by Elmer Kelton
Cooney Peale had seen all he could stand. He grabbed a heavy iron pothook from the side of his chuckbox and limped up beside Leindecker. “Stop it, Dev, or I’ll brain you.”
Leindecker ignored him until Cooney swung his arm up, the pothook whistling. Grudgingly then, he stood up, his fists still clenched and the wildness still running unchecked through his eyes.
His gaze flicked from one man to another, challenging. “McKee started it. You all saw him.”
Cooney Peale’s fists were still tight on the pothook. “You better go on out and see about them prairie dogs.”
The cowboys moved Hank McKee under the shade of the chuckwagon, then melted away toward the hot, dusty branding pens. Cooney and the wagon boss gently washed off dirt and blood with one of Cooney’s old flour sack cuptowels. The kid wrangler watched, his lips trembling in anger.
“He better not ever try that on me,” Jinx Cavenaugh declared.
Testily Cooney raised his gray head. “You got no business here, boy. Git!”
McKee finally came around. His face was swelling, his lips bruised and cut. He muttered painfully that his whole body was raw and aching.
“You better ride back to headquarters and stay till you heal up, Hank,” the wagon boss said. “You can find plenty to do there.”
Cooney shot Boyd Runnels a sharp glance “You gonna’ let Dev Leindecker stay here after this?”
The boss said angrily, “Don’t see much I can do about it. It’s the old man’s orders.”
“It’ll happen again, Boyd,” Cooney said. “Bound to.”
Runnels helplessly shrugged his shoulders.
“I know it. And next time, Cooney, you use that pothook.”
It didn’t take Dev Leindecker long to decide he had done a day’s work. By five o’clock he was back. Without looking in the wagon, Cooney would’ve wagered a right smart that there wasn’t much of the poisoned grain gone.
The branding over, the cowboys were pushing the cattle out of the pens and back into the pasture. They would loose-herd them down there on the fence awhile to graze on the mesquite and buffalo grass and give the new-branded calves a chance to pair up with their mammies. It always took a while, what with the confusing new smell of dried blood, boneoil and burned hair and hide.
Dusty Jinx Cavenaugh came walking up to the wagon, spurs a-jingle on his patched-up boots. His hostile eyes met Dev Leindecker’s and got a quick, contemptuous response. Then the horse jingler turned to Cooney Peale.
“Boyd’s got him a fat yearlin’ penned yonder for beef,” he said. “Wants to know if you’ll let him borrow your pistol.”
Cooney grunted. On most outfits they’d just knock a beef in the head with the backside of an ax and be done with it. But the boys long ago had found out about the old .44 Cooney kept up in the chuckbox. It misfired sometimes, but it was still better than an ax, if a man’s stomach was weak.
Cooney reached up and got it, handing it to the kid. “Tell Boyd the company’s gonna’ have to buy me some more shells if it keeps on usin’ my artillery.”
Forcing irritation in his voice, he pointed his crooked finger toward a loose horse which was nosing around at the edge of camp, looking for scraps. “And chase that sorrel away from here before I swat him in the rump with a shovel.”
Jinx said, “Aw no, Cooney, it don’t hurt to have a pet.”
“Pet or pest, ain’t a nickel’s worth of difference. Keep him out of here.”
Cooney grinned, though, watching the kid coax the sorrel away. Good button, that Jinx. He’d be a top hand one of these times.
Through the next week or ten days, Dev Leindecker didn’t miss many meals at Cooney Peale’s chuckwagon. Occasionally he would be gone all day, taking some cold biscuits and meat with him to tide him over till suppertime. But before dark, he always found Cooney’s camp.
He might as well have missed it, no more recognition than he got. The cowboys never talked to him—would hardly even look at him. He stayed off to himself, a brooding resentment hovering over him.
“He don’t hardly act human sometimes,” Jinx told the cook one day. “I guess poisonin’ prairie dogs is necessary, and a man has got to eat. But he shouldn’t act like he was havin’ so much fun at it. Yesterday I rode up on him after he had put out some bait. He was layin’ there on the ground grinnin’, watchin’ them varmints sample the grain. Didn’t even act human, I tell you.”
