CHAPTER XLMR. RUDABAUGH APPEARS
LEN Hersey, one of the swing men, condescended to converse with Cinquo Centavos, the fourteen-year-old horse herder. They sat their horses in the sunshine, watching the distant herd contentedly grazing. The wind was very soft and the sky very blue. Life would have been a pleasant thing for them both had they not been so close to town. They planned metropolitan conquest, both of them.
“I want to take a ride on the railroad kyars afore I go back home,” resumed Cinquo. “If I didn’t, my folks wouldn’t think I wasn’t much noways.”
“Them kyars probably don’t go nowheres near where you live at,” replied Len. “I don’t feel like taking no chances. Ef I am on a horse I’m all right; but ef a man’s on the kyars, where is he?
“If you was in town what would you advise fer to buy first, Cinquo?” he continued.
“Some onions and some fried potatoes and pie first, I reckon,” replied the boy. “Then some ammernition. Then maybe I’d get my hair cut. I had orter have some new pants. I mean ef I had any money.”
“And then a shave?”
The boy blushed red.
“I reckon I can get shaves if I pay the man,” said he, “and I reckon I am going to have plenty of money afore long. What’re you going to do?”
“Fust thing I am going to do when I get to town,” replied Len, “I am going to get a drink.”
“Then what?”
His companion gazed in deep thought.
“Then I think I’ll get another drink. Fur as I can see now, that’s about how I’m going to perceed. Of course, I may take both drinks at oncet. I can take other things under advisement, as the justice of the peace said. Maybe I would buy me a new pair pants; maybe I’d work around to the barber atter a while. When I got fixed up I might go and see what kind o’ dancin’ was in this town. Oh, yes! I did fergit about my shirt. I may buy me a shirt—ef there’s any kind of monte played in Aberlene.”
They both saw approaching across the prairies to the eastward a low-lying cloud of smoke. It was the first railroad train either of them had ever seen. They became very much excited.
“Look at her come!” said Cinquo. “Bet I ain’t skeered to ride on that thing! Now you see!”
“You’re a long ways off when you say it!” scoffed Len Hersey. “She’s goin’ to look a heap bigger and dangerouser, clost up. I bet we’d have to blindfold you and put two ropes on you afore we could put you on that there train, and then you’d be so skeered you’d shake your spurs off.”
“I ain’t got no more shakes than what you have,” said the boy. “You ain’t saw any more railroad kyars than what I have. But I don’t reckon I’ll go to town untel we sell our cows.”
“Nor me,” nodded Len. “But did you ever see such a town like this here one, now? They don’t savvy dobe none, it seems like; they don’t dry no mud; they just cut slabs of grass roots and build ’em up into a house, and put on a dirt roof. I looked inside of one as I rid by. It was lined with red caliker, walls and ceilings; no gypsum to white it up, nor nothing. Yet humans was livin’ in it. They live in them dugouts, too—just push a hole back into a bank an’ crawl in atter the hole like badgers. An’ there ain’t no trees; an’ when they do have trees, hain’t no moss on ’em. I ain’t saw a cactus nowheres, an’ as fer mesquite, I’m a notion to ride into one o’ these plum thickets an’ stick some plum thorns in my laigs, so’s’t a feller kin feel more nache’l.”
Meantime the continuous shriek of the locomotive whistle had brought to the station practically the entire population of the city of Abilene. It was a great day—a trail herd and a railroad train all in one day.
From the four coaches which made up the train there now descended an astonishing number of men, comprising all sorts and conditions of humanity. Some obviously were Eastern, and as many bore the imprint of the border. All of them pushed on toward the head of the train. There was no station building. The Drovers’ Cottage stood then for all of Abilene, and in that general direction the newcomers made their way. The ubiquitous McCoyne was first to greet them.
“Right this way, gentlemen!” said he. “Let me lead you to our hotel, the finest in the West. Welcome to Abilene, my friends! Yonder is the stockyards. I suppose some of you are looking after cattle. There is some in there now, and there is three thousand more right north of town. If you’re looking for cattle, we’ve got them and don’t you never doubt it! Gentlemen, you certainly have come to the right place. Boys, where’s the band?”
With some sort of instinct of his own McCoyne more especially addressed a quiet-looking sandy-bearded man in dark clothing, who seemed to be a man of distinct purposes and direct methods in life.
“How’d you like to ride out this evening and see our herd? They’ve just got in from Texas this morning.”
