Open Range

by Lauran Paine

  Charley said nothing.

  It was cold, which it always was before dawn, even in central New Mexico. And if they held to their present course with the cattle of north-by-northwest, they would eventually get up into higher country where, regardless of how hot the days were, the nights were never warm.

  Charley had half expected to find Mose in camp this morning. Maybe it was more a hope than an expectation. Now, with the first hint of sunrise along the horizon, he was genuinely worried.

  But he leashed his imagination and thought only of something innocuous like a lame horse or maybe Mose’s bedding down and oversleeping after visiting a town.

  They aimed in the direction instinct told them would be the proper course and held to it until sunrise. Then they quartered, each man making an individual wide sashay until Boss found what they sought and stood in his stirrups to wave with his hat.

  Charley approached at a lope. Boss pointed to the single set of shod-horse tracks with one hand while reaching with the other to unbutton the topmost part of his coat.

  They chewed jerky as they followed the tracks. With the sun climbing, Charley veered off to look for a second set of tracks. They would mean that Mose had passed them in the darkness on his way to the wagoncamp.

  He did not find another set. In fact, he did not find any horse sign at all, shod or unshod. He saw pronghorn tracks, which looked a lot like goat tracks, and he found a soft place in a swale where wolves had left their marks while moving straight northward. If a wolf had a lick of sense he’d never let daylight catch him out in open country.

  They halted at noon to let the horses crop grass while they hunkered and smoked. Boss had been getting less communicative for the last couple of hours. He did not speak now when he held out a sputtering sulfur match to light their smokes.

  Charley said, “If we pick up the gait this afternoon, by late evenin’ we’d ought to be able to see rooftops.”

  Boss smoked, squinted into the distance, and said nothing. Later, when they were mounting, Boss finally spoke. “If he never got clear of that town, Charley, it’d be a safe bet he ran into trouble.”

  Charley Waite knew exactly what kind of trouble his companion was thinking about. “Let’s wait until we’ve covered another few miles before makin’ guesses.”

  They loped, walked for a mile or two, then loped again. There was no danger of losing the tracks. If it hadn’t rained a week earlier they would have to ride more slowly now to hunt for sign. Something, anyway, was in their favor.

  If they’d had an idea they would have to ride the full distance to that town when they’d left the wagon, they would have covered more ground earlier.

  With afternoon advancing they made an effort to correct that mistake. But they still did not see rooftops before dusk, even though they could tell by the faint smoke scent coming out to them from kitchen stoves that they were not very far out.

  Finally they could see lamplight. This was irregular at first, coming from scattered homes. Closer, they saw a solid rank of lights where the town’s main roadway lay.

  They had no idea what the place was called until they rode up onto a washboardy roadbed and turned southeasterly in the direction of those lights and encountered a faded old sign that said Harmonville. The sign at one time had also given the population, but a shotgun blast had since obliterated that piece of the sign.

  They rode down the middle of Main Street, the only movement the full length of the road. There was activity at a saloon on the east side of the road, and nearly opposite but a few doors southward there was more activity where someone had established a cardroom and poolhall.

  Nearly all the stores were locked up for the night, windows dark and steel shutters in place. Three horses dozed in front of the jailhouse. Light shone from two narrow, barred windows.

  They rode down to the livery barn, piled off, handed over their reins, and when the nightman, old, thin as a snake, with milky whiteness to his eyes, asked if they figured to stay in town all night, Boss’s reply was curt. “No longer’n it takes for us to find what we come for, friend.”

  The old man, almost ghostly beneath a hanging coal-oil lantern with a sooted glass mantle, had another question. “Maybe I can help, gents. Who is it you’re lookin’ for? I know everyone in town and for miles beyond, because I been here since Harmonville was called Fort Harmon an’ there was soldiers to chase off the consarned In’ians.”

  Boss and Charley studied the old man. He seemed to want to be genuinely helpful. He also seemed so frail that a light wind would carry him away. Boss said, “A big feller. Real big, needin’ a haircut, about twenty-five.”

