By the Horns

by Ralph Compton

  Several hundred years earlier, the great world powers—Spain, England, France, and Portugal—were exploring every square inch of the planet and claiming those inches as their own. Spain claimed what would later become Texas. One of her explorers, more interested in wealth than in square inches, penetrated deep into the Southwest seeking the fabled fabulously rich Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado was his name, and to feed the men of his expedition, he took along thousands of hogs, goats, and sheep. He also took about five hundred head of cattle.

  Exactly how many head wandered off or were left behind was not known, but a couple of decades later, another Spaniard discovered that thousands of upstart wild cattle had overrun the countryside.

  Later, Spain established a network of missions and stocked them with cattle, some of which strayed off, adding to the mix that would become a legend in its own right—the Texas longhorn.

  The Nueces River country was thick with them, and within two years the Bar 40 had laid claim to thousands. Its cowhands, commonly called the 40 Outfit, were fiercely loyal to the brand.

  James Bartholomew possessed a business savvy that other ranchers envied. Under his wise management the Bar 40 prospered. Its reputation spread, until cowmen as far away as Wyoming and Montana, when ranching was discussed, mentioned it as the best of the best.

  Alfred Pitney agreed. After the ghastly affair at Whiskey Flats, he half expected to find the Bar 40 to be a motley circus of wild cows and violent men, but the order and discipline that prevailed were a testament to Bartholomew’s no-nonsense approach to ranching as a business, and to the high caliber of the men he employed.

  The first day out from town, Owen did not say much. A pall of sorrow hung over him as he sat the buckboard seat, his broad shoulders slumped. Following behind, the other three cowboys, Lon, Slim, and Cleveland, rode in silence out of respect for their pard.

  For Pitney the trip was a grand adventure. He had never been to Texas, and the land and its people were new and indelible.

  The second day they came upon a group of smiling, friendly vaqueros wearing wide-brimmed sombreros, short jackets, and pants that flared at the bottom. The vaqueros had been on business to a ranch west of the Bar 40. Their leader knew Owen, and stopped and talked for a few minutes.

  It was about noon on the second day that they came to the boundary of the Bar 40, and shortly thereafter Pitney saw his first longhorns. The buckboard was winding through heavy brush when he spotted several cattle watching their approach with wary regard.

  Sensational beasts, they were multihued. One was black splotched with white, another a mulberry blue, yet a third a mouse gray. They had remarkably high front shoulders and were thin at the flanks. They were also longer than any cows Pitney had ever seen, with bony spines and flat ribs. His initial impression was that they were all bone and legs. He guessed aloud that they must weigh close to eight hundred pounds but Owen informed him the total was closer to a thousand.

  And then there were their horns. Incredible, unbelievable horns, swept wide and curved outward, not up. Horns six feet across on the black longhorn, closer to seven on the mulberry blue, and, Pitney was willing to swear, horns eight feet across on the grulla, as Owen told him the mousy longhorn was known.

  Right then and there Pitney developed a whole new respect for the men who rode herd on such animals. He had seen a few buffalo from the train on his way south, contentedly grazing on the prairie, and the buffalo seemed tame compared to these huge bony cattle with their array of wicked horns.

  “Why would anyone want cattle like these when they could have Herefords?” Pitney wondered aloud.

  Owen, who had been lost in remembrance, stirred and answered, “Herefords are fine grazin’ cows, but they wouldn’t last long in country like this. It takes cattle as raw as the land to survive.”

  Eager to keep the cowboy talking, Pitney racked his brain for some of the tidbits his research in England had revealed prior to his trip. “They say longhorns are the hardiest breed ever known.”

  “They say right,” Owen said, with more than a smidgen of pride. “I’ve worked with all kinds of cows, and longhorns are the orneriest, most cussed, most contrary critters to ever breathe. But I wouldn’t trade them for all the Herefords, Guernseys, or Highland cattle in creation.”

  “I find it interesting you mention Highlands,” Pitney said, impressed by the foreman’s depth of knowledge, “since these longhorns you are so fond of remind me of them in a way.” Bred in Scotland, West Highland cattle were smaller and hairier than longhorns, but they shared a common trait: They thrived in country no other breed of cattle could.