The stranger made a noncommittal reply to the effect that he was hungry. The crowd of newcomers began to disintegrate. Men looked after their hand bags, their rifles. Picturesque, certainly, was the personnel of every westbound train in Kansas at that time, when the head of steel was but little beyond the boom town of Abilene, first cow camp of Kansas.
Hickok and McMasters stood near the door of the Drovers’ Cottage, looking at the stirring and curious scene before them. The man of the Northern border was quiet after his fashion, moody. He turned suddenly to Dan McMasters.
“Look at them come!” he said. “Next year they’ll be here in thousands; and there’ll be cattle here in thousands too.”
McMasters nodded. The older man went on:
“Let me give you some advice. There is going to be big money in raising and selling cattle right up in this country; more money than there will be in trailing them north and selling at the road. If you’ll listen to me, you’ll get some land of your own up here. I’ll tell you where you can get a ranch, and a good one, over on the Smoky Hill, with all outdoors for your pasture. Put some cows on there. They’ll get fatter here than they ever will in Texas, though you don’t believe it. I’ve seen cattle up here, around the Army posts—and fat too. There’s no money in selling thin cattle. You’ll find that out if you keep at it. I’ve lived up here, north of the tick line, longer than you have.”
McMasters nodded.
“I’ve been studying this country now for quite a while,” said he. “I’ve seen some wintered cattle up in here, and as you say they were heavier. There’s a lot to be learned by Texas men. They don’t know that there is any world north of thirty-six. They’re still fighting the war, down in my state.”
“Huh! Well, this trial outlet for your cattle’ll end the war quicker than all your speech makers ever will.
“Of course,” he continued, “if you settle down to ranching you’ve got to get married some time. It’s a hard life for a woman here on the front, with the Indians not so far away. They tell me you have brought a young woman up here with this herd. I haven’t seen her. Lou Gore took her in charge and I’ll bet she’ll keep her close. She’s young? She can ride? Why don’t you marry her and settle down up here?”
He laughed at his conceit.
“You can bring up cattle from below as fast as you need more stock. Marry and settle down, son, and go into the sheriff business up here. I’ll give you my recommendation that you’re the best pistol shot I ever saw, unless it’s myself, and I’m not any too damn sure of that last.
“I’d bring Agnes out here if I was in a little different line of work myself,” he added. “That’s my wife.”
No man ever heard him speak in other but terms of gentleness of the woman who had married him, knowing what he was.
“I have got to finish my work first before I can settle down,” said Dan McMasters, almost as sad and moody as his companion here—indeed, singularly like to him.
Suddenly he touched the arm of Wild Bill, spoke in a low voice.
“Look!” said he, “Don’t move! There’s our man! That’s Rudabaugh down there by the last car! So that’s the way he took to get here!”
“Yes,” smiled Hickok, only amusement on his face. “He’s got here too late to stop that herd from making Abilene.”
“Yes; but he got here at just the right time, for all that!”
McMasters’ face was cold. The mask of expressionlessness again was covering it. His eyes, narrow, the skin of the upper eyelids drawn triangularly down, never left the man for whom so long and patiently he had been waiting.
CHAPTER XLIEASTERN CAPITAL
THE passengers who descended from the train left the coaches nearly empty. The head of steel was to the westward and new towns were projected for thirty miles; but the greater fame of Abilene, the city of the future stockyards, capital of a coming cow trade, still acted as magnet for a majority of the traders and buyers, adventurers, hunters, all the curious-minded gentry then eagerly exploiting a West which never yet had lived. The rumors of northern drives of Texas cattle had in some way gone abroad; this first arrival was a news event of the first water.
Before these arrivals now spread the vastest, sweetest empire that ever fell to gaze of any adventurers of new fortunes. The very feel of it was in the warm but vital air that blew across the waving prairies; lay in the far horizon that swept untarnished by any settler’s smoke, far as the eye might reach. The flowers here also had not yet known a bee and there was not a weed. At times the edge of the buffalo grass was east of the Western border. The bluestem had not yet fully got to Abilene. The buffalo that year moved a little farther west. Their wallows dotted the surface of the earth thereabout for years to come. The great checkerboard of the gods, four vast spaces in the corners of the greatest crossroads of the world, still lay out as the Range—mesquite and grama in the Southwest, bunch grass and buffalo grass in the Northwest; native—and later bluestem—grasses in the Northeast; redtop and its fellows in the Southeast; all lapping, encroaching, passing, augmenting as the swift years altered the range. From Spanish-moss lands to the sagebrush steppes, from the scant grama to the waist-high green, lay the country of the cows. At that time it was but imperfectly known. The original, the aboriginal titles had not yet been extinguished.
