I recall.
We played for two hours, and I was careful. When a hand looked too good to be true, I wouldn’t go along or played it so badly that I lost little, and when I dealt or could hold out a card or two, I won. At the end of that time I was four hundred dollars ahead, and Woods was getting mighty ugly.
Right about that time I decided enough was enough.
There had to be a break, and I wanted to make it when I was ready, not have Woods or one of the others make it and catch me off balance. Pushing back my chair, I said, “Got to get some sleep. I’m quitting.”
“You can’t quit now!” Woods protested. “You’ve got our money.”
My smile didn’t make him any happier. Nor did what I said. “And that wasn’t the way you planned it, was it?”
Woods’s face went red and the fat man’s hand dropped to his lap. Only I’d seen the gun under the napkin almost an hour before. My old Shawk & McLanahan was out and covering them and I sort of stepped back a little.
“You,” I said to Ogg. “You’ve been taken. So’s he.”
I indicated the stage driver. “You two pick up the pot.”
“Like hell!” Woods started to get up.
My gun muzzle swung to him. “I’d as soon kill you,” I said pleasantly. “Don’t make it necessary.”
Ogg and the stage driver scooped up the money. Both of them had been in twice as deep as I could have gone , and most of the money was theirs. They gathered it up and went to the door, but at the door Billy Ogg shucked his own gun. “Come on, Tyler. I’d as soon kill one of them my own self.”
The three of us walked out together. The stage driver was Johnny Keeler, and they split a thousand between them and insisted I take the two hundred that remained.
I refused.
Ogg glanced skeptically at the old Shawk & McLanahan. “Does that thing shoot? I didn’t think they mad e them any more.”
“It shoots.”
“I’m beginning to get this now,” Keeler said suddenly.
“You’re Rye Tyler, the Colorado gun fighter.”
“I’m from Colorado,” I said.
“You killed Rice Wheeler?”
“He stole horses from my boss.”
Billy Ogg looked me over thoughtfully. “Now, that’s mighty interestin’. T’other day down to Tom Speers’ place, Hickok said you were a gun fighter. Said he could read it in you.”
“You’ll have to come around and meet the boys,” Keeler said. “Wyatt Earp’s in town, too.”
“I’m going to New Orleans,” I said.
Next morning early I woke up, bathed, shaved, and got slicked up. Just as I was starting to pack there was a knock on the door. When I opened it there was a man standing there with a box in his hands, and a rifle.
The rifle was a new .44 Henry repeater, the finest made.
And in the box were two of the hard-to-get Smith & Wesson Russians, the pistol that was breaking all the target records.
Behind the man came Billy Ogg and Johnny Keeler. “A present from us,” Ogg said, grinning at my surprise. “You saved our money. This is a present.”
Long after I was on the river boat, headed downriver for New Orleans, I handled those guns. Yet it was wit h something like regret that I packed away the old Shawk & McLanahan. It had been with me a long time.
For two weeks I loafed in New Orleans, seeing the sights, eating the best meals, sometimes playing cards a little. But this was honest playing, for I played with honest men, and I lost a little, won a little, and at the end of two weeks had won back half what I’d spent around town.
New Orleans was a lively place, and I liked it, but I was getting restless to leave. The West was my country, and I had to be doing something. Nowhere in the world was there anything that belonged to me, nor did I have any place to call home. Also, I kept thinking about Liza.
She would be sixteen now, and girls married at sixteen.
The thought of her marrying somebody made me feel kind of panicky and scared, as if I was losing something I needed.
Finally I packed to go, and then while I was waiting for time to leave, I went to a gambling hell called the Wolf Trap. As soon as I was inside the door I saw Woods, and with him a local tough known as Chris Lillie. Wanting no trouble, I turned at once and went out.
The streets were dark and silent. It was very late and few
people were about. Walking swiftly, I was almost to the end of the street when I heard someone running behind me. Quickly I ducked into a doorway.
Nobody passed, and nobody came near. Yet I had heard those feet. Suddenly I remembered that at this point another street, a very narrow one, intersected the one on which I had been walking. It would be on that other street that I’d heard the running.
Deliberately I crossed the street away from the corner.
Cities were new to me, but the hunting of men is much the same anywhere. In the blackness of a doorway I waited, watching the point where the two streets came together.
