“Howdy, Boss,” Wagner said as he turned his horse away from the creek. “I may have to shoot that cow so we can roast some beef later on.”
“She’s got a heap of meat on her.”
“And she’s meaner than a constipated catamount.”
“Maybe you ought to run her down on those sheep,” Schneck said. There was a bitter edge to his voice.
“Them sheepherders pulled out yet?” Wagner asked.
Schneck shook his head.
“Far as I know, they don’t plan to leave.”
“Then, we got us a big problem, Boss.” Wagner pulled a toothpick out of his pocket. He stuck it in his mouth and worried it from one side to the other. “Ain’t enough grass in this valley to feed what cattle are here for more’n a week or two, and you got more head comin’ down from Cheyenne in a day or so.”
“I expect we’ll have another seven hundred head, maybe eight hundred, by day after tomorrow,” Schneck said.
Wagner spat out the toothpick and reached in his back pocket for a plug of tobacco. He cut off a piece with his folding pocketknife and shoved a chunk inside his cheek. He chewed for a minute while he shoved the plug back in his pocket and folded the knife and slipped it away.
“You figure an acre per head, at the very least, Snake, and we’re already a thousand acres short on what we have here in this valley.”
“I know. That’s why we have to run those sheepherders back to Wyoming. They’re expecting their main flock today and have already got sheep running on another valley they plan to use all summer.”
“Didn’t that Garaboxosa get your message?” Wagner asked.
“Garaboxosa. I reckon he did not. I sent LouDon Jackson down there to see if them gypsy bastards are making any move to leave. He should be back right soon.”
“Well, if those sheep eat up all the grass, you’re going to lose a heap of money, Otto.”
“You mean I’m going to get a lot of money stole from me, Jim. Lose ain’t the word. Way I figure it, them gypsy sheepherders are stealing the money out of our pockets, the food from our mouths. After their sheep get through with a piece of pasture, there’s nothing left but dirt.”
“Yeah, sheep will eat grass right down to the roots and then dig up the roots. Any place you got sheep, you got nothin’ but dust after they leave.”
Schneck pulled a pipe from his shirt pocket, and a pouch from his back pocket. He filled the bowl of the briar with strings of thick-cut tobacco, tamped it down, and stuck his pouch back in his pocket. He dug out a box of wooden matches and struck one of them on the sandpaper side. He drew air through the stem while he held the flaming match to the tobacco. Smoke rose from the bowl and through the pipe stem. Schneck blew smoke out the side of his mouth.
Wagner was a short, stocky man in his late thirties with deep lines etched in his suntanned face. He wore a crumpled felt gray hat with a narrow brim and uncreased crown. A red neckerchief hid the wattles on his neck, but from there to his well-worn leather boots, he was all wire and muscle, as tough as a hickory knot. He was from Abilene, Kansas, but had roamed the West since boyhood as the child of a drummer who sold snake oil curatives in brown bottles for a dollar each.
“Seems to me, Otto, you didn’t make your message strong enough. Any man who’d die to protect a herd of sheep ain’t fit to live.”
“I can’t kill them all, Jim.”
Wagner fixed a baleful brown eye on Schneck.
“Maybe you’ve done kilt the wrong ones,” Wagner said.
“What do you mean by that?” Schneck asked.
Wagner cocked one leg up on the pommel of his saddle, the saddle horn in the crook of his knee. He spat a stream of honey-brown tobacco juice onto the ground.
“Well, with me it would be my saddle horse I’d hate to see kilt. With some men it’s their wives. With others it’s probably their kids. Every man has somethin’ he don’t want to lose, no matter what. If the barn’s on fire, I’m goin’ to drag out my best horse. If the house is afire, I got to make a choice, grab my baby girl or my old lady.”
“You’d save your baby, I think,” Schneck said, lost in the picture of the burning house and the screams of the woman and her child.
“Maybe,” Wagner said. “Tough choice, but if the kid gets burned, you still got your wife and she can give you more kids. You lose her and you got a kid to raise by yourself.”