The raw little village of itself meant not so much to most of these men, who had seen such villages before, east of the Missouri. The scanty edifices were accepted at least as sufficient. There were saloons, stores, a hotel. The travelers looked to their weapons and their luggage, and then, each after his own fashion, headed out toward the signs which made offerings to civilized man. Most went to the saloons, a few moved toward the Drovers’ Cottage, where even now, before her formal opening, Lou Gore was making mankind comfortable on the frontier. Others wandered up and down the street, gazing this way or that. None passed the corrals of the Abilene Stockyards without a curious gaze at the gaunt, long-haired creatures which now marked a renaissance of the entire cattle trade in America. It all was crude, young, new and unspeakably alluring—this strange new world, offspring of time and the whim of the immortal gods at play on their great four-squared checkerboard.
McMasters called Hickok aside, spoke to him quietly, after a time.
“Our men have gone over to the new saloon,” said he. “I see one is headed for the Twin Livery Barn. They’ve probably got horses there, or are looking for some.”
“Well,” said Hickok, “you know them best. They haven’t made any break yet and I’ve got nothing on them. None of them ever harmed me. What’s the game?”
“I want you to watch them for a little while,” replied McMasters. “I’ll not leave much to you except the watching. I’ll be with you very soon. Just now I want to find out what’s going to be done about the sale of this herd. McCoyne has got some man in tow; and yon’s Nabours, the Del Sol trail boss—he’s just come in. I think I ought to know what goes on there.”
McCoyne, the exuberant and irresistible prophet of Abilene, indeed now was bringing forward a stranger, a bearded, stocky, self-contained man of nondescript dress, yet rather of Western look himself. The three little groups now joined.
“Mr. McMasters,” begun McCoyne, “and you, too, Mr. Nabours, and Marshal Hickok, this, now, is Mr. Pattison, just come to town. He’s in the market to buy some range stuff. He’s been in the packing business in Indianapolis for several years, and he has just come out to Junction City, a couple of hours over east, to start a packing plant of his own out here; though I don’t see why he didn’t pick on Abilene for that. Anyhow he has to come here for his cattle.”
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the stranger thus introduced, smiling humorously. “I am glad to meet you. Yes, I am looking for some cattle. I don’t know how you guessed it.”
“Where’d you want them delivered?” inquired Jim Nabours, coming to the thing on his own mind. “We got some cows. I can testify they’re good travelers.”
“Well, not far,” replied Pattison. “That some of your cattle over in the pens? Junction City is just over here a couple of days’ march. I am going to try to pack a few cattle in there this year. I shouldn’t wonder if we started some stockyards in Kansas City before long. My friend, old Mitch, has been talking of it a long time. If they get the yards it won’t be long until a packing house is started there. That would save a lot of distance in shipping East.
“I know that two Milwaukee and Chicago men—Plankinton is the name of one and Armour, I think, is the other man—well, they are figuring on going into the packing-house business in Kansas City. They’ve got a man out there now, looking things over.”
“Then where does it leave you at Junction City?” demanded McCoyne.
Pattison spread out his hands with a shrug.
“Of course, their man is crazy. He’s talking of using a hundred thousand cattle every year. I shouldn’t wonder if they did put down half that many. All this Western country is going to take a mighty jump since the railroad has gone West. That’s why I am here, of course. I’ve come out to look over this whole business myself. If it’s all the same to you I’d like to look over your herd. Mr. McCoyne says it isn’t far out to where you are holding it.”
“How’d right now do?” asked Nabours calmly. “How much time do you want to look over our cows? With me it’s sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion.”
“About five minutes. I’ve seen your sample in the corrals here. How much a pound do you figure you ought to get?”
“How much a pound? I don’t know nothing about that. I don’t know how much a cow weighs.”
“Well, I can tell you. One of your sample steers will weigh about nine hundred pounds. They look like greyhounds crossed on a window shutter. Two cents a pound would be a lot for them. Now, a fat steer will weigh twelve hundred instead of nine hundred, and he’ll bring four cents instead of two. Say I give you eighteen dollars for your lean steers, right off the trail. I could give you thirty-six dollars if they was fat; say if they’d been wintered up here and fed north.”
