“Yeah, we know that.”
“Well, why are you staying here, then?”
“Costs money to move on. We can’t go until spring.”
“Would you go on west if I gave you a little money?” Bobby asked, confident that the man was not looking for violence.
“Sure, if we had the money, we’d go. How much you talking about?”
“Ten dollars,” Bobby offered, almost certain that Townsend wouldn’t mind paying that much to get rid of the squatters. He had already said he didn’t want any trouble.
“When will I get the money?”
“When you get the wagon loaded and ready to go.”
The man frowned in thought, then nodded his head decisively. “We can be ready by the day after tomorrow. This is a bad place. Thank you for the offer and your generosity, mister.”
“That’s all right. You’re welcome.”
Townsend was amazed and pleased by the outcome of his visit to the squatters’ place. That was the beginning of his new job of moving the honyockers off the Turkey Track. The position suited him. It sure beat splitting firewood or mending corrals, and in the summer it would be better than herding and checking steers.
One outfit that he approached left for free. Bobby rode over and told them it was a damn sight warmer over west of the Rio Grande. In less than a week, they were gone.
In early spring, he rode east to a place called Two Rocks. By midday, the sun had warmed considerably. There was a man and woman who had been camping out at Two Rocks since early fall and it was time to get them to move on. Bobby had observed the woman at a distance as she collected cow chips and stockpiled them in small mounds near their camp. At the time he had been gathering steers to move north with two other hands, and he didn’t have an opportunity to visit them.
He finally found the time to ride out to the place and check on the pair. By mid-morning if was hot enough for him to shed the heavy blanket-lined coat that he had put on earlier. The patches of snow in shady places had evaporated, with the exception of a small mound or two under a ledge or sagebrush.
He rode up to the tent. It was a neat walled affair with a protruding rusty stovepipe. “Hello, the house.”
The woman who appeared wore nothing but a short night shift. His eyes widened in shock as he looked at her. At a glance she was nice enough looking, but when he drew closer he noticed the deep pockmarks on her face.
“Hello there,” she said with an overly friendly smile. He grew apprehensive. The smile was not the kind a lady gave a stranger. Maybe, he mused with growing suspicion, she was covering up so her husband could sneak up behind him. A quick glance around dispelled his suspicions.
“I have some coffee. Come in and have some,” she said with a provocative twist of her thin body.
“Ma’am, is your husband here?” he asked loudly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, but he’s not here right now. Did you need to speak to him?” Her voice sounded full of innocence. Too danged innocent, he thought grimly.
She continued, sounding almost apologetic. “He left early this morning for Los Gatos to see Mr. Beamer at the bank about a loan.”
He hid a start of surprise. The woman was obviously lying. He had heard lots of stories. In fact, he had made up a few of his own at one time or another, but hers about the banker business took the prize. He decided to play along. “I see,” he said flatly.
“Could I help you?” she asked with a tilt of her arched brows.
He speculated on her obvious offer. If her man was really gone to Los Gatos, he’d not be back until after dark. But if he was the jealous type and caught them together, he might well shoot first and ask questions later. It seemed unlikely that her man would return before he was done with her. Bobby drew a sharp breath up his nose and decided it was worth a chance.
Inside the tent she gestured for him to sit on a canvas cot and then went to get him a cup of coffee. He noted that she was barefoot and the short hem of her nightshirt exposed a generous amount of her legs and slim ankles.
“My name is Claire,” she said as she handed him the coffee. She was standing so close he could see the dark brown nipples of her breasts through the thin shift. He swallowed hard when she sat down on the other cot directly opposite him.
“What’s your name?” she asked in a husky voice.
“Oh, er … Bobby Joe.” His face reddened in embarrassment as he tried to draw his eyes away from the smooth mounds beneath the thin material of her night gown.
“Is there something wrong?”
“No. Actually …” Bobby looked down at the steaming coffee. “I came here to ask you to leave. You see, this is Turkey Track land,” he explained quietly.
“Oh, I’m sure Chester, my husband, did not know that this was your land,” she said sweetly.
