Return to Red River

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Me, either,” Mathew said. “Not in the Brand Book. That was one of the brands I found on dead beef piled up along the drift fence.”

  Again, Laredo cursed.

  “Other was the Circle 43. That—”

  “What about our beeves?” Groot asked.

  Mathew’s head shook. “Not good. But maybe not as bad as places up north.” Again, he drank some coffee, broke off another bite of biscuit, but left it on the napkin near the plate. The biscuits must have been from last night and had already hardened.

  “There’s a Circle 43 brand up in Nacogdoches,” Mathew said. “But I don’t think it’s the same one I found on the carcass by the drift fence.”

  Laredo Downs drank and leaned back in his chair. “No. Wouldn’t be from Nacogdoches. Winds came in from the northwest. That’s too far north and east of here for any beeves to drift that way.”

  Groot snorted. “You figure ’em beeves come from Colorado maybe?”

  The laugh that rushed out of Mathew’s mouth held bitterness. “Maybe Canada.”

  He finished the coffee and rose. “Ask some of the hands if they’ve heard of those brands,” Mathew said. “Long shot, I know, and likely doesn’t matter one way or the other where those beeves came from.”

  They stood and walked to the door.

  “What you reckon it’ll mean?” Laredo asked as he opened the door.

  “We’ll find out come spring,” Mathew said. “But you best sharpen your skinning knife.”

  He pulled up his collar, and all three men watched the two riders easing their horses toward the big barn near the house.

  Laredo Downs whistled. “Those boys rode out together?”

  “Rode back home together, too,” Mathew said, his mood lightening. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Probably snow-blind,” Groot muttered. “Don’t see one another.”

  Mathew was already walking through the snow, heading to the barn to greet Lightning and Tom.

  * * *

  Inside the barn, he frowned. Sun shot through the open doorways enough that he could see the bruises on the faces of the two brothers. Where Tom’s lips weren’t split, they were swollen. A dark bruise had already formed beneath Lightning’s right eye, and his shirt was ripped. Tom had already lost the nail to his thumb.

  “You fight each other?” Mathew asked. Which would not have been the first time—this year, in fact.

  “Nah.” Lightning hung his saddle on a peg and dropped the blanket in the sun to dry out.

  Considering Lightning’s answer, Mathew pursed his lips for a moment and turned to Tom, who was leading his horse into a stall. “How much money do I owe?”

  Tom shrugged, grabbed a handful of hay, and began rubbing down his sorrel.

  “Not a damn thing, Pa,” Lightning sang out. “Fool beer-jerker in that bucket of blood pulled a Greener on us. Was gonna shoot us in the back.” Tom kept working on his horse.

  “By ‘bucket of blood’ . . .” Mathew measured his words carefully. “You mean . . . ?”

  “Knuckle Coupler,” Tom said without looking away from his sorrel’s withers.

  “We might have run them railroaders out of the country after all.” Lightning grinned, but just briefly. Smiling hurt.

  “I’ve told you boys to stay out of that grog shop,” Mathew said. “We wanted that spur. Lobbied two years to get it.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Lightning tossed oats into the stall that held his chestnut. “We got a spur. That connects Dunson City to the Southern Pacific in Del Rio. It don’t do us no good.”

  “It will,” Mathew said. His voice stopped both brothers. Tom dropped the hay and moved out of the stall. Lightning held the empty coffee can he had used to feed his horse its oats.

  “You have breakfast?” Mathew asked.

  “No, sir,” Tom answered. “Rode out right before sunrise.”

  Lightning shuffled his feet.

  “All right. Janeen probably has some bacon and potatoes still on the stove. Go in through the old house first. Wash up. Change your clothes. Make yourself something that might pass as presentable.”

  “Pa . . .” Lightning shook his head. “There ain’t no need in getting a burr under your saddle.”

  Mathew had already turned around. They could make out only his silhouette as he walked out of the barn. “Not me, boys. But your mother’s gonna be mad as a March hare when she sees you two.”

  * * *

  Tess Millay’s jade eyes glared so hard that even Janeen Yankowski made no comment, simply raked the potatoes and bacon onto the plates, along with the eggs she had just fried, and scurried out of the dining room.

