Sam had a certain admiration for Joel but here he was suggesting out and out cheating which Sam had conceded to before up in Fort Worth with disastrous results. That was one of the reasons he had come to San Antonio, to get away from the crooks and the fixed races, to get a fresh start. "Would there be any other way?" he asked timidly.
A faint smiled crossed Joel’s face. "Sure. Jenny could most likely win the race and pick up some purse money, that’s if we could even get sponsors for the purse. The newness has worn off and sponsors are wary. Racing for a purse is chicken feed compared to what could be made by placing our bets correctly."
Sam nodded at the logic then spent five minutes telling Joel of the mysterious man in Fort Worth, of the offer, the subsequent race and the death of the man and – of course – the money that was never delivered.
Joel listened until Sam had finished and then shrugged. "You can get burned in this business, if you don’t know who you’re dealing with. This is different," he cajoled. "We’re partners now and we’ll share equally, gains or losses. I believe that you would not object to making some good money even if it means doing something others aren’t aware of. All we have to do is to put our money on the winning horse.
Sam did not take offense at that but thought he spotted a problem. "Betting on the other horse would seem a little obvious," he reasoned.
Joel came right back. "Oh, you and I wouldn’t bet against our own horse. I’d get Skeeter to do that for us. He’s good for things like that. We’ll put a token bet on Jenny so that everything appears legit."
Sam nodded uneasily. It made his gut roll, but with Joel’s assurance, he decided to go along with the plan.
For the next few days Sam devoted his time to pampering Jenny, seeing that she got new shoes, a workout each day followed by rubdowns and measured grain. Joel busied himself setting up the race and soliciting for prize money. This had to look good, he figured, so he went about his activities with the same fervor as the first race.
Five days later the race was held on a bright sunny afternoon with the same horses due to run the same half mile distance. Joel had hawked it as a rematch grudge race. Skeeter had no problem getting all the money he offered to bet on the bay covered as smug bettors put their money on Jenny.
This second race started out the same as the first one. The roan, Lightning, jumped to a fast start with Jenny second and the bay trailing close behind. At the halfway mark, Sam urged Jenny past Lightning with the bay a little closer this time. A shouting crowd watched then groaned and cussed loudly when the bay nosed out Jenny at the finish line with the roan a now distant third. The race had gone exactly as Joel had predicted.
Afterwards Joel, Sam, and Skeeter met in Joel’s room. Skeeter handed a stack of cash to Joel. "I collected six hundred eighty two dollars!" Skeeter said.
Joel slapped him on the shoulder. "That’s great, Skeeter, really good." He counted out one hundred dollars and handed it to Skeeter. "How’s that?" he asked.
Skeeter smiled broadly. "I’m happy with that," he said then poked the money into a shirt pocket and left the room.
Joel separated some more bills. "Here you go, partner," he said as he handed Sam two hundred ninety one dollars, keeping the balance of two hundred ninety one dollars for himself.
Sam took the money, leafed through it and then said, "We might have a problem with Jenny."
Joel looked up. "How’s that Sam? What’s wrong?"
"She was favoring a front hoof when I took her back to the stable. I noticed it during the race. That bay beat us without me having to hold her back. If she’s to come up lame, then we’ll be out of the racing business."
Joel shrugged. "I guess we’ll see how she’s doing in the next few days. For now let’s go do a little celebrating."
For two weeks Sam spent much time with Jenny, fretting over the mare getting no better. At the livery, Sid examined the mare’s right front hoof. "Needs to be put to pasture," he noted.
Sam made a trip out to see Joe Craig at the Circle C ranch. Joe was an amiable man who loved his ranch and his horses. "I won’t pay you anything for a lame horse," Joe said, "but you can leave her here, if you want, I’ve plenty of pasture land. Who knows, she might come out of it in time." Sam thanked the man and left.
That very evening Joel found Sam at The Calico Calf, sitting alone at a table, head down brooding. He had been drinking straight shots of whiskey. Joel walked over and took a chair. He pointed at the bottle. "That won’t bring the horse back."
