“What ship? What dock are they sailing from? How much time do I have?”
“Levi, Levi, your father’s given me specific instructions—the family wants to give your sister a fresh start on the Continent. The Trini episode, you can imagine the position your father’s in. He also said it would be doubly disastrous for the family for you to be killed in a duel over a matter of honor involving a young woman everyone admires.”
“Admires! That chubby little tart was nothing until this silver business . . . my God, how much silver?”
“A loss in a duel would only compound your family’s earlier embarrassment. And if by some chance you killed Braxton your family would be ruined. Your father insists you try to make a go of it in government. He’s used his last bit of capital with Grant to secure a position for you in the western land bureau. It’s the frontier, Levi—a man can reinvent himself out there.”
“Oh, Jeeves, what have I done? I have made such a mess of it all.”
“You’re going West, Levi. Think of it as an adventure.”
Tickers remembered it every day for the past ten long years. As he rode, he looked out at the desolation of this barren trek of North County. For ten years, he rode the circuit of ranchers and homesteaders and had suffered the indignations of countless slurs from these slobs. Slobs that he wouldn’t have even noticed back east when they brought him his steak and Madeira. The ranchers were the worst. McCallum had been particularly nasty this trip—not even inviting him to dismount, not even the offer of a cup of coffee. Only a perfunctory “Wait,” while he went in the house to fetch his coins. Tickers had sat on his horse in the cutting wind. McCallum had handed him the coins, all silver eagles, and as Tickers went to transfer them to his satchel, his numb fingers dropped them on the ground. McCallum stood over him and glared as Tickers fumbled through the light snow before the rancher simply turned and strode off without a word into the warmth of his ranch house.
But even that was less demeaning than Walker’s ranch. There he was bade to wait in a room off the kitchen like a colored boy bringing firewood in from the fields.
To assuage his anger, Tickers ran imaginings of McCallum’s niece and Walker’s older daughter around in his mind. He toyed with the daydream of hiding out on their property and snatching one of them. He’d dress like a savage, dirty his face with charcoal, and yell gibberish as he dragged one of them into the brush. The thoughts excited him and even in the cold of the saddle, his imagination warmed him. But what if they spotted him on the property dressed as a savage? McCallum would put it together in a minute; old Gabbie would skin him. And Walker, despite all pretenses to being some colonel, he was nothing more than southern trash, as brutal a killer as McCallum. He knew the stories of savages, rustlers, and the odd vagrant or two disappearing on their lands. Tickers knew the risk was too great. They were all killers and could track and snare a coyote that had the impudence to piss on one of their trees.
Tickers grew despondent, but his spirits picked up as he approached the Hansons’ ranch. His anticipation grew as he tallied in his mind the telltale signs of decay. The fence posts rotting and slanted, untended for months. The Hansons were replacing fence posts in stretches with wire, using whatever sticks they could find to shore it up. The hay was no longer staged in picturesque bails about the fields but lay in great, soggy, vermin-infested heaps. The horses were thin, ribbed-out, and mangy. Tickers marveled at the rotting corpse of the ranch; even the animals could smell the rot and started to look like death afoot.
Yes, yes, no girls to bargain for, but some currency could be bartered here in horseflesh. Tickers calculated that the Hansons couldn’t afford the tax this year. He could make a deal, $500 worth of horseflesh to satisfy the tax bill. The Hansons would do anything to buy themselves a little time—they’d cut off their hands in winter to buy time so they could breed stallions next summer. Tickers’s mood improved as he conjured the ways he was going to squeeze blood out of the Hanson stone. His inner voice rattled off his contempt for the ranchers, and it was more vile than the hatred he had for the homesteaders. Who did these people think they were? A bunch of Johnny Rebs who had gotten a good licking and brought all that southern gentleman bullshit out here.
It was the fifteenth of December as Tickers trotted up. He tried to carry himself with a studied, detached air, but he was aware that while his horse was large, it was weak and ungainly, its forelegs bending in awkwardly at the knees. Tickers knew somewhere along the bloodline a crafty plow horse had gotten over the fence and mixed with a prized mare. Tickers adjusted his large green felt coat and tipped his broad-brimmed hat with a matching green felt band so that it slanted down over his eyes. The coat was frayed at the ends and the hat’s band was knotted in various places where the fabric had worn through.
