by Rob Hill
‘Just trying to get a picture, that’s all.’ Milton shrugged. ‘You must have practically grown up together.’
‘What are you saying? I never grew up with her.’ Not being able to see what the sheriff was driving at made Charlie’s temper flare.
‘I just mean how is she going to take the news about her pa?’ The sheriff was patience itself.
‘Hell, I don’t know.’ Charlie caught Hartford’s eye. ‘Spends her time running round with your brother Boone, that’s all I know.’
‘What about Boone?’ Hartford chipped in.
‘Ain’t no good for her, that’s all I know. I don’t care if he is your brother or no.’ Charlie’s face was flint. ‘They went around boasting to everyone they were getting hitched. When Mr Dunmore found out about it, he was mad as hell.’
‘Were you sweet on Mary May, Charlie?’ the sheriff asked softly. The question sounded good-humoured, a fond old uncle teasing a favourite nephew.
Charlie leapt to his feet as if he’d been snakebit. His face was on fire. He made sure he didn’t look at either Hartford or the sheriff, mumbled something about having to get back to work and that they should close the gate when they left. He launched himself into his saddle and spurred his pony in the direction of the cattle pens without another word.
It was Hartford’s instinct to follow Charlie. He wanted to see the lie of the ranch, see who else worked there, discover the reaction of the men when they heard what had happened to their boss. And the sheriff’s question about Mary May puzzled Hartford. It was something it would never have crossed his mind to ask. The young foreman had secretly carried a torch for the boss’s daughter. So what? He wouldn’t be the first. Or the last.
One thing was clear, Hartford reckoned. Annie’s letter, which had described how thrilled folks were over the wedding plans, was wishful thinking. The only people who were excited about the event were the couple and Annie herself. Pearl may have strung a few paper streamers around the saloon but Pa Hartford hadn’t mentioned it, Dunmore was against it, Charlie Nudd was hostile and Boone obviously wasn’t expecting his brother to turn up.
‘I’m going after him,’ Hartford said. Charlie had reached the cattle pens and had called a group of men away from their work.
‘Why?’ Milton said. ‘Charlie’s as angry as a ball of spit right now. He ain’t going to tell you anything.’
‘What about the other guys? There must be ten at least who work here.’
‘What are you going to ask?’ the sheriff said. ‘What are they going to tell you?’
‘Look, Sheriff, I got a job to do, just like you.’ The easy manner of the older man had begun to irritate him.
Milton followed Hartford down the porch steps to their horses. He grimaced with pain as he heaved himself up into his saddle and waited for Hartford to go on. Down by the cattle pens, Charlie was talking intently to the guys. As they watched, men who had been working further away downed tools and came running. Charlie turned and pointed in the direction of Hartford and the sheriff. All the men stared at them as if they were the proof of what he had been saying.
‘I got to go and talk to them,’ Hartford repeated.
‘Leave it,’ the sheriff edged his horse close to Hartford’s. ‘They ain’t in the mood for talking.’
The sound of hammering stopped abruptly and a giant of a man in a blacksmith’s apron emerged from the forge and joined them. A woman hurried along behind him. Charlie launched into a more animated explanation and the blacksmith too stared in the direction of Hartford and the sheriff.
‘Come on.’ The sheriff turned his horse towards the ranch gate.
Hartford took a hard look at the men. Pinkerton training made him note of how many there were and etch the details of what they looked like into his brain so he would be able to recognize them again.
‘See to the gate, will you? I don’t want to get down out of this saddle if I don’t have to.’
‘How come you needled Charlie like that, sheriff?’ The sheriff’s line of questions had hardly seemed relevant to Hartford. ‘We needed to talk to the hands, not just him. Now he’s lined them all up against us. Makes our job harder.’
‘Dunmore treated Charlie like a favourite son. Took him on when he was fourteen years old. Looked after him in the army, so I heard. Now he’s promoted him to foreman.’ The sheriff slowed his horse to a walking pace.
