Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
SNAKE FAST, COYOTE MEAN
“You don’t want this, Shardeen,” Sheriff Martin said.
Shardeen gave him an arrogant little smile. “Yeah, I do want it,” he said.
The lawman was so nervous that he telegraphed when he was going to make his move by narrowing the corners of his eyes. The glint of light in his pupils gave way to resignation. Martin lost the contest even before it began.
The sheriff started for his gun.
The arrogant sneer never left Shardeen’s face. He was snake fast, and he had his pistol out and cocked before Martin could clear his holster. When Martin saw how badly he was beaten, he let go of his pistol and it slid back into the holster. At that moment Shardeen fired, his gun spitting out a finger of flame six inches long.
“Bastardo!” the deputy yelled as he pulled his own pistol.
Shardeen’s gun roared a second time. Ernesto, like Sheriff Martin, was unable to get off a shot. As the smoke drifted up to the ceiling Shardeen stood there, his gun still in hand, the arrogant smile still on his face.
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
First Printing, May 2002
Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2002 Map copyright © L. A. Hensley
All rights reserved
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THE
ALAMOSA
TRAIL
Chapter 1
It was a brisk January morning. At cock’s crow, Jim Robison came out of the bunkhouse with his ash-blond hair tousled and his blue eyes still filled with sleep. He went into the barn and came back out a moment later leading a team of horses over to a wagon. The horses, not at all happy to be taken from their warm stalls, jerked their heads up and down as Jim began slipping on their harnesses. Vapor clouds billowed from the mouths and nostrils of both horse and man.
Jim was six feet tall, a little larger than the average cowboy. He was older, too, in fact—at thirty-nine, he was the oldest cowboy on the ranch. But being a cowboy was a job he loved, and because he loved it, he never complained about any of it. Neither the blistering heat of summer nor the bitter cold of winter seemed to bother him. Hard work suited him, and he actually enjoyed the long, lonely hours of nighthawk or riding fence line.
“Be nice, horses,” Jim told the skittish team. “Stand still.”
As if understanding his words, the horses calmed down and stood quietly until he had them hitched to the wagon.
The sun, bloodred and not yet painful to the eyes, rested just on top of a hundred-foot spire of rock known as Caleb’s Needle, several miles to the east. Though there were no discernible clouds in the sky, there was a rather odd haze over everything. Between Caleb’s Needle and the bunkhouse lay the sixty-five thousand acres of Trailback Ranch. The borders of Trailback encompassed some of the best rangeland in the country. It was irrigated by the Wahite River, a stream of water that shimmered in the morning sun like a twisting strand of molten gold.
The bunkhouse was part of a compound in the middle of that ranch, which also consisted of a cookhouse, a smokehouse, a barn and corral, a granary, a machine shed, and an unpainted outhouse for the cowboys. A two-story, white-frame Gothic main house, complete with turrets, dormers, a big bay window, a screened-in porch, and a painted outhouse, sat opposite the bunkhouse, and between them was a two-and-a-half-acre garden. In the corral, a windmill pumped water into the trough for the livestock. The cookhouse and kitchen of the main house had their own hand pumps.
Finishing with the team, Jim went into the cookhouse and came back out carrying a sandwich of biscuit and bacon for his trip. Walking over to the wagon, he put the little lunch packet on the seat, then climbed aboard and picked up the reins. That was when he heard someone coming out of the bunkhouse. Looking toward the sound, he saw Cal Norton and his cousin Frankie Ford just heading for breakfast.
“Damn, Jim, you mean you ain’t left yet?” Cal asked, still tucking his shirt into his pants.
“I’m leaving right now. I’ll be back by noon.”
“Ha! That is, if you don’t get tangled up with the Dog Woman,” Cal said.
“Well, I’ll just have to do my best to resist her charms,” Jim replied, snapping the reins over the backs of the team.
“I’d like to see the day my cousin had anything to do with the Dog Woman,” Frankie said. “Why do you think Mr. Brookline sends him to town instead of one of us?”
Angus Brookline was the manager of Trailback Ranch. The owners were a group of English businessmen, none of whom had ever even been to America. For them, Trailback was just a business proposition.
“ ’Cause me ’n’ you’ve not to go out to the north range today?” Cal answered.
“Wrong,” Frankie replied. “It’s because when Jim goes to town he doesn’t get into trouble.”
Frankie was right about why Brookline chose Jim to make the supply run. Cal had gotten liquored up his last time in town. Then he picked a fight with the town constable and was thrown in jail. That little episode cost Brookline fifteen dollars, the price of Cal’s fine.
