By the Horns

by Ralph Compton

  With a sigh, Sweet Sally heaved upright. Bronk was waiting for her. She walked past him without saying anything, and he reached out and snagged her wrist.

  “Hold up.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “How about a poke? It’s been a while. The first couple of weeks you gave Grutt and me all the pokes we wanted but now you won’t let us touch you.”

  “I liked you then. I don’t now.” Sally tried to pull free but he would not let go. “Damn you, unhand me.”

  “What if I were to pay you?” Bronk proposed. “I have four dollars to my name. Is that enough?”

  “I wouldn’t let you poke me now for four hundred,” Sweet Sally had the pleasure of telling him. “You or your smelly friend.”

  “Don’t hold it against us because you’re mad at Luke,” Bronk said. “Grutt and me have no say in what Luke does. You’ve seen for yourself how he is.”

  “You ride with him.” Sweet Sally stated her indictment.

  Bronk glanced toward the fire. Luke was moodily staring into the crackling flames. Grutt was picking his teeth with a twig. “There was another of us once,” he whispered. “We called him Prairie Dog on account of he looked like one. He rode with us for over a year. Then one day he allowed as how he missed his family back in Maryland, and how he had put off goin’ back long enough. He said he would leave in the mornin’, if that was all right with Luke, and Luke said it was.”

  Sweet Sally waited. She knew what was coming.

  “So that night Prairie Dog turned in, all smiles. I fell asleep later and woke up when someone screamed. It was Prairie Dog. Luke was doin’ things to him.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Bronk said. “I have nightmares when I think of it.” He glanced at the fire again to be sure the other two were still there. “Sure, I ride with Luke, and I’ll go on ridin’ with him because I don’t want to end my days like Prairie Dog did.”

  “You still don’t get a poke.”

  “Fine. Be tight-legged. Once you’ve served his purpose, Luke is fixin’ to kill you anyway.” Bronk angrily tromped back.

  Ignoring them, Sweet Sally spread her blankets a little farther from the fire than she normally would. She did not have a saddle. She used her arm for a pillow. She closed her eyes but not all the way. She would stay awake and await the best opportunity that came along.

  Grutt and Bronk jabbered about what they aimed to do with their share of the money. Grutt said he wanted a week of “wild women, whiskey, and cards.” Bronk wanted a new pair of boots, ones that did not crimp his toes and chafe his ankles. Apparently the pair he had on he had taken from a man Luke Deal shot. He took them because they were newer than his own. They were also smaller by a full size, which explained his daily morning ritual of tugging into them while huffing and puffing like a steam engine.

  Usually Bronk turned in first. Tonight was no different. He simply plopped down, his shoulders and head on his saddle, pulled a blanket up, and within minutes was snoring noisily.

  Grutt took a pair of dice from his pocket and practiced rolling them. He would say things like, “Seven! Give me a seven!” or “Come on, come on, be sweet to me!” He rolled them for a quarter of an hour. Then he placed them in his pocket, stretched out on his blanket, and said to Luke Deal, “It won’t be long now, will it?”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “What about Owen?”

  “What about him?”

  “I couldn’t do it. I’ve done a lot of terrible things but never that. I guess there’s a line I won’t cross.”

  “Lines are like superstitions,” Luke said. “They only affect you if you believe in them, and I stopped believin’ it was bad luck to walk under ladders long ago. Now shut the hell up and get to sleep.”

  “Sure thing, Luke.”

  Sweet Sally wondered what that had been about. She had come to sense that of all the people in the world, Luke Deal hated Owen the most. Or if it wasn’t hate, it was something close to it. Whenever Owen was mentioned, Luke always got a certain look about him, as if someone had stabbed him in the gut and was twisting the knife.

  Soon Grutt snored, too. He did not snore as loud as Bronk. His snores were like those of a dog Sally had once had, short ones, like Grutt himself. She focused on Luke Deal, careful to keep her eyes slitted so he would not suspect she was still awake.

  For a long while Luke stared into the fire. What he saw reflected in the flames only he could say. His arms were folded across his chest and his brow was puckered, lending the notion he was pondering a problem of some size.

