“Your name’s Earl Burns?”
“Yes, wait till I tell my friends.”
“Well, Earl Burns, what can you find me two ambulances for? Price wise?”
“I know where they be two like-new ones in a shed. I can get them for two hundred dollars apiece. Two teams of real stout mules to pull them for a hundred fifty dollars.”
“Harness?”
“Both pair for eighty dollars. New harness, the best made.”
“That’s 630 dollars?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Can they have bows and a canvas top on each wagon?”
“Make it seven hundred and they will have that, too.”
“Spring seats?”
“Two of them as well. When you need them?”
“Four days. The two of us will drive them home.”
“No, siree,” Earl said. “Why, that pretty lady don’t have to ride home in no stiff wagon. I will pay some boys to take both of them to your Camp Verde Ranch.”
Harp shook his hand. “I thank you and I know Kate does, too. We have some boys coming for tryouts to be on our payroll this spring, so we need to run right now. I will look for the wagons in a week. Better get me a receipt for them, too.”
“Yes, sir. And I mean it, Mr. O’Malley. I sure want to be your implement dealer.”
“Harp is my handle. I appreciate you and will be in touch.”
They took the receipts, climbed into the buckboard, and drove at a trot—in the livery surrey—for the stockyards. For the tryouts, Harp had rented two horses, saddles, and ropes from the livery. He also had two nail kegs for each cowboy to try to rope from off the horse.
They were all set up in a large pen. There was a canvas shade put up over the setup with a board desk and a chair for Kate to record each man’s name and how they did at the job trials.
The large crowd of teenage boys wanting jobs impressed Harper, and several fence watchers were perched on the top rail.
“Everyone, listen. You report in your turn to the lady at the desk; be polite to her and tell her your name and hometown. A horse will be hitched. You untie him, mount him, and short-lope him around the pen. Then set him down where the white lime is on the ground. Undo the rope and rope the barrel from the saddle. You have three tries to rope it. Then coil the rope and ride the horse back and hitch him for the next man.
“First man to show you how is Clarence Fowler.” Harp had talked to the young man before it started. He said he could do that to show them how.
“Ma’am my name is Clarence Fowler. My town is Berne.”
“Thanks, Clarence,” she said.
He put his worn felt cowboy hat back on, went to the bay horse, and unhitched him. Then without stirrups he handily flipped up into the saddle, sat the horse down, found his stirrups, and charged him off in a lope around the pen. Slid him to a stop, undid the lariat on the spot, uncoiled his lariat, made a loop, and tossed it neatly over the barrel and jerked up the slack.
A young boy Harp hired ran out, took his loop off of it, reset the barrel, and ran for the fence. Clarence coiled it going back, dismounted, and hitched the horse back to the fence.
Harp looked at Doug, who nodded his approval. “Clarence, you’re hired to go to Kansas with the O’Malley brothers. See Miss Kate later.”
Everyone gave Clarence a round of applause.
“Johnny Marks,” Doug called off his list.
Some had trouble getting on the horse. Others were too round bottomed to even ride. But there were many good ones. A Mexican boy came with his own reata and asked to use it instead of the rope.
“Sure, Carlos Rey, use it,” Harp said.
When he roped the barrel he dallied his rope around the horn and backed the horse up, too. He got the hired call.
Two boys could damn sure ride but could not rope. But Harp and Doug both liked them and hired them. The afternoon wore on. It was obvious that the trial would not finish before sundown. Besides he figured Katy must be getting tired. Harp told the ones left to be back there at eight thirty in the morning and bring along anyone else who wanted to work.
Katy whispered, “Call Billy McCall up here. I know he failed, but he’s an orphan. Could he help in camp?”
“Billy McCall, come over here,” Harp shouted.
A boy in oversized bib overalls came on the run—bare footed.
“You got a job for me, sir?”
“You an orphan?”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t beg.”
“I don’t need a beggar, either. I need an assistant cook. We want you back here for the trials tomorrow. So find a place to sleep and eat, and tomorrow you will be on our payroll.” He gave him fifty cents, plenty enough money to eat on in the barrio.
Billy thanked Harp and left.
After he was gone, Kate stood up on her toes and kissed him. “You won’t regret doing that.”
“I didn’t figure I would. Doug, Katy, let’s go eat supper. We’ve found some good boys and I am convinced we will have enough hired by tomorrow to go to Kansas. Plus we have those two more supply wagons and the farm machinery.”
They ate supper in the hotel dining room. Plans were to eat breakfast at seven and then go back for the rest of the trials.
* * *
First thing Harp noticed in the morning at the pens was that the number of boys and onlookers had really increased. Two were black teens and sure enough cowboys, riding and roping both.
“You Trent boys brothers?” Harp asked them.
Sly said, “We really cousins, but we been raised by dee same woman, sah.”
Jimbo agreed. “Sir, we will do our damndest to make hands for you outfit. Ain’t no jobs ’chere, so we really need the work.”
“I pay the same wage to all my hands. You understand me?”
“That be fine, sah.”
