by John Shirley
This time, Mason Durst might not come back alive.
CHAPTER TWO
Some of the men who’d come to the hire that drizzly morning scarcely needed to be hired. Mase was always ready to ride with Perry “Pug” Liberty, Ray Jost—an old friend who’d sided Mase on two drives with other outfits—and Lorenzo Vasquez. Soon as they expressed themselves satisfied with the proposed pay, they would be hired.
The other four men standing in front of the barn at the Durst Ranch were unknown to Mase till this morning. A compact little waddy with a door-knocker mustache, compensating for shortness with a ten-gallon hat, identified himself as one Andy Pike. He had worked for the Circle H, he said, and had left because “he didn’t like Mr. Harning’s ways.” He claimed to be a good horse wrangler and an experienced drover. Mase had indeed seen him riding along the property line with Harning’s men, and figured he was likely experienced enough. From Alabama, and the son of a Confederate colonel, Pike proudly announced he had ridden behind General Lee himself. “So you know I can hold my own in a fight.”
Mase’s father had died in the War Between the States, fighting for the Confederacy, and Mase had chosen to stay behind and run the farm for his mother and sister, his older brother having ridden off with his father to join the Rebels. Despite his father’s allegiances, the whole idea of splitting up the United States had gone against Mase’s grain. Then the elder Durst had been killed, and Mase’s brother, Hiram, had come back from the war a haunted, bitter man, caring only for cheap whiskey, loose women, and easy money. Mase hadn’t seen Hiram in five years.
Anyhow, Mase just wasn’t impressed with Civil War stories. But he needed men—four others he’d approached had said no, not wanting to ride the Red Trail—and he was going to be short on hands as it was.
“All right, you’re hired,” he told Pike.
Jacob Marsh was a black man, about forty, who’d been recommended by Crane Williams as “tough as old leather and quick to get things done.” He stood there, a little apart from the others, hat in hand, and just listened. They’d met the day before, and Mase noted Jacob to be a man of few words but a steady gaze. He had never been on a long drive before, but he was a good all-around hand, according to Crane. Jacob was to assist the cook and the horse wrangler and, when he wasn’t doing that, to ride drag or swing.
Harry Duff was twenty-one and just plain skinny; a rancher’s son, from the Triangle D off to the south a fair piece, he wore ram’s fur chaps, a new Stetson, and a Colt Army on his hip. “Everybody just calls me Duff, except my ma and pa.”
Duff was shivering without his jacket, and that made Mase doubt him. “You feeling chilly, Duff? It might get mighty cold up north. Spring ain’t summer, and in them hills, about two in the morning when you’re on night guard a long way from the campfire, you’ll feel cold and then some.”
“Why, I can handle it, boss!” Duff declared, tilting his head proudly back.
Pug snorted. “Boy, you’d better be able to—I’ve seen it so cold in April out on the prairie, with that north wind sheering in, a man’s eyelids freeze shut!”
“That ain’t nothin’,” said Ray Jost. “I saw it so cold on night guard, a fellow froze to his horse, the horse froze solid, and they both died so stuck together, they had to be buried in one grave, the horse standing up. That was a deep hole to dig, too.”
The other hands stared for a moment and then burst into laughter at this windy.
Mase only chuckled—he was used to Ray’s ludicrous stories—and turned to young Duff. “Tell me something, Duff—why do you want to go on this trip?”
“Mr. Durst, my whole life I’ve only been but eighty-five miles from my pa’s ranch! I want to see the elephant! And—well, my old man didn’t think I’m man enough for it either. So I had to do it!”
Mase nodded. Having to prove something to your father was something he understood. It was a powerful motivation. “How’re you for horse wrangling?”
“Why, that’s most of what I done on our place! My pa breeds horses as well as cows, Mr. Durst.”
“I’m shorthanded, so I reckon you’re hired. You’ll handle the remuda, and sometimes you’ll trade out with Ray Jost so you can ride drag. Not the best jobs but you’re green, and that’s what you’re offered.”
The young man grinned, a very wide and bright grin, and stuck out his hand. “Happy to do anything you need, Mr. Durst.”