As Raif took in the sight of Tickers’s approach, he supposed the shabby outfit was probably once expensive. The fact that Tickers didn’t dismount, but called him “boy” from the horse irked Raif. The slight cut to the bone. Tickers had always dismounted and greeted his father like they were long-lost friends; removing his hat and saying repeatedly things like, “I know, sir, I know, they must make up the fees at county, they’re not horse people like you and me, you know my task is to deliver the news, don’t hate the messenger, sir.” But now Tickers didn’t even dismount; he stared down his long nose at Raif, and spoke in rapid clips of speech as if he was in haste to meet with a more important engagement.
“I assume you are the Hanson son that is now in possession of the Cuchalainn?” Raif nodded, and Tickers offered a few brief words of condolences, calling the deaths regrettable. Without pausing, Tickers continued, “According to the poll records, the Cuchalainn is due for its year-end land tax assessment. This year it is . . . umm.” Tickers pretended to search his tax log, a tall leather-bound ledger that he kept in the postman’s satchel he’d slung over his shoulder.
Raif was skeptical Tickers needed to look up the assessment for the third largest ranch in North County.
The ledger had a record of $240. “Ah, yes, here it is: $280; payment due by December the 31st. If you like, you can pay me now, it would save me a second trip at the end of the month or you a trip to town. This December is a cold one; one trip out here is enough.”
The ranch was down to its last hundred dollars, and Raif needed time to think how to raise another $180. He spat a stream of tobacco and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Tickers noticed the pause, and sensing an opportunity interjected, “You know your father would sometimes pay the assessment in horses; sometimes three or four and even five, depending on the quality of horseflesh, of course. I realize cash is tight in these hard times. Perhaps those two—the roan and that young one, the reddish one, and how about that mare, the shaggy one. Those three would take care of it.”
The request stunned Raif, and he blurted out, “They’re my best three; that’s two thousand dollars of horseflesh in Tin City.” He silently cursed himself for the loss of composure and compounded the mistake by saying, “I do have a couple dozen more on the north field.”
Tickers enjoyed the reaction, a thin smile breaking out on his cracked lips as he sensed an opportunity. “Oh, no, those won’t do. I passed those as I rode down from McCallum’s. No good, won’t do. Anyway, I couldn’t sell those nags until the spring, and maybe not even then. Whether the blight has really ended no one knows for sure. No, no, no, I couldn’t transport them to Tin City or the fort until the thaw. I would have to feed them through winter, and there’s still no guarantee those nags would sell. No, no, I don’t think so. No, no, no, they will not do. It’s got to be at least those two—Blacky and Bloody, we will call them, that is, unless you have the $280 on hand, then we don’t have to keep at this silly talk out here in the cold.”
“Mister, I’ll give it to you in cash. What’s the last date we can pay?”
Tickers perked up. “Well, if you have silver eagles, why have I been wasting my time freezing here talking about a f
air trade? Let’s settle the account.”
Despite the cold, Raif could feel the sweat beading on his forehead. “It’s better for the ranch’s finances if I pay at the end of the month. What date is the latest?”
Tickers ignored Raif’s comment, and said, “I tell you what, give me the two and I’ll settle the account for the full year. Listen, I understand everyone in the county is hurting, we all have trouble—farmers, ranchers, the merchants—all have felt the blight, but relief is in sight. Endure this winter, son, and the spring will grant fresh opportunity. If you part with those two, we can even put a little down payment toward next year’s assessment, say twenty, twenty-five dollars.”
Raif felt as if he was spinning and forced himself to ask, “What’s the last date we can pay, mister?”
Tickers’s expression grew hard, his eyes squinted, and he hissed, “I have told you twice, boy. It’s two weeks.” Tickers caught himself and used a softer voice: “I don’t see how it does you any good to know the date. I want the two. The two dozen in the back forty are dead on their feet. The only ones desperate enough to buy that trash on hooves is the cavalry, but you and I know the Crossing is snowed in, and its thirty days there and back from the fort if you stick to the flats, and the drifts in the flats are plenty this winter, swallow you whole, son.”