  The old man gazed steadily at Boss for a long time without parting his lips. He looked them both up and down. “Yeah, I know who you’re talkin’ about. Looked like he’d been livin’ out of his saddlebags most of his life. Got some scars on his face.”

  “You know where we can find him?” Charley asked.

  The old man knew. “Up yonder in the jail-house.”

  “What’d he do to get in there?”

  “I wasn’t there so I can’t say exactly what happened, but the story is that some range cattlemen started in on him at the general store, and he hurt three of ’em before Marshal Poole come up in back and hit him over the head with his gunbarrel.”

  The old man paused, his milky gaze sliding from Spearman to Waite. “Doc Barlow patched him up . . . Does he ride with you gents?”

  Boss nodded his head.

  The old man said, “Mister, I can tell you one thing maybe you’d ought to know. Folks in the Fort Harmon country hate freegrazers worse’n they used to hate In’ians. You might want to bear that in mind when you’re talking to the town marshal.”

  Chapter Four

  The First Warning

  By the time they got up to the jailhouse, only one of the tethered horses was still dozing at the tie-rack out front. When they entered, a long-legged, lean man with sandy hair and testy eyes turned from filling two cups with coffee at the woodstove to stare at them. He had a five-pointed star on his vest.

  The other man was heavyset and slouching in a chair as though he’d been relaxing there for some time. He was older than the town marshal, in his late fifties or early sixties. His face was round, ruddy, and beard-stubbled. He showed no expression as he stared at Boss and Charley. Neither did the lawman until Boss said, “Evening, gents. My name’s Spearman. This here is Charley Waite.”

  Neither man spoke. The marshal turned back to filling the cups, handed one to the heavyset man, and took the other one over to a desk chair with him. He said, “I’m Al Poole, town marshal. This is Denton Baxter. He ranches north of town near the foothills. What can I do for you?”

  Marshal Poole did not ask his visitors to be seated. Charley Waite got the impression that both Poole and Baxter not only knew who he and Boss were, but had not been surprised when they had walked into the jailhouse office.

  Evidently, Boss had the same feeling, or else he sensed hostility, because he remained standing, thumbs hooked into his shell belt, as he spoke bluntly. “Down at the livery barn they told us you have a friend of ours in your cells. His name is Mose Harrison.”

  Denton Baxter’s eyes never left Boss; his face remained expressionless. Marshal Poole put his coffee cup aside when he spoke. “Yeah. I got him here. He started a fight in the general store.”

  Boss wagged his head. “Mose don’t start fights. He just finishes ’em.”

  Poole looked hard at Spearman. “I said he started it and you said he didn’t. That sounds maybe like you’re calling me a liar.”

  Charley could see Boss’s shoulders straightening, and he spoke before Boss could. “Is he hurt, marshal?”

  Poole’s gaze drifted to Charley. “He got hit over the head. I had the town doctor patch him up. Right now he’s sleeping. When he wakes up he’ll have a headache. Otherwise he seemed all right to me.”

  Boss’s face was reddening as he stared downward at the seated lawman. He knew
exactly what was behind this; he’d had this and other forms of harassment since he’d entered New Mexico from Texas. But he did not mention what he knew. Instead he said, “You got a charge against him, marshal?”

  Poole deliberately sipped coffee before replying. “Yeah. Incitin’ to fight. Disturbin’ the peace. You want him back, Mister Spearman?”

  “Yes.”

  For the first time both the seated men showed something in their faces, the hint of a cold smile. Al Poole nodded very slowly without taking his eyes off Boss. “All right. You pay the fines an’ you can have him. Hundred dollars for fightin’. Hundred dollars for disturbin’ the peace. How’s that sound to you?”

  Boss’s answer was sharp. “Like highway robbery.” His voice had a deadly soft tone.

  Charley braced. Marshal Poole’s eyes didn’t change, but his wide mouth drew out flat as he leaned to arise. The older man spoke for the first time, ignoring Poole’s obvious quick-rising temper. He did not raise his voice as he said, “It’s a lot of money, ain’t it? Maybe we can figure something out. There’s always two sides to everything.” He waved a thick, work-callused hand in the direction of the stove. “Have a cup of coffee, Mister Spearman.”

