A Lone Star Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “That’s not exactly true,” Tom said.

  “What’s not exactly true? Are you calling my daughter a liar?”

  “No, I did tell her that. But I was lying, Mr. Conyers. The truth is, I do love your daughter. I love her more than I thought would ever be possible.”

  “Then why did you tell her that you didn’t love her?”

  “Because I am not deserving of her love.”

  Big Ben blinked in surprise, for he had not expected that answer. Then he nodded.

  “Do you have any idea where she is, Tom?” This time the words were soft, and non-accusatory. They were pleading. “I’m not asking you this as an angry employer, but as an anguished father. Do you know where she is? Did she say anything to you before she left?”

  “No, sir, she said nothing to me before she left, because I didn’t know she was going to leave. And I have no idea where she is. Mr. Conyers, if it is your wish, I will leave the ranch.”

  Big Ben shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, there is no need for that. Clay likes you, all the cowboys like you. Damn it, I like you. I just don’t think that a marriage between you and Rebecca would be for the best.”

  “And on that subject, you and I agree,” Tom said.

  On the trail

  For the first several days, the Rocking H company pushed the cattle hard, not only to get them away from their customary range so as to make them less hesitant to wander away, but also too tired to run at night. By then, the trail was fairly routine with the cattle moving along by habit. The strongest steers had taken their place as leaders; others had positioned themselves somewhere in the long column, and they too, took their places every day, like soldiers with assigned positions.

  Because Rebecca was the newest and greenest of the cowboys, she was given the job of riding drag. She came away from the herd each evening with a heavy coating of dust on her hat and eyebrows. That was because the thousands of cattle pulverized the ground into a fine dust.

  A typical day began with the last change of guards before breakfast at four o’clock in the morning. Those heading back to their bedrolls for half an hour or so more sleep would awaken the cook, who would build his fire and start breakfast, mostly biscuits and bacon.

  Hearing the cook rattling his pots and pans would signal the wrangler to ride out and bring in the remuda. Then, when breakfast was ready, Cornett and the cowboys who would be riding point would rise so they could eat first, then ride out to be with the herd as the cows began rising from their bed ground.

  Finally, the cook would start banging on a pot with a large spoon, making a terrible racket as he called out.

  “People, people, people! Out of your sacks and into the heat! Off your ass and on your feet! Come and get it, or I’ll throw it out!”

  “Hey, Bailey, you wouldn’t really throw it out, would you?” a young cowboy named Stewart asked.

  “You damn right I’d throw it out!” Bailey replied. “I gotta get my wagon ready and move on to the next spot so I can set up for lunch. I don’t have time to be lollygaggin’ around.”

  “You better go up there first, kid,” Stewart teased. “Because if you don’t beat Forney through the chow line, he’ll gobble it all up like a pig wallowing through slop.”

  “What are you calling slop, boy?” Bailey said. “You don’t want breakfast, you just say so and I won’t even bother to cook it.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your food, Bailey,” Stewart said. “I was just funnin’ with the kid is all.”

  By the time breakfast was over, the trail boss and those who rode point had already reached the herd, and the cattle were beginning to leave the bed ground and start their own breakfast, grazing as they started moving north. Those on point positioned themselves well back from the lead steers so the cattle could spread out and graze along at their own pace.

  Although Rebecca had been around cowboys for her entire life, she had always observed them from the lofty station of being the daughter of one of the biggest ranchers in Texas. She had thought them to be like children in a way, laughing much, finding fun where they could, but always respectful of her and her parents.

  Now she was seeing cowboy life from the other side. The cowboy worked for forty dollars a month and food, and for this the cowboy was prepared to perform labor, no matter how hard it be, fight against Indians or cattle thieves, even to the point of risking his life, put in eighteen hours a day in the saddle, twenty-four in case of an emergency, all the while providing his own clothes, bedding, hat, boots, saddle, bridle, clothes, rope, spurs, pistol, and ammunition. The diet consisted of biscuits, bacon, beef or salt pork, beans, potatoes, dried fruit, and coffee.

