Mystery Herd

by Paul Lederer

  ‘He’s not,’ Trinity said. ‘I don’t need the job, but I’ve hired on to do it.’

  Cooky glanced at him again, the comment making little sense to him. He shrugged, turned the bacon with a long-handled fork and said, ‘I’ll be serving it up in a few minutes.’

  Trinity finished the cup of hot, strong, bitter coffee and put his cup down. ‘I’m going out now. I don’t much feel like seeing anybody this morning.’

  The cook frowned and nodded his understanding. He inclined his head toward a straw basket covered with a cloth. ‘Grab yourself a couple of biscuits to take along.’

  ‘Thanks, I will,’ Trinity answered and he lifted two of the still-warm biscuits and placed them in his coat pocket. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said to the cook. Trinity had heard the sounds of men stirring and decided it was time to make his exit.

  The outside air struck him coldly. Thin rime glossed the land, colored now by the pre-dawn light of the sun. Squinting toward the west he could just make out the thrusting bulk of the Colorado Rockies. All around the ranch low, tortured, broken hills encircled the valley, crowding in on it. He knew a river ran across the land somewhere nearby, but he could not see any sign of it.

  Trinity started toward the stable. Flocks of small birds fluttered and chittered madly in the barren cottonwood grove.

  No one was at work in the stable yet, which suited Trinity. His piebald horse looked up with apparent eagerness. There was ice on his chin whiskers. Trinity saw that the oat bin had been nearly emptied. The horse had eaten well overnight.

  Saddling and slipping the piebald its bit, Trinity considered what he had seen so far on the Owl. The owner of the ranch, Lewis Noble Bates had died, gone before he could tell his son what was so important that he urged him to come home even though he was enlisted in the army. The elder Bates must have known what sort of situation that would put Russell in, so it must have been something dire. But what?

  The Owl foreman, Dalton Remy, had been hanged – because he knew too much? Who had done that killing? A new foreman had been brought in immediately or sent for prior to Remy’s death, apparently by Holly Bates. Vincent Battles had arrived with lots of presumably hand-picked men. The older sister, Millicent, seemed unaware of anything that was happening on the Owl, or was simply unconcerned about matters.

  Trinity himself had been assaulted violently last night. Simply because he rode with Russell Bates? To top that the older brother, Earl Bates, was due to arrive from Texas, perhaps looking to inherit the Owl.

  Altogether things seemed to make no coherent pattern, no sense. But Trinity knew there was a pattern there – one of deceit stitched together with threads of violence. If he could only find one loose thread and start tugging at it.…

  ‘What do you want?’ the querulous demand came from the shadows of the stable Trinity had taken to be empty. The voice belonged to a Spanish-looking kid of fifteen or sixteen. He stood glowering at Trinity over a stall partition.

  ‘I came for my horse,’ Trinity said. ‘The spotted black horse.’

  ‘The one wearing a Rafter W brand.’

  ‘That’s right. You’re pretty observant,’ Trinity said as he slung his saddle from the partition where he had left it.

  ‘I know all about horses,’ the kid said, slipping from the stall to face Trinity. He was tall, but still had a boy’s spindly arms. ‘I seen that bay horse there and I knew it was army stock from its US brand. I figured out that Russell Bates was back before anyone told me.’

  ‘You can learn a lot studying brands,’ Trinity commented, smoothing the striped blanket on his horse’s back.

  ‘You came with Russell – are you an army officer?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I wanted to find out. I know enlisted men all ride bay horses, but officers are allowed to provide their own.’

  ‘You know quite a bit.’

  ‘Yes. The last army officer who came here explained it to me. He was riding a white horse with a gray mane and tail.’

  ‘Was he?’ Trinity asked, positioning his saddle.

  ‘Yes, that’s how I learn about these things, hanging around the stable. I like horses more than anything. I sure like being around the stable better than what I’m doing now – I even clean up the stalls for free sometimes when Roger has had a rough night with his whiskey.’

  ‘Roger’s the stable man?’

  ‘Supposed to be, but he’s getting old and kind of dry inside. I figure I might be able to get his job some day.’