Several minutes passed and then I saw Chris Lillie come out of the alley and peer down the street up which I had come. The street was, of course, empty.
All was dark and still except under the few misty street lights. Fog was beginning to drift in from the bottoms, and the night was ghostly in its silence.
Then a second man emerged, and this was Woods.
They stood there together, whispering and peering around.
My disappearance worried them. And then I stepped out into the street. “Looking for me?” I asked.
Woods had a pistol in his hand. He whipped it up and fired, but he shot too quickly, and missed. I felt the bullet whip past me as I steadied my aim and fired. Wood s turned back, starting in the direction from which he had come, and then fell dead.
Lillie sprinted for the alley, and I let him go. Waiting only a minute longer, I turned away and walked back to my hotel. By daybreak I was riding a rented horse wes t of the river. And I had killed my third white man.
But this time with the Smith & Wesson .44, not the old Shawk & McLanahan.
Chapter 8
IN 1872 much of Texas was still wild. In eastern Texas there were vast thickets of chaparral, and some good forests. It was lonely country, dangerous for a stranger. It was feuding country, too. The Lee-Peacock and SuttonTaylor feuds had left the country split wide open. Neither of them was really setttled, and much of the bloodiest fighting was still to come.
Every ranch in some sections of eastern Texas was an armed camp, and few men rode alone. There were old enmities that had survived the fights of the Regulator s and the Moderators, and the fighting and general lawlessness had brought into the country some bad men from the Indian Territory and elsewhere. But Texas had enough of her own.
In Marshall I bought a horse. He was a fine dappled gray, the fastest walking horse I ever saw. He was seventeen hands high and could really step out and move, ideal for such a trip as this.
Some nights I camped out, and at times stayed in wayside inns or at ranches. It was good riding, and new country for me. In the back of my mind all the while was the thought that I was heading for Colorado, where I’d stay a while before riding on to California to visit Logan and Mary. Meanwhile I was young and restless, and the country looked good.
For a month I rode, drifting south and a little west, and one day I came on a man with a herd of cows.
He had six hundred head and he was short-handed.
He was a big man with a blunt, good-natured face. He looked me over as I came along the road, then called out, “Hunting a job?”
“Use one,” I said, and swung my gray alongside him.
“Thirty a month,” he said. “I’m driving to Uvalde. Selling this herd to Bill Bennett. He’s going up the trail to Kansas.”
“All right.”
“Can’t promise you Kansas, but the job is good to Uvalde. My name is Wilson.”
The gray was quick, intelligent and, active. He became a good cow horse, and learned fast. Mostly, though, I rode one of Wilson’s horses.
Nobody asked questions in those days. Every man was judged by what he did. Lots of men had pasts they did not want examined, and if you minded your own business and did your work, nobody bothered about anything else.
Riding jobs always suited me. I liked to think, and a man could follow along with a herd of cattle and do a powerful lot of thinking. In my jeans I had over a thousand dollars. Here and there along the trail I’d gambled some, and I’d won and lost, but I had a stake. And I wanted more.
The beef Wilson had was mostly young stuff, and it looked good. In Kansas City I’d heard a lot of talk about the rich grass of the northern prairies and how cattle could actually fatten while on the trail. This stuff Wilson was driving was young, rawboned, and would fill out.
The third day I made up my mind. Wilson was riding point and I drifted alongside the herd until I pulled abreast of him. After we’d passed the time of day and talked about the weather and how dusty it was, I started in. “Got a little money,” I said. “Mind if I buy a few cows and drift them with yours? I’d be a partner in the herd then, and you’d have a free cow hand.”
“Go ahead!” Wilson waved a hand. “Glad to have you!”
Leaving the herd that night, I rode on ahead and began to check the ranches. And right away I began to wish I had more money.
Cash was a scarce thing in Texas in those days. Men had cattle, horses, and hay, but real cash money was mighty hard to come by for the average rancher. Moreover, he had to gamble on riding anywhere from thirty to a hundred miles to market with maybe no sale when he got there, or a niggardly price.
I rode into a. ranch yard and drifted my horse up to the trough. Looking around at the cattle, I saw they were mostly good stock, with a few culls here and there such as you’ll find in any cow outfit. But this stock was big, like your longhorns are apt to be, and rangy. Given a chance, a longhorn could fill out to quite a lot of beef.