  Rebecca had not brought a pistol. She didn’t own one, and had not thought about it. She took a little ribbing for that.

  “Hey, Carmody, what are you going to do if the Injuns decide to attack us? How are you going to fight off the cattle rustlers? What are you going to do, throw rocks at them?”

  Rebecca took the teasing good-naturedly, and when the others saw the skill with which she could cut cattle, or run down an errant steer and push him back into the herd, they accepted the new young cowboy as one of them. They even accepted her staying by herself as much as possible, passing it off as being shy.

  The storm hit midway through their second week on the trail. Far in the distance, Rebecca could see a line of dark clouds on the horizon. As she stared at the clouds, she saw flashes of light from within. She knew that those were flashes of lightning, but the thunder came so long after the lightning flashes, and was so low, that it was little more than a very distant rumble.

  Then the breeze, such as it was, stopped, and it was as if the air itself couldn’t move. Sweat began to form on Rebecca’s face, actually mixing with the dust to turn into mud. Gradually the flashes became brighter, the thunder closer upon the flashes and louder. In addition, a heavy mist rose from the ground.

  Then, as the cloud bank came toward them, it seemed to hang menacingly just overhead. Now it grew dark, almost as dark as nightfall. A sudden, blinding flash of lightning lit up the countryside, followed immediately by a roaring thunderclap. Before the thunder even faded away, the herd was running, and even above the sound of the storm, Rebecca could hear the rumble of hooves and the frightened bellow of the cattle.

  Rebecca let go of her reins and squeezed down hard on the saddle horn, hoping that the horse she was riding could keep its feet and stay out of harm’s way. Finally the storm abated and the cows stopped running, but the cattle were strung out in one long string and it took until mid-afternoon to get the herd reassembled.

  But even though the rain had stopped, their problems weren’t over. The rain had turned the prairie into a huge mud bog, making it hard for man and animal to eat. With the cattle, it was because the grass had been pretty much trampled down into the mud, and when the cattle could eat, they wound up consuming as much mud as grass. The cook had a hard time finding dry wood for a meal, and on the night after the big storm, nobody slept due to wet blankets and water on the ground.

  It took two more days to dry out, but finally the cowboys were rested because they had been able to sleep dry, and the cattle were content because once more the grass was green and sweet, and the cows were eating well. Then, one week after the great storm, they ran into another problem.

  At first, Rebecca didn’t believe what she was seeing, but she heard Stewart talking to one of the other cowboys so she knew that she wasn’t just imagining things. There, in front of them, far up in the panhandle just west of the Caprock Escarpment and south of the Canadian River breaks—

  “What the hell?” Stewart said. “Sheep! Do any of the rest of you see what I’m seeing? Hell, they must be two or three thousand of ’em.”

  “Where did they come from?” Fowler asked.

  “Look at ’em! They’re eatin’ all the grass,” one of the other cowboys complained.

  “No problem,” a third cowboy said. “All we got to do is start killin’ sh
eep. The rest of ’em will leave.”

  “Yeah, either that or kill us a few sheep herders,” Stewart suggested.

  Rebecca listened to the angry comments of Stewart and the other cowboys and cringed. She wanted no part of killing men or sheep. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard John Cornett’s reply.

  “Hold on, let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves here. Bring the sheep herders to me.”

  “Be glad to. You want ’em draped over their horses? Or just bound and gagged?” Stewart asked.

  “Neither,” Cornett replied. “Just bring them here and let me talk to them.”

  The sheep were being worked by three dogs, so the three shepherds had nothing to do but to stand around and watch the dogs keep the sheep in line. Pierre Dubois was the first to see the rider approaching them, riding fast. He was also the first to see that the rider was holding a pistol in his hand.

  “Gaston!” Pierre called to the one that the others recognized as the leader of their little group. “Quel-qu’un vient, et il a une arme à feu!”

  “Yes, Pierre, I see that he has a gun.”