“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, “you’re talking foolish, though pleasing. I don’t know how much nine hundred pounds is, nor twelve hundred pounds; but when you tell me any Texas steer is worth more than thirty dollars you make me think you ain’t got no money to buy nothing. You don’t mean to say that in the presence of witnesses?”
“I certainly do mean to say it,” rejoined Pattison. “But that isn’t all. Your Texas steers will bring a good deal more than thirty dollars when you have taken time to move them up north of the edge of winter and ranged them and fattened them and bred the horns off of them. That can all be done in five years.”
“I ain’t got no five years,” said Jim Nabours. “You allowed five minutes will do. Well, let’s climb on top our broncs and ride out and see; it’s only about two miles or so north.
“Come on, Dan.” He turned towards McMasters. “Ride along with us. I rely some on your judgment.”
McMasters turned toward Hickok with a quiet word or so, and waving his hand strolled off to pick up his own horse. McCoyne, anxious as he was to see a trade effected, did not dare forsake the city of Abilene at so critical a time. The newly christened Lone Star was full. Besides, he was mayor of the town.
“Bill,” said he, accosting Hickok, “I got you here now, and I’m going to have you elected town marshal. We can’t hold any election right now, and we may need a town marshal right soon. I appoint you marshal right now, and Mr. McMasters as your deputy.”
Hickok looked at him lazily and smiled.
CHAPTER XLIITWENTY STRAIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE
THE great herd, scattered over a mile of grazing ground, by now was well quieted. Wearied by their own exertions, some of the animals were lying down, as though aware that the end of their journey was at hand; the remainder scattered, grazing contentedly. Men were on guard here and there at the edges of the herd; others were at the fire, eating. A sudden excitement arose among the cow hands when word passed that a buyer was on the scene, for so they interpreted the advent of Nabours and his companions. Nabours waved a hand with genuine cowman enthusiasm.
“Look at them!” he exclaimed. “Did you ever see a finer outfit of cows in your borned days, Mr. Pattison?”
The face of the trader remained expressionless, though his eyes were busy as he rode.
“You’ve got some she-stock in here,” said he at length; “some yearlings in too. I should say, too, that you’ve got several sorts of brands.”
“Well, maybe we have,” said Nabours. “I’d have a damned sight more if we had not hit so much country where there wasn’t no cows coming north. This here herd belongs to a orphant, Mr. Pattison, and in our country they ain’t no questions asked about orphants; the law of brands don’t run on orphants. We put up this herd in our own country. Our road brand is a Fishhook, and when you buy a Fishhook steer you are buying our support of the brand—twenty good men that can shoot. I got to sell these cows straight too.”
Pattison reined up, still dubious.
“Let me tell you something. I know beef—that’s my trade. You’ve got maybe three or four hundred of light stuff and shes. They don’t pack well. Still, here I am with a good ranch over on the Smoky Hill. It hasn’t got a head of stock on it yet.
“I just took in the land and water and trusted to God for the cattle. I know where the real money is, and it isn’t in buying lean fours. If I had any way to handle these stockers over on my ranch I’d take your herd straight.”
“I can’t split no cows,” said Jim Nabours. “It’s all or none. I got to sell all these cows afore dark. We both allowed that five minutes was plenty.”
“Well, it is,” said Pattison quietly. “I trade as quick as anybody, and I don’t go to the saloon first, as two or three other men have, whom I happen to know, that came on that train. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do: If you’ll hold out that stuff below the fours I’ll give you twenty straight for your fours, right here on the prairie. Five thousand cash down, balance in draft on the First National of Kansas City.”
Suddenly Dan McMasters turned to Nabours.
“The herd is sold,” said he. “Twenty a head, straight through.”
“How do you mean, Dan?”
“I am taking all the she-stuff and stackers for myself. Let Mr. Pattison have the fours.”
“But what’re you going to do?”
“I am thinking of starting a Northern ranch for myself. It don’t take me long to decide either. I believe Mr. Pattison is right. There’s where the money is. Besides, I’m leaving Texas before long.”
Pattison turned toward him with his quizzical smile, estimating him after his own fashion.
“You bid me up, young man,” said he; “but you’ve sold this herd, yearlings and all, at twenty straight on the prairie.
“Now, we’ve got plenty time left—two minutes by the watch. I’ll give you just a minute and a half to think of me as your partner in my ranch on the Smoky Hill, myself to own half this stuff you’ve just bought in, you to trail a fresh herd up to us next year and to run this upper ranch for me—all dependent on your investigation of me back East, preferably by telegraph to-night. I’ve got the land, you’ve got the cows.