So Dev Leindecker stayed around, and day by day the cow camp got to be more and more like a corked jug, with the pressure building in it.
The plug blew just after Cooney moved camp to Quitman’s Mills. The cowboys rode in off drive near noon and caught up fresh horses from Jinx’s remuda. Jinx unsaddled his sorrel and roped himself a new mount.
The men were half through eating when someone hollered, “Jinx, get your horse away from that grain wagon!”
But it was already too late. The camp pet had shoved its nose under the loose tarp that covered Leindecker’s wagon. By the time Jinx could run to him, tripping over his spurs, the sorrel was on its side, thrashing its legs in agony.
“Help me, somebody,” the kid was bawling. “Somebody come help me!”
But there wasn’t much anybody could do except stand there tight-throated and watch Jinx cry like a lost kid over the sorrel pony. Old Cooney melted some lard in a pan.
“Think that’ll help?” Boyd asked.
Cooney shook his head. “But we can’t have the kid thinkin’ we never even tried.”
Runnels held the pony’s head up while Cooney forced the jaws open and poured lard down the animal’s throat. If it helped any, it didn’t show. In a little while the sorrel’s thrashing was over.
One by one the cowboys straggled off toward the branding pens, their heads down and their boots dragging. Pretty soon the only ones left were the kid, old Cooney Peale—and Dev Leindecker.
Through it all, Leindecker had never moved. He hunkered just beyond the cook fire, near the woodpile. He had hunched his huge shoulders and drawn up within himself, putting a hard shell against the contempt of the cowboys.
Now the kid’s brimming eyes lifted from the dead pony and fastened upon Dev Leindecker. Jinx Cavenaugh pushed himself to his feet. His kid shoulders squared, and his fists clenched hard as live oak knots.
“You killed him, Leindecker,” he exploded in a shrill voice not his own.
Leindecker arose and waited, his hands flexing. Choking, the kid broke into a run and sailed into him with fists flailing. It was like trying to drive a spike with his bare hands.
Leindecker’s left hand grabbed the kid and shoved him off to arm’s length. The ox-strong right arm slashed across. Jinx staggered back, his hands defensively lifted over his eyes. A hard grin broke across Leindecker’s dark face, tugging upward at the sweat-streaked beard. The big man closed in, smashing Jinx first with one fist, then the other. The wrangler sagged, his battered face smeared an ugly red.
Strong hands tugged desperately at Leindecker, hands gnarled and old, the veins standing blue.
“Stop it, Dev!” Cooney Peale was shouting. “Damn you, leave the kid alone.”
Leindecker turned half around to shove the old man away. Cooney’s horny fist smashed his nose and came away bloody, wresting from the big man a quick squall of pain. With a roar Leindecker whirled from the kid and grabbed at the old cook. Cooney managed to duck away and step back.
Then the tricky right leg betrayed him and he faltered.
Leindecker hurled Cooney backward into the woodpile, pinning the old man down to helplessness. His thin, hard lips curved in a crazy grin. There was no mercy in the wild gleam of his gray eyes. He was a slashing, killing wolf.
A shrill voice made Leindecker spin. Blood-spattered, Jinx Cavenaugh poised there, a heavy singletree from the wagon arced over his shoulder. A bawl of fear tore from Leindecker’s thick, whiskery throat as he tried vainly to jump away. The singletree snapped his head back, and Leindecker dropped.
Gently the hard
-breathing kid helped Cooney to his feet. “He hurt you, Cooney?”
A dull ache throbbed all through Cooney’s sparce frame, but he knew it would be nothing serious. “I’ll make out.”
Jinx still held the singletree. Worriedly he looked down at the slack body of Dev Leindecker. “Reckon I killed him?”
An ugly line of red oozed from a long slash across Leindecker’s head. But the poisoner’s back showed the steady rise and fall of his breathing.
“You weren’t that lucky, son. Now you’ll never be able to turn your back on him. Maybe you better clear out for a while.” Jinx shook his head. “Nothing going to scare me out.”
After washing, Jinx walked toward the branding pens to make a hand. Alone with Leindecker, Cooney went on with cleaning up the noon-day mess. But, glancing often at Leindecker’s sprawled form, he made sure his old hands were never far from his heavy pothook.
