Driftin' (Shad Cain Book 3)

by Lou Bradshaw

  ~~~~~ o ~~~~~

  Four days later I was in the three rivers country, in fact I was following the Kaweah River which was the result of two rivers coming together to make the third. I could see the Sierra Nevadas looming up above the valley off to the east. I had stumbled onto a bit of luck and shot a young mule deer as he was coming out of the brush along a stream. I only took enough meat for myself and enough to keep Dog going strong. That way he didn’t spend half his strength hunting. The soft grass kept his footpads from cracking and causing him pain… he was in fine shape.

  Riding along the south bank of the river, I’d been looking for signs of life. But I wanted the right signs. I didn’t want to ride into one of Glazer’s camps and start asking questions about Max Bell. So I avoided anything that looked like it might be a cattle camp. What I was looking for was a small ranch or farm.

  Up ahead and off to the right, I spotted a thin column of smoke. It looked to be a chimney smoke rather than a campfire smoke. A chimney smoke is more controlled and organized into a column than a campfire. I figured it was from a cook stove left over from the breakfast fire. So I moseyed on in the direction of the smoke.

  Not wanting to ride out into the open in strange country, I stayed under cover along the river, until I was almost abreast of the smoke. Then I took a deep breath and left my cover and rode up the slope toward the source of the smoke. Nearing the top of the hill I dismounted and crept up to where I could see without too much of me getting seen.

  Laying in the tall grass, I could see a small ranch house, a barn, and several other out buildings. There was a corral and a well, and I doubted very much that this humble working ranch would be the headquarters for a big shot, like Glazer was supposed to be. So I mounted up loosened my rifle, took the thong off my Colt, and trotted toward the house.

  At about three hundred yards or so I could see two men in the door yard. They had been fussing at each other. It looked to me like the one was trying to get the other one to do something, and having to use a good deal of persuasion and arm waving to get his way. They hadn’t seen me yet.

  I rode on until I was in the clear of all brush and other things that might be a distraction before they saw me. The taller gent, the one who was taking all the persuading, was the first to spot me and pointed me out to the other. The shorter fella considered my presence an annoyance and turned with fists on his hips looking my way.

  When I got within twenty feet I pulled Bud to a halt, touched the brim of my hat, and started to say, Howdy, gents, but the smaller one pulled off his hat, and out fell a bushel basket of hair. So I was able to change it to say “Howdy… folks.”

  Still giving me a good going over she said, “Morning, stranger… You lost or hungry… If you’re lost, we can give you directions… if you’re hungry, there’s cold meat and cheese in the cupboard… If you’re lookin’ for work, I might have a job opening up soon.” With that she swung her head and glared at the old fella she’d just been haranguing… That’s a fancy word for giving him the dickens.

  She was no spring chicken, but she weren’t no crotchety oldster either, she was just sorta comfortable in whatever number of years she might have seen. She was wearing a pair of men’s dungarees tucked into a pair of well used mule eared boots. And she had a mass of pure white wavy hair. I’d seen more than a few women in my time, and some of them were a mighty tough, but I only had to look at this one to know she wouldn’t take a step backward for any man.

  “Ma’am, that cold meat and cheese sounds temptin’, but I just had breakfast a few hours back… Actually, I’m not lost, but I do need some directions. I’m lookin’ to find a fella named Max Bell. I been told he has a place up here in the three rivers country.”

  She immediately took on a different posture. Her back stiffened and her brows drew down and created creases in the middle above the bridge of her nose. “What might your business be with Bell?” She asked.

  I was a little taken aback by her quick change in attitude and said, “Ma’am, I know there’s trouble in these parts, but I just heard about it back at Morro Bay a little over a week back. Max Bell and me and some others took a herd up to Pueblo a few years back. We fit the weather and rustlers and a sheriff and just about everybody ‘cept each other.”

  “I was out here on a holiday just lollygaggin’ along, but when I found out that there was trouble up here and Bell was in the middle of it…. well, I just naturally changed my plans and came a floggin’.”

  “Uh huh… and just what might be your name, Mister?”

  “Shadrac Cain, Missus, but most folks just call me Cain, when they’re calling me anything in a friendly manner. Others have different names for me.”

  “Uh huh… It’s Miss, and proud of it… I don’t recall Max Bell mentioning anyone named Shadrach… or any other of the children of Israel… Who was the boss on that trail drive?”

  “That would have been, Ben Blue, Ma’am… He owned the herd and ran the trail boss off… for being in cahoots with some rustlers.”