  Sweet Sally remembered the little girls, and inwardly shivered. What kind of man could do that? To say he was vile was not enough. To call him wicked did not do his nature justice. Branding him evil was not an explanation. Deep down inside he was twisted. He was not entirely human. Outwardly he seemed normal enough, but he was filled with a darkness darker than the night.

  Her musings were brought to an end when Luke eased onto his side and pulled his hat brim down. That was usually the sign he was going to sleep. She waited, scarcely breathing, for some sign that he had.

  Minutes dragged past. Sweet Sally tingled with excitement. She was sure her time had come. She did not feel the least bit tired. Once she was on the bay, she would not stop until she overtook the Bar 40 boys.

  Sally’s excitement climbed. Luke Deal’s chest and shoulders were moving in the rhythmic embrace of heavy sleep. She waited a bit longer to be sure, then slowly sat up.

  Now came the dangerous part. Sweet Sally pushed up off the ground. She inadvertently grunted as she rose, then bit her lower lip and glanced fearfully at the sleeping forms. None stirred.

  Straightening and steadying herself, Sweet Sally picked up the bridle she had been using and edged around the fire. The horses were used to her and did not whinny or stamp. She had to pull out a picket pin but it was not as difficult as she had fretted it might be. She slid the bridle on and adjusted it. Then she turned to lead the bay off into the night, and safety.

  Climbing on later posed a problem. Sally could not do it on her own. But she had a solution. She would find a handy log or boulder, climb on that, and from there onto the animal’s back. She prayed she wouldn’t slip, and the horse wouldn’t move when she was halfway on.

  Sweet Sally took a step and tugged on the reins.

  “Goin’ somewhere?”

  Sally spun. She almost tripped over her own feet and had to lean against the horse to keep from falling. “Luke!” she blurted. “I thought I heard something and came to check on the horses.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Luke said.

  “About what?”

  “Needin’ you to distract Owen and the others. I can take them without you.”

  “Don’t,” Sweet Sally pleaded.

  Luke Deal slowly drew his Colt. He slowly pointed it at her and slowly thumbed back the hammer. Their eyes met, and Sweet Sally opened her mouth to scream. Luke shot her in the right knee. The horse squealed and shied, and Sally landed hard on her back, flooded with torment.

  “No, Luke! Please!”

  Luke Deal shot her in the left knee. Sweet Sally screamed. He shot her in the belly and her scream became a shriek. He shot her in the throat and the shriek faded to a gurgle. He shot her between the eyes and the gurgling stopped.

  Grutt and Bronk came running, their revolvers out, and Bronk asked, “What in blazes happened?”

  “It’s like I told her,” Luke Deal said.

  “What?” Grutt asked.

  “There are big sieves and little sieves.”

  20

  Showdown

  By Owen’s reckoning they were ten days out of Dodge City. Dodge was the midway point, or thereabouts, and they still had a long way to go. But beyond Dodge the perils lessened. They had little to dread from rustlers or hostiles until they neared Wyoming Territory, and then their main worry would be roving bands of warlike Sioux. Dodge was cause to celebrate, to relax
, to rest a few days, to rent rooms and sleep in comfortable beds with a roof over their heads for the first time in months.

  “I can hardly wait,” Alfred Pitney happily declared. “To set eyes on civilization again will be a delight.”

  “Don’t get your hopes too high,” Owen advised. “Dodge isn’t New York City.”

  “It has people and buildings and streets, doesn’t it?” Pitney lightheartedly replied. “It has dining establishments and hotels and a theater, I do believe.”

  “It has all that,” Owen conceded. “It also has hombres who will steal you blind or buck you out in gore and ladies who will fleece you out of every dollar you have as slick as grease.”

  “It’s as bad as all that?” Pitney grinned. “Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one?”

  “Once it was,” Owen said. “Dodge was the wildest, wooliest town this side of anywhere. There was drinkin’ and gamblin’ and carryin’ on every hour of the day and night.”

  “You have been there before, I take it? During those wild days?”