“I see what you mean,” Schneck said.
“You kill all of Garaboxosa’s men and he can hire more. And you can’t rightly kill off all his sheep less’n you pour poison into their drinkin’ water. You do that and you spoil the water for yourself and your cows.”
“I see the logic of what you say, Jim. It might be hard to do.”
“You kill what a man holds most dear, you kill somethin’ inside him, that’s all I’m sayin’.”
Schneck took in a deep breath. His men left their women at home, their wives and girlfriends, and they didn’t bring whores to the grasslands. But the sheepherders brought their families with them. They were a lot like gypsies. And a lot like sheep, too. They took over land as if they owned it and left their buried trash and outhouse offal in holes where flies could breed and rats could thrive. To him, the sheepherders were a filthy bunch, and their flocks ruined the land and left it barren.
“Is that Garaboxosa feller married?” Wagner asked.
“I don’t know,” Schneck said. “But he’s the boss of those sheepherders.”
“Too bad. If he ain’t got nothin’ to lose, you can’t hurt him.” Schneck puffed on his briar pipe. He savored the aroma of the tobacco mingled with the scent of evergreens and cattle. He watched the smoke turn to tatters and drift off into nothingness against the backdrop of the snow-crowned peaks chiseled against the blue sky.
“I’ll have to give that some thought. He hired a man who’s raising hell with my men. Don’t know his name, but he shot and killed Rudolph.”
“I heard. I heard he was fast with a six-gun and that he bucked up against Hal Sweeney and LouDon Jackson.”
“He’s got balls,” Schneck said.
“Might be he’s the man to drop, then. If Gara-whatzisname hired him as a gunslinger. Maybe you get rid of him it would take the wind out of that Basque bastard’s sails.”
“You got a point, Jim. I have that man on my list anyway.”
“Maybe Hal and LouDon can take him down. They’re both pretty fair rifle shots.”
Wagner spat another stream of tobacco juice and returned his leg to the side of his horse. He slipped his boot into the stirrup as if he was ready to ride off and tend to his duties.
“The man to do it is Sorenson,” Schneck said. “But I’m not too sure of him.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Schneck said, “but I get the feeling he doesn’t want any part of this range war.”
“Is that what it is? A range war?”
“It’s shaping up that way, Jim.”
“They had some bloody ones up in Wyoming and Montana amongst sheepherders and cattlemen.”
“And in Utah and Idaho.”
“Who won them wars?” Wagner asked.
“The cattlemen,” Schneck said and laughed.
“Maybe history does repeat itself.”
“I aim to win this one,” Schneck said. “I’m just not real sure about Sorenson. He’s not one of us. I don’t trust him.”
“Well, Otto, seems to me you have a choice.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Put it to Sorenson. Straight out. Ask him if he’ll go after that gunslick and put his lamp out. If he says no, then get rid of him.”
“What if he goes over to the other side?”
Wagner turned his horse and spat tobacco onto a cow pie.
“Then, Snake, you got to kill him.”
“I reckon so,” Schneck said. “Too bad, too, because I really like that big Swede.”
“You can’t like a man if he ain’t worth trustin’, Otto.”
>
“True enough, Jim. I think I can no longer trust Sorenson.”
“I got to get to it, Boss. We got to drive some of this herd onto another valley or we’ll be up to our necks in hungry cattle by the end of the week.”
“Thanks, Jim. You’ve given me some food for thought.”
“Don’t choke on it, Otto,” Wagner said and kicked his roweled spurs into his horse’s flanks to put him into a gallop.
Schneck watched him ride off and looked around for the errant cow, but it had disappeared into the trees and was no longer making noise in the brush.
He knew he had decisions to make. Garaboxosa was not responding to his threats and had hired a gunslinger to fight his battles.
He needed a man to spy on the sheepherders, to find out who the gunslick was and whether or not Garaboxosa was married and had ties that could be used against him.
He needed a man who could hire on with the sheepherders and be his spy. It would have to be a clever man, a man who wasn’t afraid to be on the sly and tell him what he wanted to know.