Pools of evening shadow appeared at the base of the sage, the saguaro flowers loosened slightly in anticipation of the coming darkness. The trail dirt which had reflected the sunlight like a mirror earlier in the day was dull now and in the east, a blueberry stain soaked the edge of the sky. With momentary curiosity, a family of jack rabbits watched them pass then chased off somewhere amongst the brush. From far off came the yelping of a lone coyote.
‘One thing you don’t know,’ the sheriff continued quietly. ‘Dunmore cut Charlie into his will, left him a stake in the place. Told me so himself.’
Hartford tried to figure what this meant.
‘Old Dunmore was beaten up by the thought of his darling Mary May running around with your brother. The day after she told him to his face she was going to marry him, he rode up to Dallas and found himself a lawyer. And there it was in black and white.’
‘He told you?’ Hartford had to be sure.
‘Showed me,’ Milton said. ‘Stopped by my office on his way home. Guys like Dunmore, who are in charge of running things don’t generally have anyone to talk to. The whole thing was driving him crazy, so he stopped by and spilled the whole thing. A quarter share in the Lazy D will keep Charlie for the rest of his natural days and some.’
‘And Charlie was up at Snake’s Creek today,’ Hartford said. ‘So what was this about Charlie having sweet thoughts for Mary May?’
‘Wasn’t much of a guess.’ Milton laughed to himself. ‘She was the only girl up on that ranch.’
‘Doesn’t mean a thing.’ Hartford shook his head. ‘Every guy on the Lazy D will have had pictures of Mary May in his head.’
‘What if Charlie had asked Dunmore for Mary May’s hand. . . .’
‘That’s bull, Sheriff, and you know it,’ Hartford cut across him. He had never heard anything so ridiculous. ‘Charlie’s a ranch hand. You reckon Dunmore would stand by while he makes a play for his daughter? Never in a thousand years. Anyway, so what if he did?’
‘Charlie was like a son to Dunmore. After all, he was going to inherit a quarter share.’ The sheriff reined in his horse and stood facing Hartford. ‘What if Charlie got greedy? What if he wanted it all? What if he did ask Dunmore if he could marry Mary May? He’d have it all then, Mary May and the whole of the Lazy D. Thing is, how would he react if Dunmore turned him down?’
CHAPTER SIX
The sheriff reached into his desk drawer and brought out a bottle of red eye and two glasses. Hartford pulled up a chair. Outside, the street was filled with the grainy light of early dusk. As the sheriff lit the oil lamp that stood on the desk, an orange glow filled the room, the whiskey shone like brass and the window darkened until the street became invisible and the room was reflected in a sheet of polished jet. A set of heavy iron keys lay on the desk and the cell door was open.
‘So Dunmore asked you guys for help.’ The sheriff poured the whiskey and pushed a glass over to Hartford. ‘Because the local law enforcement wasn’t no good.’
‘He never said that.’ By now, Hartford was used to the oblique way the sheriff asked questions. ‘Told us someone had been cutting the herd and no one could get to the bottom of it. He offered to pay the salary of an agent, if Chicago would send one down. Said you’d been looking into it.’
‘Well, that’s true enough.’ The sheriff reflected for a moment. Hartford noticed that he had not yet touched his whiskey.
‘Told you I came down a couple of days early when Annie wrote to me about the wedding.’
‘Someone’s been cutting Dunmore’s herd all right.’ The sheriff leaned back in his chair. ‘Same as every herd between
here and Kansas. You’re talking about hundreds of square miles of open range, cattle constantly being moved from grazing to grazing, every cowpoke as poor as dirt, every rancher willing to buy beeves on the cheap. This is how it is down here, you know that.’ The sheriff grimaced as he stretched his legs out under the desk. ‘You, me and a whole army of Pinkertons couldn’t put a stop to it.’
Hartford knew it was true. Stories of gangs of rustlers lying in wait for the beeves as they were being moved north to the railheads were nonsense believed by city folks, even the ones who ran the Pinkerton Office in Chicago. Down here, ranchers were always anxious to increase their stock and would pay for anything anyone offered them. Odds on, Dunmore was no different. There were probably as many steers in his herd with other ranches’ brands on them as the ones he had lost.
‘Dunmore suspect anyone?’ Hartford asked.