  She stood there pondering for a minute then she asked, “You be the crusty ol’ scout that helped Blue blow up the rustler’s camp?”

  “Yes’am… Still pretty crusty, ‘cept when I put on my city clothes.”

  “Well, climb down off that hoss and let’s have us some coffee, Mister Cain… I’m Dee Wells… and you can call me Miss Wells till you get to know me better…You like donuts, Mister Cain?”

  Before I could answer she turned to the man she’d been berating and said, “Earl, you ride on up to the Bell place and tell him there’s a friend of his here lookin’ for him… and you come right back… ya hear?”

  I looped Bud’s reins over the hitch rail near the porch and followed Miss Wells into the house. It was small but as neat and clean as any I’d ever been in. I could smell the baking as soon as I walked into the kitchen. She poured two mugs of coffee and took a plate of donuts from a counter and set it on the table. Then she motioned me to a chair.

  She told me that Max often told about that trail drive and those who were a part of it. But he mostly talked about Ben Blue. “Max and his wife, Dori, both thought a lot of him.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” I said, “most decent folks are taken with Blue, I see him and Miss Patty Anne about three times a year… they’re good people.”

  “So he married the girl… did he? That hadn’t been decided when they last saw him.”

  “He surely did and they got two little redheaded youngens runnin’ and crawlin’ around to boot.”

  She went on to tell me what was going on along the west wall of the Sierras. It seemed that this Ed Glazer came into the country with a bunch of Mexican cattle and a lot of men, and he was determined to take over the whole region. Since Bell had the biggest and best spread in the three rivers area, he wasn’t immediately troubled, but a lot of the smaller ranches were. Some just packed up and left, but the rest banded together and resisted the takeover.

  Cattle were rustled and waterholes were fouled, but until lately there hadn’t been any bloodshed. A few weeks ago a ranch hand was bushwhacked and killed. Some of the ranchers figured it was a message being sent, but there wasn’t any proof. A few local punchers were roughed up in the saloon at the settlement where the two streams formed the Kaweath River.

  I asked her if she’d had any trouble and she said, “They know better than to harm me or any woman alone. Besides, my brother was too well connected in government. Why, the governor himself sat in that same chair many times and ate supper with us. No they won’t bother me, but that won’t help the others much… We’re just a small part of a big state.”

  She went on to tell me how her brother came out in forty nine and had some luck in the gold fields. But instead of playing the fool like so many did, he claimed this piece of land and built a cabin. Then he went back home to Illinois and brought his wife and his sister out.

  Miss Dee Wells, sat there holding her cup looking me right in the face for a long half minute. Finally she
said, “Shadrach Cain, you look to be about the hardest critter I ever saw walking on two legs… You look like you could wade through a bunch of Mohaves with a willow switch and come out standin’. Pardon me for sayin’ so, but if you’d a come ridin’ up to my door twenty years ago, you’d a been hard pressed to ever get away again.”

  I knew I’d just been given a compliment, but I’d been given so few, I wasn’t sure how to reply. All I could think to say was, “Ma’am… what makes you think I’d have even tried to leave.”

  That brought a good hearty laugh and she called me a scamp. “Tell me, Mister Cain, are you a married man?”

  “That’s part of the reason I came out here on a holiday. I went and made a fool of myself askin’ a mighty fine young lady to be my missus. But I’d pulled her of some mighty bad trouble, and I reckon every time she would be lookin’ at me would bring back painful memories… I understood, but I felt like just doing some driftin’ for a spell.”

  “Pity.” Was all she said.

  Chapter 6

  “Ma’am, since you sent your man Earl off to take a message on my account, the least I can do is go out there and do whatever it was you were tryin’ to get him to do when I rode up. I’d sure hate to get back to Colorado and find my hands had got soft.

  She laughed and said, “I’ll save the rest of my questions for later… How are you at plantin’ wildflowers?”

  “Don’t rightly know, seein’ as how I ain’t never planted any… I just always thought they come up all by themselves like wild bears and wild rabbits… but I’m a first rate learner.”

  We worked for about an hour, with her giving directions and me passing those directions on to the shovel. I was hauling water from the well to finish the job when we heard the rattle of hooves. I set the bucket down and got my rifle from the porch, and then I went to the corner of the house to have a look at who was coming.

  I looked toward the rear of the house and past the barn, since that’s the direction they were coming from. At first I didn’t see anyone, and then two riders came from behind the barn. It didn’t take a second look to recognize Max Bell and the other one was Earl. They pulled up in the yard. Bell swung down and came toward me with his hand out.