Sam swallowed the remnants in his glass. "I know that, Joel, I’m just sorry to see her gone." He let out a long breath. "Now I’ll have to find something else to do."
Joel reached and took hold of the whiskey bottle, he tipped it up and took a swig then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "We’ve lost our cash cow but there’s other ways to make money. Anyway, it’s time for us to do some droving."
Sam straightened in his chair. "Droving?" Something niggled at him, something about how Joel said the word.
Joel smiled. "Do you remember when we first met and I told you that Willie, Skeeter, and I have been working on procuring enough cattle to make a drive up to Kansas ?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah, I recall," he answered, wary.
Joel dipped his head a little at Sam’s tone. "Well, we’ve been busy getting things ready and I now believe that we have enough cattle lined up, and the time is right to make a drive. We’ll spend tomorrow putting the herd together then start the drive the next morning. We could use you if you want to go along."
Sam thought for a moment. This was exactly the kind of work he had wanted and expected to do when he first went to work at the Double D Ranch up near Denton. Now he was being offered a chance to redeem himself, perhaps the beginning of a profession that would last a lifetime and he could set the life of larceny aside. Since Joel seemed to be sincere in this new endeavor, Sam decided to come clean and reveal his past. He cleared his throat before speaking. "You might as well know, Joel, that I’ve done about everything imaginable on a farm with the handling of horses, mules and such. I spent a year on a ranch up by Denton, mostly doing cooking, fence work and gofer chores. I don’t claim to be partial to ranch chores and I’ve never trailed a cattle herd," he confessed.
"Hell, Sam, sometimes a man’s gotta do some things whether he likes it or not," Joel said. "I believe that the easy money has dried up around here so we have to do what’s at hand."
Sam nodded. "I hear you there, Joel. I haven’t been particularly partial to a lot of the jobs I’ve done, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t do what’s necessary, in order to get by."
"Why don’t you throw in with us and come along?" Joel said. "You’re already an experienced ranch hand and you’ll pick up in no time what needs to be done to drive the herd. What do you say?"
Sam worked the thing over in his mind. Hell, he was tired of getting drunk in San Antonio anyway. Maybe my luck is changing for the better, he mused. What with the extra care he had given Jenny his money had taken a hit. He decided to take his friend’s offer. "Yeah, that sounds good, Joel. I‘d like to tag along on your cattle drive. Starting tomorrow, you say?"
Chapter 5
At breakfast the next morning, the four men sat around their table sipping coffee while waiting for the meal. Joel was the first to speak. "Glad you could come along, Sam. Now here’s the deal. We don’t own any cattle but I’ve got a little money and intend to buy a few head myself, but the bulk of the herd will be from some local ranches here about. Our aim was to offer the ranch owners an opportunity to let us trail some of their cattle to Kansas for them, saving them the time and expense of the trip not to mention the hassle. It won’t cost them a thing upfront, all they are putting up is a few cattle and I imagine they’ll most likely throw in some culls just to clean up their home stock. Since we’re not charging them anything upfront, we have to pay our own expenses and settle up after the cattle are sold."
Sam didn’t say anything as he realized that
this was another one of Joel’s schemes that surely had some untold risk to it.
Joel must have seen the expression in Sam’s eyes. "Don’t worry. There’s little to go wrong and if you’re short of cash I can cover you until we sell the herd."
Sam didn’t want to feel like he was being a burden. "I can pay my own way."
Joel smiled. "Fine, fine, now if the four of us each put up fifty dollars apiece, we’d become partners and have enough money to buy what grub we might need to get us going. Willie’s already got a cook lined up, a man who has his own wagon, he said he’d do it for a hundred dollars for the trip and his two sons are coming along to help with the herd. All we have to do is supply the grub."
Sam reached into his pocket as Joel and Skeeter each laid out fifty dollars in front of Willie. "That’s all I got left," Skeeter said. Sam handed his fifty dollars to Willie.
After breakfast Joel stood and turned to Willie. "Things should be getting started over at Richardson ’s. He said that he’d put up a couple hundred head. His men will bring them over to that pasture next to Coyote Creek."