Right now, he thought, Garaboxosa was short two men. It might be an opportune time to send a man down there to apply for a job as a sheepherder. Did he have such a man in his employ?
Schneck clamped his teeth down on his pipe. He did have such a man working for him. He might be perfect for the job. The man was a Mexican and a damned good wrangler. Surely the Basque bastard could use such a man.
He rammed spurs into his horse’s flanks and trotted across the valley. He headed for the stables. That’s where he would find the man he had in mind to hire on with the sheepherders and tell him what he wanted to know.
The day began to seem a little brighter to Schneck. He had a plan, and he would win this war.
By hook or by crook.
THIRTEEN
Brad looked down on the cow camp from the ridge. He had ridden there in the dark and found a place that offered concealment and a good view of the structure that served as a stable for the horses and mules. Ginger was ground-tied some two hundred yards away and Brad was on foot, with a pair of binoculars slung around his neck.
He watched as riders rode out and relieved the men on night herd, saw the smoke from the chuck wagon as the cook prepared breakfast and coffee. Men wandered out in the predawn light from their log huts and relieved themselves. Voices, low-pitched with garbled parts of words and sentences, drifted up to him. He listened to the moans of cattle and the snorting whickers of horses, the braying of a mule.
Pale morning light inched through the trees around him. It crawled up the trunks of the pines and made the needles shimmer with a brilliant green glow. The valley hovered in shadow like a gray lake, and the cattle were stiff statues in mottled brown and white. Shadows moved among the log huts and there were noises in the stable.
After a time, a lone rider emerged from the deep shadows and headed for the timbered ridge. Brad put the binoculars on him and saw that it was Thor Sorenson. Brad shivered in his buckskins as the rising sun drew the cold from the ground, chilling the air around him. He put the binoculars in their case and waited until Sorenson reached the shelf and disappeared into the timber. Then he walked back to his horse, stuck the binoculars in a saddlebag, and mounted Ginger.
He rode Ginger slowly, almost noiselessly. The tracks of Sorenson’s horse were easy to follow. The hooves left streaks in the dew-wet tapestry of the forest, and the left hind foot dragged slightly, turning over fallen pine needles and upsetting desiccated pinecones so that their dried sides flashed up at him like out of place articles in a neatly organized drawer full of knickknacks. He kept Ginger at a pace that would allow Sorenson to stay ahead of him if he didn’t stop or dawdle. He wondered where the Swede was going, because the timber thinned out, and he suspected they were going to run out of ridge right soon.
The shelf began to slope, and Brad knew that the ridge would descend into what might be another valley. There were few pine trees, and the scrub pines that remained were stunted by wind and hard weather, snow and rain. The trail he was following might have been a sheep trail at one time. It was very narrow and faded as if it had not been used by animals in some time. So the trail probably did not lead to water but had been used as a kind of portage route by sheep in single file.
As he reached more open ground, he caught a glimpse of Sorenson some three or four hundred yards ahead of him, descending along a ridge spine. Beyond, he saw a long wide valley bristling with young shoots of green grass that seemed to have no end to it. It lay in a huge bowl formed by a ring of young mountains that jutted up in a succession of limestone walls that gave it the look of an immense fortress. He saw a hawk floating above the rimrock as graceful as an aerial dancer in slow motion, its wings rising and falling in currents of air, the tips of its feathers like fingers twisting and turning to stabilize its flight, while its feathered tail twitched from one side to the other in order to correct its course.
Moments later, near the floor of the valley, Brad lost sight of Sorenson. He felt a tug of hesitation in his mind and hauled in on Ginger’s reins. The horse stopped, and the hawk folded his wings and sank in a steep dive toward the rimrock.
Sorenson was gone, and Brad didn’t know if he had stopped or turned to the right or to the left. He waited and listened. He wet his right index finger and held it up to see from which direction the breeze blew. Straight toward him, out of the valley.