  Stewart, the rider dispatched by Cornett to summon the shepherds, pulled his horse to an abrupt stop, and shouted angrily.

  “Who is in charge? What are these sheep doing here?”

  “Comme vous pouvez le voir, les moutons paissent,” Gaston said.

  “What? What the hell did you say? What lingo is that?”

  Neither Gaston, nor either of the other two, responded.

  “All right, come with me,” Stewart said. And, making a motioning effort with his pistol, he made it known by sign language that he expected them to follow him, and follow him they did.

  Rebecca waited with Cornett and the others, holding The Rockin H herd in place until the shepherds were brought into camp. There were three of them, tall thin men, all with beards and wearing black berets. It was not only their hats that differentiated them from the cowboys. They were wearing short jackets, crimson in color, and dark blue trousers. None were wearing boots.

  “Here they are, Boss,” Stewart said. “But there ain’t none of ’em spoke a word yet that I can understand.”

  “Spanish?” Cornett asked.

  “It ain’t Spanish. I don’t speak the lingo all that good, but I do recognize Spanish when I hear it. I ain’t never heard nothin’ like this.”

  “Leur dire pas que nous pouvons parler Anglais, jusqu’à ce que nous apprenons ce qu’ils veulent,” one of them said.

  “They’re speaking French,” Julius Jackson, the black wrangler said. “This one,” he pointed to the man who had spoken, “just told the others not to let us know they can speak English until they find out what we want.”

  “Damn, Julius, are you telling me that you can speak French?” Cornett asked. “I’m impressed.”

  “No need to be impressed, Mr. Cornett. I’m what you call a Griffe. I’m from New Orleans. My Papa was a colored man, but my Mama was Cajun mulatto and she spoke French.”

  “What’s your name?” Cornett asked the man who had spoken.

  “Pas leur dire quoi que ce soit,” one of the three said.

  “It is too late. They already know we speak English,” the shepherd Cornett had addressed said to the others. Then, to Cornett, he said, “My name is Gaston. This is Pierre and this is Andre.”

  “Well, Gaston, Pierre, and Andre, I have a question for you. Are you just passing through here? And if so, how long to you plan to stay?”

  “We are not passing through,” Gaston said. “We plan to stay here for the entire summer.”

  “The hell you will!” Stewart said, angrily.

  “Why are you so angry?” Gaston asked. “We mean you no harm.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t mean us any harm, but here is the problem we have,” Cornett said. “You see, we have to trail our cattle through here. And our cattle need to graze. Now we’ve been using this trail for better than twenty years, not only us, but just about every cattle ranch in Texas. This is free range territory, and we depend on grass being available. Our cattle don’t eat all the grass, just enough grass to keep us going as we pass through. That way we leave grass for the others who are coming along behind us. And believe me, there will be other herds and thousands more cattle, and they will need grass as well. And, like us, after they pass through, they will leave enough grass for the following herds.

  “But your sheep now, they are wiping the prairie clean. They’re eating right down to the roots so that there’s nothing left. So, here is what I’m going to ask you to do. I’m going to ask you to move your sheep, and I’m asking you nice.”

  “We can’t move our sheep, Monsieur. Our employer told us to graze the sheep here,” Gaston said.

  “All right, let’s take this to the next step,” Cornett said. “Bailey?”

  “Yeah, Boss?” the trail cook replied.

  “Do you know any recipes for lamb?”

  “Oh, yeah, I could make a nice roast of lamb,” Bailey said.

  “Stewart, go out and kill us a lamb for supper.”

  “Yes, sir!” Stewart said, pulling his pistol and riding out toward the flock of sheep grazing peacefully nearby.

  “Monsieur, non!” Gaston cried out.

  “Do I have your attention yet, Gaston?” Cornett asked. “If you take your sheep on out of here, it will just end with us having lamb for supper. If you don’t, then we’ll kill as many as we can. And since cowboys hate sheep, I expect we can kill a hell of a lot of them. And if killin’ the sheep don’t make you move, well, we might just start havin’ to kill a couple of you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Even as Cornett was explaining the situation to Gaston, they heard the sound of a gunshot, then Stewart’s triumphant yell. Looking over toward the flock, Rebecca saw one of the sheep fall over onto its side, its legs sticking straight out.