  “Shad Cain, what in the name of Heaven are you doin’ out here in the land of milk and honey? When Earl told me a fella named Able was here lookin’ for me, I couldn’t imagine who he was talkin’ about. I was still in the dark when he said we were on a trail drive together. But when he said you were about the toughest lookin’ coot he’d ever seen, I knew he got his Bible mixed up… It was Cain, not Able.”

  “Can you stay awhile? Man, it sure is good to see you… Although things are a little bit screwy here at the west wall right now… but I don’t expect any real trouble.”

  “That’s what I heard down at the ocean. I ran across an old Mexican named Infante… Juan Infante, and he told me about the trouble up here. I remembered Ben tellin’ me you wound up somewhere north of Bakersfield… I mentioned your name to Infante and he said you was right in the middle of it… And I can stay till we run ‘em off… I got nobody waitin’ for me back in Colorado.”

  “Well,” he said, “it could get a little touchy. Ed Glazer seems nice enough to your face, but he keeps bringing in more gunmen. That’s what doesn’t make sense, this whole three rivers area isn’t worth much more than what he’s payin’ in wages… folks around the region are just a little nervous.”

  “When he moved in he had already bought two small spreads, and he’s tried to buy others, but no one is sellin’. There’s been a little trouble and one man’s been killed, I’m not expectin’ a full fledge range war.”

  “I ran into a hardcase down in San Lois Obispo, named Bob Reese. He sorta figured by the look of me that I was comin’ up here to work for Glazer too. He kinda run off at the mouth.”

  Bell’s face came up when I mentioned Reese. “Bob Reese is bad news. He’s a known back shooter… a sure thing killer from the Los Angeles area … You reckon he’s here already?”

  “No… he ain’t comin’.”

  Miss Wells, was standin’ next to Max with her hand hooked on his arm. She looked up and asked, “Did you convince him not to come?”

  “Yes Ma’am. I showed him the error of his ways and convinced him that this wasn’t the right place for him.”

  “Good for you Mr. Cain… that was a nice thing to do.”

  “Yes’am.”

  We stayed a little longer and then I thanked Miss Dee Wells and we rode off to the northeast. Along the way, I filled him in on what had been happening in my life and got him all caught up on Ben and his family. He asked about the boy, Tater.

  “That boy’s a growed man… he’s one to ride the river with… he’s down in Texas wearin’ a Ranger’s star.”

  “Well I’ll be damned… first time I met him he wanted me to go with him on a bounty hunt, the only problem with that was, the bounty was on me. When he realized that he’d have to shoot me to collect it, and I’d be shooting back, he changed his mind… And he’s a good cook too.” Then he laughed and declared that he’d be damned again.

  “Max,” I said, “when I met your wife in that hotel dining room there in Pueblo, you introduced her as Izzy and Miss Wells called her Dori… did you get you another wife?”

  He laughed again and told me, “Her name is Isadora, and I guess I’m the only one that calls her Izzy, and she’s stuck with that… you better call her Dori, so she’ll know who you’re talkin’ to.”

  We rode into the ranch yard, and I’d have to say it was a top notch outfit. There was a nice sized and comfortable looking ranch house. Everything looked about the way I’d expect a Max Bell spread to look. This was no rawhide outfit, everything was nailed down and standing straight and square.

  I took my hat off as I went in the front door, and the lovely dark haired Mrs. Bell came from the kitchen drying her hands. “Izzy, do you remember meeting Shad Cain back in Pueblo?”

  “I most certainly do.” She declared. “How are you Mister Cain?”

  “Oh, please, Ma’am, just Cain… anybody calls me mister, I figure they must have me mistaken for a gentleman.”

  “If that’s the way it is, then you should call me Dori because ma’am sounds like a school marm.” We shook on it and the deal was done.

  Dori brought in coffee and we talked over the situation in the three rivers area. I told them that I’d like to do some scouting on my own. And I’d likely be gone for several days at a time. I’d just stow my gear in the bunkhouse, and I’d be traveling light… just me and Dog.

  They both raised a fuss about me moving into the bunkhouse, but told them I’d be much more comfortable there. Dori fussed a bit more but it was mostly for style. It was agreed that he’d tell the men that I was a wolfer, he’d hired to cut down on varmints coming down out of the high up timber.

  Bell walked me out to the bunkhouse to show me around and introduce me to the men who were there. He had six men all together, but only two were working in the barn and corral. One was mucking stalls and the other was shoring up the corral fencing. I led Bud into the corral and unsaddled him.

  “I’d say that big fella could be a twin to Ben’s big gray, except for the coloring.” Max told me.

  “He’s pretty close but about a half a hand smaller. Ben brought him up to me a few months back… said he had too many of that color and needed to get rid of him. I knew he was givin’ it to me for helpin’ him get his youngen back. I’d lost a good horse in that affair, but he knew I wouldn’t take it as payment…. So I swallowed his cock and bull story and accepted it.”