They shook hands, and Mase turned to the man who was likely to be his trail cook.
Mase had met Mick Dollager on a recent trip to town, finding him fruitlessly searching for work “as a chef,” as he put it. Mase had already as much as hired him. He had invited him to the ranch to demonstrate his cooking, and the results had more than impressed both Mase and Katie. She had even asked him for the recipe for what he called officers’ stew.
Dollager was a big, heavy-bellied man with a curling brown beard and curled-up mustaches. He wore a bowler hat, a threadbare dusty blue suit, and a frock coat. Standing there holding his lapels and emanating self-importance, he had the air of a politician about to give a speech, or so it seemed to Mase. He seemed to know his job—he told convincing stories of having been a cook for the British Army in India—and Mase found the man entertaining, even likable, despite his pomposity. But would he be able to abide the long trail north?
“Boys,” said Mase, “this is Mick Dollager. He’s from far-off Britain. If we come to an agreement today, he’ll be our cook.”
“Who’s he loyal to?” asked Pike, looking at the Brit askance.
“Here now, what’s all this, young man!” Dollager said, frowning at Pike. His British accent made the men chuckle.
“Is you loyal to the king of that England or to this here US of A?”
“Why, are you planning to make war on the United Kingdom, young man?”
Pike seemed taken aback. “Me?”
“In point of fact, sir, I am . . . I am soon to be an American citizen. I want nothing else. My loyalty is to good men, sir. Are you a good man?”
“Why, in course I am!”
“Then I’ll be loyal to you. ‘Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable, than loyalty,’ so Cicero tells us.”
“Is Cicero workin’ with this outfit?” Pike asked, scratching his head.
“Is Cicero—?” Dollager looked at him in amazement.
“Never mind about Cicero,” Ray said. “The question, Dollager, is, are you a biscuit shooter—or a belly cheater?”
The other cowboys nodded approvingly at that.
Dollager cleared his throat. “I am not entirely familiar with your nomenclature, sir, but I assure you that as a cook, I will cheat no one’s belly! You shall have all I am allowed to give you, and you shall have it cooked to that degree of perfection that is permitted by conditions.”
“Fair enough,” Ray said with his trademark crooked smile. He thrust out his hand and the two men shook, Dollager adding in a small bow.
“I know you can cook, Dollager,” said Mase. “But can you drive a team of oxen?”
“Can I drive—!” Dollager raised his eyebrows. “Sir, I drove a cook wagon for Her Majesty’s Army in India. Oxen were my constant companions! I am richly experienced in the matter!”
“Now, suppose we’re attacked out there. What will you do?”
“As to that, I am no man to glorify violence. Our camp was overrun in the India Rebellion, there was a terrible loss in our ranks, and I was forced to shoot two of the invaders. It saddened me. But I will do it again if necessary! I will exhibit caution but not cowardice.”
Mase nodded in approval. He suspected there was much more to Dollager’s life story. The man was a fish out of water here in Texas. How had he come to be here? Why was he so eager to be an American citizen? He could be running from something. But trail-worthy cooks were hard to come by. “You’re hired, if you agree to the wages.”
Mase stepped back and looked them all over, then said, “Boys—the same goes for you all. You’re all hired if you agree to the wages. I will need you to meet me at the north gate of the ranch, Monday morning—Curly will show you where it is. The chuck wagon and oxen will be there, too, loaded and ready. I want you there at one hour before dawn! That’s before dawn now! You can bring your own horse, or you can use only the remuda. But you’re responsible for any mount you fork.”
“Who’s trail boss?” Lorenzo Vasquez asked. The vaquero was a cheerful, medium-sized man with big brown eyes and curling mustachios; he wore a modest sombrero, a short deer-hide jacket sewn with intricate patterns, black trousers with a white strip of embroidery on the sides, and deer-hide chaps.
“I’ll be my own trail boss,” Mase replied, “but I’ll be drovin’, too. Pug is your foreman. We’ll look into hiring some more help up near the Red River, but till then, there’s a heap of cattle and not enough of us.”