  “The Scotsman who owns the Triple S brought several over a few years ago,” Owen said. “One strayed into quicksand, another fell prey to a cougar, and the third wandered off into the brush and was never seen again.”

  “How do longhorns handle cold?” Pitney asked the question that had been crucial to the BLC’s decision to send him.

  “Texas has brutal winters but there’s never a shortage of longhorns,” was Owen’s astute reply.

  As the buckboard drew near, the watching longhorns wheeled and melted into the tangle of vegetation with barely a ripple of greenery. One instant they were there, the next they were gone.

  “Remarkable brutes,” Pitney said.

  “Wait until you see the one you came for,” Owen remarked. “He’s so beautiful, he will take your breath away.”

  Pitney had never heard an animal described in quite so passionate a manner. “My only hope is that he will prove worthy of his cost.”

  They talked cows a while more, until Owen lapsed into his sorrowful silence. That evening they made camp beside a stream, the earth around it torn by the countless heavy hooves of roving longhorns.

  Seated by the crackling fire, sipping a cup of tea he brewed himself, Pitney listened to the distant yip of coyotes, and smiled. “I envy you blokes.”

  Slim looked up from the dice he and Lon were taking turns rolling. “How so, mister?”

  “This land, the people, the wildlife.” Pitney sighed. “I spend most of my days behind a desk, working with accounts and figures until I have them coming out of my ears.”

  “I’d be no use at a desk job,” Lon said. “I couldn’t sit still long enough to get the work done.”

  “I don’t have your freedom. A business manager has to pay close attention to the books and attend a lot of meetings and arrange an endless array of financial details. Some nights I am at my desk until midnight.”

  “Better you than me,” Cleveland said. “I was raised on a farm. The outdoors is in my blood.”

  Owen, holding a tin cup filled with black coffee in both calloused hands, looked up. “You have your desk, we have our saddles. We spend most of every day on horseback, and there have been nights when I’ve been so sore and stiff, I wished I was mindin’ a desk instead.”

  “Why, that’s blasphemy.” Lon grinned. “You might as well wish to be a store clerk.”

  Slim said, “At least store clerks get to see a lot of pretty girls each and every day. We see the hind ends of a lot of cows.”

  “Clerks also see a heap of biddy hens,” Lon pointed out, “and have to put up with gripes and grumbles and stack boxes and tin cans and fold blankets and clothes. I don’t reckon I could stand the excitement.”

  “Yep, those dumb clerks,” Slim said. “They don’t work under the bakin’ sun when it’s one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. They don’t have to ride through thorn brush where the thorns are so sharp they can shred a man’s legs if he’s not careful. They don’t get bucked or stomped on or gored. I don’t know how they can stand it.”

  Alfred Pitney laughed. “It seems to me every profession has its good and its not-so-good aspects. Frankly, being here with you fine fellows is one of the highlights of my life.”

  “Are you pokin’ fun at us?” Lon asked.

  “Not at all,” Pitney said. “Can you imagine a boy raised on the bustling streets of Bristol, si
tting here under the stars in the midst of the American wilderness? In case you aren’t aware, Bristol is a seaport, and an industrial center. Its streets teem with people. There are buildings everywhere. It is as different from your Texas as night is from day.” Pitney breathed deep of the crisp night air. “Your most marvelous Texas.”

  “Uh-oh,” Cleveland said. “You’re starting to talk as if you like it here. Next thing you know, you’ll put down roots.”

  “It’s not our fault the rest of the world can’t hold a candle to Texas,” Lon remarked.

  “Surely you like it here?” Pitney asked Cleveland.

  “I reckon so, or I’d have gone back to Ohio a coon’s age ago. There’s something about Texas that gets in a man’s blood. Once he sets foot in it, he never wants to leave.”

  Slim made a show of scratching his chin. “I thought it was that pretty senorita at the cantina in Nueva who got into your blood?”