By contrast, when Jim was sent, he went straight to the store, picked up the supplies, and came straight back. Impressed by his efficiency, Brookline announced to everyone that from then on only Jim would be allowed to go into town for supplies. But since the other cowboys on the ranch assumed that Jim took no pleasure in the trip, they didn’t actually resent the fact that he could go and they couldn’t. They had had their fun, and if they were paying t
he price now, they figured it was worth it.
The trip into town would take about an hour and a half, but Jim didn’t mind. Like riding fence, he enjoyed the solitude. Also, the rutted road ran through some of the most spectacular scenery in the country.
As Jim sat on the wagon seat, he could almost feel the weather growing colder. He found that odd, because normally it would get warmer toward the middle of the day, and he had expected it would do so today. In fact, the morning had started warmer than usual so he left his sheepskin coat back in the bunkhouse, choosing to wear a light denim jacket instead.
Now the haze Jim had noticed earlier in the morning was beginning to build into clouds to the west. The high, puffy clouds had started out white, but were now turning gray. He wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t encounter a little snow before he got back. He wished now that he had worn his sheepskin coat.
The rutted road abruptly became the main street of the small town of Buffington. There were only nine buildings in the entire town, and Proffer’s General Store was nearly as big as the other eight structures combined. That was because Dennis Proffer kept enlarging his establishment.
Starting out with a store, Proffer had built a small addition to house a bar, another for a bar bershop, then two rooms out back to provide the only thing Buffington had in the way of a hotel. The result was a rambling, unpainted wooden building that stretched and leaned and bulged and sagged until it looked as if the slightest puff of wind might blow it down.
Proffer was sweeping the porch when Jim stopped the wagon out front. A large balding man with a graying beard, Proffer was wearing an apron that might have been white at one time. As the wagon drew to a stop, Proffer smiled broadly at Jim. A nondescript yellow dog was sleeping on the front porch. The dog was so secure in his surroundings that he did nothing more than open his eyes briefly as Jim arrived.
“Hello, Jim. How are things out at Trailback?”
“Fine, Dennis, just fine,” Jim answered. He set the wagon’s brake and tied off the reins, then reached into his shirt pocket. “I have a list of things we need.”
“Seems to me like you was the one who come for supplies the last time,” Proffer said.
“That’s right.”
Proffer scratched his beard and looked back to the east, as if looking for someone else.
“Yeah, well, the thing is, I was sort of expectin’ maybe Cal or one of the other boys would come on this trip.”
Jim laughed. “Brookline said he wasn’t going to send them anymore because they got drunk and raised a ruckus last time.”
“Ah, it was nothin’,” Proffer said with a wave of his hand. “Just a couple of boys havin’ a good time is all. What’s the harm? And they spent good money with me.” He sighed. “Well, never mind. Come on in and I’ll start filling the order.”
Jim stepped up on the porch, then looked toward the west again. Proffer stopped and looked with him.
“Yeah,” Proffer said. “I been lookin’ at that too. What with the clouds lookin’ like that, and the way the temperature’s been droppin’ all mornin’, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t get a little snow.”
“Hope I can get back before it moves in,” Jim said.
Jim leaned down and patted the dog’s head, then followed Proffer inside. The interior of the store was dappled by patterns of shadow and light. Some of the light came through the door, but most of it was in the form of gleaming dust motes illuminated by bars of sunbeams stabbing through cracks between the boards.
Proffer’s cleaning woman, and part-time whore, was on her hands and knees in the back of the store, using a pail of water and a stiff brush to scrub the floor. She was called the “Dog Woman” by all the cowboys because she had spent three years as a captive of the Chey enne Dog Soldiers. Her real name was Anna Polla. She looked up at Jim and brushed a strand of pale brown hair back from her forehead. Her eyes were gray and one of them tended to cross, and when she smiled, there was a gap where one tooth had been knocked out by a drunken Indian. Cal had once said of her, “She’s so ugly she’d make a train take five miles of dirt road. But she’s the only whore within fifty miles, so she’s all we got.”
“Did you come by yourself?” Dog Woman asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s too bad. I was hopin’ Cal or one of the others woulda come today.” Shoving the pail to one side, she got to her feet, revealing that she had tied up her skirt to keep from getting it wet. That action exposed her legs all the way above her knees almost to the bottom line of her bloomers.
“Anna, for God’s sake, leave the man alone,” Proffer said. “Don’t you know he ain’t interested in that?”
