The Omaha Trail

by Ralph Compton

  EASY PICKINGS

  Lyle looked both ways for the night riders. They were out of sight, but he saw that there was a commotion at the tail end of the herd as one of the hands pushed to get the cattle moving.

  A moment or two later, he saw one rider round the tail end of the herd and come his way at a slow walk. His horse was bobbing its head and shaking it as if flies were already dipping into the fluid in its eyes.

  He turned the other way and saw the other night rider emerge from the front of the herd and head for his station on the flank.

  “When is that kid going to shoot?” he whispered to himself.

  Then he heard the shot and there was a second or two of absolute silence as the crack of the rifle seemed to vanish into a vacuum.

  Cowhands shouted and the rider on his left rose in the saddle and stood in his stirrups, staring at the front of the herd and the other rider on Lyle’s right. That rider turned his horse and went back to the head of the herd. Lyle heard one of the men, probably the trail boss, order someone to find out who had shot.

  Lyle curled his finger around the trigger inside the guard and watched the rider on his left put his horse into a slow trot.

  The rider came closer. Lyle sighted on him and waited. When the horse and rider were directly opposite him, he held his breath. He lined up his sights and led the rider a half foot.

  Then he squeezed the trigger with a gentle pull of his finger.

  Ralph Compton

  The Omaha Trail

  A Ralph Compton Novel

  by Jory Sherman

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65604-4

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Tucker’s Reckoning

  Chapter 1

  Dane Kramer, owner of the Circle K Ranch in Shawnee, Oklahoma, rode the whiteface calf down into heavy brush. The calf had been struck by lightning the night before when a violent thunderstorm had swept over the plains, stampeding some of his herds, knocking down trees, and stripping some of their limbs. Some of the roofs on his outbuildings were in tatters, and debris lay strewn along a mile stretch from one tank to another. The tanks were filmed over with dust and leaves and stray branches that would have to be skimmed off with long-handled rakes.

  The calf had a streak of raw flesh running from its neck to its tail, right along the spine. The calf needed doctoring or it could die, Dane knew.

  He called to one of his hands, Joe Eagle, a Cherokee. “I’ve got him spotted, Joe. The little feller is caught in that gully full of brambles.”

  “Be right there, Dane,” Eagle replied from t
he other side of the gully. “Can you get a rope on him?”

  “I don’t think so. Might take two of us to drag him out.”

  Eagle spurred his horse, a small dun, with bogged tail and mane, and rode to where Dane waited.

  The bulging black elephantine clouds of the early morning had blown east and left only streamers of ash gray clouds in their wake. These were far to the west and the sun had not risen high enough to paint them peach and gold. There was a dankness to the air, the cloying scent of rain that had left glistening beads on the branches and buds in the thick brush where the calf was imprisoned. It was early spring in Shawnee Mission, Oklahoma Territory, and the grasses were still short on the prairie.

  Joe Eagle trotted up alongside Dane. He saw the calf struggling with the blackberry vines, kicking its way into even more tangles. Its long tongue lolled from its mouth like a pink ribbon and its brown eyes were rolling in their sockets, flashing shadows and sunlight with a glassy intensity. The calf bawled and flailed with its front hooves as it tried to jump through the mesh of vines and sapling bushes.

  “Him heifer,” Eagle said.

  “Yep, Joe. I saw it happen. She was standin’ next to that hickory tree by the home pond. Sky lit up bright as a shiny silver dollar and twined around that tree, then jumped over to the calf. Stripped her back just like that tree, only the tree looks like an unpainted barber pole now. Lightnin’ just twined around it and then run the length of that little heifer’s back.”

  “Heap storm,” Joe said. “Heap lighting. Heap rain.”

  “We got to get her out of there and not get caught in that brush ourselves.”

  “You get head. I get tail. We drag out and rope.”

  “Good idea, Joe,” Dane said. He dismounted and ground-tied the sorrel gelding to a clump of sage.

  Joe slipped from his saddle and let his reins trail. The dun was a cow pony and well trained to stay where Joe left it.

  The two men walked into the gully, two yards apart. Joe headed for the tail of the calf while Dane forged toward its head and neck. The two waded and clomped down on brittle brush while the heifer bawled and kicked and jumped to escape both from the patch of berry vines and the two humans bearing down on it.

  Dane grabbed the calf’s left ear and then wrapped his wiry arm around its neck. Joe dived between the hind legs and grabbed them just above the hooves and lifted its rear end waist-high. He grunted as the calf twisted and struggled to free itself. Its legs pumped back and forth, but Joe increased the pressure of his grip and started dragging it toward the rim of the gully.

  Dane wrestled the calf’s head until it bent down toward his boots and then pulled in concert with Eagle.

  They got the calf onto bare land. It was bawling and struggling, kicking with those cloven hooves and bucking like a bronco out of the chute.

  “You sit on her, Joe. I’ll get a rope.”

  “You sit on neck. Joe get rope.”

  Dane grinned. Sweat drenched his face, dripped in streaks from under his hatband. His shirt was plastered to his back, and the armpits of the gray chambray were sweat-soaked ovals, dark as a cow dug.

  “Good idea, Joe,” Dane said, and bulldogged the calf’s head to the ground. Joe released the hind legs and scrambled over the calf and sat on his neck, pinning the animal to the ground.

  Dane ran to his horse and untied the leather thong that held the looped coil of manila rope. He found the loop and widened it as he came upon Joe and the calf.

  Joe reached out and grabbed the loop, pulled it over the calf’s head clear to the shoulders. Dane pulled on the rope and tightened the loop until it was snug around the calf’s neck.

  Joe stood up and stepped away from the heifer. It stood there, spraddled, its brown and white curly hide dulled with dust and the detritus of the brush. It looked stupefied and stopped its caterwauling.