“My biggest rule is no fighting with crew members. This is serious business. All of you remember that. There will be no fighting or you will be afoot in no man’s land. If you can’t get along you walk around that other one. No stealing. You can’t live by the rules, don’t leave San Antonio. No one is any better than the other. If you are told to help the cook, you help him. We all have to pull together. We may have to shoot people who get in our way, but by damn, if you don’t give me your all, I will leave you out in the prairie.
“A man named Earl Burns is taking two wagons up to Kerrville and on to my family ranch. He will bring you out to our ranch. It will take over two days to get up there. Bring a blanket and clothes. If you don’t have a bedroll, we will supply you one when you get up there. We will have a rubber slicker and a hat for you to wear. If you have a saddle bring it. We can get some saddles for those don’t have one. If you don’t want the job don’t come, we won’t be back until sometime in the fall.
“There is hardly a way to get mail. But you can send notes home. We will have paper, pen, stamps, and envelopes. At the ranch I need to know who to notify as your next of kin in the case of your death. You can get mail to you at General Delivery, Abilene, Kansas. You will get it there in four months from our leaving here.
“Any questions?”
He arranged with Earl to take the boys, who didn’t ride their own horses out there, in the wagons. He paid him twenty dollars to feed them.
Everyone was informed. He went by and saw his banker Fred Newman.
Fred asked him if he needed any money.
“If I do need some I can wire you, can’t I?”
“Yes, and we can have it delivered to you.”
“So far we have enough. But it will get more expensive.”
“How many head are you taking?”
“We have two thousand head that we rounded up. That’s one herd. The number two herd belongs to our neighbors, small ranchers with a few hundred or less, with up to two thousand head in that herd. Herd three is ours on the shares with two older women who needed some help.”
“Seven thousand head?”
“Yes. We’ve been hiri
ng cowboys and we have some good ones picked out.”
“Oh, my, Harp. That will be a feat even larger than the Sedalia one.”
“Bigger, yes, but we know more now.”
“Harp and Mrs. O’Malley, you have my prayers. You need money, just wire me. Be careful . . . you are too good a man to lose.”
“Thanks. We are headed home tomorrow. In a month we go north.”
“God bless you and your family.”
He left the man still in shock thinking about their huge undertaking.
Katy asked him, riding in the rented surrey back to the hotel, if he thought it was that scary.
He clucked to the team that was laying back a little. “Darling, we will do what we have to do, and no, I think with the crew we are assembling we can do it.”
Back at the hotel they joined up with Doug for supper, and Doug asked how they met.
Kate answered, “Doug, I found me a man, one day, to buy me some canned peaches.”
“I know the guy.”
“He acted like he was foot loose and fancy free. Boy, did he ever fool me. He’s a tycoon turned loose.”
Doug agreed with her. “I’m jealous as hell of him. My mind don’t move as fast as him, but I am learning. He fired a terrible cook one day, and the next he was running the whole damn outfit and did a wonderful job at it, so I don’t think this cattle-moving business is new. While it is bigger, it is not anything to be scared of. And I am also jealous as how you picked him out up there at Lee’s Creek and not me.”
“Doug, you have to keep your eyes open. There is a lady out there looking for you that you will be proud of.”
“I will be a-looking then.”
“Doug, you better listen to her. She knows a lot about the future that I can’t figure how she knows it, but she does.”
“This has been a great experience. Where did you get the tryout deal for the boys?” Doug asked Harp.
“He gets things like that so easy,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.
“I decided if they could ride and rope we’d take them and make cowboys out of them. It was just a way to see them in action.”
“I won’t forget it. Now I know what to look at and for.”
“Now we need to eat and some sleep. We take the eight-o’clock stage back home. Remember we still need to hire more cooks.”
Damn he was closing in getting things done, but now he knew how Emory felt back then getting ready. Whew there was still a lot to do.
CHAPTER 21
In the cool of morning the threesome left for home on the rocking stagecoach. Three miles west of Berne, three men wearing flour-sack masks stopped the driver and told everyone to get out. They were being held up.
Harp sharply told Katy to do as they asked. He had his .30-caliber Colt in his waistband and kept the presence of it under the brown suit coat he wore. He helped her down under the gun barrels of two of the outlaws on horseback, rifles pointed at them on that side of the coach.
“Get your hands up, mister,” said one of them, who, he figured, was only a boy.
The outlaws’ horses acted ready to spook, and two of them were shaky-handed pointing their guns. One of them dismounted and stepped up close to Doug, then demanded he unbuckle his gun belt and drop it.
Doug, instead, forced the robber’s gun hand up in the air and shot the man at close range with his own pistol. Gun smoke boiled.
Harp had his Colt out, cocked, and fired it in the other boy’s face. The third rider’s horse shied to the right and Doug’s next shot took him out and off his horse after the bullet from the robber’s rifle went off overhead.
Harp caught his wife when her knees buckled. He dropped his pistol to hold her. He was satisfied Doug was checking on the downed outlaws and seeing if there was any fight left in them.
The driver had the spooked teams held down. “You three all right?”
Doug told Harp to turn Katy around and then he shot each of the still living in their heads.
“Come help me get them off the road. The law can collect them,” he said to the driver.
