by Elmer Kelton
Deciding the crowd had seen enough to convince them, Monahan stepped down and led his horse through the gate. He left the cattle inside.
Walking up to Foster Lodge and a dozen others who had gathered around him, Monahan asked, “Well, what do you think now?”
Lodge replied with satisfaction, “I reckon you proved what you set out to. And you don’t owe for any cattle. We’re ready to talk business.”
“There’ll never be a better time.”
Monahan had been so intent in watching the reactions of the bystanders that he hadn’t seen anything else. Now he heard a murmur of alarm move through the crowd. He saw a woman point excitedly, and he turned quickly to see what the trouble was.
A group of cowboys, maybe twenty in number, had ridden up to the opposite side of the creek. Now they came spurring across, splashing the cold water high. Gaining the bank, they spread out in a line and moved into a lope, yelling and swinging ropes. A few fired guns into the air.
Women screamed and grabbed up their children. Bigger boys and girls lit out for the protection of the oak timber. Men pulled back in a hard trot away from the corral.
Caught by surprise, not carrying a gun, Monahan only stood and watched the cowboys coming, the dust boiling up behind their horses. The line split. The riders circled around his corral. Ropes snaked out and tightened over fence posts loosely tamped in the dry dirt. Riders spurred away, their horses straining as they began pulling the fence down.
The cattle inside were running wildly from one end of the pen to the other. Now, seeing the fence go down, they made a panicked break for the opening. Some cleared the wire, but others jumped into it, hanging their legs and threshing desperately as cowboys yelled and pushed them on. Most of them watched as the cowboys finished destruction of the corral badly. Two steers were hopelessly enmeshed, legs tangled in the vicious wire. They lay there, fighting in terror.
Archer Spann rode up, gun drawn. He stared coldly at Monahan and leaned over, firing twice. The steers stopped threshing.
Most of the crowd had retreated to the oak timber and watched as the cowboys finished destruction of the corral. Monahan stood in helpless rage, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it.
In a few minutes it was over. The corral was down, a hopeless tangle of wire and posts. The cowboys gathered on either side of Archer Spann. One who somehow had fallen into the wire had his woolen shirt ripped half away, and he was holding one arm that appeared to be badly cut. A couple of the others were looking it over. Spann turned his horse so that he faced the crowd in the trees.
“You folks listen to this,” he said loudly, “and you’d better remember. The captain says tell you there’ll not be any bobwire fences!”
He turned away from the crowd and faced Monahan, who stood alone out there in the open. “As for you, Monahan,” he said evenly, “this means you pull out of the country and stay out. The next time, you’ll eat that wire!”
Monahan’s fists were clenched, and his face darkened. “I swear to you, Spann,” he said bitterly, “I’ll even up with you if it takes me twenty years.”
* * *
SHERIFF LUKE MCKELVIE solemnly looked over the tangled wire and pulled-up posts and the two dead cattle. “I got back out here as quick as I could. I thought there was something suspicious, that boy being sent to fetch me. It was a trick, all right, to get me out of the way.”
Monahan shrugged angrily, not knowing whether to believe the sheriff or not. It could have been a put-up job.
“Not much we can do about it now, Sheriff, unless you’re willing to arrest the men that did it.”
McKelvie caught the doubting edge in Monahan’s voice, and it irked him. “I can and I will, if you’ll sign the complaints. But even if you get them in jail, there’s not much you can do. Under Texas law it’s nothing more than a misdemeanor to cut or tear down another man’s fence. If I throw them in jail, the captain will bail them out, and the judge will give them the lightest fine he can because he’s in debt to the captain.”
“Wouldn’t hardly pay me then, would it, McKelvie?” Monahan asked with bitterness.
McKelvie shook his head. “Not hardly.”
Monahan and Stub Bailey rode back to town with the sheriff.
Monahan said, “I thought of one thing I could get Spann for. It’s a felony to shoot a man’s cattle, isn’t it?”
The sheriff said, “Yes, but they were Foster Lodge’s cattle at the time they were shot. Do you think Lodge would prefer charges?”