If Sorenson’s horse was moving, there would have been sounds. The ground on the spine was hard from the constant breezes and winds. There was no trace of snow on the valley floor. He expected to see a mule deer or two, or perhaps a small herd of elk, but there was only a long emptiness with a greenish hue where the grass must have been over an inch high. The high bluffs offered protection from heavy snows and blistering winds, so the grass at that elevation had more of a head start than other places he had seen.
He waited a while longer, wondering if he would see Sorenson reappear in the valley. But he did not. He weighed the options in his mind. A man might turn left as a natural direction to change course. But he also might turn to the right just to fool anyone who might be tracking him.
How smart was Sorenson? Brad wondered.
Did the man know he was being followed? Some men could sense beyond their natural senses and know if there was a bear or a cougar stalking his track. Sorenson might be such a man. Brad knew that he was himself, especially when he was keyed up in a strange place where he did not know the country or the lay of the land. He was also attuned to danger when he even suspected that someone or something might be following him.
Perhaps Sorenson, the woodsman, was such a man.
Brad turned Ginger to the right and gently nudged him in the flanks with his spurs. The horse turned, and Brad let him pick his way over hard rocky ground, reining him over to avoid brushing against the bushes or trees. The pace was such that in a race with a snail, Ginger would have lost.
Ginger’s forelegs stiffened as the ground grew steeper. The horse and its rider descended at a more rapid rate through scrub brush and washouts littered with pebbles and sand.
He halted the horse again to listen. The valley floor was only a few yards away. He should have seen Sorenson if he had continued to drop down to the flat. There was no sign of the man.
Sorenson had turned then.
Right or left?
Brad looked off to the right and then to the left. There wasn’t a sign of either a horse or a man. The breeze made a soft sound in the windblown trees and whispers in the brush around him. The air seemed to scream of emptiness and silence as if he were hearing a woman sob softly in a faraway room on a bleak Sunday afternoon.
There was just nothing to see or hear.
Perhaps, he thought, he should return to the trail and track Sorenson once again.
But where could the man have gone?
Up or down? Right or left?
Or straight down into a hidden arroyo.
Certainly not straight up into thin ai
r.
Brad almost laughed at his own wild thoughts. But he was trying to decide how Sorenson could have eluded him so easily.
He studied the valley and turned his head to look back up at the wide slope that descended from the ridge. There were few places to hide, even if Sorenson was a small man and even if he’d been riding a pony instead of a horse.
There were tents in the slope, but these were small fissures where melted snow and heavy rains had plowed furrows into the earth. None of them was deep enough to swallow a big man on a big horse.
He rode on and downward, puzzled as he had seldom been before.
Then he heard a noise and saw a horse, Sorenson’s horse, rise up from an elk wallow and shake the dust from its hide and saddle.
Sorenson stood up, covered with dust, and waved at Brad.
“Glad it’s you, Storm,” Sorenson said.
“How did you do that?” Brad asked, a look of bewilderment on his face.
Sorenson walked toward him, leading his sorrel. He patted dust from his shirt and trousers, but there was a patina of fine silt still on his face.
“I trained Monty here to lie down,” Sorenson said. “He can do other tricks as well.”
“You sure as hell fooled me.”
Brad climbed out of the saddle, and the two men stood face-to-face less than a yard apart.
“Wasn’t sure who it was. I thought maybe Snake might have sent a man to follow me, maybe put me down.”
“Oh, is, ah, Snake, on the outs with you, Thor?”
“He probably is. I’m not one of his cowpokes, and I think he might want me to do some illegal gun work. I let him know that I was only interested in scouting for him. He wasn’t too happy with me.”
“But you’re still working for him, right?”
“I am, but Snake is up to something. He’s got something in his craw. He left real early this morning to talk with his foreman, Wagner. He relies on Wagner for advice, and Wagner’s as cold inside as they come. His pa was a snake oil salesman and Jim, that’s his given name, ran off and joined up with Quantrill’s Raiders. So that boy has been to Kansas and left a lot of spilled blood in at least two states.”
Snake Eyes (9781101552469) Page 7
