Die by the Gun, page 20
part #2 of Chuckwagon Trail Series
He had been hired to get the Circle Arrow herd to market and wrangle the best price that he could. Selling about a third of the beeves for a hundred a head made him glow with pride. The reason Luther Wardell paid so much hardly mattered. The money covered all the Circle Arrow hands’ salaries and then some. The sale of what remained, in Denver or elsewhere, was pure gravy.
Flowers rode steadily back to the Circle Arrow herd. The closer he got, the less sure he was what to do. By the time he reached the chuckwagon, he was too confused to know which end was up. Mac was working to clean the harness for the chuckwagon team and looked up when Flowers came closer.
“You find him?” Mac tossed aside the harness and saddle soap.
“He’s on his way to Mexico. With Don Jaime and his herd.”
Mac pursed his lips. Flowers saw the wheels spinning in the man’s head as he ground everything into a fine dust before spitting it out.
“You’re going after him, aren’t you?” Mac said.
“No! He’s old enough to make his own decisions.”
“What’s Miz Sullivan going to say? She wanted you to look out for him.”
“I never agreed to that.”
“But you didn’t have to say it out loud,” Mac said. “You and her, you’ve got a verbal contract. She stayed at the Circle Arrow, and Desmond was supposed to stay with the herd until it was sold. He was supposed to learn the business of running a ranch.”
“You think I should go after him?”
Mac wiped his lips. His brain still churned. Watching the process would have been funny if Flowers hadn’t had so much riding on Desmond and the herd.
“I do, Mister Flowers. How hard is it letting the herd stay here and graze?”
“There’s no market here. Wardell sold our cattle to the Army. There aren’t other markets big enough for seven hundred head. Almost that many.” He did a quick inventory in his head. “Too many of them are steers for the local ranchers for breeding into their own herds.”
“We could drive the herd down into Mexico. If Don Jaime has a market there, we might do all right, too,” Mac said.
“I don’t know anybody there. I don’t know the markets, and I sure don’t speak Spanish.”
Mac laughed and said, “You don’t hardly speak English.”
Flowers glared at him for a second, then laughed, too.
“Got me on that.” He relaxed a mite and thought as hard as Mac had been on the subject. Everything clicked into place, like dice falling in a chuck-a-luck cage.
“Messy can be the trail boss and get the herd started for Denver. I’ll corral Desmond, bring him back, and catch up before a week’s out.”
“You trust the German with that much responsibility?”
“I’ve ridden with him and his buddy, Kleingeld, for a couple years. Nothing rattles him. And I don’t intend being gone all that long. He’s somewhere out riding herd. You can tell Messy what I decided. He gets my pay and his own while I’m gone. That’ll please the hardheaded German.”
Mac said nothing.
“You behave yourself, Mac. It’s hard enough dealing with Desmond. I don’t want you acting up, too.”
Flowers led his horse to the corral, chose another that wasn’t all tuckered out, mounted, and rode back. He nodded in Mac’s direction.
Then he galloped off, knowing he had to put distance between himself and the herd or his resolve would weaken. Getting Desmond back mattered. That might not get him into Mercedes’s good graces since he let her son light out for Mexico in the first place, but it helped. Let her fire him. In his heart he knew he was doing the right thing.
After a mile, he slowed to keep the horse from collapsing under him. If he kept up a decent pace, Don Jaime’s herd would be within reach by nightfall, maybe sooner. From everything he’d heard, the rancher had only a few vaqueros. That would slow down the drive. Feeling good, Flowers began singing one of the songs the nighthawks crooned to keep the cattle settled down.
He jumped a foot when another voice joined in on the chorus. Hand on his revolver, he twisted around in the saddle.
“Mac!” he exclaimed when he saw the cook trotting toward him on horseback. “What are you doing here? Something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Mac pulled even with him and made no move to stop or head back toward Fort Sumner.
“Messy refused to be trail boss?”