  Lightning attacked his food. Tom lost his appetite.

  “Really,” Tess said. “Really?”

  Looking up, Lightning swallowed and laid his fork on the table. “The railroaders started it, Ma.”

  “Like hell.” Tom pushed his chair back from the table, wadded up the napkin he had placed on his lap, and tossed it onto the table near his plate.

  “They’re nothing but railroaders, Ma,” Lightning tried again. “We ain’t got no use—”

  Her small fist rocked the table. “No use. Why do you think your father and I got that spur run from Del Rio? So we could catch a freight to Austin or El Paso? Your father invested in a railroad that never even saw a crosstie or spike. We need that railroad. For cattle.”

  “Pa says it’s too expensive to ship—”

  “For the time being, yes. But five years from now? Ten? Twenty? When the two of you are running this spread? That’s why we did this. For you. For the future of the empire Thomas Dunson, your grandfather, carved.” She pointed out the window.

  “Have you looked outside? When’s the last time you two even saw snow this far south? Tell me something.” She walked to Tom, who likely thought he was out of her line of fire, and pointed. “What did you see when you rode into Dunson City?”

  He blinked. “What? Well . . . um . . .”

  “Snow.” Lightning laughed, but Tess whirled and slapped him. His mouth fell open. Tom scooted back in his chair.

  He wet his lips, took a breath, and tried again. “Snow drifts. Mostly. Coyote tracks. Rabbit tracks. To be honest, Ma, we didn’t pay much attention.”

  “That’s right. You didn’t pay any attention. You didn’t ride out to the drift fence, like your father did. There are cattle frozen to death all across Texas. Likely all across the West. This winter has been a disaster, boys. It could ruin the whole beef industry. It could ruin us. Destroy us. Crumble this empire like Rome.”

  “We’re sorry, Ma.” Lightning uttered the apology first. Tom just nodded his affirmation.

  Tess’s face had flushed. She sat down at the end of the table, shook her head, and lifted the cup of coffee Janeen had poured for her.

  “What do we need to do?” Tom asked.

  It took a while before Tess could regain her composure. “We . . .” She paused. Set the cup in its saucer. “There’s nothing to do . . . till spring. Then we see how bad things really are.” The cup came up to her thin lips, and she drank, then lowered the cup and rose.

  “Eat your breakfast.” Tess was heading out the door when Lightning called her. She turned and heard him ask the question.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “He said, ‘Who’s Jess Teveler?’”

  Mathew Garth looked up at his wife, pursed his lips, and closed the ledger on his desk.

  “Teveler,” he whispered as he pushed his chair back. His lips flattened. He glanced at the glass of Scotch near him, but did not reach for it.

  Tess Millay looked back in the foyer and, satisfied, closed the door to the library. She crossed the old rug until she stood in front of the desk. She saw the glass of Scotch, too, but she picked it up and drank.

  “Last I heard of Jess Teveler,” Mathew said, “he was in Huntsville.”

  “He’s out of prison now.” Tess held the glass to Mathew, who took it, but instead of killing off the finger of single malt, he
placed it back on the desktop.

  She condensed what Tom and Lightning had told her. The boys had been, typically, brawling in town, at the Knuckle Coupler. The bartender had a shotgun after the fight, was aiming at one of their sons, and Teveler had stepped in and winged the bartender. Teveler, Tom, and Lightning had shared a drink or two before the old gunman rode out for Mexico.

  “He had gotten into some sort of a scrape up in San Angelo,” Tess concluded. “Texas Rangers, he told the boys, were after him.”

  “Figures.” Now Mathew finished the Scotch. He wet his lips.

  “Teveler told them to tell you howdy.”

  Mathew nodded. “Not you?”

  “He told them that I wouldn’t remember him.”

  Mathew let out a soft chuckle. “He was wrong about that.”

  “Oh, I remember him all right. He was a skunk. A killer.”

  Mathew shook his head. “Driven to it. Had a place well east of here. Carpetbaggers came in, grabbed it, like they were taking everything. He did what he had to do.”

  “He hired his gun out to Dunson.” Those green eyes of hers glared with hatred.

  As Mathew rubbed his chin, Tess said, “Tom offered Teveler a job.”