Willie nodded. "I’ll have the wagon and supplies over there before supper time."
By mid-afternoon, Nate Richardson’s drovers had driven two hundred twenty-five head to the Coyote Creek rendezvous pasture where Skeeter and Sam waited. Bill Cranston’s Circle C men delivered another two hundred fifty head later in the day. Joel and two men came in pushing twenty head of cattle and an even dozen horses that had been bought from another outfit. The two wranglers left once Joel’s cattle and horses melded into the main herd of cattle. Before long, Willie rode in leading the way for a man who was driving a chuck wagon, with two teenaged boys riding saddle horses alongside.
By nightfall, the camp was established on one side of the creek and nearly five hundred head of cattle milled about on the grassland across the creek. The new cook, a slender man of forty-seven years, going by the singular name of ‘Jensen’ and one of his teenaged sons quickly had strong coffee made while they put together a fine meal of fried chicken, boiled potatoes, thick gravy and corn bread. "Starting tomorrow it’ll be beans aplenty!" Jensen said jovially. The sons were introduced as Spike, who was the younger of the two being sixteen years old, and Henry, a year or so older. They appeared to be chips off the block, their slim builds, rangy looks and speech emulating their father.
After supper, Joel stood while nursing his coffee. "We gotta set watches over the herd," he said. "Sam, you can relieve Willie for the first watch from now until ten. I’ll come to relieve you. Skeeter will take over from twelve to two then Henry from two until four and Spike can watch them until we’re ready to leave come daylight."
Joel answered Sam’s questioning look. "You need to just ride around the herd real slow like, and keep ‘em bunched as best you can. Keep the strays from wandering. This is all new to the cattle too, but they’ll settle and bed down before long. If you see any big problems, just ride over and get me and the others."
It was an uneventful, star-filled night and for the most part the cattle seemed content to remain bunched without much prodding. At dawn, Willie rode over to where Spike sat on his sorrel. "Better go in and get some grub, your dad is already starting to gather things up so he can get going."
While Sam and all the others, except Willie, who was watching the herd, were finishing their breakfast, Joel stood and spoke to everyone. "To get started, we’re going to walk our horses amongst the herd and roust them to their feet and push them a little. Slow and easy in order to not get them excited. Cattle are dumb shits and will react to any rough handling by running. We don’t want that. The trick is to let the cows believe that it’s their idea to move along. Once they get started, it’ll just be a matter of us following along while keeping them herded up."
Sam figured the speech was for the benefit of the two Jensen boys as well as him. Joel, Willie and Skeeter had each been on at least one drive before.
Joel continued. "Jensen will take off first and be waiting a ways up the trail when we’re ready to give the cattle a noon rest. Skeeter and Henry will work the right flank, Willie and Spike the left flank. It’s the flanker’s job is to keep any wanderers from dropping out, then one man can drop back to help out the drag man from time to time. Sam, you’ll ride drag today, I’ll show you how soon as you’re ready. The thing is, just keep the strays from wandering and keep all of ‘em moving. If your horse gets tired, change to another at the noon break. We’re trying to do fifteen, twenty miles today."
By the time those miles had been covered Sam had firsthand knowledge of how much work it was to ride drag at the tail end of a cattle herd. He came into camp covered by a layer of dust from head to food. He still wore a bandana around his face. He pulled the bandana off and sneezed immediately then placed an index finger to depress one nostril and shot a wad of dirt and mucus out the other then repeated the process with the other hand and nostril, wiping his fingers on his pants.
Joel sat and watched Sam’s nose cleaning, seemingly unconcerned. When Sam was finished, Joel announced, "You’ve got the ten to midnight watch tonight."
Sam didn’t say anything, his mouth was too dry, but he nodded his understanding.
Jensen cackled when Sam went to fill his dish for supper. "Boy, you look like you’ve been digging for prairie dogs," he joshed.
Sam, tired as he was, tried to smile. "It’s dusty as hell back of the herd."