‘Dunmore could think of a reason why every cowboy in Credence was the one cutting the herd. Gave me a list of names a yard long. Like to guess who was on the top of that list?’
The lamp flickered and shadows danced crazily across the ceiling. The sheriff didn’t take his eyes off Hartford.
‘Your brother, Boone.’ The sheriff’s words tolled like a funeral knell.
‘Dunmore have any evidence?’ The whiskey burned in Hartford’s gut.
‘Told me when it came to a confrontation, Boone just laughed in his face.’
The lamp flickered again. Black shapes danced.
‘Early start in the morning.’ The sheriff reached for his whiskey and downed it in one. ‘I need to find Mary May and there’s plenty more questions to ask. After that, we’ll try to get a fix on Jake Nudd and the other two. Someone must know where they’re headed.’
Over at the saloon, the oil lamp on the bar was lit. Pops Wardell and Bill Greely were sitting with Pearl in a pool of wax-coloured light. The rest of the place was in darkness. As Hartford pushed open the door, he saw Pearl’s hand move towards the twelve gauge on her knees. Pops broke off from the story he had been telling them and the three of them stared towards him.
‘Gun,’ Pearl called out to him. ‘One rule for everybody, Hart.’
Hartford unbuckled his gun belt and hung it on the peg by the door.
‘Just telling ’em how I found the body.’ Judging by the frozen expressions on the others’ faces, Pops must have told the story half a dozen times.
‘Damnedest thing,’ Pops launched straight into the story again without asking if anyone wanted to hear it. ‘Headed straight up to Snake’s Creek this afternoon. There’s pools up there where they got flat-head carp fat as your arm. Been going up there for years.’
‘You want a drink, Hart? Something to eat?’ Pearl interrupted the story. ‘I got a cold beef stew out back.’
‘Stew would be fine.’ Hartford suddenly remembered he hadn’t eaten all day.
Pearl slipped down off her bar stool. Pops continued without missing a beat.
‘ ’Course I never saw him at first. Headed down the bank to my usual spot and there he was. Right there in front of me, lying on his back in the reeds. Eyes wide open staring up at me.’ Pops paused to judge the effect of this on his audience.
Greely clearly relished the story even though he had heard it before. His lopsided grin showed black teeth.
‘Bet you thought he was alive,’ Greely said excitedly. His favourite part was coming next.
‘Thought he was staring straight at me,’ Pops went on. ‘Thought he was alive and was lying there watching me.’
Greely gave a little excited whoop. He’d never heard anything so good.
‘Bet you talked to him too.’ Greely’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said howdy, Mr Dunmore, what are you doing down there?’
‘Howdy, Mr Dunmore,’ Greely echoed and slapped his skinny thigh with sheer delight, his black grin a mile wide. ‘Damndest thing I ever heard, saying howdy to a corpse.’
‘I didn’t know he was dead.’ Not wanting to be shown up in front of Hartford, Pops glared at Greely. ‘Not right then.’
‘You haven’t said about his horse,’ Greely prompted him. He caught Hartford’s eye, letting him know that as a livery man, horses were his concern.
‘What about his horse?’ Pops had lost the thread.
‘Dunmore’s horse,’ Greely sounded disappointed that he had to remind his friend. He turned to Hartford to explain. ‘Black mare. I’ve looked after her in the livery.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Pops remembered. He looked knowingly at Hartford. ‘Horse was standing right there. Refused to move.’
‘Loyal,’ Greely explained. ‘More loyal than dogs, horses. Most folks don’t know that.’
The interruption made Pops lose where he was again.
‘Tracks,’ Greely sounded disappointed. He wanted Pops to get back into the swing of the story so he could enjoy it.
‘I was coming to that,’ Pops said crossly. Greely was stealing his thunder. He turned to Hartford. ‘There were fresh tracks all heading towards McGreggor’s spread. That’s an indication of something, ain’t it?’
John McGreggor was Dunmore’s neighbour to the east. His vast ranch occupied hundreds of square miles of cattle country right up to the Trinity River. Whereas Dunmore’s domination of this part of Texas was respected, McGreggor ruled his land like an emperor. He had a reputation for dispensing acts of charity, cruelty and summary justice on a whim.
