The Buccaneers, page 16
“About a week,” I said. “Maybe a little longer.”
“Isn’t that sort of taking a gamble? The bottom could fall out of this market any day.”
“Norris, didn’t anybody ever tell you that ranching was a gamble?”
“Yes,” he said, “I believe you’ve mentioned that three or four hundred times. But the point is I could use the cash right now. There’s a new issue of U.S. treasury bonds that are paying four percent. Those cattle we should be shipping right now are about to reach the point of diminishing returns.”
Ben said, “Whatever in the hell that means.”
I said, “I’ll think it over.” I ragged Norris a good deal and got him angry at every good opportunity, but I generally listened when he was talking about money.
After that Ben and I talked about getting some fresh blood in the horse herd. The hard work was done for the year but some of our mounts were getting on and we’d been crossbreeding within the herd too long. I told Ben I thought he ought to think about getting a few good Morgan studs and breeding them in with some of our younger quarter horse mares. For staying power there was nothing like a Morgan. And if you crossed that with the quick speed of a quarter horse you had something that would stay with you all day under just about any kind of conditions.
After that we talked about this and that, until I finally dragged the note out of my pocket. I said, not wanting to make it seem too important, “Got a little love letter this noon. Wondered what ya’ll thought about it.” I got out of my chair and walked over and handed it to Ben. He read it and then brought all four legs of his chair to the floor with a thump and read it again. He looked aver at me. “What the hell! You figure this to be the genuine article?”
I shrugged and went back to my chair. “I don’t know,” I said. “I wanted to get ya’ll’s opinion.”
Ben got up and handed the note to Norris. He read it and then raised his eyebrows. “How’d you get this?”
“That messenger boy from the telegraph office, Joshua, brought it out to me. Said some man had given him a dollar to bring it out.”
“Did you ask him what the man looked like?”
I said drily, “Yes, Norris, I asked him what the man looked like but he said he didn’t know. Said all he saw was the dollar.”
Norris said, “Well, if it’s somebody’s idea of a joke it’s a damn poor one.” He reached back and handed the letter to Howard.
Dad was a little time in reading the note since Norris had to go and fetch his spectacles out of his bedroom. When he’d got them adjusted he read it over several times and then looked at me. “Son, I don’t believe this is something you can laugh off. You and this ranch have made considerable enemies through the years. The kind of enemies who don’t care if they were right or wrong and the kind of enemies who carry a grudge forever.”
“Then why warn me?”
Norris said, “To get more satisfaction out of it. To scare you.”
I looked at Dad. He shook his head. “If they know Justa well enough to want to kill him they’ll also know he don’t scare. No, there’s another reason. They must know Justa ain’t all that easy to kill. About like trying to corner a cat in a railroad roundhouse. But if you put a man on his guard and keep him on his guard, it’s got to eventually take off some of the edge. Wear him down to where he ain’t really himself. The same way you buck down a bronc. Let him do all the work against himself.”
I said, “So you take it serious, Howard?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I damn well do. This ain’t no prank.”
“What shall I do?”
Norris said, “Maybe we ought to run over in our minds the people you’ve had trouble with in the past who’ve lived to bear a grudge.”
I said, “That’s a lot of folks.”
Ben said, “Well, there was that little war we had with that Preston family over control of the island.”
Howard said, “Yes, but that was one ranch against another.”
Norris said, “Yes, but they well knew that Justa was running matters. As does everyone who knows this ranch. So any grudge directed at the ranch is going to be directed right at Justa.”
I said, with just a hint of bitterness, “Was that supposed to go with the job, Howard? You didn’t explain that part to me.”
Ben said, “What about the man in the buggy? He sounds like a likely suspect for such a turn.”
Norris said, “But he was crippled.”
Ben gave him a sour look. “He’s from the border, Norris. You reckon he couldn’t hire some gun help?”
Howard said, “Was that the hombre that tried to drive that herd of cattle with tick fever through our range? Those Mexican cattle that hadn’t been quarantined?”
Norris said, “Yes, Dad. And Justa made that little man, whatever his name was, drive up here and pay damages.”
Ben said, “And he swore right then and there that he’d make Justa pay damages.”
I said, “For my money it’s got something to do with that maniac up in Bandera County that kept me locked up in a root cellar for nearly a week and then tried to have me hung for a crime I didn’t even know about.”
“But you killed him. And damn near every gun hand he had.”
I said, “Yeah, but there’s always that daughter of his. And there was a son.”
Ben gave me a slight smile. “I thought ya’ll was close. I mean real close. You and the daughter.”
I said, “What we done didn’t have anything to do with anything. And I think she about as crazy as her father. And, Ben, if you ever mention that woman around Nora, I’m liable to send you one of those notes.”
Norris said, “But that’s been almost three years ago.”
I shook my head. “Time ain’t nothing to a woman. They got the patience of an Indian. She’d wait this long just figuring it’d take that much time to forget her.”
Norris said skeptically, “That note doesn’t look made by a women’s hand.”
I said, “It’s block lettering, Norris. That doesn’t tell you a damn thing. Besides, maybe she hired a gun hand who could write.”
Ben said, “I never heard of one.”
Howard said, waving the note, “Son, what are you going to do about this?”
I shrugged. “Well, Dad, I don’t see where there’s anything for me to do right now. I can’t shoot a message and until somebody either gets in front of me or behind me or somewheres, I don’t see what I can do except keep a sharp lookout.”