Monahan grudgingly answered, “No, I don’t reckon he would.” Disappointment was still heavy on his shoulders. He had come so close to selling those farmers. Then, suddenly, the whole thing had blown up in his face. They had backed away from the project as they would from a loaded shotgun.
“You saw them, Monahan,” Foster Lodge had said excitedly, his face half white. “The captain’s men and some of Fuller Quinn’s, too. We can’t fight those big outfits. We don’t aim to try.”
The sheriff pulled up as they passed the big rock courthouse. “Whatever you decide, let me know. But I think you should forget it and leave town.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Monahan said angrily, not even looking back at him. He headed across the street for Hadley’s saloon. If there had ever been a time he needed a drink, this was it.
Oscar Tracey, the mercantile man, saw him from the front porch of his store and hailed him. Monahan hesitated, not knowing whether he wanted to talk to anybody right now or not. But he reined his horse over to Tracey’s.
Tracey, a tall, sickly-thin old man, came down off the porch steps in great agitation. “Come around back with me, Mr. Monahan. I’ve got something to show you.”
Monahan and Stub Bailey followed the old storekeeper around the side of the building and out the back. There, in a smouldering pile of ashes and snarled black wire, lay all that was left of the many spools of barbed wire Doug had stored in the shed back of the mercantile.
“They came in here a while before dinnertime,” Tracey said. “They took out your wire and piled it on a bunch of old lumber scraps that was lying there. They poured kerosene on the whole mess and set it afire. They said if I ever had another roll of barbed wire in my place, they’d burn the whole store down.”
The storekeeper’s voice was high-pitched with apprehension. “I’m sorry, Mr. Monahan. I’d like to do anything I could to help you, but you can see what I’m up against. I’m too old to start over again. I’ve got to protect what I have. You see that, don’t you?”
Monahan nodded gravely. “I see it, all right. I’m obliged for all you’ve done, and I won’t ask you to take any chances for me. Looks like I’m out of the fence-building business around here anyway.”
Shoulders slumped, he pulled his horse around and headed across to Hadley’s saloon. Bailey caught up with him.
“You mean you’re giving in, Doug? You’re leaving?”
Doug Monahan shrugged. “I don’t see what else I can do.” His jaw tightened. “But on my way out, I’m going to hunt down Archer Spann and beat him half to death!”
They walked into Chris Hadley’s place and moved toward the back. Hadley brought a bottle and a couple of glasses. In his eyes was a quiet sympathy. The news already had reached town.
“Tough day,” he said.
Monahan nodded sourly and took a stiff drink.
Hadley said, “So Captain Rinehart’s still the big man on the gray horse.” He shook his head regretfully. “It could be a good country for a lot of people, but it’ll never amount to much as long as the captain’s sitting up there like God, holding it back with his fist. For a little while I thought maybe this would be the time. I thought we’d fight our way out from under.”
Noah Wheeler moved through the front door, closing it behind him. He sighted Doug Monahan and came walking back, his big frame blocking off much of the light from the front window.
“Been looking for you, Mr. Monahan.”
Monahan stood up and shoo
k the old farmer’s hand. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Wheeler.” He motioned with his hand, and Wheeler sat down.
“Have a drink with us?”
Wheeler said hesitantly, “Well, I’m not much of a drinking man.…”
“Neither am I,” Monahan replied morosely, “but this seems to be an occasion for it.” Trying to shake his dark mood, he asked, “How is everybody?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Did your cow ever have that calf you were looking for?”
Instantly he saw that he had touched a nerve. Wheeler’s lips tightened. “She had the calf.” He fingered the glass, frowning. “Best cow I ever had, old Roany. And Sancho, there’s not a better bull in all of West Texas. For months I’ve waited, wanting to see what that calf was going to turn out like. Well, it got here, all right.”
He turned his glass up and finished it. “It wasn’t from Sancho atall. It was from one of Fuller Quinn’s scrub bulls. Big, long-legged calf, spotted with every color in the rainbow. Just a pure-dee scrub.”