  Boss did not move.

  Baxter put the hand back in his lap. “Your man’s horse is down at the public corrals. His rig’s at the livery barn. You can take him with you when you leave town tonight. An’ first thing in the morning you hitch up your wagon, get your damned freegrazing cattle moving, and keep ’em moving until you’re out of the Fort Harmon country.”

  Seconds passed as Boss stared at the slouching older man. He had known what was behind all this the moment that scarecrow down at the livery barn told him what happened to Mose. Established cowmen, and most townsmen as well, were hostile to the kind of cattlemen Boss Spearman represented, because their cattle grazed through a country and kept going, leaving behind for local ranchers eaten-off grass. What the livery barn nightman said had been becoming increasingly prevalent over the years: freegrazers were no longer predominant, as other stockmen had taken up land, settled in, and—whether they had legal right or not—staked claims to vast grazing areas that they had used to build up extensive ranches.

  What Boss had said to Charley only a day or two earlier during their discussion of Button’s future had been based on his knowledge that the freegraze method of drifting cattle over open range, owning no land, simply using it, was becoming increasingly unpopular among livestock men. There had been out-and-out battles between established cowmen and freegrazers. Both Boss and Charley had been through a few of those confrontations.

  Boss stood gazing at the slouching, heavyset man, who met his stare without blinking. Obviously, Denton Baxter, who appeared to own Town Marshal Poole, was not just a power in the Fort Harmon country, but was also one of those ranchers whose opposition to freegrazers was deep and unalterable.

  As the two older men confronted each other in silence, Marshal Poole made a drawling comment to Spearman. “Times change. Most folks manage to change with them. A few holdouts never do. Mister Spearman, we knew when you grazed into our territory, an’ we know what you been doing since you set up your wagoncamp out yonder. What we been waiting for is to see you strike camp and move on. You haven’t done it.”

  Denton Baxter quietly said, “He will, marshal. Mister Spearman looks like a reasonable man to me. Why don’t you go see if his rider’s able to ride? If he is, fetch him up here so these gents can get back to their camp.”

  After the lanky, rawboned marshal had taken his key ring and gone down into the cellroom, Denton Baxter shifted in his chair, showed a smile, and said, “Have some coffee, gents. It’ll be a long ride back in the cold.”

  When he finished speaking, Denton heaved up out of his chair and went to the stove to refill his own cup. He turned around and stood wide-legged, no longer smiling, tawny eyes fixed on Boss Spearman. “Three years ago a freegraze outfit come into the country up along the foothills where I own land and run cattle. Something happened one night. Their cattle got stampeded all over the countryside, their wagon caught fire while they was out tryin’ to find their cattle, an’ when one of them boys was ridin’ a rim he got shot off his horse in the dusk.” Baxter drank half his coffee before continuing. “Three days later they was gone with what cattle they’d found.”

  Baxter went back to his chair and sat down holding his half-empty cup. When Marshal Poole came up out of the cellroom herding a puffy-faced, bruised, and shuffling Mose Harrison, Baxter went to the marshal’s desk, produced a bottle of whiskey, poured a cup, and handed it to Mose.

  Boss and Charley were shocked at Mose’s appearance. He hadn’t just been hit over the head but kicked and beaten too. He took the whiskey to a bench and sat down as he forced an ill smile at Boss and Charley. He drank, blew out a fiery breath, and finally spoke. “Glad to see you. I’d like to get back to camp.”

  Boss Spearman turned a cold look at Marshal Poole. “Looks like someone put the boots to him after he was down.”

  Poole said, “Does it?” He tossed a worn old shell belt and holstered Colt atop the desk. “Take ’em with you, Mister Spearman. You’ll be too busy getting under way to come back to Harmonville, I expect, and that’ll be just fine. There won’t be no more trouble.”