How long Leindecker had lain there before he regained consciousness, watching him with crazy, hate-filled eyes, Cooney would never know. But when the cook took hold of his wreck pan and carried it off a ways to dump the soapy water out of it, Leindecker got to his feet and made for the chuckbox. Caught off guard, Cooney ran toward him.
But he was too late. Leindecker had the .44. And when Cooney tried to wrestle it from him, the big man swung it up, then down again. He caught Cooney behind the ear and sent him rolling in the warm sand. Wildly Leindecker pointed the six-shooter at Cooney, and twice he squeezed the trigger. Both times it misfired.
Then Leindecker turned and weaved heavily out toward the branding pens. Painfully Cooney pushed himself to his feet and tried to follow him.
The dust that billowed up in the stifling hot pens was thick enough to cut with a knife. Two ropers on horseback were heeling calves and dragging them up toward the branding fire for the flanking crews to grab and hold down. Working hard to make up for lost time, the cowboys never saw Leindecker until he was in the pen with them.
Over the loud, steady din of bawling cows and calves, someone shouted, “He’s got a gun!”
Young Jinx Cavenaugh, bruised and one eye swollen shut, was kneeling atop the neck of a struggling calf, gripping one foreleg with his left hand and pushing the calf’s head down against the ground with his right. At the sharp voice, he looked back.
Leindecker towered behind him, the gun in his hand and a savage fury blazing in his dirty, black-bearded face. His dry lips pulled away from his teeth. He squeezed the trigger.
Jinx slumped forward. The calf broke loose and jumped to its feet, kicking the cowboy who had held its hind legs. Jinx lay limp, his fingers digging into the soft dirt of the corral.
Half a dozen cowboys surged toward the big man. But he swung the gun at them. They stopped.
Cooney Peale limped into the corral. A cry tore from him at sight of the body lying still in the dust. Leindecker was watching Cooney. This last violent action had flushed the unreasoning anger from Dev Leindecker’s narrow eyes. In its place was a cold determination.
“You,” he said sharply to Boyd Runnels, “gather up them horses and bring them here. I ain’t leavin’ them so you can hurry no sheriff onto my trail. Shag it, I tell you!”
He whirled on Cooney Peale. “I’ll need some grub. You, Cooney, go to the wagon and gather up the cold biscuits, meat, anything else you can shove into a sack.”
Cooney hesitated, his stricken eyes still on the boy.
“Git, damn you,” Leindecker bawled, “before I fire this thing again.”
Cooney lifted his pale eyes to Leindecker’s. They were two glittering chips of ice. “I’ll git you what you need.”
Boyd Runnels brought Leindecker the horses the heelers had been using in the branding pen. Hastily Leindecker chose one of them to ride. He led the others out the gate. Then, shouting at the top of his voice, he plunged toward the saddled horses tied along outside the fence, breaking them loose. He shoved them in front of him, leaving the cowboys afoot.
Leindecker reined in beside the chuckwagon.
“How about that grub, Cooney?”
Cooney Peale handed him a flour sack, bulging at the bottom.
“Don’t let them forget I’ve got the gun,” Leindecker warned. “I’ll kill any man who comes after me.”
Tying the flour sack behind his high cantle, Leindecker kicked the horse with his bare bootheels and loped out of camp, driving the saddled horses and Cooney’s mule team before him.
* * *
The sheriff and his deputy changed to fresh mounts close to the wagon, then stepped up for a quick bite to eat. Silent, brittle as an old mesquite limb, Cooney showed them Leindecker’s tracks.
“Headed for the New Mexico line, you can bet your boots,” the sheriff commented darkly, biting a big chunk out of a piece of fried steak. “We’ll sure have to ride fast if we’re gonna’ catch him.”
Slowly Cooney shook his head, his pale eyes burning with a cold fire. “Take your time, sheriff. He won’t make it to New Mexico.”
The lawman’s eyebrows lifted. “What’s that?”
“He won’t get far. Wherever he stops to eat, that’s where you’ll find him.”
The sheriff’s gaze touched the strychnine wagon. His jaw dropped in horror as he read the meaning in Cooney’s grim old face.
