Bitter Trail and Barbed Wire

by Elmer Kelton

  A remnant of warm coals still smouldered in the woodstove. Doug punched them up and put in a little kindling to rebuild the blaze. Slowly he fed dry mesquite into this until he had a good fire going. He set the coffee pot on, then turned to see what he could cook. He was hungry from the long, busy night, and he was sure the rest of the men were, too. Finding a side of bacon, he sliced it. He found a keg of sourdough and filled a big biscuit pan.

  When breakfast was ready, he let the R Cross and Quinn men eat right along with his own crew. “You boys that were on those bottles so hard last night better take a little extra of this coffee,” he said. “You got a catawampus of a day coming up.”

  A pink promise of dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky when he herded the men out of the house and made them saddle their horses. Made frisky by the chill, one bronc pitched out of the corral. Stub Bailey had to help the rider up off of the ground. Back across the dry prairie they rode, toward the Noah Wheeler place.

  For some of them, it became torture. Two or three had to stop. Doug held up the ride until they finished being sick. Some of the rest were whitefaced and not far from the stopping point themselves, but Doug kept pushing them.

  For a long time Fuller Quinn could do little more than groan. He was halfway to the Wheeler place before he finally found his voice. “This is kidnappin’! I’ll have you throwed in jail and left there till you rot!”

  Doug said caustically, “Why, it’s just the good old cow country institution of neighbor help. You came over and helped us last night, and now you’re going to help us again today.”

  In the dark, Doug hadn’t been able to see how bad the damage was. Now, riding up to it in the full light of morning, he felt the anger build again. They had wrecked about a mile of fence. In places the wire was pulled down but could be put up again. In others it was cut in so many places as to be useless.

  “Made a pretty bad mess of it, didn’t they?” Stub Bailey said.

  Nodding grimly, Doug turned back to the sobered R Cross and Quinn cowboys. “You fellers can get down now and unsaddle. You’re so good at cutting fence, we’ll see how you are at patching it up again.”

  Vern Wheeler took the horses and turned them loose in the grain patch. Doug scattered the raiders, delegating his crew to supervise them. The first thing they had to do was pull down all the short pieces of cut wire for discard. The longer stretches that could be salvaged were spliced together.

  By noon they had the splicing done and a good part of the wire restrung. Up and down the fenceline lay scattered pieces of wicked wire, cut too short to be worth anything. Left lying on the ground, they would always be a hazard to livestock.

  Fuller Quinn groaned and complained, cursed and threatened all morning. So did a tall, sour-faced cowboy named Sparks, who was with him. After dinner Doug handed Quinn a shovel and Sparks a pick.

  “You two are going to bury all that wasted wire. I want a hole four feet deep, big enough to take care of the job. Get after it.”

  Quinn swore and shook his fists, but in the end there was nothing for him to do but take the shovel and go. Doug left the rest of the men on the wire-stringing job. It was much easier, but most of them were suffering from the night before. They sweated and groaned, and occasionally one fell sick.

  Doug no longer pushed them. When he saw a man who seemed to be getting too much of it, he called him out and had him sit down. These weren’t bad men. Most of them were cowboys, men of his own kind. What they had done here was not so much out of malice as from the fact that they had been ordered to do it. True, they probably had not registered much objection. They might have enjoyed the idea of ripping out the fence, but they would not have attempted it except under orders. Doug doubted that they would enjoy it so much the next time.

  By supper most of the damage was patched up. Even most of the R Cross cowboys seemed to take some interest as the job went along and they saw a good tight fence shaping under their own blistered hands. Once they gave up the idea of rebellion, they pitched in and worked hard. They labored and sweated the whisky out of their systems.

  A while before sundown, Doug sent Vern after the men’s horses. He signaled the men in. “That’s enough. You’ve done more than I ever thought you would.” He smiled now, for the anger was gone. Weariness lay heavy on his shoulders.

  “Before you start back, Trudy Wheeler’s got you a good hot supper fixed. I don’t believe in working a man and not feeding him.”

  Some of the cowboys grinned. Fuller Quinn didn’t. He was swelled up like a toad. So was Sparks, the tall rider who had helped him bury the wire. Doug had made them dig the hole big enough to bury an elephant in. He had made them throw all the wasted wire in the bottom and cover the hole up again.