Grass was not good and most of the range was overstocked. Most of the ranchers had not begun to realize that there was a limit to the amount of stock the range could carry. Their great argument was a buffalo. They had themselves seen the range black with their millions.
I had seen it, too, but what I remembered that some of them seemed to forget was that the buffalo never stopped moving. They gave the grass a chance to grow back. It was a different thing with cattle. They were confined to one range, once men began to herd them, and they ate the grass to nothing.
My horse walked up to the trough and started to drink, and a long-geared man in boots with run-down heels walked over from the corral.
“Light an’ set,” he invited me. “Don’t get many visitors hereabouts.”
“Riding through,” I told him as I swung down. “I’m going to Uvalde.”
“What I ought to do,” he said, biting off a chew, “I should drift me a herd up to San Antone. But that takes hands, and I ain’t got ‘em. I’d like to drift a herd to Kansas.”
“Risky,” I said. “Indians, herd cutters, an’ such-like.”
His wife came out to look at me, and two wide-eyed children in homemade dresses.
“Might buy a few myself,” I said thoughtfully. “I’m ridin’ through. Shame to make the trip for nothin’.”
He glanced at me. My rig was new and looked good and prosperous. “You could do worse,” he said. “Fact is, if a man had him a little cash money he could buy cows mighty cheap.”
“Don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “A man could lose a sight of money thataway. Stampedes … Men have made money goin’ over the trail, but they’ve lost it, too. Lost their shirts, some of ‘em.”
“Young fellow like you,” the rancher said, “he should take a chance if anybody should. Got your life ahead of you. I reckon you could double your money.”
“Well,” I hesitated, “I have got a little money, but gold is scarce in this country and I hate to get shut of it.” I let that settle down through his thinking for a few minutes, and then added, “Why, a man can buy most anything for gold in this country!”
“Gold?” He looked at me again. “Mister, if you want to buy cows with gold, you don’t have to go any farther. They pay ten dollars a head in San Antone. ���
“More’n I’d pay. A man’s got risks, driving to Kansas. He has to hire riders, get a chuck wagon, grub, a string of horses. Takes a sight
of money.”
The rancher chewed slowly, looking thoughtful. “Might sell a few,” he said. “Could use some cash money.”
Cattle bred like rabbits and his range was overstocked.
He would have been a fool not to sell, if only to save grass for the other cows.
“Give you five dollars a head?”
He was astonished. “Five? You’re crazy.”
I gathered my reins and moved to mount. “Maybe I’d better forget it, anyway. As it is, I’m drawing cow hand’s pay. If I own cows, I stand to lose. I’ll just forget it.”
“Might let a few go for eight dollars?” he suggested hopefully.
“No,” I said, “I’ve got to ride on. Enjoyed the talk.”
He put a hand on my saddle. “Now, look “
A half hour later we compromised at seven dollars a head, his men to round them up, and no culls. I bough t a hundred head. And when Wilson came along, I swung them into the herd. A neighbor boy who wanted to see San Antonio came along for the ten dollars I promised him to make the drive.
It was a good feeling, seeing those cattle, knowing they were mine. They were good stock, and would bring a good price whether I sold them in San Antonio or at the end of the trail in Kansas.
William J. Bennett was waiting in the plaza at Uvalde when I rode my horse into the square with Wilson. Wilson gestured to me. “Ryan Tyler,” he said, “a good hand.”
“Glad to know you,” Bennett cut the end from his cigar.
“Got any cows?”
“A hundred head.”
“I’ll buy ‘em.”
As easy as that I could turn a profit, maybe double my money, and in only a few days of work. I might go out again and buy more cattle and sell them, too. If I worked hard and used my head, I could build a business for myself. But the trail to Kansas was north, and it was closer to Colorado.
“Ten dollars a head,” Bennett said. “Take it or leave it.”
“No,” I said, taking my time. “I don’t want to sell. I want to make the drive with you.” I leaned on the pommel. “Mr. Bennett, I want an outfit of my own. I know a little valley out in Colorado that’s just what I want, but I need money. If I can sell those cattle in Kansas, I’ll be well along toward having my stake.”
L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06 Page 6