The next morning Henry relieved Sam off drag duty. "Joel said we are to rotate every day," the youth said. "I guess you get to ride flank with Skeeter today."
Each of the riders rotated as such every day the entire trip so that each man rode drag every fifth day. All but Joel, which no one questioned. Joel was the boss of the outfit, but still participated in the watches at night. He had enough to do as it was, leading the way, finding a place to camp for the night then checking on the critters and riders. At times he would lend a helping hand to the drag rider or anyone else who appeared like they were in need of assistance.
The days to come were long and monotonous, everyone putting in sixteen to eighteen hours in the saddle. After a week, the cattle became so used to traveling they would often be up and feeding ahead of their bed ground without being prodded, before everyone had even finished breakfast. The rider on duty could do little but ride along with a watchful eye until the drovers showed up.
Every rainstorm and river crossing had a tale waiting to be told. They had lost only a few head to misfortune. Two steers drowned in river crossings, three had lamed and were left for the Indians, and two mysteriously disappeared.
Eighty-one days later they arrived in Ellsworth, Kansas.
Once the cattle were penned, Joel called out to Sam. "You can come along with me to get the money for the herd. I paid Jensen off already and gave him a twenty five dollar bonus. I gave each of his boys seventy five dollars. Jensen said he and the boys were going over to Wyoming to see his brother. Willie and Skeeter are going to sell those extra horses we have and then book us rooms over at the Drover’s Cottage."
Sam watched as the suited man counted out seven thousand, eight hundred, and eight dollars, mostly in hundreds and twenties, into a stack on the table. Joel shook hands with the man on the deal at sixteen dollars a head for four hundred eighty-eight head that had been counted at the pens. When they stood to leave, Sam shook the brawny buyer’s hand also, but he never did catch the man’s name.
When they checked into the Drover’s Cottage, Joel handed Sam five dollars. "Get us a bottle and come on up to my room," he looked at the key tag, "room eighteen, so we can divvy the money up." Sam nodded then went into a saloon and got a bottle of whiskey.
Once in the room, Sam poured a generous amount into two glasses then handed one to Joel. Joel held the glass aloft. "Here’s to good days." The two men clinked their glasses together and then took hefty swigs of the fiery liquid.
Joel sat before a small table and placed the stack of bills on it. He counted off an even four h
undred dollars. "This pays me back for the horses and twenty head of cattle I bought with my own money." He put the four hundred into a shirt pocket and then picked up the larger stack and began counting as he divided the entire stack into four equal piles. When finished, Joel pushed one of the piles toward Sam. "Your share comes to one thousand twenty-seven dollars, less the sixty-nine dollars that is your part of what I paid Jensen and his boys, for a total of seventeen hundred fifty eight dollars, same as mine, Willie’s, and Skeeter’s."
Sam was taken aback, he had developed a growing friendship and kinship with this man. Joel was not one to shirk any kind of duty, always ready to jump in and help where needed and now he was sitting here offering to Sam one fourth of the entire sales price of the herd. He respected Joel as a leader, a fair man and thought that Joel had given him the opportunity to work at something legitimate that could possibly define his future. He had not thought about what kind of wages to expect, figuring a hundred dollars plus the reimbursement of his fifty dollar investment in grub at the beginning of the drive would have been more than fair. What was on the table was more money than he had ever seen at one sitting in his lifetime. "But I thought we had to ride back to Texas and pay off Richardson and Cranston for the cattle they trusted to us," Sam said cautiously.
Joel looked at him and smiled. "No use thinking like that, not for a man in our game. We left that behind when we took those cattle and turned into true enough bandits. Half of those cows we got from old man Richardson were stolen by him and his riders. Hell, some of them he had just rustled the night before we left! I saw the brands on the cattle. And Cranston, that old skinflint would whine if he got twenty dollars a head for the culls he pawned off on us. We did all the work! And it is a true enough fact that there ain’t no honor when it comes to thieving! If those two old bastards want any of this hard-earned money, then they can just come up here and take it away from us!"
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 59