The old farmer turned his eyes to Monahan, and Monahan could see keen disappointment in them. “I want to have a good herd, and the only way I can build it is with good calves out of cows like Roany. I’ll never get the job done as long as any old stray bull can come across my land. So I want one of your fences, Mr. Monahan!”
Monahan almost choked on his drink. He got it down. “Are you sure you know what you’re saying?”
Wheeler nodded. “I’m sure. Three days now I’ve thought it over. I want you to build me a fence.”
“Haven’t you heard what happened today out on Oak Creek?”
“I heard.”
“And you still want to go on?”
“It’s my land,” Wheeler said stubbornly.
Deep inside, conscience was telling Doug Monahan not to agree. Angered because of that scrub calf, the old man might not fully realize what he was letting himself in for. Conscience said to turn him down.
But Doug Monahan paid no attention to his conscience. Suddenly he felt a wild elation, a soaring of spirit. Out of defeat had come his chance.
“Then, come hell or high water,” he declared, “we’ll build you that fence!”
7
Doug Monahan walked up to the town’s smaller livery stable and found the owner out front, patiently hitching a skittish young sorrel to a two-wheeled horse-breaking gig, a light buggy with long shafts that would keep the animal from kicking it to pieces. Doug watched with interest while the man tied a rope on one of the pony’s forefeet, then drew it up through the ring on the hames.
“He starts to run,” the liveryman volunteered, “I’ll just pick up that forefoot. He can’t make much speed on three legs.”
Cautiously the man climbed up on the rig, and it looked as if the horse was going to break and run. “Whoa now, be gentle,” the man said in a soothing voice.
“You seen Dundee?” Doug asked quickly, for it looked as if the horse was going to run anyway. “They told me he was here.”
The liveryman pointed with his chin and took a tight hold on the reins. “Out back yonder, shoeing his horse.” The sorrel moved forward, quickly stretching into a long-reaching trot, looking back nervously at the rig which wheeled along behind. The liveryman had him under full control.
Doug glanced up and grinned at a sign over the door: COWBOY, SPIT ON YOUR MATCH OR EAT IT. A livery stable fire was a thing to dread.
Passing through the dark interior and its musty smell of hay, he found Dundee behind the barn, shoeing his good bay horse in the shade. This was one of those mildly warm Texas winter afternoons when an idle man enjoyed leaning back in a rawhide chair and soaking in the fleeting sunshine, while a man working came to appreciate the shade.
Dundee had shod the hind feet first. Now he lifted the horse’s left forefoot and ran his thumb over his preliminary hoof-trimming job. He straddled the foot and held it between his legs, rasping the trim job down to a smooth finish. The horse began to lean on him, and Dundee heaved against him. “Get your weight off of me, you lazy ox.”
He glanced up at Doug Monahan. “Gettin’ him in shape to travel. Looks like we got to, if we’re both goin’ to eat much longer. The captain’s got the word out he don’t want any ranch around here hirin’ men who worked for Gordon Finch.”
“Got any plans?”
Dundee shrugged and carefully felt of the hoof, noting an uneven place in it. “Never had a plan in my life. I get tired of a place, I just move on and hunt me somethin’ else. I’d purt near used this place up anyhow.”
Doug squatted on his heels and examined the shoe Dundee was going to put on the horse’s hoof. “How’d you like to work for me?”
Dundee stopped the rasp. “Doing what?”
“Building fence.”
Dundee smiled indulgently. “You still on that? Somebody’d have to hire you before you could hire me. And who’s goin’ to, after what happened out there on Oak Crick?”
“Somebody already has.”
Dundee straightened. “Who?”
“Noah Wheeler. Nobody knows it yet, and I want it quiet as long as we can keep it that way.”
“I won’t say anythin’.”
“What do you think about that job?”
Dundee dropped the horse’s foot and wiped his half-rolled sleeve against his forehead, leaving a streak of sweat-soaked dirt. He dropped the rasp into a box. “I never could get a shovel handle or a crowbar to fit these hands of mine,” he said, holding out his right hand and bending the fingers.
“Fit a gun all right, though, don’t they?”
Dundee smiled. “They always considered me a fair to middlin’ good shot.”