He shook his head. “Not my land, ma’am.”
“Claire.”
“Yes, ma’am, Claire. It’s Mr. townsend’s land … er … sort of.”
“Sort of?” she repeated softly as she rose and moved to sit beside him on the narrow cot. When her hand touched his thigh, he spilled a little of his coffee.
Clearing his throat, he avoided looking at her face. “Well, it is his and it ain’t. Except—”
She cut him off by placing her fingertips against his lips. “I hate to worry about legal things, don’t you?”
As she leaned against him, he was reminded of how a woman smelled. It had been so long, he had forgotten about the musky scent of a near-naked woman’s body. The pressure of her soft skin against his and her earthy fragrance acted like a fire upon his brain.
Of course, with his limited knowledge of women at that time, it was really a squirming flash-in-the-pan affair. But he managed to prove his manhood twice. Then the same odor that had drawn him to her rushed to his nose and nearly gagged him with revulsion. Exhausted and weary of the scar-faced woman with the stringy hair, he pushed himself up and threw back the covers.
“Will you come back, Bobby?” she asked as she lay blatantly naked and unconcerned about the fact.
“Sure,” he said quickly, thinking it was a lie.
“Will you, ah, leave me a little money?”
“How much?” He sighed and avoided looking at her as he dressed.
“Two dollars for two times?” she asked with the first note of uncertainty in her voice. Then she sat up and gathered the blanket to wrap up under it.
He dug the money out of his pocket and threw it on the bed.
“If we don’t get a loan, I will need this to go on,” she explained softly.“Otherwise, I wouldn’t ask you for it.”
“That’s all right. You be sure and tell your husband about this land belonging to Mr. Townsend.”
“Oh, I will.” She stood and wrapped the blanket around her body. “Bobby, will you kiss me?”
He turned and looked at her in puzzlement. “I guess. Why?”
She didn’t look up. “’Cause men don’t kiss sporting women goodbye.”
He furrowed his brows. Who didn’t? It was news to him. He usually kissed them before he left, especially if he was drunk. He lifted her chin and dropped a quick kiss on her dry lips. She was no sporting woman, he was certain, or she would have stuck her tongue in his mouth.
Later, mounted on his horse, he circled around and studied their camp for a long time. From his vantage point, Bobby was able to see a man climb out of the wagon, look around, then enter the tent. Bobby turned his horse westward. He wondered how many trips he would have to make until they had enough money to go west. There was no need to worry Mr. Townsend or the boys about these nesters. He could afford their stake.
Mr. Townsend was proud of his patrol. With spring upon them, Bobby stayed out riding the range, moving stray wagons of pilgrims off the Turkey Track. Claire and her hidden husband left in April with nearly thirty dollars of his money. Bobby had cut the cost to a dollar after that first trip, regardless of the number of times he used her.
The wagons did not make goo
d time. Sometimes they traveled as little as five miles a day. Then the squatters would rest and graze their stock. But he made it clear to them that they weren’t to stay in one spot for more than two days. Or else. His “or else” was seldom more than a threat.
One evening he rode into the main ranch, bone tired, and dismounted at the corral.
“Well, how’s my security force?” Townsend asked jovially.
“Good, sir. I hope I’ve been handling the problem to suit you?”
“Oh, yes.” Townsend walked beside him. Bobby’s arms were loaded with his saddle, and every step he took sent a jolt of pain through his body, but he noticed his employer seemed very preoccupied with some troubling thought.
“Something wrong, Mr. Townsend?” he finally asked.
“Well, actually there is, Bobby. There’s a Texas outfit planning to drive a couple thousand head of cattle up here.”
“Here?”
Townsend nodded. Bobby noted the grimness in his voice when he continued. “We may go meet them and try to change their minds.”
“You think that’ll work, sir?” he asked doubtfully.
“Bobby Joe, I’m just not sure. These men are not dirt farmers. They wear guns like you do, and I’m sure they know how to use them.”