  ‘Your name must be Tonio,’ Trinity said.

  ‘How’d you guess that?’ the boy asked in astonishment.

  ‘Not from reading your brand. Russell told me about you and your mother.’

  ‘He did?’ Tonio asked with a flush of pride. ‘That I am good with horses?’

  ‘He only said that you are Alicia’s son and that you help her.’

  Almost as if that were her cue, a Spanish woman with wide dark eyes, in her mid-thirties, entered the stable. The brilliant new sunlight behind her showed a woman of middle height, with fine features only slightly blurred by the onset of middle age, wearing a striped skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was piled on top of her head, held in place by a Spanish comb.

  ‘Tonio!’ she said. ‘I need you in the kitchen now. Come and set the places for breakfast.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ Tonio answered. There was a hint of childish rebellion in his voice, but he smiled shyly at Trinity, brushed his hand along the piebald’s sleek neck and went out.

  ‘We’d better be going too,’ Trinity told the horse as he slipped his long gun into its saddle scabbard. There was no point in waiting around to see if someone wanted to start a confrontation.

  Trinity’s kidney’s complained as he swung into the saddle. From experience he knew this would be a lingering pain, flaring up with every sudden movement. Sunlight was bright through the skeletal branches of the cottonwoods and rich and golden where it struck the upper reaches of the lone blue spruce. Men were moving around near the bunkhouse, gathering on the porch to smoke, but Trinity paid them no mind as he swung his horse westward, away from the glare of the rising sun, and headed out on to the long-grass flats. There was a scattering of prairie flowers: blue gentian, star flowers and purple lupines, and fields of yellow and white mustard.

  There were also healthy clumps of live oak trees, their prickly little leaves remaining green no matter what the time of year. The air was still and crystalline. To the north a few thin pennant-shaped clouds drifted eastward. There were yammering crows in the grass and a pair of golden eagles soaring far above them. Trinity smiled to himself – to think he was being paid for this sort of work!

  For no particular reason he decided to swing southward. He rode easily, the sun warming him, the horse moving easily beneath him, Several times the horse’s hoofs startled pheasant from the long grass which took off with wing beats.

  Trinity drew up with a frown. In the shade of a half dozen jack pines on a low knoll to his right, a lone horseman was watching his approach. Trinity had loosened his Winchester in its scabbard before he saw that the lone horseman had lifted a hand and was waving him in that direction. Warily he turned the piebald’s head that way.

  He was within fifty yards or so before he recognized the rider in blue jeans, red-checked shirt and fawn-colored Stetson hat as Holly Bates. She sat on perky-looking little paint pony.

  ‘Good morning,’ Trinity said as he reined up beside her. Holly’s face was not so set, her eyes not so hard as when he had met her the day before. Perhaps. Trinity considered, he had just happened to meet her on a very bad day, the day her father died.

  ‘’Morning,’ Holly answered A slight breeze had risen and it toyed with a few wisps of red hair that had fallen free of the Stetson’s confines.

  ‘You’re out early,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I just felt like a ride. How about you?’

  ‘I wanted to do what Russell suggested – get a look at the land, th
e ranch.’

  ‘I’m getting a little hungry,’ Holly told him. ‘I shouldn’t have ridden out without eating, but Alicia was serving up some of her Mexican grub this morning. I like eggs well enough, but I like to be able to see them, not have them all smothered in hot sauce and onions.’ She studied his face. ‘You didn’t eat either, did you?’

  ‘No.’ Trinity reached into his coat pocket and pulled out one of the biscuits he had been saving. ‘But I have two of these. I’m willing to share.’

  Holly smiled, not unprettily, and took the biscuit. ‘Is this how Cooky is sending the men out these days.’

  ‘No, but I was up early. It didn’t seem like a good morning to linger over breakfast.’ He went on to tell her sketchily what had happened to him the night before.

  ‘That would have been Willie Meese.’

  ‘We never got properly introduced,’ Trinity said.

  ‘He has a habit of hazing the new men, the young ones. Nailing their boots to the floor, hiding their blankets.’