  Lon cackled, and Owen mustered his first smile since leaving Whiskey Flats.

  “Then there are those,” Cleveland went on, “who say Texas is for simpletons who can’t count past ten without their boots off.”

  “I can count to fourteen,” Slim said.

  The genial mood was abruptly intruded on by a low, guttural cough from out of the darkness. Immediately, the four cowhands shot to their feet, their hands on their revolvers, as several of the horses stamped and whinnied.

  “Why the alarm?” Pitney asked. “What was that? A bear?”

  “A jaguar,” Owen said.

  Pitney sprang erect, nearly spilling his tea. “This far north?”

  “From time to time,” Lon said, peering intently in the direction the cough came from, “one will drift north of the border.”

  “When one is hungry enough, it will go after anything,” Slim added, “includin’ people.”

  Cleveland snickered. “I’ve always wanted me a jaguar rug. There was an old coot by the handle of Charlie Stubbs who had one, and it was the prettiest rug you ever did see.”

  “A rug to go with the home you don’t have to impress the woman you don’t have?” Slim said. “That makes a heap of sense.”

  Owen went to the buckboard and retrieved his Winchester. Levering a round into the chamber, he announced, “I’ll go have a look-see. The rest of you keep your eyes skinned.”

  “I would like to go with you if someone will lend me a rifle,” Pitney volunteered.

  “I’d feel better if you stayed.”

  “I’ve hunted stag and ducks and geese,” Pitney said to justify his request, “and I’m more than a middling shot, if I do say so myself.” He clasped his slender hands together. “As a personal favor?”

  Lon had an opinion. “Mr. Bartholomew will throw a fit if we let one of those big cats rip you to bits and pieces.”

  “Please,” Pitney said to Owen. “I will never have an adventure like this again.”

  “You’re loco,” the foreman said, then reluctantly grinned. “But if Lon will lend you his Henry and you agree to do exactly as I say, you can come with me.”

  In an excess of enthusiasm, Pitney gushed, “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Wait until the chaps at the BLC hear about this.” He accepted the rifle Lon handed him and admired the gleam of the brass receiver in the firelight. “What did you call this? A Henry?”

  “It’s .44-caliber,” Lon said. “Holds fifteen shots. You can blast the cat to hell and back if you have to.”

  Pitney grinned like a schoolboy given his heart’s desire. “I hope I have the chance.”

  Owen started toward the brush. “Be careful what you wish for,” he whispered. “Sometimes the Almighty is payin’ attention.”

  As the thickets closed around them, some of Alfred Pitney’s enthusiasm waned. The darkness was near total. He could barely see his hand at arm’s length. It would be ridiculously easy for the jaguar to sneak up on them. Consequently, he stayed so close to Owen that twice he nearly tripped over him.

  The second time, the Bar 40 foreman stopped and turned. “Walk quieter if you can. You’re makin’ enough noise to wake the worms.”

  Pitney tried, he honestly tried, but he snagged his clothes and trod on twigs that snapped unnaturally loud, and then he failed to realize Owen had stopped and bumped into him again. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he whispered.

  “You should go back.”

  That was the last thing Pitney wanted. He was set to argue but another bestial cough diverted Owen’s attention.

  “Did you hear that? It’s close.”

  The hairs on the back of Pitney’s neck prickled. He was certain the jaguar could see them. He practically felt its eyes on his skin. But though he probed high and low, there was no sign of the phantom predator. “Is it wise to stand still like this?” he wondered.

  “It is if we want it to take the bait.”

  With a start, Pitney divined they were the bait Owen alluded to, that the cowboy was deliberately trying to lure the jaguar in, to have it attack them instead of the horses.

  A soft rustling hinted the plan might be working.

  His throat bobbing, Pitney strained to spot the source. The inky thicket appeared to be a solid wall of vegetation but it wasn’t. Plenty of gaps and openings would allow the jaguar to stalk near enough to pounce.