  Mathew’s head bobbed. “I would’ve done the same, had a stranger saved my bacon. But with Rangers on his trail, I don’t think you have to worry about Jess Teveler.”

  “For now.” She went to the bar to fetch more Glenlivet. She left her husband thinking back more than twenty years.

  * * *

  “I’m going to kill you,” Thomas Dunson said, and his hand shot down for the Colt on his hip.

  That was the mutiny. They were in the Indian Nations, and by now everyone on the drive had learned that there had to be—had to be—a railroad in Abilene, Kansas, but Dunson, always that thickheaded fool, insisted on driving the herd to Sedalia, Missouri. And everyone—maybe even Dunson himself—knew that the border gangs running roughshod in Missouri would kill them all and take that herd.

  So Mathew had said the herd was going to Kansas. He, Dunson’s son if not by blood then by bond, was taking the herd. Stealing it. Not for himself, but for every rancher in Texas. He was doing this for Texas and, maybe, even Dunson.

  The Colt shot out of the holster, and Mathew jerked his own. But he couldn’t fire. Not against that stubborn cattleman. Cherry Valance, however, swept his revolver up and put a bullet in Dunson’s shoulder.

  So Mathew was able to take the herd, point it to Abilene. They left Thomas Dunson behind, wounded, defeated, full of hate. Dunson had told him that he would find him and then hang him, and every one of his men, from the nearest tree.

  Later, in the chuck wagon, Groot had grumbled: “Good luck, Mr. Dunson, findin’ a damned tree in this God-awful country.”

  “He’ll use the wagon tongue,” Cherry Valance had joked.

  Jokes. But no humor. Everyone felt the edge, the damned fear. Even Mathew spent most of his time looking over his shoulder, half expecting to find Thomas Dunson standing right there, gun or rope in his hand, hatred in those cold gray eyes.

  Three men—Old Leather Monte, Brick Keever and Jargens, all dead now—had remained loyal to Dunson, but Dunson freed them from the commitment, told them to ride with the herd. So Mathew had left Dunson and crossed the Nations. They had found the wagon train bound for Virginia City, Nevada, and Mathew had once again met Tess Millay. The cowhands had helped those with the train run by The Donegal, an Irish cheat, sharper, pimp, and thief. They had survived an Indian attack, a pure frog-strangler of a thunderstorm, and a stampede. And the birth of a baby.

  The mother’s name was Edna, one of The Donegal’s girls.

  Dark skinned, sad eyes. So tiny, so quiet. She had been married back in Memphis, but her husband joined the Confederacy and fell at Shiloh. And Memphis had far too many widows to feed, so Edna had done . . . what she had to do. To survive.

  Few memories about that time from the Red River to Abilene ever led Mathew to smile, but he did now as he thought about that time, pouring rain, lightning flashing, cattle stampeding, guns blasting, Edna screaming, Tess yelling, and Mathew sitting white-faced in the back of a wagon. Tess had handed him the newborn.

  He had stammered something idiotic about breaking the baby. Said a few other things. Tess had scolded him, told him to calm down, and Mathew had finally gotten the kid to someone who knew how to handle kids, and he had hurried off to find Groot to help set another one of The Donegal’s girls’ broken arms.

  Groot had studied Mathew closely, then commented on how funny Mathew looked.

  He had said that Edna had just given birth to a baby.

  And Groot had shot back, “You’re drunk.”

  * * *

  Blinking, Mathew saw the glass of Scotch his wife was offering him. He took it, thanked her, and sipped before passing the glass back to her.

  “You were smiling,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Poor Edna.” Tess drank. Then a memory caused her to grin. “Remember that night? I said we should name the boy Mathew Garth.”

  He nodded. “Groot said ‘Stampede.’”

  “Lightning,” Tess said softly.

  The smiles had faded. The glass went from Tess to Mathew and back again.

  “Maybe we should have told him,” Tess said. “When he turned eighteen.”

  Mathew shrugged. “We talked about it. Talked about it when he was ten . . . when he was thirteen . . . when he was . . .”

  Tess killed the Scotch. “He’s just so wild. So unpredictable.”

  “Like lightning,” Mathew said. “You picked the right name for him.”

  She set the glass on the desk.

  “How many men know?”