Raif spit and said, “It’s two weeks over the Crossing, be back December 31st, Tinkers. I’ll have your goddamn money.”
Tickers was taken aback by the flash of anger but recovered and drew his full frame up in the saddle. “It’s Tickers, son, Mister Tickers, you will learn that soon enough. Perhaps I am too hasty. I give you fair warning—the price for the red and black is going to be different on December 31st. It’ll be different, boy, much different. You heed me now, son, winter’s blowing hard this year, and the last bit of your daddy’s money will not save that mangy stock from the blow.”
The tax assessor reined his horse and trotted off as Raif watched him. The assessor’s oversized green velvet coattails flopped against the flanks of his horse as he sauntered away down the road.
Raif, Jed, and Abner sat on the porch. Jed sat with his hands in his pockets, and Raif, with his hat pulled low, was thinking hard.
Jed muttered, “You heard that dandy, Raif. Maybe we shoulda given him what he was squeeze’n us for. Tomorrow’s the sixteenth, where we gonna raise a hundred and eighty dollars by the end of the month? And even if we do, how we gonna buy feed without a cent left after that last hundred’s gone?”
Raif looked up. “We’ll sell the nags, a dozen of ’em. That’ll earn us more than enough.”
“Raif, ain’t nobody gonna buy them nags in North County before winter’s end,” Jed snapped.
“The fort will buy them or we’ll find a buyer in Tin City. They’ll pay a winter premium too. The pestilence hit them hard down there. They got cavalrymen walking foot patrols. I hear renegade ponies been riding circles around them. Reverend Graham said it’s bad times down there too. He said Tin City’s about to go bust losing one of every three shipments of silver being snatched by renegades. Down there, any North County horse is four or five times its worth at its best price in the spring.”
Jed looked at his brother with concern. “Raif, the Crossing, it’s closed until the thaw, and we can’t hire no party of twenty armed men that’ll stick with us to wrangle ponies over that heathen hill anyway. If we try to ride the flats, we’re never gonna be back in time even if the snows don’t stop us—it’s twenty days at best going hard on the flats to the fort in the spring with the weather with you. If we make a thousand dollars, we still lose the ranch to that tax man and we will have to bid at auction to buy back what’s ours to start. What the heck has gotten into you? We need to buy time.”
“No, we’re leav’n first light, you two round up every nag we got. I’m gonna ride to McCallum and Walker. We’ll sell some horses for them too and take a cut out of it for the price of transporting their stock over the Crossing. We’ll take forty across the pass.”
Jed and Abner felt a rush of embarrassment for their brother. Raif looked them both down and said, “I’m not in the habit of saying things twice. Get going.”
They moved off.
Raif headed to Walker’s first. When he reached the two-story manor house, he dismounted and tied his horse to the hitching post. He cursed himself for not changing and felt self-conscious in his filthy field clothes.
Walker greeted him at the front porch and asked him to come inside.
Raif responded, “No, sir, thank you, no, but I don’t have time.” Raif offered his deal to take as many horses south through the Crossing as Walker was willing to risk, and they’d split the price fifty-fifty. If he crossed the pass, the probability was, and Walker knew it, he could triple the price of any nag down in the fort or in Tin City. He factored the winter’s feed money that Walker would also save.
Walker stood on his porch in an oversized wool sweater knitted and shipped from the highlands of a forgotten land his family had left centuries ago and rolled the offer around in his head. They walked across his front yard as Raif unfolded the scheme in half-formed sentences. Walker kept factoring the odds of success. He figured it was a no-lose proposition. He’d give him ten nags, the ones that wouldn’t live through winter anyhow. Walker was bound to lose at least that many to the cold by winter’s end if they stayed in the fields. He looked at Raif and realized he was talking to Matthew’s son, and that he was still a boy.