  Dane handed the coiled rope to Joe. “Hold her tight. I got a tin of salve in my back pocket.”

  “Hunh,” Joe grunted, and grasped the rope. He held the rope in one hand and bent the calf’s head toward its chest with the other, holding it in place.

  Dane reached into his back pocket, the one that did not hold his tobacco pouch, and pulled out a flat tin box. The tin, which had once held snuff, now was packed with Indian Salve. The original label from which he had drawn this portion proclaimed it to be “vegetable and animal.” The ad on the original label said that the salve was “an invaluable specific for the cure of cuts, tumors, swelling, running sores, burns, freezes, chopped hands, and corns.”

  The price of the salve had been twelve and a half cents when he bought it from a medicine peddler passing through Shawnee Mission. The peddler said the salve was prepared and sold by Merritt Griffin of Glens Falls, New York. And that too had been on the label.

  Dane figured that the calf had at least two of the ailments, perhaps three. When he looked at the slashed flesh, he saw that there was some swelling, and it was probably burned and would wind up as a running sore.

  “Joe, you hold that calf real steady while I smear this salve over its wound.”

  Dane twisted the lid off the tin and let it drop to the ground.

  Joe sniffed the odor emanating from the salve. “Him stink,” he said.

  “Yep, it smells to high heaven, Joe, but it’s better’n ointment. Last longer, I reckon.”

  Dane stuck two fingers into the salve and withdrew a dollop of the medicant. He started at the tail and laved the goop on, dipping into the tin for more salve until he had covered the entire pink of the exposed flesh. When he finished, the tin was almost empty and it still gave off a rank odor.

  “Okay, Joe, you can let her go. I’ll dope her again in a couple of days and see how she’s doin’.”

  Joe slipped the loop off the calf’s neck. It stood there for a long moment, then took one gingerly step, then another. It wagged its short tail and shook its head.

  “If she don’t lick it off, that salve ought to cure her. A wonder she didn’t get electrocuted,” Dane said.

  The calf made a sound and slowly trotted away toward the pasture in front of the ranch house.

  “At least she knows where home is,” Dane said.

  “Heap smart heifer,” Joe said, and ginned.

  Joe stood a head shorter than Dane, who was not tall, but barely reached five feet and ten inches. Dane was clean-shaven with straight brown hair that was chopped even all around and did not touch his shoulders. He was all sinew and muscle, while Joe had a slightly bulging midriff, burly arms, and bowed legs from many hours and days astride his dun horse.

  Dane picked up the lid of the tin and screwed it back on the container, tucked it into his pocket. Then he wiped his hand on his denim trousers, picked up a handful of dirt, and scrubbed away the stench before rubbing the dust off.

  Both men saw the calf bolt a few yards to its left. They looked beyond the switching tail and the salve-smeared back and saw a rider heading their way.

  “Him come, Randy,” Joe said.

  “Sure looks like Randy,” Dane said. “Wonder what he wants.”

  “Him hurry,” Joe said.

  He was right. Randy Bowman was coming at a gallop, slapping the sides of his paint with the trailing ends of his reins, the front brim of his hat bent back from the breeze he was fanning with his speed.

  Dane reached into his other back pocket and pulled out a tobacco pouch. He opened it and plucked a clump of it and worked it into his mouth. With his tongue, he evened the tobacco out and began to chew it, savoring the nicotine juices that squirted into his mouth. His brown eyes glistened in the pale sunlight and he wiped the sweat streaks from his brow with the back of his left hand.

  Randy rode up and skidded his horse to a stop. “Dane, they’s somebody at the house wants to talk to you.”

  “Who is it? He in a hurry?”

  “He’s, well, he’s mighty anxious. Says he’s from Omaha.”

  “Omaha?”

  “Yep,” Randy said. “That’s what
he said. Big feller. Dressed kind of fancy.”

  “Omaha, Texas?” Dane asked.

  “No, sir. Clear up in Nebraska Territory.”

  “Omaha, Nebraska?” Dane asked.

  “Yep, sure enough. I ast him twice. I was shoein’ that swaybacked mare in the barn when he come up and called out. Your pa, he was sitting in the front room and I heard him thump his cane like he was rarin’ to run out and see who it was rode up.”

  “What’s the feller want?” Dane asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Randy said. “But when he talks, he bellows, and I hopped on Patches here and got to you fast as I could.”

  “He asked for me by name?” Dane asked.

  “Yes, sir, he done said he come to see Dane Kramer of the Circle K, like it was a real formal visit.”

  “Randy, you wouldn’t know formal from a pie social. What in hell do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but he walked right in and is talkin’ to your pa in the front room.”

  “Just walked right in, did he?”

  “Like he belonged in your house.”

  “I think maybe my pap invited him in,” Dane said.

  “Well, I reckon. I got to get back. That mare’s kickin’ at her hobbles and might hurt herself if I don’t hurry back.”

  “Run along, Randy. Joe and I will mosey up to the house.”

  Randy turned the paint and rode off at a gallop.

  He was a young man, a drifter, who had come to the ranch about six months before, looking for work. He never said where he was from or talked about his parentage. He slept in the barn and seemed to bond with animals, especially horses. Dane figured him to be seventeen or eighteen. He paid the boy ten dollars a month and fed him. He was cheap help at that, because he hauled food from Shawnee Mission when asked and fixed fencing, could set a pole in hard ground, and knew how to tack on shoes to unshod horses or replace worn ones with new.

  Eagle and Kramer lifted themselves into their saddles.

  “Well, let’s see what the man from Omaha has to say. He must have something on his mind to come all this way a-lookin’ for me.”

  “Maybe,” Joe said, “you owe him money.”