From his experiences in the Nation, with Texans, he had some misgivings about them backing down. He had seen lots of drovers pushing their cattle across the Indian territory. Wild sky shooters, he privately called them. They all rode half-broken horses and stampeded anything that got in their way. They certainly were not dirt farmers in an inhospitable land. This was grassland and the Texans knew it. It was the kind of range that they would be looking for, and they wouldn’t give a damn who laid claim to it.
Townsend made up his mind to go out and try to change their notions about crowding his range. He and Bobby rode southwest for three days until they spotted the rising dust of distant cattle.
“Whatever we do, Bobby Joe,” Townsend warned, “I don’t want any gunplay.” Bobby thought his boss was being overly optimistic, but he had noticed from the first time he had met Peter Townsend that he was unarmed. He had looked almost naked to Bobby. At times he felt embarrassed to be riding beside a man without a sidearm, but that seemed to be Peter Townsend’s way of life. He might send others out to shoot wolves or coyotes, but he was never armed himself.
The leader of the Texans, Rod Dailey, was a tough old man with a snow-white handlebar mustache. His eyes were flint hard and his back hunched from years in the saddle. “Mr. Townsend,” he stated flatly, “we’re headed for New Mexico.”
Bobby noted his tone of voice and grew uneasy. This was no threat, no wild raving, just mere facts. They were coming with their herd regardless.
“Mr. Dailey,” Townsend warned, “there isn’t enough grass to last the summer. Not for all these cattle.”
“Well, then, when it’s gone, we’ll move on to Colorado.”
“Mr. Dailey, be reasonable. I have steers to fatten, and I can’t have them pushed around all over the place.”
“Townsend, you, sir, are a damn fool,” Dailey declared with contempt. “You come here, unarmed, with a sniveling, snot-nosed kid who’s armed with a broken pistol, and you tell me I can’t graze up there. Well, you go home and get the rest of your army ready because I’m coming!” The meeting grew worse, the words flying fast and furious.
Only Townsend’s flat refusal to unleash Bobby saved the Texan Dailey and his Mexican vaqueros from death. The vaqueros stood around with their hands on their gun butts, and spit out tobacco carelessly. Slant-eyed dogs who accompanied the Texan, ready to snap at anything upon Dailey’s command.
Townsend looked defeated when he and Bobby rode out. Even when they pitched camp later, neither man had anything to say. Bobby fixed some half-cooked salty beans for their meal. Then after the horses were hitched for the night, he and his boss rolled out their bedrolls and fell into a restless sleep.
Bobby wanted to tell Peter Townsend a lot of things. Those bullies would never reach Turkey Track if he had his way. There would not be any more talk, just action. They would see what a sniveling kid could do. But that was not his boss’s way.
From deep sleep, Bobby woke to rifle fire. It sounded like fifty of them blazing in the night, shooting up the camp. He scrambled on all fours and managed to get away into the darkness. Bullets screamed around him as he continued to crawl from the camp.
“Don’t shoot!” he heard Townsend cry, but their guns were reloaded and kept up the orange barrage. Blasts and sour gunsmoke filled the night sky. At last the Texans rode off. The night fell silent except for the retreating horse hooves. Not one word had been spoken. But as Bobby lay in the stiff grass, trembling, his leg burning from a slight wound he had received, in the distance he made out a faint few words in Spanish from Dailey’s vaqueros. They bragged about what they had done to Townsend and him. Good, they thought he was shot up, too. They would pay, if it cost him his life. At dawn, he buried Peter Townsend on a rise; tears of grief clouded his vision. He mounded rocks on the bullet-ridden corpse. He had no shovel and knew of no other way to hide his employer’s body from the vultures and coyotes. Without a prayer book, he looked up at the sky helplessly.
“God, he’s yours now. Those bushwhacking bastards are mine.”
The Texans had fought Comanches, but they had never fought anything like the ghostlike avenger who stampeded their cattle with his wild coyote howls. One by one, he picked off riders and killed them as they tried to stop the runaways. Each night became a fearful time for Dailey’s men.
Once, Bobby sent a dummy on Townsend’s horse racing into their camp. The “rider” quickly had over a hundred bullet holes in him. Only later did Dailey discover that the dummy was dressed in the clothes of one of his own men. They found the naked man’s corpse the next day, his skull bashed in.