“Raif, it’s not likely you’ll even reach the pass. The ice is already choking the switchbacks up the cliffs this time of year. Hell, it’s near impossible for the hooves to grab. There isn’t anything off the end of that footpath at the top, it drops a thousand feet.”
Raif said in a steady tone, “Colonel, I figure the drought has fixed us all, the flats is covered but maybe the Crossing’s dry. The snow can’t be deep this early, and if the ice is thin it’ll crack and give a hold. I heard it can be done.”
“No one’s ever said it can’t be done because no one ever thought to try it in December. The dry down here don’t mean it’s dry up there, that mountain makes its own weather.”
Raif grabbed the reins of his horse. “I’ve heard say that the renegades do it; that’s how they used to raid in winter. Luther said he done it one winter.”
“Luther used to say a lot of things, Raif.”
“Luther had the knowing of many things.”
“I don’t deny that, Raif. Some say Luther was a papist priest before his wanderings brought him to North County. Some say he was a whaling captain because he could ride at night guided by the stars. But some, including your father, said he was touched.”
“Luther had the knowing of a lot of things, and he said the Crossing can be done in winter. He told me how to do it.”
“You know, your father and Gabriel and me chased renegades up them switchbacks in winter. We chased them all the way to the base of the Druid Mountains before the wind broke us and turned us back. I could see the outline of the peak before we turned, and we could see them renegades on the skyline and watched them climb away on their ponies. Even if you reach the pass, you’ll have them to deal with up there. And that’s still their world. Luther told you that too, didn’t he? We don’t see them much around here anymore, but they’re still up there in them cliffs and caves, raiding to the south—Luther told you that too, didn’t he?”
“Colonel, the cavalry is paying silver eagles; word is they’re running around on foot chasing renegades on their bone-thin ponies that beat the pestilence—sir, I got to be going, it’s a fifty-fifty split on each horse we get across and I aim to near triple the price.”
“Raif, it’s December . . .”
“No hard feelings, Colonel, but I am out of choices. I appreciate what you’re saying, and I take no offense, but if you don’t want the deal, I got to get going, sir.”
Walker responded: “I’ll lend you the money. Pay me back in the spring, this county’s luck is g
onna change. Next year, we’ll all be straight again, you’ll see, we’ve seen these years before—I’ll stake you and your brothers. I’ll stake the Cuchalainn.”
“I appreciate that, Colonel, but I got a chance here to sell my own twenty nags for three, four, maybe five times what they’ll fetch in summer. I aim to take my chance. Like I said, sir, no hard feelings.”
“All right, but I’m only giving you ten. If you’re going to make it, you have to keep it to ten a man. I’m in if you give me your word that if the first switchback has an inch of ice, you’ll turn ’round. I rode up there with your father. I owe your father ten times whatever Tickers told you your assessment is, don’t take it as charity. I rode with your father. We cut this land open.”
“I hear you, Colonel; I can’t promise you that we’ll turn back if there’s ice, but I’ll give your offer some thinking.”
“Oh, hell, Raif, take the ten and good luck.”
Raif headed with Walker’s ten and took a course that ran long and back through the McCallum lands. Gabriel stood with his two brothers by a freshly dug fence-post hole. His nephew stood off to the side holding a shovel, and the uncles had pickaxes. Even in the December chill the sweat was dripping from all four men as they broke at the frozen earth. Raif gave his pitch and added that Colonel Walker had given him ten. Gabriel listened intently, not interrupting. At the end Gabriel asked, “How many can you handle.”
“I reckon we can handle a dozen each, so thirty-six, one man for every dozen horses.”
Gabriel responded, “I think eight, maybe ten, but you can choose a dozen from that far pen. They don’t look like much, but they’re strong.”
Gabriel went to a horse nearby and drew a new Colt .45 single action from the saddlebag along with a small leather satchel with rounds in it. He handed it to Raif. “That’s a loaner. Bring it back with my cut.”
The pistol was so new Raif could still see bits of the packing grease in the grooves of the barrel. The black metal of the weapon was so smooth and polished it reflected even the gray of this day’s light.
Angels of North County Page 5