Mase had a tough exterior, but he quietly arranged to pay each man—at the end of the drive—a mite more than the average drive boss. A hundred thirty dollars and found. Pug would get a hundred sixty-five dollars and found because he was to be foreman.
“Just one thing, Mr. Durst,” Pike said after they’d gone into the barn, where a table was set up, to sign the hire contract. “Some bosses will pay an advance if a man’s hard up. Harning fired me after I done spent my pay, and well, I got a debt of twenty dollars. I don’t want to go on the trail owing folks.”
“How am I to know you won’t just take it and spend it all on whiskey?” Mase asked.
Pike scowled. “That how you see me?”
“I don’t know you. Well?”
“No such a thing. I want it for a debt.”
“All right, though it’s not something I like doing. I’d better not see everybody else line up for it either.” He fished a double eagle from his pocket and handed it over. “Now—this’ll be taken out of your pay. And if you don’t show up Monday, when I come back, I’ll take it out of your hide!”
Pug chuckled at that. “He will, too.”
Pike nodded. “You can trust me, Mr. Durst.”
* * *
* * *
Andy Pike stood in front of Tom Harning’s desk, hat in hand, and said, “After we signed the contract, boss, he gave us the lowdown on the drive. They’re heading up the Shawnee Trail, then over west to somethin’ he calls Red Trail, north on that through the Leadton hill country.”
“You don’t say. When do they leave?”
“Monday morning at dawn.”
“Was you not my top hand, I’d send you along to do a job for me. I don’t want Durst finishing that drive.”
Pike was a little startled at that. He didn’t mind pretending to sign on with Durst—and getting twenty dollars out of it, too—but what Harning was hinting at stuck in his craw. A man could hang for that. And he had no intention of riding north on the Red Trail.
“That’s not my kind of work, boss.” He licked his lips. “But I know a man . . .”
* * *
* * *
Mase and Katie were sitting up in bed, having perhaps gotten a start on a second child; he was studying Crane’s map for perhaps the tenth time, and she was scratching Varmint behind the ears, the cat now curled up on her lap. Katie glanced thoughtfully over Mase’s shoulder at the map. In the yellow light of the oil lamp, it looked to her like not much more than chicken scratchings.
Katie sighed. “That sure don’t look like much to go on. Can’t I talk you out of it, Mase? Later in the season the Chisolm will open up. . . .”
He dropped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “I’m afraid not, darlin’. I’m going to get those cows up north before everybody else. And this is the only way to do it.”
“You know, I heard from Elsie Sorenson that Tom Harning’s lawyer has got something in the court docket, and it might just be our ranch, Mase. You know what Harning thinks.”
“I know what he pretends to think. It’s all puffery. Don’t mean a thing.”
“Without you here . . .”
Mase frowned. “Without me here—what?”
“I just don’t know what he’s capable of. I’ve heard some stories. And he shot the Sorensons’ sheep.”
“He shot a few of them that came onto his land. Or anyhow he said he did. He had to pay them for ’em, too. He pushes, he gets pushed back.”
“His ranch is on three sides of us. Seems like it bothers his mind not to have it all.”
“Hell, he’s not making money like he used to. You know, I sell these cattle, I just might buy some of his ranch from him. Who knows? Maybe he’d sell out to me!”
Katie snorted. “Not likely. I feel sorry for his wife. He only married Gertrude for her pa’s money.”
“He’s managed to sire a couple of children with her.”
“Managed to!”
Mase blinked. “I say something wrong? I never know—”
“Well—just because she’s not a pretty woman . . .”
“Oh, she’s fine, just fine,” Mase said hastily. “She seems a decent sort when I see them in town. Never seems happy with that sourpuss, and I don’t blame her. Anyway, you don’t worry about him. He’s all hat and no cattle. Can’t back up anything he says. And I know something else for sure—Tom Harning’s no match for Katie Durst!”
She smiled. “You think so?”
He kissed her. “I know so.”
“Mase—did you think on what I asked about—for Monday morning? It’d make Jim feel good, and you can use the help getting those beeves on the trail.”