  The way Trudy Wheeler treated the men, a casual visitor would never have suspected that they had come to destroy. Like Monahan, she seemed to feel that they had served their sentence. She smiled and talked and saw that their plates were full. The cowboys watched her covertly, admiring her.

  “Vern,” said weary Shorty Willis, “if I’d knowed you had a sister like that, I’d’ve been over here workin’ for your old man instead of over yonder with the captain.”

  After supper, Doug stood on the porch with Noah Wheeler and watched the cowboys ride away.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t expect I made any friends in that crowd. But Trudy did.”

  Tired, sleepy, Doug was glad the day was over. Another hour and he wouldn’t have made it. All the way out to the barn, he thought of old Foley Blessingame, crowding sixty. This was hard enough on a young man. Pity touched him. The old man was probably already in his blankets, asleep.

  Pushing the door open, Doug heard a loud voice. It was Foley’s. The cedar-cutter had a small table pushed out in the middle of the dirt floor and sat there shuffling the cards. He was bright-eyed and rarin’ to go.

  “How about it, Bailey? You worked up the nerve yet to try me a game?”

  * * *

  ARCHER SPANN STOOD in the back of the Twin Wells mercantile, watching distrustfully while storekeeper Oscar Tracey stacked the goods listed on the R Cross bill. He kept glancing at the duplicate list, making sure Tracey didn’t cheat on the count. He never had, as far as Spann knew, but the foreman believed it didn’t pay to trust anybody.

  Up in the front of the cluttered store, a couple of women customers were stealing glances at Spann, and he knew they were whispering about him. He tightened his fist and tried to keep from looking at them. He had felt that whispering ever since he had been in town. More than that, he had sensed people laughing. They kept a solemn face when they were near him, but he could see the laughter hidden in their eyes.

  It was the Wheeler fencing job that had done it. Never before had people laughed at Archer Spann. Some hadn’t liked him—some had even hated him—but that hadn’t bothered Spann. Let them hate him, for all he cared.

  But not laugh at him.

  First it had been that fiasco at Drinkman’s Gap, and now it was the rout over on Wheeler’s fenceline. Twice Archer Spann had tried to stop Doug Monahan, and each time the whole thing had blown up in his face. He didn’t know what he would do next. But this he knew, next time it would have a different ending.

  He felt needles pricking him as a man walked through the front door and closed it against the cold. Noah Wheeler!

  For a moment Spann considered going out the back way so he wouldn’t have to face Wheeler. He had developed a gnawing hatred for the old farmer. He didn’t even want to look at him. But Spann knew that to walk out the back would be taken for a retreat. There had been too many retreats already.

  Steeling himself, he shoved the duplicate supply list in his pocket and started to the front. He heard Wheeler say, “I got a list of goods here I need to take back to the farm today, Oscar.”

  Tracey replied, “Be with you directly, Noah.”

  Wheeler turned and Archer Spann walked toward him. The R Cross foreman stopped and glared at the farmer. He felt his
hatred well up like something indigestible. Here was the real root of the trouble, he thought darkly. Monahan was the most obvious cause, but had it not been for Wheeler, Monahan would not have been able to stay. Even yet, were Wheeler to fold, Monahan could go no farther.

  The captain could believe what he wanted to and say what he wanted to about Noah Wheeler, but to Archer Spann he was nothing but a plain dirt farmer too big for his britches.

  Spann turned angrily on Oscar Tracey. “Oscar,” he said, “the R Cross has bought a lot of supplies from you in the past. If you want to keep getting that trade, you better stop selling to its enemies.”

  To his surprise, Oscar Tracey never wavered. “It’s your right, Mr. Spann, to buy from whoever you please. And it’s mine to sell to whoever I please.”

  Spann rocked back on his heels. A month ago, there wasn’t a man in town who would have said that. And Oscar Tracey, this thin, gray old storekeeper who looked ready to blow away if a strong wind hit him, was the last man Spann would ever have expected it from.