  “Oui, monsieur, I understand.”

  “Do we need to kill any more of your animals?” Cornett asked.

  “Non, monsier, please do not kill any more. We will move the flock.”

  Cornett smiled. “I thought we might be able to come to some sort of an agreement. How much is that one lamb worth?”

  “Nine dollars, monsieur,” Gaston said.

  Cornett took out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to Gaston. “Here,” he said. “This is for the lamb we killed, with an extra dollar for your trouble. Now please, move the rest of them as quickly as you can.”

  Bailey did an excellent job with the lamb, and that night the cowboys enjoyed the best meal they had eaten so far.

  “Damn. If I had known that sheep tasted this good, I might ’a become a sheep herder myself,” Stewart said as he gnawed the meat away from a small bone.

  “Ha! Can you see Stewart wearin’ one of them funny-lookin’ little hats and that jacket?” one of the other cowboys asked.

  “What’s the hat got to do with it?” Another cowboy wanted to know.

  “Well hell, you seen it, didn’t you? All three of them fellers was wearin’ those funny hats. You have to wear one of them funny hats to be a sheep herder. That’s the law.”

  “That ain’t the law,” Stewart insisted.

  “Yes it is. If you are goin’ to herd sheep, you’ve got to wear one of them hats and that jacket.”

  As the others laughed and teased Stewart about the funny hat and jacket he would have to wear, Rebecca walked over to Cornett, who was sitting on the ground, leaning back against the wheel of the chuck wagon.

  “That was a very good thing you did,” she said.

  “What was?”

  “Finding a way to resolve this issue without resorting to killing.”

  “Hell, boy, did you really think I’d kill the sheep herders?”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “I suppose that I was afraid you might.”

  Cornett had just taken a bite of meat. He chewed on it for a moment, then sucked his fingers and stared up at Rebecca before he answered. He stared at her for suc
h long time that she became self-conscious. Had he recognized her?

  “Yeah, well, that’s just what I wanted Gaston to think too,” Cornett said. “If I scared him as much as I scared you, then I guess I did my job.”

  Rebecca’s laugh was one of relief.

  “I wonder what those people are,” Cornett said. “They aren’t Mexicans, and they damn sure aren’t Americans. They was speakin’ French, but it don’t seem likely that there would be any Frenchmen over here herdin’ sheep.”

  “I believe they were Basque,” Rebecca said.

  “They were what?”

  “Basque,” Rebecca repeated. “It’s a group of people who originated in the Pyrenees between France and Spain.”

  “How do know that?”

  “I read about it,” Rebecca said. “The Basque have a long history of tending sheep, and a lot of them have come to America for that purpose.”

  “Carmody, you are a most interesting young man,” Cornett said.

  Dodge City, Kansas, August 22

  It took them forty-two days to reach Dodge City, and Cornett held them just south of the Arkansas River for two days before taking the herd into town. It was another two days before the herd was loaded onto the train and the cowboys were paid out.

  Though everyone had missed a lot of sleep while on the trail, the cowboys were more eager to “have fun” than they were to catch up on their sleep. The first stop for most of them was a barbershop, where they had their hair trimmed and got professional shaves. Then they bought new clothes, took baths, dressed, and headed for the nearest saloon, dance hall, gambling establishment or whorehouse.

  “Come on, Carmody, let’s go get a haircut and shave, then find us some friendly women,” Carter invited. “Well, in your case, I guess you’re too young to need a shave. But you ain’t too young to have yourself some fun.”

  “Thank you, but I’d rather get a hotel room and catch up on my sleep,” Rebecca said.

  “Sleep? Hell, why waste time sleepin’? You’re goin’ to die one of these days, then you can sleep forever. Come on. I’ll bet you ain’t ever even had a woman, have you?”