The next day I was about two miles from ranch headquarters, riding my three-year-old bay gelding down the little wagon track that led to Blessing, when I heard the whine of a bullet passing just over my head, closely followed by the crack of a distant rifle. I never hesitated; I just fell off my horse to the side away from the sound of the rifle. I landed on all fours in the roadbed, and then crawled as quick as I could toward the sound and into the high grass. My horse had run off a little ways, surprised at my unusual dismount. He turned his head to look at me, wondering, I expected, what the hell was going on.
But I was too busy burrowing into that high grass as slow as I could so as not to cause it to ripple or sway or give away my position in any other way to worry about my horse. I took off my hat on account of its high crown, and then I eased my revolver out of its holster, cocking it as I did. I was carrying a .42/.40 Navy Colt, which is a .40-caliber cartridge chamber on a .42-caliber frame. The .42-caliber frame gave it a good weight in the hand with less barrel deviation, and the .40-caliber bullets it fired would stop any thing you hit in the right place. But it still wasn’t any match for a rifle at long range, even with the six-inch barrel. My enemy, whoever he was, could just sit there patiently and fire at the slightest movement, and he had to eventually get me because I couldn’t lay out there all day. It was only ten of the morning, but already the sun was way up and plenty hot. I could feel a little trickle of sweat running down my nose, but I daren’t move to wipe it away for fear even that slight movement could be seen. And I couldn’t chance raising my head enough to see for that too would expose my position. All I could do was lay there, staring down at the earth, and wait, knowing that, at any second, my bushwhacker could be making his way silently in my direction. He’d have to know, given the terrain, the general location of where I was hiding.
Of course he might have thought he’d hit me, especially from the way I’d just fallen off my horse. I took a cautious look to my left. My horse was still about ten yards away, cropping at the grass along the side of the road. Fortunately, the tied reins had fallen behind the saddle horn and were held there. If I wanted to make a run for it I wouldn’t have to spend the time gathering up the reins. The bad part of that was that our horses were taught to ground-rein. When you got off, if you dropped the reins they’d stand there just as if they were tied to a stump. But this way my horse was free to wander off as the spirit might move him. Leaving me afoot whilst being stalked by a man with a rifle.
I tried to remember how close the bullet had sounded over my head and whether or not the assassin might have thought he’d hit me. He had to have been firing upward because there was no other concealment except the high grass. Then I got to thinking I hadn’t seen a horse. Well, there were enough little depressions in the prairie that he could have hid a horse some ways back and then come forward on foot and concealed himself in the high grass when he saw me coming.
But how could he have known I was coming? Well, that one wasn’t too hard to figure out. I usually went to town at least two or three times a week. If the man had been watching me at all he’d of known that. So then all he’d of had to do was come out every morning and just wait. Sooner or later he was bound to see me coming along, either going or returning.
But I kept thinking about that shot. I’d had my horse in a walk, just slouching along. And God knows, I made a big enough target. In that high grass he could easily have concealed himself close enough for an easy shot, especially if he was a gun hand. The more I thought about it the more I began to think the shooter had been aiming to miss me, to scare me, to wear me down as Howard had said. If the note had come from somebody with an old grudge, they’d want me to know who was about to kill me or have me killed. And a bushwhacking rifle shot wasn’t all that personal. Maybe the idea was to just keep worrying me until I got to twitching and where I was about a quarter of a second slow. That would be about all the edge a good gun hand would need.
I’d been laying there for what I judged to be a good half hour. Unfortunately I’d crawled in near an ant mound and there was a constant stream of the little insects passing by my hands. Sooner or later one of them was going to sting me. By now I was soaked in sweat and starting to get little cramps from laying so still. I know I couldn’t stay there much longer. At any second my horse might take it into his head to go loping back to the barn. As it was he was steadily eating his way further and further from my position.
I made up my mind I was going to have to do something. I cautiously and slowly raised my head until I could just see over the grass. There wasn’t anything to see except grass. There was no man, no movement, not even a head of cattle that the gunman might have secreted himself behind.
I took a deep breath and moved, jamming my hat on my head as I did and ramming my gun into its holster. I ran, keeping as low as I could, to my horse. He gave me a startled look, but he didn’t spook. Ben trains our horses to expect nearly anything. If they are of a nervous nature we don’t keep them.
I reached his left side, stuck my left boot in the stirrup, and swung my right leg just over the saddle. Then, hanging on to his side, I grabbed his right rein with my right hand and pulled his head around until he was pointing up the road. I was holding on to the saddle with my left hand. I kicked him in the ribs as best I could, and got him into a trot and then into a lope going up the road toward town. I tell you, it was hell hanging on to his side. I’d been going a-horseback since I could walk, but I wasn’t no trick rider and the position I was in made my horse run sort of sideways so that his gait was rough and awkward.
But I hung on him like that for what I judged to be a quarter of a mile and out of rifle shot. Only then did I pull myself up into the saddle and settle myself into a normal position to ride a horse. Almost immediately I pulled up and turned in the saddle to look back. Not a thing was stirring, just innocent grass waving slightly in the light breeze that had sprung up.
I shook my head, puzzled. Somebody was up to something, but I was damned if I could tell what. If they were trying to make me uneasy they were doing a good job of it. And the fact that I was married and had a wife and child to care for, and a hell of a lot more reason to live than when I was a single man, was a mighty big influence in my worry. It could be that the person behind the threats was aware of that and was taking advantage of it. If such was the case, it made me think more and more that it was the work of the daughter of the maniac in Bandera that had tried in several ways to end my life. It was the way a woman would think because she would know about such things. I couldn’t visualize the man in the buggy understanding that a man with loved ones will cling harder to life for their sake than a man with nothing else to lose except his own hide.
Wesley Ellis, The Buccaneers