  Spann stamped out the front door and into the raw chill of the open street. He stopped then and wondered where to go to kill time. He didn’t drink because whisky too often got in a man’s way, and he didn’t like to idle in saloons where men sat around lazily instead of going out to hustle, to make money. There was nothing about this rough little prairie town that he liked. He had always hated it. He hated it even more now that he could feel its laughter.

  Someday, he thought grimly, I’ll be running the R Cross, and then I’ll snub them up short of the post. There won’t be any old man going soft and saying hold off. They’ll do what I tell them, by God!

  He half turned and glanced at the window of the store. Spann doubled his fist. Here Wheeler was, right in his grasp, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Captain Rinehart had tied his hands. If only …

  Spann felt a sudden elation. Why hadn’t he thought of it already? Sure, the captain had tied his hands, but he had no say-so over anybody else. Not over Fuller Quinn, for instance. And Spann had seen Quinn ride up to the Eagle Saloon down the street an hour ago.

  Spann pushed the saloon door shut behind him and stood looking. He spotted Quinn slouched in a chair at a back table. With him was a tall, hook-nosed cowboy—Sparks, his name was. They had emptied the better part of a bottle of whisky just since they had been sitting there.

  The bartender stared in surprise at Archer Spann. The R Cross foreman was seldom seen in a place like this. “What could I get you, Mr. Spann?”

  “Nothing,” Spann said curtly. Then, because he was cold, he said, “If you got coffee, I’ll take that.”

  He walked back to Quinn’s table. Quinn looked up at him belligerently, for some harsh recriminations had passed between them after that affair out at Wheeler’s place. Finally Quinn said, “Sit down, if it suits yuh.”

  Spann nodded toward the bottle. “Hitting that pretty hard, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t see it’s any of your business,” Quinn responded sharply. As if in defiance, he looked Spann straight in the eye and poured his glass full again.

  Spann could see that Quinn was already far gone. He got a look at the palm of the man’s hand, lying slack on the table. It was blistered and sore. “That hand looks bad.”

  “Yours’d be too if you’d spent the whole day with Monahan’s gun pokin’ you in the face, and you workin’ with a pick and shovel like me and Sparks done.”

  Sparks sat sullenly, feeding on some deep anger and paying little attention to anybody. The barman brought Spann’s coffee. Spann sat and blew it awhile, then sipped it as he sized up Fuller Quinn. Quinn might just be mad enough and drunk enough to do it.

  “Why don’t you do something about it?” Spann asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Noah Wheeler’s over at Tracey’s mercantile. Was I you, I’d take it out of his hide.”

  Quinn glared suspiciously. “The R Cross got a worse dose of it than we got. Why don’t you do it?”

  “The captain says no. Seems he and Wheeler were friends once a long time ago, and he won’t let me touch the old devil.”

  “And you want me to do it?”

  Spann shrugged. “It don’t make any difference to me. All I said was, you got a good chance, if you’re a mind to.”

  Quinn took another long drink. His eyes watered, and he blinked hard to clear his sight. With one eye squinted almost shut, he rasped, “Tryin’ to get somebody else to do the dirty work for yuh!”

  Spann said, “It wasn’t me that had to dig that hole and bury all that wire. If you got the guts to, you can give Wheeler what he deserves. If you’re scared, you can let him go. It don’t matter a damn to me.”

  Fuller Quinn straightened, his face getting redder. “I’m not scared of you or Wheeler or Monahan or anybody else, Spann! I’ll do as I please, and you can go to hell for all I care!”

  Spann forced himself to keep a tight rein. He had planted the seed, and maybe the whisky would germinate it. There would be plenty of time to make Fuller Quinn eat those words. Spann would not forget them. He stood up and shoved his chair back under the table.

  “Take care of those hands, Fuller. I’ll see you around.”

  After Spann’s wagon was loaded, he stalled a while and watched for Noah Wheeler to leave the store. Wheeler’s wagon rolled off down the street and out onto the trail that led toward his farm. Presently Fuller Quinn and Sparks swayed out of the saloon. With some difficulty they managed to get on their horses. Quinn pointed, and the two headed out in the same direction Noah Wheeler had taken.