  Suddenly there was a loud snort. Not from one of the horses, but from deeper in the brush. It was followed by a few seconds of total silence. Then a racket such as Alfred Pitney had never heard fell on his ears. Caterwauling, roars, and hisses mixed with bellows, basso shrieks, and throaty uh-uh-uh sounds. Brush crackled and popped. A war was being waged, a savage clash that brought goose bumps to Alfred Pitney’s flesh when the brush in front of him parted and the two principals materialized, shadowy shapes locked in deadly combat.

  One shape was that of a large feline, a stocky cat with steel-spring legs and flashing claws. The other was that of a monster that stood as tall as Pitney and had wickedly curved horns and sharp hooves.

  The jaguar was battling a longhorn.

  Glued in dumbfounded fascination, Pitney did not think to run as the combatants swirled toward him. The jaguar leaped and slashed and bit. The bull tossed its great horns and kicked out with its heavy hooves.

  “Move, you simpleton!”

  Pitney felt arms encircle his waist, and he was shoved toward the fire. But Owen’s effort came too late. The longhorn and the jaguar were on top of them. A heavy blow to his side lifted him off his feet and hurled him half a dozen yards. Thorns and branches tore at his clothes, his neck, his face.

  On his hands and knees, bleeding from cuts and scratches, Pitney sought to clear his head by shaking it. He heard Owen shout his name, and looked up as a living mountain towered above him. He glimpsed the jaguar on top of the longhorn’s back, ripping and clawing, and then a hoof caught him on the shoulder and he somersaulted like a French acrobat into a wall of vegetation.

  The pain was excruciating. Pitney smothered a cry and pried at a branch caught fast in his clothes. He struggled to stand and felt as if a hundred small knives tore at him at once.

  Suddenly Owen was beside him, pulling and tugging. “If you value your hide, get up!”

  Pitney tried.

  Then the forms of the furiously battling beasts appeared behind Owen. Cat and bovine were locked in the most elemental of duels. Neither would yield until its adversary was dead. The jaguar’s teeth and claws took a fearsome toll but the longhorn was holding its own.

  Owen hooked an arm around Pitney and wrenched him from the thicket’s embrace. Pitney staggered and would have fallen if not for the cowboy’s grasp. He willed his legs to move but they did not respond as they should.

  “I need to catch my breath.”

  If Owen heard, he made no sign of it, but only lengthened his strides. “For God’s sake, run!”

  The crash of underbrush was loud in Pitney’s ears. He glanced back, and there was the living mountain again, moving with amazing speed for something so huge. It slammed
into him with the force of a battering ram. Pitney was conscious of becoming airborne. He had the illusion he sailed through the night sky as high as the clouds. The ground rushed up to meet him, and this time he did cry out as a piercing pain shot through him from head to toe and the world faded to black.

  How long Pitney was unconscious he could not say. Perhaps a couple of minutes. Perhaps more. A groping hand found his shoulder and the contact restored him to the land of the living. “Owen?” he croaked.

  “Hush!” the foreman whispered. “Listen.”

  Pitney did, but heard nothing, absolutely nothing at all. The significance seeped in, and he blurted, “It’s over!”

  “Maybe not,” Owen whispered, adding, “The jaguar could be anywhere.”

  Dread filled Pitney’s every pore. He broke out in a cold sweat. The Henry had been knocked from his grasp. He was defenseless. He consoled himself with the thought that Lon, Slim, and Cleveland would come to their aid, but when time went by and they did not appear, it dawned on him that the cowboys did not realize anything was amiss. In any event, they were too smart to blunder blindly into the brush. He opened his mouth to call to them, but Owen realized what he was about to do.

  “Not a peep. We lie still until we know it’s safe.”

  Pitney swallowed, and nodded. He could barely see Owen’s face so it was doubtful Owen had seen his nod, and he was about to say that he would do whatever Owen wanted when Owen clamped a calloused hand over his mouth.

  Pitney did not need to ask why. He heard it, too: stealthy movement, very close. Something took long, heavy breaths, punctuated by a strange sucking noise. Pitney held his own breath in anticipation of a hoof or a paw flashing out of the night, but nothing happened. Soon the movement, and the sucking noise, faded.

  “You can stand,” Owen said.