Two days later, Dailey rode in the lead of the herd, directing the few remaining vaqueros, when a lone rifle shot cracked across the sea of grass. Spooked cattle raised their heads, poised to race off. Blood ran down the leathery face of the Texas rancher, Rod Dailey. He slumped and fell off his horse amid the sagebrush. Dead.
The vaqueros dismounted around his body. They pointed in all directions as they argued where the bullet had came from.
Bobby watched them through an eyepiece. As if spooked by the sight of their dead employer, the vaqueros hastily remounted and rode off.
Riding up, he looked down at the bloody corpse. He did not bother to ride after the others, nor did he bury Dailey’s body. He left him for the buzzards and coyotes. Satisfied the man was gone to hell, he raised his head and howled. He yapped like a real coyote, hoping the vaqueros would hear him. From then on, he decided, that’s who he would be, what they had called him, the Coyote Kid.
Leo was talking to him and his concerned voice brought him back to the reality of the moment. “I have some supper here for you. You all right, Kid?”
“No, I’m blind as a bat. You reckon that I’ll see at night like bats do, Leo?” he tried to joke.
“God, Kid. I don’t know. My head’s been pounding all day too, but I can still see. Guess I didn’t drink as much of that poison as you did.”
“Hey, thanks for the food, Leo,” Bobby said, taking a tin plate from his friend. His fingers felt clumsy as he tried to feed himself.
“I’ll help you,” Leo offered.
“No.” Then the Kid cocked his head at a faraway sound. A coyote raised his yipping cry, Coyotes rarely howled in the daytime. With stark realization, he knew it was dark and he was not like a bat, he could not see in the darkness, either. He was truly blind.
10
Dolly knew that Milt Devers would never ride across the valley and all the way up into the Mustang Mountains. He was like a tethered dog. If another dog came inside his circle, he would fight it to the death. But if you turned him loose, he would go back and lie down in his own yard. He probably wasn’t afraid of the whiskey peddlers. It was simp
ly the fact that he fought better on home ground. Some men were like that.
John Wesley was the opposite. She had noted that about him their first night out. He adapted easily to new places and situations. The one possible exception was having a woman riding with him. And he had such methodical ways that irritated her. Every night he checked everything in a certain manner. He went over the animals, then inspected the cinches and pack saddle, and finally his weapons.
Devers had curled up in his bedroll after a polite word or two about her cooking. Soon he was snoring. After she washed the metal plates, she sat on a small log and tossed twigs into the dying fire.
“Are we going to take turns guarding?” She addressed John Wesley’s back, which was bent over the pack saddle.
“Oh, I don’t sleep very deep.”
“If we do need to take turns, Mr. Michaels, don’t concern yourself with me. I’ll take my turn.”
His shoulders heaved as though he were sighing in exasperation. But his voice was casual when he spoke. “No need for you to bother about guarding, Mrs. Arnold. I’m used to fending for myself. And as I said, I’m a light sleeper.”
She was already piqued because he had not said one word about her cooking, and his attitude caused her anger to grow out of proportion. Maybe he was a better cook than she was, she mused acidly.
Unaware of her growing anger, John Wesley spoke over his shoulder, “Oh, Mrs. Arnold, if you want to ride back with Devers it might be your last chance. What I mean is the last chance for someone to escort you home—”
She glared at his broad back and spoke through clenched teeth. “No, thank you. I am staying here.” Her dress swished as she stalked past him. Obviously the hard-headed man still did not believe that she was going with him. For Lord’s sake, she argued silently, did he think she was playing a game? He had not seen her child lying on the ground with the life draining out of him from those killers’ bullets. Even now, the memory brought a stabbing pain to her heart that she could only transfer into hate and a desire for revenge. It was the only thing that kept her going. And if that … that stiff-necked marshal—excuse me, peace officer of the court, she corrected herself grimly—if he thought she was playing some sort of game, then he had better think again.
Servant of the Law Page 14