  Mathew shrugged, but he had been doing some thinking himself.

  Groot and Laredo were all that were left on the ranch who had been with the drive to Abilene. Most of the other trail hands—men like Kavanaugh, Andres, and Dale—had drifted on. Teeler Lacey had bought a place up north along the Brazos. Others were dead now. Old Leather Monte—a grizzled old-timer whom Mathew had thought would live forever, and even was fond of saying, “I have lived forever”—had broken his neck in a horse wreck in ’68. Jargens had drowned crossing the swollen Canadian on a drive to Ellsworth in ’73. Some sawbones said Keever’s appendix had ruptured, and he had died in agony in Laredo a few years back. Joe Nambel drifted in every now and then, but Nambel was like Groot and Laredo. He knew to keep his mouth closed on certain subjects.

  But Dunson had come after Mathew, and he had hired ten men to back his play—if needed.

  Most of those, Mathew had never even learned their names, and he had not paid enough attention to their faces to remember them. His eyes had been focused on Thomas Dunson as the bear of a man walked through cattle standing in the streets of Abilene, determined to live up to his word and kill Mathew Garth.

  Nelse Burdette had been one of the gunmen Dunson had hired, but Burdette was dead later that year, shot down in Waco in an argument over a faro game. His body had been shipped all the way down to his home in Goliad, where he had been buried in the family plot. Joe Thompson of Lampasas, who had turned from cattle ranching to killing for hire after the War between the States, had not lasted much longer. Hired guns usually didn’t live too long, and Thompson had been ambushed by a bunch of angry citizens up in San Saba on July 4, 1876. Folks said San Saba had not celebrated Independence Day since the outbreak of the War between the States until that evening. Mathew had read in a newspaper that the death of Joe Thompson did more to reconcile North and South, at least in San Saba, than anything else.

  There were others . . . and there was Jess Teveler.

  Dunson’s men had stopped with The Donegal, too. Tess had tried to talk Dunson out of revenge. Cherry Valance, who had stayed behind when Mathew had pulled out for Abilene, had tried to kill Dunson only to die himself. But Dunson and his men—and Tess Millay and a suddenly feverish Edna and her new son—had kept north. Found
Abilene. Found Mathew Garth.

  * * *

  After they had buried Dunson in Texas, Mathew had ridden south, back to the ranch with the money from the profits of selling the herd. Tess had gone back to Abilene.

  She had returned with a baby. A wild-eyed, dark-skinned boy named Lightning.

  “What the hell is this?” Mathew had snapped when he saw the kid, swaddled up.

  “It’s Lightning,” Tess had said.

  Mathew had looked around. “Where’s Edna?”

  “She’s dead.” Tears had welled in Tess’s eyes, and Tess Millay had not cried in years. “I didn’t know what else to do, Mathew. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  * * *

  He was standing now, at the big window, staring into the emptiness, the black sky, the white ground. Behind him came the sound of Scotch filling the glass Tess had taken off the desk.

  “You want to tell him?” Mathew asked.

  “No.”

  He had expected that answer. It had not changed in more than twenty years. Lightning had not been her child, but Tess had delivered him. She had been holding him in that miserable sod house in Abilene when Edna had slipped into a coma and slowly died. She had taken the baby and somehow managed to get him all the way from Kansas to southern Texas. Lightning wasn’t her child, yet he was.

  Tom was hers and Mathew’s. Thomas Dunson Garth. But Tom was more like Mathew. In temperament. In looks, though he had Tess’s green eyes. Tom was dependable. Solid. Knew what was expected of him and would do more.

  Oh, Tess loved both of her sons, but she had always favored Lightning. Mathew? Well . . . maybe he favored Tom a little.

  He heard her feet as she crossed the room and felt her standing beside him. She drank a healthy portion of the Scotch and lowered the glass to her side.

  “You think I’m wrong?” she asked.

  “No.” His answer came immediately, without a second thought, and he knew—Tess knew this as well—that he wasn’t lying.

  “You know him better than I do,” Mathew said. “I’ve tried . . . but . . .”

  “Well . . .” Tess’s free hand took his into her own. She squeezed it with affection, and plenty of people in the county would say that Tess Millay rarely showed any affection.