Over the years, McGreggor and Dunmore had rubbed along. With their ranch houses a few hours’ ride apart, they didn’t have to see each other if they didn’t want to and rarely ran into each other by accident. Although each of them had an idea in his head of where the boundary between their two properties lay, they probably would have been hard pressed to draw an accurate line on the ground. No matter. It was wide open country and there was room enough for them both.
When each of these two barons came back from the war and set their men to gathering up their respective herds, each accepted that this would mean incursions into the other’s property. Dunmore ended up with steers bearing McGreggor’s brand amongst his herd and vice versa. As many of the cattle had bred in the years the men were away and carried no brand at all, neither complained. But when the Shawnee Trail closed, everything changed.
In August 1866, President Johnson’s Proclamation declared that ‘. . . insurrection is at an end and peace, order, tranquillity and civil authority now exist throughout the whole of the United States of America.’ It may have looked like that from Washington, but down here the country was crawling with embittered, armed, ex-military men who had lost everything. Far from ushering in an era of tranquillity and civil authority, this turned out to be the era of the gunfighter.
Once they had gathered their herds and realized the scale of the profits they could make, both Dunmore and McGreggor eyed up each other’s property and the size of each other’s herd and privately regretted the easy-come way they had established their boundary before the war.
Another thing that happened was that Dunmore’s men who had joined up with him all returned safely to the Lazy D after the war. Most of McGreggor’s men who followed him into the army were killed. Dunmore’s men settled back in to the ranch life they were used to. McGreggor was forced to hire new men from the assortment of drifters and ex-soldiers who gravitated to the area because they had nowhere else to go. When it came to rounding up his herd, McGreggor saw that he could turn this to his advantage. His new hands could not have cared less about which steers carried the McGreggor brand and which did not and when it came to snatching longhorns from Dunmore’s property, most of them didn’t even know where the boundary was.
When they closed the Shawnee, trouble between the cattlemen came to a head. For months, relations between them had been deteriorating. Each accused the other of stealing his beeves. When the ranch hands ran into each other on the range, they traded threats. There had been fistfights at the saloon in Credence and Sheriff Milton had
locked up the offenders overnight. This meant fines had to be paid and since the men had blown their meagre wages in the saloon, Dunmore and McGreggor were summoned. Both of them resented having to bail their men out and each of them blamed the other. But the main bone of contention was that with the Shawnee closed, McGreggor had to drive his cattle across Dunmore’s land to pick up the Chisholm Trail to head north.
Pearl packed Pops Wardell and Bill Greely off home for the night.
‘No one would want Dunmore out of the way more than McGreggor.’ Pearl set Hartford’s plate of stew in front of him and explained how things stood between the two ranchers.
‘Rumour is that McGreggor made Dunmore an offer for the Lazy D and he turned it down. That would have solved his problem about driving his herd to the Chisholm and having to negotiate with Dunmore every year.’ Pearl poured herself a glass of red eye from the bottle on the bar.
‘Guess all this means the wedding will be off.’ Hartford wanted Pearl to tell him about Mary May.
‘If it was ever on.’ Pearl took a slug of whiskey. ‘Boone was supposed to pay me to decorate the place for him, but I ain’t seen a nickel yet. Mary May persuaded Dunmore to come in here to look the place over a few weeks ago. They ended up having a scorching row right in front of Pops and Bill Greely. Dunmore yelled that if she got herself hitched without his say so, he’d never speak to her again.’
‘Doesn’t make sense.’ Hartford shook his head.
‘Not much does round here,’ Pearl laughed. ‘Town is dying on its feet and everyone is at each other’s throats.’
‘So you reckon Boone was just leading Mary May in some kind of dance?’ Hartford said. ‘Heard Charlie Nudd carries a torch for her too.’
‘Poor Charlie.’ Pearl shook her head sadly. ‘As far as Dunmore was concerned, no guy was ever going to be good enough to marry his daughter. He liked Charlie though, I heard he even cut him into his Will.’
‘Could Dunmore have left him a piece of the Lazy D in exchange for him letting Mary May alone?’ Hartford wanted to test the sheriff’s theory on her.