“Well, you keep a close eye on him, and you two can help us drive ’em up to the crossing at Butner Creek. But no farther!”
“He’ll be thrilled!”
“We’ll see how thrilled he feels when you get him up about two hours before dawn. . . .”
* * *
* * *
Everyone was there well before dawn, Monday morning, including Katie and a sleepy young Jim Durst. Katie had set up a campfire near the wagon, just to make the “Arbuckle,” and Jim was yawning as he poured water from a bucket into the enormous coffeepot.
Working under a lantern, Mase and Dollager went over the goods packing the chuck wagon, the cook noting everything down with a pencil and paper, including all the dry goods and hardware.
They would be hiring more men on the way, and Mase had stocked up for them, too. The victuals list included two hundred fifty pounds of salt pork, four hundred pounds of flour, forty pounds of salt, ten pounds of pepper, ninety pounds of coffee, one hundred fifty pounds of ground onions, four hundred pounds of beans, fifty pounds of sourdough starter, four hundred pounds of potatoes, sixty pounds of dried chilis, thirty-five pounds of dried garlic, fifty pounds of lard, and two hundred pounds of dried fruit. In addition, Dollager had brought along two chests of his own, including one for “various spices,” and twenty pounds of butter. The butter was a treat that they would soon have to do without; it would be used up in the first week and not replenished, for it would not keep as long as lard. There were a hundred pounds of salted beef, from an older steer Mase didn’t think would make it to Wichita, and half a dozen smoked hams.
Besides food supplies and water barrels, the chuck wagon carried pots and pans; tin plates and forks, which the cowboys liked to call “eatin’ irons”; two spare wheels strapped to the sides; lanterns and five gallons of kerosene; and kegs for holding sourdough, a small barrel of horseshoes, spare oxen shoes, small barrels of nails, two boxes of tools, and a small anvil. There were a big box of rifle ammunition, a long box for shotguns, and two big coils of rope. The possible various drawers and cubbies in this Charles Goodnight–style wagon contained bandages, needles and thread, vinegar, and a few patent medicaments. A Dutch oven stood just inside the rear ga
te of the wagon, and alongside it was a three-gallon coffeepot. Lucifers and extra blankets rounded out the storage.
As they went over these goods, Dollager, so it seemed to Mase, had the grave and reverential air of a priest preparing for a mass.
“Well, coosie,” said Mase, “I’ll tell you true—”
“Pardon me, sir?” Dollager asked, brows knitted in puzzlement. “What did you call me?”
“‘Coosie’—it’s what we call the cook on the drive. Now, I’ve been scrimping for this drive for a long time. Selling what I could sell—even sold ten acres. These supplies cost me close to three thousand dollars. And that’s not including the cost of this wagon. Just see you guard the whole shootin’ match with your life!”
A twinkle in his eyes, Dollager saluted him in the snappy fashion of the British Army. “Very good, Captain!”
Mase grinned. “Come on, let’s look at the oxen.”
The sturdy oxen were fully grown but relatively young, and they seemed to champ at the bits, stamping their hooves as if in a restless hurry of their own.
The two men inspected the animals’ hooves—carefully, not wanting to be kicked by the enormous bovines—and peered at the oxen’s eyes and mouths.
“They seem well enough,” Dollager declared. “Have they names?”
“Well, they’re brother and sister. You can name them if you care to.”
“I shall call them Albert and Victoria.”
“Suit yourself. Now, we won’t tussle with the stove this morning, but we’ll have a short breakfast of coffee, biscuits, and dried ham before setting out. Katie’s made the biscuits and coffee, but you can hand it all out and pour the coffee. After this, you’re on your own, except maybe if you get some help from Jacob!”
Mase went to inspect the remuda. There were twenty spare horses hobbled there, within a circle of roped stakes. The horses were another daunting investment for Mase, for these were all trained cow ponies, stock horses used to being haltered, herded, and corralled; they were responsive to cowboys, ready to turn to face the wrangler once roped from behind, and experienced at driving cattle. Such horses did not come cheaply.
