The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail

  “Umm. Well … our back-up is out with some busted bones in his hand, and we heard Ringo can play in the outfield, too. You don’t like him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Your face did.”

  His head shook. “Playing in the National League has wised you up, Silver. Ringo had talent.”

  “Had?”

  Dugdale finished his drink.

  Remembering Cod Myers’ comments, I said, “Was it his lushing?”

  Dan Dugdale pushed himself out of his chair. “John Barleycorn’s just one of his problems. It’s the morphine that ruined his career.”

  * * * * *

  We missed the Cowboys’ 11 to 2 loss to the Phillies, and arrived home just after we won the next game, 12 to 10.

  Our next two games proved dismal. Mox McQuery decreed that playing first base and managing taxed a person’s thinking far too much, so he opted to play center field. That put Dan Dugdale at first base and Frank Ringo behind the plate. I pitched. “Pitched like a King,” was how Mr. James Whitfield put it in the Times.

  For some reason, I kept looking into the grandstands. It’s hard to explain, but I wanted to see if Mother and Papa might be watching. I couldn’t see either one, but Cindy McKim was there, yelling encouragement. Her father shouted profanity, but none of his curses had been aimed at me.

  He screamed at Dan Dugdale, even though Dan made two fine snags at first base, and he screamed at Mox McQuery, who chased down four fly balls in center field. Mostly, however, Mr. McKim pelted our new catcher with curses. Frank Ringo, you see, committed five errors, struck out four times, and had to be carried from the field after our 3 to 0 loss. Those in the crowd threw bottles at our bench as we packed our gear—until Mr. Joseph Heim and Mr. Augustus McKim arrived.

  “That was pathetic,” Mr. McKim said.

  “The kid pitched well,” Charley Bassett said.

  “I don’t need to hear from you, Bassett,” Mr. McKim said. “If you want to do us a service, draw your Colt and shoot Frank Ringo in the head. You’ll be avenging Tombstone and today’s disgraceful performance.”

  “No,” Mr. Heim said. “Wait till Monday’s game against Boston. Shoot him then.”

  “I’m not shooting anyone.” For once, Charley Bassett sounded as though he might be kin to a tough Dodge City lawman. “Especially a walking whiskey vat who can’t even stand up.”

  “It ain’t the whiskey,” Grasshopper Jim said. “It’s the morphine.”

  “My, oh, my …” Mert Hackett stared down at the unconscious, salivating, pale Frank Ringo. “I swan’, Mister Ringo wasn’t that bad last time I seen him. He was a right smart ballist.”

  “It’s not your fault, Hackett,” Mr. McKim said. “It’s yours!” He pointed a finger underneath Mox McQuery’s nose. You suggested this worthless reprobate.”

  “I … uh …” Mox McQuery glared at Hackett and me.

  “Get him off the morphine,” Dan Dugdale said, “keep him away from the whiskey, he might come around.”

  “Jesus,” Mr. McKim said. “You’re not bad ballplayers. I know that. I read reports and saw that most of you played before I ever signed you to this team. It’s September. The season ends next month. We have talent. Why in hell’s name aren’t we winning baseball games?”

  When no one answered, Mr. McKim shoved Mox McQuery.

  “I thought you were a manager …”

  “I tried, sir,” Mox said. “It just ain’t what I’m good at. Too much …”

  “Thinking!” Mr. McKim snapped. “Yeah, I guess brains is not what you’re good at. How about you, Dugdale? What’s the problem as you see it? I know you have brains. That hidden-ball trick proved that. We have talent. Why don’t we win?”

  With a methodical purpose, Dan moved his bats into a bag, then placed his thin fielding glove and thicker catcher’s mitt into the bag. After setting the bag on the bench, he pushed back the large sombrero Mr. Heim was making us wear now, and spoke in an assured voice.

  “We have talent. We don’t have a team,” Dan said. “But I’ve got a remedy for that if we can catch the afternoon train to Atchison. We can be back in time for Monday’s game.”

  “More money I have to spend on you wastrels?” Mr. McKim said.

  “Consider it a tithe,” Dan said pleasantly.

  “Church?” Mr. McKim scoffed. “You’re taking this bunch of rotgut-guzzling whoremongers to church?”