“By gawd they sure won’t ever try to rob another stage. Mister, is your wife all right?”
“She will be shortly. Things got rather tight here for a minute or two.”
Kate was pale but getting her breath back. “Sorry. I just knew we’d all get killed.”
Set on her feet, she leaned her forehead on his chest.
“It is going to be all right. Walk around a little. This matter is over.”
Harp walked his wife in the short grass back and forth away from the corpses, while Doug hitched the would-be robbers’ horses to a farmer’s fence nearby. He checked their saddlebags.
Doug shook his head at him. “No loot in them.”
The driver said, “I’ll have the agent report this to the law at the next stage stop. The sheriff can handle it. Let’s load up and go.”
“I’m putting her back in the coach,” Harp said, then he retrieved his gun off the ground.
“Ma’am, I sure am so sorry about this happening,” the driver said as he closed the coach door after them.
“Don’t worry about me. I am fine. It’s over.”
“Still it is a bad thing every time someone tries that.”
In her seat she asked Harp, “Did he hear me?”
“Yes. I think it shook him badly, too.”
“Well, it was damn exciting. Doug, thank you, too.”
“Next stop, I need to reload my gun.”
“Yes, so do I. Let’s hope that does our robberies for now.”
They were off again and Harp started thinking about the drive. Doug was definitely the man to take one of the herds. Long needed to scout. He was damn good at appraising sites and knowing what was ahead. Their dad never said if he would take a herd. He was getting near fifty years old. He had no physical things wrong that Harp knew about—but he didn’t like to leave their mom alone that long.
He still needed another man to head the third herd if his dad didn’t. Chaw Michaels might be the one. Long would have some ideas by this time and they’d need to nail down that third herd leader.
When they got back to his parents’ place, Katy became sick. His mother told him not to worry, that it was part of her pregnancy, but he looked back on the violent scene they had with the stage robbers as bringing it on and regretted her being there. He stayed busy making plans and learned that Long was still branding cattle in the same location. Hiram had not come home, either.
His mother sounded concerned about Hiram working too hard since he had eased back a lot on doing physical things in the past two years. His brother had lots of things going on up there at that ranch they owned, and since his mom was well behind the line from the Comanche raids, Hiram was probably enjoying himself being in on the scheme of things.
Harp did all he could on his books, and, the next morning, when Kate felt somewhat better, he and Doug rode for the cow camp. They made a quick trip and found everyone busy branding. The whole outfit looked worn out except his dad, who was laughing and enjoying himself over the whole situation.
Long looked gaunt to him; he must have lost twenty pounds in the past ten days. When finally dragged back into camp, Harp asked him how many cattle they had gathered.
Long took off his hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “I can tell you now we’ll have three thousand steers in our own herd going north.”
“That’s one helluva herd.”
His brother slumped down on the bench and nodded his head. “And we will have them all in the pasture you rented.”
“Sounds great. I found enough cowboys for our old plan. I bought two good supply wagons and mules to pull them. A mowing machine and rake for Hoot. I have it coming.”
“You will never guess what I bought?” Long smiled over his secret.
“What is that?”
“Two bell steers. They are coming from Mexico.”
“Great. How much?”
“Two f
ifty for the pair.”
“That’s not bad. So when we get things all lined up we can road-brand all the cattle going north, but we will still need two cooks.”
“Ira has a good buddy. He knows this guy well and there also is a Chinese man in Kerrville that wants to be the other one.”
“If Dad can buy us twenty-five more saddle horses around the country, we’ll soon be set.”
“That may be hard, but he’s a hand at finding things. How else did it go in San Antonio?”
“Our banker there says if we need money wire him. Doug and I had a run-in with some stage robbers west of Berne.”
“I take it they didn’t rob you.”
“They won’t rob anyone again.”
“More people need to use that policy.”
Harp agreed. “Who’s taking the third herd? I figure Doug to take number two.”
“Good choice. Dad said he’d pass on it. I think Chaw can handle it. He ain’t Doug, but he has lots of savvy about men and isn’t afraid to work.”
Harp agreed with the choice. He had thought that all along. “I want him dressed up more. He needs to look like a leader. He don’t need a suit coat, but dress him up so he looks like the boss.”
“I had not thought about that, but yes, he needs to make an impression on people and his own men.”
“Horse wranglers?”
“We can pick them. I know you want Holy Wars wrangling for your bunch.”
“Yes, and we’ll need some camp boys to help the cooks. I found one in San Antonio. Say one or two per outfit? Whatever the cooks say they’ll need.”
“Yes, we can find them. I know we’ll be stretched thin, but I think spreading out the good men that we took north last year, who have some experience, throughout all three groups will help us get there. My lands, Harp, they have worked their butts off rounding up these cattle.”
“I know. And we will have a great drive. Let’s get them back to the home place and organize them into three teams.”
“I promised them two days off.”
“That’s good. They need it. Mom is concerned that Dad is working too hard.”
“He won’t take a desk job.”
“Long, we both knew that.”
The two started chuckling at the thought.
The O'Malleys of Texas Page 19