“My God!” the lawman breathed. His tin plate and the food in it fell to the ground as he swung quickly into the saddle and spurred out onto Leindecker’s trail, the deputy trying vainly to catch up with him.
They found Leindecker’s body the next morning at a windmill where he had stopped to water his horse and eat a little of the food out of Cooney’s sack.
Accidental death, the justice of the peace called it. Obviously, Leindecker had drunk some poison water somewhere along the way.
The roundup was over by the time the doctor let Jinx Cavenaugh go back to the ranch. Cooney’s wrinkled old face lighted up like a camp lantern at the sight of that familiar gangling figure. Jinx was pale and thin, but his wide kid grin made up for it as he came swinging up the hard-beaten path to the cookshack.
“You lazed around town long enough,” Cooney spoke, hardly above a whisper. “I begun to think you wasn’t comin’ back at all.”
That was all he said, and it was all that was needed, for the stout grip of his rough hand said the rest.
Cooney led the boy out and down to a corral next to the red frame barn, where a little sorrel bronc watched with alert ears poked forward.
“Boyd Runnels picked him up down south. Thought you’d like to break him this winter, if you’re able.”
The kid was laughing and talking and crying all at the same time. Finally he managed, “Cooney, you reckon that if I went back to the cookshack…”
Cooney smiled, his hand tight on the boy’s shoulder. “Sure, son. I saved them from breakfast, special. You’ll find them in the warmin’ oven.”
RIDE A STRAIGHT ROAD
Coming in on the upper road, Toby Tippett slowed his dun horse as he started down the crest of the hill and came into sight of Patman’s Lake. At first glance he thought the town hadn’t changed much in four years. Pretty much the same—spread out a little more in the small Mexican settlement way down in the south. But when he got closer, he could see that there had been changes, a good many of them. A man couldn’t be away from a place four years and expect it to remain the same.
There were three or four big houses up on Silk Stocking Street. Two-story houses they were, the kind a man saw in the prosperous cotton towns back in East Texas. Times must have been pretty good in the cow business lately, Toby decided. There were a few new buildings along the business street, too. They had torn down the old Mustang Saloon. Another one stood in its place, a big outfit with a conservative little sign up front that read Equity Bar.
A grin formed on Toby’s face as his memory ran back to things he had seen and done in the old Mustang. He had been too young to go in there, really, but the way people looked at things then, a man was old enough if he was
big enough. And Toby had always been a stretchy, overgrown kid for his age.
They hadn’t gotten around to building a new courthouse. The old frame one stood just as always on the big courthouse square. It was a couple of years late for a paint job. Saloons always did seem to do better than the county, when it came to taking in revenue.
Sight of the courthouse brought back some other memories, memories that made the grin fade. What had happened to him there would be with him as long as he lived. It showed in the lines, carved years early in a face that still was youthful in other ways. It showed in the solid maturity of his blue eyes, eyes which should still shine with mischief.
The homesickness came sweeping over him again, hard. He wanted to keep riding until he got to the ranch, until he had ridden through the last familiar gate and closed that familiar old door behind him. But the sun was dropping low over the cedar-covered hills west of town.
At the end of the street old Roper Finney’s livery barn stood just as it always had. It never had had a coat of paint, and the frame walls were sun-bleached to a dull gray, the boards warped and cracked. Toby dismounted in front of it and stretched his long, saddle-weary legs.
A short, middle-aged man came out and squinted at him.
“What’ll you have, cowboy?”
“Like to put up my horse. And I reckon old Roper’ll still let a man make his bed in the hay, won’t he?”
The little man peered closer at him. “You been gone a long time, ain’t you? Old Roper ain’t been here in two years or more. Sold this place to me and went back to East Texas. Had an itch to farm some cotton.”
Toby acknowledged the information with a nod. “Been a good year for cotton back there. Hope he’s making a crop. How about that bed?”
“Sure,” the stableman replied, “help yourself. Unsaddle, and I’ll feed your horse.”
Something was working at the little man. Toby could see it making a fever in his pale eyes. Presently, dipping oats out of a bin with a five-gallon bucket, the stableman spoke.
“You live here?”
Toby said, “The old home place is twenty miles out of town, south and west.”