“Maybe I’ll need that gun hand more than the shovel-handle hand. I never was any great shot, myself.”
“It’d take more than just me. You’d have to have several good men, Monahan, if you was to really make it stick.”
“That’s where you come in, Dundee. I need a good crew. Most of mine left the country. I figured you might know some good men who can work hard and at the same time could handle a fight if one came at them.”
A strong flicker of interest was in Dundee’s eyes. “I think maybe I could rustle up a few.”
Relieved, Monahan said, “It’s a deal, then? I’ve got Stub Bailey left, and maybe one or two more. If you can find me as many as six or seven more, I can use them. What’re cowboy wages around here?”
“Vary with the man. Average about thirty dollars a month, and found.”
“I’ll pay forty. And a little bonus if we get the job done without too much cut wire or other damage from the R Cross.”
Dundee grinned with admiration. “You get your mind set on somethin’, you just don’t quit, do you? I thought they’d quit makin’ that kind anymore.” He turned back and patted the bay horse on the neck. “Well, old hoss, looks like we may stick around a while and watch the show.”
* * *
IT WAS A fifty-mile ride to the cedar-cutters’ camp, down on the river and out of Kiowa County. That was a long way to haul posts in a wagon. It would have been easier to use mesquite or live oak, but Doug was convinced that cedar would make better, longer-lasting posts.
He reached the camp in time for supper. The night chill was moving in with a raw south wind, and he was glad for the sight of the big side-boarded tent the Blessingame men used for a home. They would set it up in the heart of a cedar thicket and proceed to cut the cedar down from around it. When the posts were all cut and sold, they would simply hunt another thicket.
In the edge of camp, amid a tinder-dry litter of trimmed-off limbs and browning dead cedar leaves, Monahan saw dozens of stacks of cedar posts, some of them no more than three inches across the top, and some of the longest ones a foot or more, stout enough to build an elephant pen.
He could hear a clatter of pots and pans. The noise stopped, and huge old Foley Blessingame ducked through the tent flap, looking to see who was riding up. His big voice boomed, “Git down,
Doug, and come on in here. We’ll have a bite to eat directly.”
Foley Blessingame was crowding sixty, Doug knew for a fact. If he hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have been able to guess within twenty years. Foley stood six feet four, and his powerful shoulders were axe handle–broad as he stood there, his tangled red beard lifting and falling in the cold wind. The man had arms as thick and hard as the cedar posts he cut for a living.
“You ain’t going to like the supper,” Foley said, “but it won’t be any worse on you than it is on the rest of us. Mules spooked the other day and run over me with a wagonload of posts. Bunged up my chopping arm. I got to do the cooking now till I kin handle an axe ag’in. The kids are out yonder workin’.”
From somewhere in the brush echoed the ring of steel axes biting deep into heart-cedar.
“Just bunged up your arm?” Doug asked wonderingly. “Is that all the damage it did?”
“Well, it like to’ve tore up an awful good wagon.” Blessingame motioned at Doug’s horse. “Just skin the saddle off and turn him loose. He’ll find our bunch and stay with them. The kids’ll put out a little grain directly.”
Doug unsaddled and followed the old man through the tent flap. A big woodstove had it much warmer inside, but the place reeked of scorched grease and burned bread.
“Never did care much for cookin’,” Blessingame complained. “I’d rather cut fifty trees with a dull ax than stick my hands in a keg of sourdough. I always leave this chore up to the kids. Ain’t no job for a growed man anyhow.”
“Let me take a turn at it,” Doug offered, and the old man stepped aside. “I’d be much obliged.”
Paco Sanchez had taught Doug a deal about camp cooking. There wasn’t much he could do about old Foley’s sourdough now. It was too late for a new batch to rise before supper, so he’d just have to use this. He sliced thick venison steaks off a tarp-wrapped hind quarter hanging from a tree outside. He salted them and flopped them down, one by one, into a keg of flour, until they were well coated. The Blessingames made their living cutting cedar, but Monahan noted with relief that the fuel in the woodbox was all dry mesquite. It was better for cooking.