“I’m just tryin’ to get him interested in buyin’ me a drink is all,” Anna countered.
Jim chuckled, then walked over to put a coin down on the bar. “Give Miss Polla a drink, Dennis.”
“And you don’t want nothin’ for it?” Anna asked.
“Just to see you smile, is all,” Jim said.
Anna’s mouth spread into a wide broken smile. “You’re a real gentleman, you are,” she said.
It took no more than fifteen minutes for Jim’s order to be filled, and by the time he got back to the wagon, the temperature had fallen several more degrees. His denim jacket was totally inadequate against the sudden chill.
“Jim,” Proffer called from the door of his store. “Maybe you better take this.” Proffer held out a buffalo robe. “No more’n you got on now an’ you’re likely to freeze to death before you get home.”
“Thanks, Dennis. I’ll bring it back next time I come.”
Jim wrapped himself in the robe and started back to the ranch. The snow began falling before he reached the edge of town.
Frankie and Cal were in the north canyon looking for straying cattle when the snow started coming down. The flakes were huge, and they were coming down with such intensity that visibility was cut down to no more than ten or twenty feet.
“Will you look at this snow?” Frankie said. “Cal, you ever seen snow like this?”
“Snow is snow,” Cal said. He pointed toward a draw. “We’d better check up in there.”
“No larger’n that draw is, even if there are cows in there, it couldn’t be more than half a dozen or so,” Frankie complained. “And the way I look at it, if they’ve found themselves some shelter from this snow, I say, let ’em keep it.”
Cal shook his head. “We can’t do that,” he said. “If the snow closes up the canyon and traps the cows up here, they’ll starve to death.”
“Yeah? Well, let me ask you this, Cal. Have you thought about what might happen to us if the snow closes up the canyon and traps us? The cows are dumb animals and don’t know no better, but we do.”
“It’s our job,” Cal replied, as if that explained everything.
As the men pushed on, the horses kept trying to turn their backs to the driving sleet, so both Frankie and Cal had to dismount and lead their animals. But by now the snow was really beginning to pile up, and they moved on as best they could, plunging into drifts that were sometimes knee-deep, urging their horses on. The men moved to the side of the horses, feeling somewhat guilty about keeping the poor creatures between them and the wind.
“Cal, we need to start back,” Frankie said. He had to yell to be heard over the howl of the wind. “Even if we do find any cows in here, there’s nothing we can do about them.”
“Yeah,” Cal answered. “Yeah, all right, we’ll start back.”
They turned around, then stopped. The snow was falling so hard now that they could barely see, and the ground around them was completely white.
“Which way is back?” Frankie asked.
“That way,” Cal said, pointing.
“You sure? Feels more like that way, to me,” Frankie said, pointing in a direction that was about forty-five degrees off from where Cal had pointed.
“You think it’s there. I think it’s here. Let’s split the difference and go this way,” Cal sugg
ested.
“All right.”
The two men started back. For more than an hour they beat their way against the blizzard and the bitter cold.
“Frankie,” Cal said. His voice was weak and thin, and Frankie could barely hear him above the banshee howl of the wind.
“What is it?”
“I ain’t goin’ to make it,” Cal said. He stopped and leaned against the side of his horse, breathing heavily. “You go on without me.”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere without you,” Frankie replied.
“I’m just holdin’ you up here,” Cal said. “If you stay here with me, you’re goin’ to freeze to death. I’m tellin’ you, go on without me.”
“No,” Frankie said. “We’ll stay here a while until you get your breath back. But I’m not leaving you here.”
Jim Robison made it three-quarters of the way back to the ranch before the road became totally impassable. The wagon was no longer a vehicle that achieved its motion by rolling on wheels. Instead, it was an inefficient sled. The team could get through, but the snow was so deep that as the horses pulled, the wagon would push the snow in front, piling it up into a huge, impenetrable wall.
Finally, Jim felt that he had no choice but to abandon the wagon. Unhitching the team, he left the wagon behind. Then, wrapping the buffalo robe around him as best he could, he held on to the tail of one of the horses, and urged them ahead.
Traveling was still difficult for the team, but less arduous than it had been when they were pulling the wagon. And as the horses walked, they cut a path through the snow, which made it somewhat easier for Jim to walk.
“Let’s go home, horses,” he said. Then, trusting in the horses’ ability to find their way back, he hung on to the tail of one of them and followed, step by foot-weary step, moving almost as if in his sleep, as the team plodded on.
The Alamosa Trail Page 1