  Nodding in satisfaction, Spann said to the cowboy who had come with him to drive the team, “Roll ’em. I’ve seen all I want to.”

  * * *

  IT WAS DARK when Sheriff Luke McKelvie came in driving Noah Wheeler’s wagon. Noah was slumped on the spring seat beside him, and McKelvie’s horse was tied on behind. Men who had been sitting on the porch, eating supper, put their plates down and hurried out to the wagon.

  “Easy with him,” McKelvie cautioned as Doug Monahan reached for the old farmer. “He’s pretty bad beat up.”

  Noah Wheeler’s square face was swollen and bruised and angry red in places where rough knuckles had broken the skin. A white bandage was bound around his head. His clothes were dirt-streaked and torn.

  “Easy, Noah,” Doug breathed, “just relax and let your weight come on me.”

  Stub Bailey was helping him, and Foley Blessingame and a couple of the Blessingame boys. The others were crowding around anxiously, ready to make a grab if Wheeler should start to fall.

  The commotion caught the attention of the two women in the house. They came running as Wheeler got his feet to the ground. The men moved aside for them. Mrs. Wheeler’s face went white, and she swayed for just a moment. Then she was in complete control.

  “Bring him into the house,” she said. “Whatever’s to be done, we can do it better in there.”

  Luke McKelvie climbed down from the wagon and followed them toward the porch. “Mostly what he needs now is rest, Mrs. Wheeler. The doctor said no bones are broke.”

  Noah Wheeler protested weakly that he was all right, but they carried him to his bed, pulled off his boots and laid him across it anyway.

  Doug turned to the sheriff. “What happened?”

  “He left town with the goods he bought at Stacey’s. About a mile or so out, Fuller Quinn and that cowboy they call Sparks caught up with him. They were drunk and mad. They roped him off of the wagon and drug him around some, then beat him up.”

  Doug Monahan felt ice in his stomach.

  The sheriff went on, “A kid was out hunting a stray horse and happened up on them. They cussed him out and rode off. The kid got him back up in the wagon and brought him to town.”

  Doug sat down heavily. He hadn’t expected revenge to come this way, not against a helpless old man.

  “It’s my fault,” he said dully. “They were mad at me because I drug them over here and made
them work all day. They couldn’t get to me, so they took it out on him.”

  McKelvie said, “It’s a wonder they didn’t kill him. Drunk like they were, and dragging him around on a rope, they could’ve done it easy enough, even if they didn’t mean to.”

  Doug sat there dumbly, head bowed, cold chills running up and down his body as he considered what might have happened. He put his head in his hand while Mrs. Wheeler and Trudy got the torn clothes off of Noah Wheeler and pulled the covers up over him.

  He only half heard McKelvie saying, “If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here tonight. Then I’ll go over to Quinn’s tomorrow and arrest him. He’s going to pay for this.”

  Trudy was saying, “Of course, we’ll be glad to put you up, Sheriff.”

  Suddenly Doug arose. “Noah,” he said bluntly, “I’m going to quit!”

  All activity stopped. Everybody turned to stare at him. “I’m going to quit,” he repeated. “All this is my fault. I brought it on you. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t happen this way, that we could protect you, but I know now we can’t. We can’t watch every minute, every day. I never would’ve thought they’d waylay you away from home like this, or I’d have sent somebody with you. If it happened once, it can happen again.”

  He had never seen Noah Wheeler actually angry before, but now he did. Lying in the bed, his face bruised and beaten, the old farmer said loudly, “Doug, I’m not going to let you quit. I was the one that wanted this fence.”

  Doug shook his head. “No, it was me. I wanted to build a fence somewhere—anywhere—and rub the captain’s nose in it. Trudy was right, all I was interested in was revenge. I didn’t consider the trouble I’d be getting other people in. I didn’t let myself consider it.”

  Noah Wheeler said, “If you’ll just remember, you didn’t come to me about building that fence. I was the one that went to you. I suggested it, you didn’t.”

  “But I knew what was bound to come. Deep down, I knew it, and I should’ve told you.”

  “Do you think I’m a fool, Doug? Don’t you think I knew it, too? I did, and I thought about it a heap, and I was still willing to take the risk.”