“He liked the idea. You might have to fight him to get your job back.”
“So why are you here?”
“I decided to help you fetch back Desmond. I owe him.”
“You’re that good a friend?” Flowers laughed harshly. The two young men had a wary truce and nothing more.
“More like a grudging respect. Desmond is fighting to climb out of a bad hole and is doing a good enough job.”
“What you’re saying in polite words is that he’s not as big of an asshole as he once was.”
“That,” Mac said. “And we worked good as partners before.”
“We won’t have Quick Willy Means to deal with anymore. Not like in Fort Worth.” Flowers hesitated, then asked, “What’re the men going to do for a cook if you’re coming with me to Mexico?”
“Kleingeld claims he can do better. Let him try with his stuffed skunk cabbage and sausage. If I get back and the men like him better, I’ll move on and everyone will be happy.”
Flowers heard something more in what Dewey Mackenzie said. If he liked Mexico, he’d never go back to the Circle Arrow herd. Desmond might be traveling with the herd again, but the drive was going to lose a cook, a damned good one, to boot, sooner or later.
He’d deal with that problem when it happened. First, he had to hog-tie Desmond and drag him back. Then he’d worry about Mac.
CHAPTER 23
The day was as perfect as it could get. Luther Wardell shifted his feet, hiked them up on the porch railing, leaned back a bit farther, and sipped at the Kentucky bourbon he had special ordered six months ago for celebrations. Snookering Don Jaime counted as reason to sip at the whiskey and enjoy the fine late summer day, with the wispy clouds high in the bright blue sky, the gentle breeze, and land that he owned as far as he could see. Even if he climbed to the roof of his two-story house, he wouldn’t be able to see the boundaries of his ranch.
After he bought Don Jaime’s ranch for the price of a few mortgage payments, he wouldn’t be able to ride around the perimeter of his land in a day. Two, maybe, but even galloping on a fast horse wouldn’t take him off his own property. He was on his way to being a power in De Baca County. Some of Don Jaime’s land stretched out to Lincoln County. That would be the next direction to expand.
He laughed.
“What’s so funny, boss?” Joe Ransom asked as he came up to the porch.
He motioned for his foreman to join him.
“Ransom, my good man, I am going to expand my spread. Don’t you like the play on words? I’m going to own all of southeastern New Mexico Territory within a couple years.”
Joe Ransom dragged a chair over and put it at polite distance from his employer. He looked at the chair as if not understanding what good it was, then settled down into it.
“Something’s eating you, Ransom. What is it? Don’t ruin my good mood.”
“I’d better go check the herd on the south forty.” He started to stand, but Wardell motioned him to stay put.
“You are going to ruin my day. I can tell. What’s wrong?”
“Don Jaime and the bank,” Ransom said. “I just heard that the banker’s giving him another month to make his back payments before putting the ranch up for sale.”
“So? Another month? I’m a patient man. I can wait that long.” Wardell fixed a cold stare on Ransom. The man was more gunman than foreman and had ice water in his veins. That he looked downright fidgety now caused Wardell to knock back his whiskey. It burned down to his belly. He didn’t taste it, and that put him in a foul mood. He had spent a hundred dollars getting a couple of bottles from the distillery.
“Don Jaime rounded up all his cattle and is driving them to Mexico.”
“He’s abandoning his ranch? Good. That’ll make . . .” Wardell’s words trailed off. The reason for Don Jaime’s trail drive wasn’t cowardice or welshing on the bank loan. “He has a buyer for the entire herd? Willing to pay enough to cover his debts?”
“All of them, if my ciphering’s right, boss. He sent a telegram to Don Pedro Escobar. I asked around. The two of them don’t get along, but Don Jaime’s got the cattle and Don Pedro’s got the markets farther down in Mexico. He sells to the Federales and a half dozen Indian tribes, including the Yaquis.” Ransom grinned wolfishly. “Rumor has it he also sells guns to the Indians. That might be where his real money comes from.”