  They left the office with Mose between them, walking in the direction of the livery barn. Mose said nothing. He had a large bandage beneath his old hat, his gaze was dull, and his attitude was indifferent. They got him astride under the solemn gaze of that milky-eyed old nighthawk and adjusted the croaker sacks full of provision. He rode up through Harmonville between Boss and Charley. Two men leaning out front of the jail-house watched him depart from town with his friends, then they strolled in the direction of the town saloon.

  The night was cold, but moonlight made visibility better than it had been when Spearman and Waite had first left the wagoncamp.

  Mose did not say ten words the full distance back, and until the effects of the whiskey wore off an hour or so after sunrise, he seemed almost normal.

  An hour or so before they had camp in sight, he started to sag in the saddle. With his condition deteriorating from that point on, Boss and Charley had to support him on his horse.

  Button was nowhere around when they reached the wagon. They helped Mose down and guided him to canvas shade behind the wagon, where they settled him on his blankets, removed his hat and boots, and went back to care for the horses. Charley said, “I wonder how many of those bastards it took to do that.”

  Boss’s stone-set lips did not part. He methodically hobbled the horse, removed his outfit, waited until Charley was ready, then led the way back to the wagon, with saddle, bridle, and blanket over one shoulder.

  Mose was sleeping soundly.

  They upended their outfits in the shade and emptied the croaker sacks, made a little fire to cook by, and were finishing their coffee when Button returned in a loose lope. He had seen the rising smoke of their fire. When he strode toward the wagon and saw Mose’s bandaged head, discolored, swollen, sweaty face, he stopped in his tracks. Charley got him untracked.

  “Have some coffee, made fresh for a change. Where you been?”

  Button came up and sat on the ground, still staring at Mose. “What happened to him?”

  Charley waited for Boss to reply. “He run into a little trouble in that town.”

  “Looks like more’n a little trouble,” Button said, filling a cup with coffee. After a while he asked Boss a question that indicated he had sorted through possibilities to arrive at the correct one. “Are we goin’ to move on?”

  Spearman tossed wet grounds into the little fire before replying. “We always do, don’t we, once we’ve grazed off a place?”

  Charley watched Boss get to his feet and walk over to where Mose was sleeping, his back to the fire. Button started to speak, but Charley held up a silencing hand until Boss walked up toward the front of the wagon to roll a smoke and lean in thought. Then Charley sa
id, “Don’t ask questions. Just leave things be for a while.”

  Button looked into his coffee cup. “There was three riders scoutin’ up the herd this morning. I didn’t see ’em arrive. I was siftin’ through lookin’ for hung-up calvy cows when I noticed some of the critters starin’ out there. And there they was, sitting maybe a half mile out. Just sittin’ out there looking at the cattle. We’re in for it again, aren’t we?”

  Charley dumped grounds from his tin cup and tossed the cup toward the grub box. It landed inside and rattled other tin utensils. The sharp noise made Mose groan and flinch in his sleep.

  Charley Waite, who was a thoughtful man, rarely hasty about anything including judgments or decisions, answered Button slowly while gazing at their badly beaten friend. “Yeah, we’re in for it again, unless we head out within the next day or two.” Charley watched the gangling youth’s expression grow troubled. He made a poor effort to be cheerful. “About time to move on anyway, isn’t it?”

  Button’s gaze came up slowly. “How many did it take? Charley, they don’t own this land, do they? Well then, what right they got to beat a man like that because he rides with an outfit that’s got as much right to graze over it?”

  Mose was awake and thirsty. Charley got a canteen and knelt to hold it for him, but Mose’s strength was returning; he held the canteen without assistance and drank deeply, handed the canteen back, and raised a swollen hand to gingerly explore the bandage and ask who had put it up there.

  “Some doctor down in Harmonville,” Charley replied. “Looks like a real professional job, Mose.”

  Mose saw Button staring, and smiled. “It’s nothing. Hell, I been hurt worse than this and didn’t even stop talking. Button, how’d things go out here?”

  “Pretty much like always. Damned horses drifted like they usually do. Mose, you look—”

  “Like you’re picking up,” Charley said, cutting in swiftly. “How about something to eat?”