  “A few times. On trail drives. In the old days the town council welcomed cowboys with open arms. Beeves were money on the hoof, and they let all us Texas wolves howl as we pleased. But we howled a mite too loud and were much too rough, and the respectable folks complained.” Owen paused. “Can’t say as I blame them. A man with a wife and children doesn’t want a drunken cowboy outside his window at midnight shootin’ at the moon.”

  Pitney chuckled. “So it’s not that wild anymore?”

  “Not nearly. There were killin’s and stabbin’s and the like all the time until the town council set down new laws and hired peace officers to enforce them. Men with the bark on. Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Mysterious Dave Mather—”

  “I say,” Pitney interrupted. “He really calls himself that? ‘Mysterious’? Rather juvenile, what?”

  “Mather doesn’t ever say much of anything. He’s the quiet type. His past is pretty much a mystery. So somewhere he picked up the nickname and it stuck. The one thing everyone does know is that he’s mighty quick with his pistol, and he will shoot a lawbreaker as dead as Moses and not bat an eye.”

  “I’ve heard of those other chaps you mentioned, Masterson and Earp. The newspapers write about them from time to time.”

  “It shows the caliber of Dodge peace officers, and why it wasn’t long before Dodge went from bein’ wild and wooly to fairly respectable. These days it’s not nearly as rough. There’s even been talk that the town council is tired of the beef trade. They say it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and I’ve heard rumors they’re thinkin’ about postin’ Dodge off limits to any critter with horns and hooves and anyone wearin’ a six-shooter.”

  “They would do that?” Pitney marveled. “With all the money they are making?” His businessman’s sensibilities were shocked.

  “It’s only a rumor. But Dodge does have the railroad now. It makes money from other things besides cows. If they lose the Texas trade, they reckon they’ll survive.”

  Pitney gazed eagerly northward. Ahead stretched a seemingly endless vista of prairie, as it had day after day after day. He had never seen so much flat land in his life. “So long as they don’t impose the ban before we get there, and they have hot baths available, I will be happy. I would give my right arm for an hour of luxuriating in hot water.”

  “We do tend to get whiffy on the trail,” Owen said.

  “If by ‘whiffy’ you mean we are caked with dust and dirt, our hair and clothes are filthy, and we smell abominably, then yes, we certainly are.”

  The afternoon passed at its customary snail’s pace.

  Owen rode on the right flank, as he had every day since they lost Cleveland. The dead hand’s effects were in the chuck wagon. The money in Cleveland’s war bag would be sent to his sister in Ohio, along with a couple of photographs and his dofunnies.

  Slim had taken the death hard. For over a week he barely uttered a word to anyone. Then one evening a moth flew into the pot of beans Benedito was stirring, and the cook gave vent to a barrage of obscenities that would have blistered the ear of an army drill sergeant. Benedito had cursed that moth in every cussword in two languages. He disliked bugs, especially flying bugs, and for one to get into his food was the ultimate outrage.

  Slim had started laughing and couldn’t stop. He laughed until his cheeks glistened with tears and he was holding his sides in pain, and after that he was his old self again.

  Pitney had been glad to see him restored. He would not admit as much, but he had grown quite fond of the Bar 40 cowboys. As much as he longed to reach the BLC and begin his program of infusing new blood into the BLC’s herd, he would regret their journey’s end. It had been an experience unlike any other, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and despite the many hardships, despite the blistering sun and the dust and the rustlers, he had enjoyed himself immensely.

  The sun hung low in the vault of blue when Lon Chalmers came riding back from point. He swung his mount in alongside Owen’s and Alfred Pitney’s and pushed his hat back on his sandy mop. “We won’t strike water again until tomorrow about noon. Do you want to push on or bed them dry for the night?”

  “They’ve behaved this far.”

  “Easiest trail drive I’ve ever been on.” Lon grinned. “We should spread the word. From now on, all trail herds should be ten cows or less.”

  “They wouldn’t make much money,” Pitney observed, “and making money is the whole point in bringing cattle to market, is it not?”

  Lon found the comment amusing. “As a cowboy you would make a fine banker. There’s more to life than ledger books.”