  “My church,” Dan said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Everyone called the white-haired man Mr. Bill.

  Bill Anderson ran the Diamond Nine Ranch south of Atchison, Kansas, with his three sons, Junior, McKay, and Shane. Mr. Bill and his boys—all grown men, sturdy, bronzed, and tall but not quite as tall as their father—met us at the depot in wagons and took us the seven miles to his small spread, where other cowboys busied themselves saddling horses tethered to a long wooden fence.

  “Light down, boys!” Mr. Bill called as he set the brake of the wagon he had driven before hopping down from the box. Pushing back the brim of his dusty hat, he waited as we ballists stood awkwardly, taking in the bunkhouse, the wagons, the main house, the corrals, and all the cattle, which looked rugged and cantankerous, and the horses—already saddled—that seemed just as wild. Without speaking, Mr. Bill walked up to Dan Dugdale and Mert Hackett, shaking hands with both men, speaking a few pleasantries, and then telling them, “Find a horse that’ll fit you, boys. I’ll speak to our trail crew.”

  “Trail crew?” Shorty Radford whispered, and turned to Charley Bassett. “What the hell’s a trail crew?”

  “Be quiet,” Charley said.

  “I want you to know something,” said Mr. Bill, ignoring Shorty and Charley and stopping in front of me before moving on. Years in the saddle had bronzed his face, which made his blue eyes more piercing and his brushy eyebrows more white. As he pulled off his deerskin gloves, I noticed the scars on his fingers, the roughness of his knuckles. His hands were huge, his legs bent into a bow. All of his sons wore belted pistols, but Mr. Bill went unarmed. Yet his mere presence told me that this man needed no six-shooter. He simply commanded respect.

  “What do you see there?” He pointed a crooked finger at Mert Hackett and Dan Dugdale as they led a couple of cow ponies away from the fence.

  “Dugdale,” Jim Donnelly tried, “and the darky with some horses.”

  “Wrong.” Turning, Mr. Bill smiled as Mert Hackett eased into the saddle, gathered the reins, and backed up his chestnut while Dan Dugdale swung onto a sorrel. “I see two men. I don’t see any color.”

  He shifted back toward us, and put a hand on Donnelly’s shoulder. “I’m no Abolitionist, son.” He gave Donnelly a gentle squeeze and lowered his arm. “Served in Hood’s Brigade out of Texas during the late war, if you want to know the truth. Left three toes at Gettysburg. Took my first cattle drive to Baxter Springs after the war, and a couple more after that. Bought this place after two trips to Abilene. Got sick of Texas, I guess. Fell in love with Kansas and the Atchison Antelopes.”

  He walked back a few paces, stopping in front of me again.

  “But here’s what I learned on those drives north. There ain’t no black, no white, no Mexican, no Irishman, no nothing when you’re trying to get two thousand beeves to market. You work together or you go bust. You don’t got to be saddle pals, or best pals, or pals at all. You ain’t even got to like each other. But you got to work together. McKay!”

  His youngest son, a blond man with a thin mustache and his father’s eyes, stepped forward and tossed Mr. Bill a baseball bat.

  “Billy!” Mr. Bill called out as he settled into a batter’s stance.

  Before I knew it, Mr. Bill’s oldest son was winding up and delivering a speeding baseball at his father’s waist. The bat swung in a blur, cracked. The ball landed near the privy, where the middle son, Shane, who
had dark hair and a brushy mustache, fielded the ball on the second bound, and hurled it all the way back to McKay. Shane’s arm seemed like a Howitzer.

  “Just like you got to work together on a baseball team,” Mr. Bill said before he tossed the bat back to his youngest son.

  “Now I know why this ranch is called the Diamond Nine,” Grasshopper Jim said, and we laughed.

  “That’s right, son,” Mr. Bill said. “Saw my first game in Kansas City. Wild Bill Hickok himself served as umpire.”