“Real money,” Wardell said. He spat. “He’s got plenty to buy cattle. Do you think Don Jaime might be smuggling guns into Mexico?”
“He wouldn’t have the crust for that.”
“That’s the way I see him, too,” Wardell said.
“I can catch up with his herd and gun him down.”
“That won’t get me his ranch anytime soon. If it gets tied up in court, I have to buy off judges and lawyers. You know what crooks they are.”
“So he doesn’t end up with a couple ounces of lead in his belly?” Ransom sounded disgruntled at this. His fingers twitched, as if they circled the butt of his six-gun and pulled back on the trigger.
“There’re all sorts of dangers to face on a trail drive. Stampedes can destroy most of your cattle. What if his horses were stolen and his vaqueros had to walk?”
“He has to pay off the loan in a month. The banker won’t give him more time.”
“Why’d Amos Dunphy give him one second longer to pay up? Dunphy would foreclose on his own grandmother if there was an extra nickel in it for him.” Wardell thought hard. Then he shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe he gave Don Jaime the extra time because he’s sweet on Estella.”
“The fat banker man and a chica bonita like that?” Ransom laughed. It was an ugly sound that made Wardell wonder if the gunman wasn’t sweet on her, too
“It makes sense. He thinks giving Don Jaime a break might ingratiate him to his daughter. He either doesn’t see too clearly how she’d react to an arranged marriage with a fat, pasty-white banker or there’s something more at stake.”
“What does it matter? He gave Don Jaime the time.”
“Will he give him one second longer if he doesn’t get his money? Maybe with a bonus tacked onto it.”
“I can see that. Dunphy gets a bribe, paid under the table so his shareholders never find out. That’s what I’d do, then find away to foreclose on his ranch.” Ransom sounded proud of such a scheme. Wardell knew that much was true, but Estella’s hand, with the ranch as dowry, still intrigued Ransom.
“How many men can you get into the saddle?”
“To overtake Don Jaime? A half dozen. If I take any more, tending the cattle out on the range will suffer. We’ve got Mescaleros raiding almost nightly. Without enough guards, they’d run off the entire herd within a week.”
“Damned Indians,” Wardell groused. “Get the men ready to leave as fast as possible. I’ll stay here to deal with the Apaches.”
“And the banker?” suggested Ransom.
“Dunphy must have a weak spot. I’ll find it and dig my thumbs in to see how deep the bruise goes.” Wardell recovered some of the good nature he had experienced before Ransom delivered such bad news. There wasn’t any call to get upset. Things would work out for him soon enough. All he needed was patience.
Patience and a way of applying pressure to Don Jaime and Amos Dunphy and anyone else who got in his way.
CHAPTER 24
Mac pulled his battered hat down until the brim was just over his eyebrows. This shielded his eyes enough to slowly survey the land ahead even as it let the hot sun bake down on the top of his head through the hole in the hat’s crown.
Small ranges of low mountains perked up all around, but the main path any cattle would take lay wide and green with juicy grass. Try as he might, he couldn’t find Don Jaime’s herd. This worried him. The rancher might have taken some other route from Fort Sumner. Going straight into the Sacramento Mountains had to be the worst choice. They were high and passes would need to be found. Mac had never driven a herd through mountains, but it didn’t look easy.
He turned more to the south. The Circle Arrow herd had come from the southeast. Don Jaime had no reason to cross the Pecos. Texas was filled with longhorns, and the price of any given steer was too low to get him the money he needed.
“There,” Hiram Flowers said, pointing due south. “He’s made good time to get that far.”
“Are you sure?” Mac finally spotted the dust on the far horizon. “It’s only a dust devil.”
“Don Jaime’s herd,” Flowers insisted. “He’s in a hurry.”
“He’ll run those beeves until they’re nothing but skeletons.” Mac pushed his hat back up in a more comfortable position. He eyed the dust as it died down. The brown haze lay in the right direction.