  ‘This was a little more than that,’ Trinity said, shifting in the saddle for his kidneys’ sake.

  ‘Yes, I can see it was,’ Holly replied, eyeing Trinity’s face. Without a mirror he couldn’t tell, but he must have gotten marked up some in the fight, judging from her expression. ‘Well,’ Holly said, washing down her biscuit with a drink from her canteen, ‘we can’t sit here all day – how would you like a guided tour?’

  ‘That suits me, if you have the time.’

  ‘I’ve given myself the day off,’ she said. ‘I figure Russell and Vince Battles will be at odds all day, and my only other choice was to sit home with my sister – I swear Millicent is going to grow roots in that chair of hers.’

  ‘I’d always thought that a couple of women would be happy to share a conversation outside of the hearing of men.’

  ‘Millicent doesn’t talk to me,’ Holly said with asperity.

  Trinity didn’t comment, but his thought was that maybe this was simply a case of the sisters having different interests. Millicent cared about her home, about fashion and leisure while Holly was a horsewoman, one who liked the outdoors, long grass and wind.

  ‘Want to look the herd over?’ Holly asked, answering Trinity’s desire without his having to ask. ‘If you look hard through the mist in the valley,’ she said, pointing that way, ‘you can see where they’re gathered.’

  Looking that way, Trinity could indeed see a herd of about five-hundred Owl cattle grazing their way slowly across the valley. They began to ride that way.

  ‘Up there,’ Holly said, waving with her right hand, ‘is Dos Picos. We’ve a tangle of brush-clotted canyons and cacti and brambles up in there, and a lot of lost beef.’

  ‘I’ve heard about it,’ Trinity said, and Holly gave him a look of close scrutiny.

  ‘How? When!’

  ‘Just last night. Some of the hands were talking.’ At Holly’s look he smiled and said, ‘I told you that I’ve been asked to look around and keep my ears open.’

  ‘By whom – Russell?’

  ‘He’s a little overwhelmed right now,’ Trinity said, without really answering her question.

  ‘Yes,’ Holly said, ‘so are we all.’ Then she heeled her little pony into a brisk lope and they approached the cattle herd at a quicker pace. The animals had not yet been sorted into a trail herd. One and two-year olds, too young for such a drive, mingled with the herd and Trinity even saw a few bulls, too valuable to be sold for beef among them. He mentioned this to Holly.

  ‘I know. We’re just finishing up looking for strays up along Dos Picas. When they’re all gathered, the men will start dividing the herd.’

  ‘That’s a tough job,’ Trinity said from experience. The bulls would not like anyone interfering in their domain; none of the cattle would be eager to move off what they now considered to be their home range.

  They walked their horses among the cattle. They all seemed to be sleek and fat, bright-eyed, well-fed and watered. Even the two-dozen or so longhorns among them. From time to time Trinity leaned out of the saddle to stroke an animal’s coat. There were no lesions, no scabbed sores. These animals had been well tended. The army, it seemed, had made a good bargain when it chose to purchase its beef from Owl.

  ‘How many are you taking?’ Trinity asked as they left the herd.

  ‘One hundred and fifty,’ Holly said. ‘The army has already built holding pens near Fort Bridger. It’s my understanding that a lot of them will be used to barter with the Indians, though I don’t know much about that. It doesn’t concern Owl. The army sent a young officer around to inspect the herd a month or so ago, and he was quite pleased with them.’

  Trinity nodded. He had gathered as much from his conversation with Tonio in the stable.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Father dealt with him. I think it was Lieutenant Ross – something like that.’ They had halted their horses again on a low grassy knoll from which they could look down on the red and white backs of the grazing cattle. To the east, a mile or so away, Trinity could see a small group of Owl riders approaching them.

  ‘Is there anyone among you who doesn’t want the cattle sold?’ Trinity asked. Holly had removed her hat again, and swirls of red hair crossed her eyes as they flashed uncertainly.

  ‘What do you mean? Who wouldn’t want to sell them?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ Trinity said weakly. Holly replanted her hat, more firmly.