  “My mother was at that game,” I sang out. “With …”

  Mr. Bill’s eyes landed on me. I sensed them conveying something, but I didn’t know what. I swallowed, trying to look strong. Mother. Even though I knew I had been in the right, I regretted those sharp words I had spoken to her, and I missed her. I missed my father, too. But especially I missed Mother’s encouragement and … well, her coaching. I wanted things to return to the way they had been, only I wanted my mother to accept Cindy McKim—but that seemed impossible.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Mr. Bill had moved down to the end of the line, where Frank Ringo shivered in his baseball shoes, and Mr. McKim looked bored. “You’re going to find a horse. Let one of my hired men match you up with a good one. You’re going to work cattle, and you’re going to work together. You’ll find a lariat on the horn. Don’t touch it. Baseball players aren’t good after they lose a finger. Show these Kansas City Cowboys your left hand, Nell.”

  The cowboy named Nell raised his hand, which had only a pinky, thumb, and forefinger, the latter of which had been severed at the top joint while the other two fingers were completely missing.

  “Any questions?” Mr. Bill asked.

  Grasshopper Jim slowly raised his hand.

  “Yes.”

  “Are we going to have to drive them cows to Abilene?”

  A few of us laughed, as did Mr. Bill’s sons, but Mr. Bill only grinned as he made his way back down the line. “They don’t like Texas beef in Abilene anymore, son, and those are steers. Not cows. Besides, you have a ball game tomorrow against …?” His eyes settled on me.

  “Boston,” I answered. “The Beaneaters.”

  “Isn’t Old Hoss Radbourn throwing for them this season?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He whistled. “Saw him pitch for Providence a couple of times. Best pitcher I’ve ever seen. If you can beat him, you can beat anyone.” With a curt nod, Mr. Bill walked to the end of the line. “All right,” he said, then asked, “How many of you ballists have ever been on a horse before? And don’t lie?”

  A few hands lifted, including Charley Bassett’s. Charley leaned toward me and whispered, “I’m lying, Silver. You know that.” “Then put your hand down, damn it.”

  “I can’t. I’m supposed to be the son of a Dodge City lawman. I can’t let anyone know I’m from Rhode Island. So tell me what do I have to know?”

  “I’m not a horseman,” I said. “Or a cowboy. Just …”—Mr. Bill started coming back our way—“just mount on the left side.”

  “Left.” Charley’s head bobbed. He flexed the fingers on his left hand. “I can remember that.”

  * * * * *

  Mounted on a fine black mare with a white blazed forehead, Mr. Bill made his horse do things I never thought possible. He slapped his hat against his chaps, spun the horse in a tight circle, backed her up, went this way and that way, all the while barking orders at his sons.

  They divided us into three groups—and that took some doing. Mox McQuery could ride pretty well, and Charley Bassett, bless his heart, happened to be put aboard a blood bay gelding that followed other horses naturally. Charley did not have to do much. Frank Ringo fell off his horse twice, once before it even took a step. But I give him credit, for he brushed himself off, as best he could with sweat cascading down his face, armpits, arms, and back, and got boosted back into his saddle.

  I happened to be put into the group with Dan Dugdale, McKay Anderson, and two Diamond Nine riders—a Mexican called Pedrito and a grizzled old-timer with a reddish-gray beard named Duncklee.

  “Here’s the way this is going to work,” Mr. Bill called out. He had ridden several rods ahead of us, and stood in his stirrups. “Shane’ll take his men to the pond. You’re picking up the herd and guiding them to the shipping pens. That’s three miles. Back in the day, we’d make eight to twelve miles a day herding cattle from Texas to Kansas. If I were you, I’d make good time. Otherwise, you’ll miss your game tomorrow and forfeit. To do that … get those beeves to the pens and you to your baseball game … you have to work together.”

  Junior’s group had to ride the opposite direction. My team had to pick up the cattle grazing near the ranch house. I thought that gave us the advantage.

  It didn’t.

  Pete Conway couldn’t slow his horse, and the steers scattered.

  “Slow down, slow down!” Duncklee bellowed, adding a few choice pieces of profanity and spraying tobacco juice with each word. “Runnin’ cattle burns off fat, and fatter steers sell better!”

  While I was trying to pick a steer to go after—like I had a clue what to do if, by fortune, I actually got close to it—Dan Dugdale trotted his horse over toward me. With a wide grin as he rode past, he said, “Give him rein, Silver. Horse does all the work. Like catchers in a baseball game.”