  ~~~~~ o ~~~~~

  I was gone the next morning before the rest of the crew had their socks on. A quick breakfast and about a half gallon of coffee, and we were over the first ridge. Max had drawn me a map of how the valley laid out and the positions of the six smaller ranches, not counting Miss Wells’ place. He also marked the Glazer headquarters. It was up north, between the coming to
gether of the rivers. All the others were south of the south fork.

  The Glazer place was back against the mountains and somewhat isolated from the rest. It was a good fifteen miles between Bell’s place and Glazer’s, so I had some riding to do. I angled my horse so that he would take us to the base of the mountains. From there I could move north without much fear of being seen. I wanted to get up above the Glazer place and watch the comings and goings for a spell.

  Having spotted all the smaller ranches on my way north, I had them located in my head for quick reference. I didn’t have a plan other than just wait and watch. My first two days on the job were pretty boring. There was nothing unusual going on down there. Men were getting up in the morning and riding out in pairs. They were all going in different directions. There was nothing unusual about that, cow hands often worked with saddle partners.

  On the third day, something unusual did happen. Two large wagons rolled in and both pulled in to the bigger of the two barns. Both wagons were canvas covered, but not like the old prairie schooners. They were both wider and not nearly as heavily made as a Conestoga. They had come in from the northeast and both went straight into the barn.

  There was a lot that didn’t make much sense about this operation, and those two wagons were at the top of the list. Second on that list was, where were the cattle? I could see small groups spread out across the land surrounding the ranch headquarters. There wasn’t near enough to justify as many men as I’d seen coming and going.

  I had to agree with Bell after looking over the area in question, the only way this stretch of land had enough value to be worth the effort, was if there was a mother lode of gold underneath that grass. I hadn’t seen any signs of mining on my way up, but that didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t see everything without a lot of looking, and I hadn’t spent that much time.

  Right then, my main concern was those wagons. They just weren’t stout enough to carry really heavy loads. They weren’t even rigged right for carrying supplies. A covered supply wagon would have the canvas tied down snug to the load. These two, had the canvas propped up on roughly four foot poles and suspended across a center beam pole on the top. They looked like a couple of big tents on wheels.