“Let’s ride. We can overtake them by sundown.”
“We should have brought a second horse for each of us. Swapping out when one got tired would have let us double the distance we can ride.”
“We’ll get there, Mac. What worries me most is if something’s happened to Desmond. Sometimes, he doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
“You mean you worry that Don Jaime catches him fooling around with Estella?” In a perverse way, Mac hoped Don Jaime did catch them and booted Desmond off the drive. He smiled, just a little, at the notion of Estella turning from Desmond to someone else. He was that someone else. Ever since he had seen her in the restaurant, she had dominated his thoughts and dreams.
Desmond had been able to corner her when he hadn’t. Desmond gave her a way off the ranch that her pa was driving into the ground. Mac wasn’t sure what he offered her, but it had to be better than the ne’er-do-well. Desmond had hardly worked a day in his life before the trail drive.
Mac had worked every day since he was eight or nine. His pa had made sure of that. When he moved on after his parents died and his brother Jacob upped and left without so much as a good-bye, life had turned difficult. All the time he’d spent in New Orleans had shown he coped well and met any challenge, even the snake eyes he rolled with Pierre Leclerc.
A momentary pang caused him to catch his breath as he thought of Evie. She had been so lovely. For all he knew, she enjoyed her life with Leclerc, though he doubted it if she got wind that the shipping tycoon had murdered her pa. He shuddered, remembering how he had found Micah Holdstock’s body tied up on the oak tree, his body slashed and his throat slit with Mac’s knife.
He still used that knife for cooking on the drive.
“What’s wrong? You forget something? Your knife’s sheathed at the small of your back, if that’s what you’re feeling around for.” Flowers looked curiously at him.
“I worry about forgetting things. I’m ready to ride.”
“Gallop a mile, walk half, trot for a half, then gallop until the horses tire. If we change their gait they won’t get as worn out.” Hiram Flowers patted his horse’s neck. The animal turned a big brown eye around to glare at its rider, as if it understood what the trail boss said and disagreed.
“You’ve done this before,” Mac said. “Was it chasing after Desmond then, too?”
“You’ve got a mouth on you, boy. You just shut it and ride. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a mouth full of bugs and dust.” Flowers lowered his head and brought his horse to a gallop.
Mac followed him. His horse wasn’t anywhere near as strong as the trail boss’s but kept up well enough, lagging only a few dozen yards by the time Flowers drew back to a walk.
Mac closed the distance and said, “You see what I do?”
Flowers jerked around, eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?”
Mac felt a momentary pride that he had paid attention to his surroundings and Flowers hadn’t. The satisfaction died when he realized how second nature that had become to him with bounty hunters on his trail and a murder trial waiting for him in New Orleans.
“Not a mile to the west. At least five riders. They’re making tracks for Don Jaime’s herd, too. They might be rustlers.”
“That’s mighty quick of them, if they are. From what I can tell, Don Jaime got the bug up his ass to drive his cattle to Mexico in the last day or two. Maybe only hours before he set out.”
“This isn’t the usual trail that a cattle drive takes, is it?”
“The Goodnight-Loving Trail is miles and miles to the east and doesn’t go anywhere near Mexico. Men don’t ride this section of the territory for fun, not with the Indians always riled up about something.”
Mac hazarded a guess. “Apache scouts?”
“Apache war party is more like it. You didn’t get any better look at them, did you?”
Mac started to snap back an answer. He had seen the riders; Flowers hadn’t. How much more was he supposed to do? Count the number of gold teeth in their heads? Find out their horses’ names?
He held back his sass.
“From the way they’re headed, we can cross in front and find out what they’re up to. Or we can dog their back trail and sneak up when they camp.”
“And spy on them?” Flowers spat out the words. “That’s downright uncivil.”
“If they’re honest men traveling for honest reasons, that’s not overly polite. You’re the one who said there’s no such critter as an honest man out in this part of the territory. Other than us. And Don Jaime and his vaqueros.”