  I relaxed my grip on the reins, and felt the horse find a new gear. My rump pounded against the saddle, and I feared my shoes might slip out of the stirrups and leave me tasting gravel as Frank Ringo had. Except the Diamond Nine riders, Dan Dugdale, and Mert Hackett, no one actually wore cowboy boots.

  We had no doubt who ran this operation. Dan Dugdale, Pedrito, Duncklee, and Anderson knew their jobs, but, to my surprise, we ballists learned fast. Or maybe our horses had the brains. I’m not saying we did everything, or anything, perfectly, but we managed to stay seated in our saddles. Even Frank Ringo, who got assigned to our group.

  “Put them in a line!” Dan yelled from the point of the herd.

  The barbed-wire fence stretched northeast. Despite the dust and the profanity directed at us, within a half hour we had our cattle moving.

  Dugdale and Pedrito took the point, and I finally figured out the difference between “swing” and “flank”—swing being about a third of the way from the pointers, where the cattle began to swell a bit, and flank being another third down.

  Pete Conway and Grasshopper Jim started out at swing. Jim Donnelly and McKay Anderson took flank. I rode drag, eating a ton of dust, with Frank Ringo and Duncklee.

  “Flank rider’s main job is to make sure the beeves don’t wander too far from the main herd,” Duncklee explained while rolling a smoke, seeming oblivious to the dust the cattle kicked up and the wind blew into our faces. “Swing does some of the same. Drag riders, that’s for the tenderfeet. We make the herd keep on movin’, push the slowpokes along so we don’t lose no cattle.”

  I had pulled up the bandanna over my mouth and nose to fight the dust. “You’re no tenderfoot,” I called out to Duncklee.

  “No, but I’m paid to make sure you two keep up with the rest of us.”

  This made me feel like the lowest person on the cattle drive, although, at three miles, it wouldn’t be much of a drive.

  After Duncklee struck a Lucifer and fired up his cigarette, he continued explaining. “Here’s somethin’ you ought to know. On a drive, a real drive, ’em boys ridin’ swing and flank and usually even point, they make a dollar a day. The boys ridin’ drag, eatin’ dust, gettin’ blinded by dust, four to six months on the trail, they get paid the exact same. Because it’s like that baseball game you and the boss man and his family is so fond of. Y’all gots to depend on each other. Boss man, he tells us, ‘You’re only as strong as the weakest man you got.’”

  “That’d be me,” Frank Ringo muttered.

  “Bullshit,” Duncklee
said. “You got dusted twice before we ever left the damned ranch, boy. Weak man would’ve quit. You got right back in the saddle. Not once. Twice.”

  At that point, a brindle-colored steer bolted to the left, and before I knew it my horse had jumped out with it. The steer wanted to go back home, and although both Duncklee and Ringo reined in and turned in their saddles, neither did a thing to help me. They just watched.

  I—or maybe it was my horse—blocked the steer’s retreat, but this longhorn had no quit in him. He must have thought beating me had to be easy. I made myself ready, waiting for the steer to make its play. It bolted left, and I tugged my rein, feeling the power of the horse underneath me. Again the horse blocked the steer, and immediately it darted back to the right. I anticipated that ploy. So did my horse. This time, the spry mossyhorn turned around and trotted back past Ringo and Duncklee to rejoin the herd.

  Duncklee took a final drag of his cigarette, flicked the remnants away, and grinned a toothless grin at me. “Good job,” he said, adding a word that made my head swell, “cowboy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Boston Beaneaters pounded us 11 to 2 on Monday, September 6th, but when Mr. McKim and Mr. Heim came to our bench, screaming and cursing and pointing fingers, most of our players had a ready excuse for our bosses.

  “My butt’s bruised,” said Grasshopper Jim, who had pitched that afternoon’s game. “I can hardly walk, and don’t even ask me to sit down.”

  “My thighs are so chafed it’s not even funny,” Cod Myers added.

  Several teammates bobbed their heads in agreement, forcing our owners to glare at Dan Dugdale.

  “Do you know how much that train trip cost us?” Mr. Heim said.

  “Or how much that Mister Bill charged us for your little experiment?” Mr. McKim said.

  Dan Dugdale simply grinned. “It’s one game,” he said calmly. “Besides, we didn’t get off the train till four in the morning.”