  ‘That’s what they were raised for. They are the money on the hoof that the Owl needs to continue. I want to sell them, I’ll tell you that. Our savings have gotten pretty low. Millicent doesn’t give a hang about anything that goes on around here so long as the money to pamper herself continues to flow in. She, of course, wants to sell them. She always needs money, more money … she wants these to go through. Not that there’s a choice: we have already contracted with the government and they’re not fond of people who back out of sales contracts. Your question makes no sense. Of course we want to deliver the herd, as soon as possible.’

  She started her pony down the knoll, and Trinity followed, his eyes flickering toward the approaching cowboys – probably the bunch being sent up into the tangle of canyons surrounding Dos Picos to look for strays.

  Trinity and Holly rode in silence for a way. He found himself admiring the way she sat on her saddle, the erect line of her back beneath that red-checked cotton shirt she wore.

  ‘What about Earl?’ he persisted. Holly frowned at him.

  ‘What do you mean? Are you still talking about who might not wish to sell the herd?’

  ‘Yes, I am. They say that Earl has his own spread down in Texas. Maybe he could use more cattle.’

  ‘From what I know of it, my brother’s ranch is water-poor. He’s already running all the cattle his land can support, and doing well at it,’ Holly answered, snapping at him – her voice had grown sharper.

  ‘And Vincent Battles?’ he ventured. Holly’s eyes hardened. They were gold, now that he was paying more intention – oddly gold eyes, now sharp with displeasure.

  ‘You don’t know Vincent Battles.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Tell me about him.’

  She shook her head fractionally. Was she in love with Battles? Trinity knew that at one time Battles had worked for Owl. Until when? Was it possible that the old man, Lewis Bates, had sent him away for some indiscretion or other?

  ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know for your line of enquiry,’ Holly finally answered as they entered a small stand of scattered pine trees. ‘Though I don’t know why you are so curious. Who are you, anyway?’

  It was Trinity’s turn not to answer. After a few minutes, as their horses plodded on silently – their hoofbeats muffled by fallen pine needles and the cool breeze drifting through the dark pines – Holly continued.

  ‘Vincent Battles is only interested in making some money for himself and his men. Do you think he has it in mind to steal an entire herd of cattle and dr
ive them five hundred miles to Mexico unseen, untracked? If no one else followed him, the army would be after him within a day or two – you can’t run fast or far with a herd that size which isn’t even broken to the trail yet.’

  ‘No,’ Trinity admitted, ‘I guess you can’t.’

  ‘Besides, Vince is a good friend of the family. A very good friend of mine,’ she said with more emphasis. That silenced Trinity.

  They rode on without speaking, Trinity mulling over all that he had heard, Holly apparently still considering Trinity. She had not failed to notice that her question. ‘Who are you?’ had gone unanswered. Trinity was acting oddly, asking a lot of probing questions for some drifting man Russ had happened to meet along the trail and hired on out of gratitude.

  They emerged from the cool of the pine forest on to a sun-bright slope. There was a little-used trail which Holly must have known of, making its uncertain way past a stand of craggy yellow boulders toward the flats beyond. The Owl Ranch house was visible, a mile or so away. Holly drew her paint pony up briefly in the shadows cast by the huge boulders.

  ‘All right,’ she said with determination. ‘You ask more questions than you have answered, mister. I would like to know—’

  At that moment the face of the rock behind them exploded with splinter and dust. The echo of a rifle followed immediately. Trinity reached toward Holly, snatched her from the saddle with one arm and rolled to the ground with her, as the horses shied away and the day filled with gunfire.

  FOUR

  Trinity kept his hand on the back of Holly’s head, holding her down as bullets continued to spatter against the face of the rocks and ricochet off wildly, spraying them with rock fragments and dust. Peering into the harsh sunlight, Trinity could see nothing of their attacker. It would have done him little good, anyway. He held only his handgun. The piebald had danced away from the ruckus with his Winchester in its saddle scabbard.

  ‘Why don’t you shoot back?’ Holly demanded.

  ‘It would be like throwing stones at this distance, with a Colt,’ he answered. The shooting continued for another minute or so, the length of time it would have taken the man, whoever he was, to empty the magazine of his rifle.