  Stars were blossoming when they made camp. The horses were tethered, the longhorns were bedded down, and Benedito fired up the Dutch stove to prepare supper. The cowboys and the Brit sat around the fire, waiting for the coffee to come to a boil. The wind was still and the prairie was quiet save for the rattle and clank of pots and pans.

  “Peaceful, ain’t it?” Slim said contentedly. “And my ma used to wonder why I joined the cow crowd.”

  “I’d rather be married to a cow than a woman,” Lon said. “Cows don’t sass a man to death.”

  Slim arched a thin eyebrow. “You shouldn’t be let loose without a handler. I’ll take a two-legged female over a four-legged any day.”

  Lon winked at Owen and Pitney, then said, “I reckon Sweet Sally will be happy to hear that. You should write her when we get to Dodge, and propose.”

  “Cut that out. We were friendly, nothin’ more.”

  “She sure took a shine to you,” Lon teased. “Must be that beak of yours. They say women like men with big noses.”

  The talk turned to women they had known, and then women in general, and then the differences between women and men. At this point Slim commented, “Women sure are peculiar critters. You have to wonder what the Almighty was thinkin’ when he took that rib from Adam.”

  Benedito mentioned to Owen that he was running low on supplies. He had to stock up in Dodge. But he had enough left to make them delicious frijoles and rice laced with strips of succulent meat from a plump grouse Lon had shot. To mop up the juice they had hot bread steeped in the inevitable butter. For dessert there was apple pie made with the last of their dried green apples. A gallon of coffee washed everything down.

  By then night had descended. A cool breeze out of the northwest was more than welcome. To the west a coyote yipped. Another yipped to the east. A shooting star blazed a bright trail below the Big Dipper.

  Slim breathed deep and said, “I don’t care what my ma thinks. This will always be the life for me.”

  “You and me, both,” Owen said. “Cows are all I know. Cows are all I ever want to know.”

  Lon leaned toward Pitney and put a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell Cynthia Langstrom. The schoolmarm thinks she’s his true love.”

  “Go to hell,” Owen said.

  Slim rummaged in his saddlebags and brought out a worn pack of cards. Since they were close t
o Dodge, Owen allowed an exception to the no-gambling rule so they could practice. They played poker with blades of grass for chips. Benedito finished putting his utensils away and joined them.

  The scene would forever be etched in Pitney’s mind: the crackle of the warm flames, the cozy companionship of men who had shared trials and tribulations, the giant longhorn bull lying a dozen feet away, watching them inscrutably, and the eyes of the cows aglow in the wash of firelight. For a while all was right with the world, and he was as happy as he could ever remember being.

  Then Lon said to Slim, “I see your five blades of grass and raise you ten more, and if that’s not enough, I’ll pluck extra.”

  “I’ll just call your raise,” Slim declared. “It’s my lucky night. I can feel it in my bones.”

  A gun blasted, booming like thunder, unnaturally loud because it was unexpected. They all heard the fleshy thwack of the slug that slammed into Slim’s bony chest. The impact knocked him flat on his back. He didn’t cry out, he didn’t move. He was dead before he struck the ground.

  Frozen in astonishment, they gaped at the body. They were barely aware that the longhorns, including Big Blue, had heaved up off the ground, or that several of the horses whinnied and pranced.

  Lon Chalmers was the first to awaken from his daze, the first to twist and start to rise as he flung his cards down and stabbed for the Colt at his waist. But even he was too slow.

  “I wouldn’t, were I you,” said a voice that dripped death like a caress, and out of the darkness from three points of the compass materialized Luke Deal, Grutt, and Bronk. Thin wisps of gun smoke curled from Luke’s Remington.

  “You!” Owen exclaimed.

  “Me,” Luke Deal said, imbuing that simple word with supreme malice and contempt, and something more.

  Grutt and Bronk held rifles. Grutt pointed his at Lon Chalmers and taunted, “Go ahead. Unlimber your hardware. I dare you.”

  Alfred Pitney tore his horrified gaze from the scarlet mist pumping from Slim’s smashed sternum. “Are you men insane? What’s the meaning of this outrage?”