“I’ll show you how to get three-four-five cents a pound for beef on the hoof. What do you say?”
McMasters turned his own cool gray eyes upon the other, regarding him with a like smile as their eyes met, and their hands.
“We have traded,” said he quietly.
Nabours looked from one to the other, scratching his head.
“Then is my cows sold?” he demanded. “Do we get twenty straight?”
“You heard us,” said Pattison. “There is a new company on the new northern range—the PM brand. Mr. McMasters is my partner; you see, I know something about him already. And I want to say to you, sir, you are on the road to more money than you could ever make in Texas. We’ll cut this stuff and tally out to-morrow if it pleases you. Come on over to the fire, partner; let’s light down.”
Each in his mood, Nabours somewhat chastened as he endeavored to figure out how much the five minutes’ work had meant to him, they moved to where the giant cart of Buck the cook loomed on the level prairie. Pattison reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a great package of folded bills, which he tossed on the ground before him as he reached for his coffee cup.
“I think that’s five thousand dollars,” said he. “I can’t carry much cash with me, of course. In town, I’ll give you a draft on the First National of Kansas City for fifty-five thousand more if the herd tallies out three thousand head. I am almost ready to take your own tally.”
“No,” said Jim Nabours, “we haven’t tallied out since the last run; I been scared to. If we hadn’t had no bad luck down the trail there wouldn’t ’a’ been money enough in Kansas City to buy all them cows we started with. Do you mean to say to me that you’re going to give me sixty thousand dollars for them cows?”
“I certainly am if you don’t object too much about it. And I call this a good day’s work. I have bought the first northern-trail herd. Besides, I have got a partner and a manager for my ranch, and a line of supply for the ranch, too. Yes, I call it a good five minutes’ work.
“You shall have all the time you want to put up your half for these stockers, Mr. McMasters,” he added.
“I don’t want any time,” replied Dan McMasters. “I can raise a little money. You see, I know the history of this herd. I’d almost have been ready to buy it straight through at twenty a head myself.”
“I was afraid you would,” said Pattison. “But I wanted the cows and a partner too. All right, take your pleasure as to your half of the northern ranch ante. I tell you, I am going to make you more money than either of us ever made in our lives. Lord, this is just the beginning of things! What a fine world it is out here!”
He turned to the others as he went on, tin cup of coffee in hand.
“You see, I am banking on two things that you Texas men didn’t know anything about. One is the stockyards at Kansas City. The other is a packing business in Kansas City. There’s going to be the market for this range stuff. Meantime I’ll have to get some of your boys to drive these fours over to Junction City for me. I’ll buy all your ponies except what you need to get back home. My partner and I will need some horses for the PM outfit on the Smoky Hill.
“Oh, I don’t blame you for not seeing the game very far ahead up here,” he went on. “This is a colder country than you are used to. But if I can hire some of your men to run the herd for us, they can build dugouts in a few days like those you saw in town, and hole up warm and snug for the winter. After a while you’ll begin to make hay, but you’ll need a whole lot less than you think right now.
“We are going to start the first winter ranch on the heels of the first herd north of thirty-six. I am going to show you that cows will do a heap better when you fatten them north of the edge of winter and north of the tick line.
“Is our five minutes up? I don’t like to waste time here. Let’s go back to town.”
“When do we deliver, then?” asked Nabours.
“You’ve sold and delivered right now and right here, on the prairie,” replied Pattison. “I am hiring all the men that will go in with Mr. McMasters and me; we’d like at least six or eight. Mr. McMasters will come out to help tally to-morrow if that suits you. I never knew a Texas cowman to falsify a count, and I never knew one that didn’t go broke trying to pack his own cattle. It takes big men to do big business, and you will have to pardon me if I say it never was in the cards to pack cattle in Texas, by Texas or for Texas. The South needs the North in this thing. It’s going to take both the North and the South to make this country out here.” He swept a wide arm. “The West! Oh, by golly!”
“Well,” sighed Jim Nabours, still unable to credit his sudden good fortune, “my boss is the richest girl in Texas right now, if she was in Texas. I’ll have to admit she owes part to a damn Yankee, same as part to us Texans.”
He turned earnestly to the Northern trader.
“You’ve got to see our boss when you get in town,” said he. “You’ll be glad to see where all your money went to. She shore is prettier than a spotted pup.”
“Well, let’s ride,” laughed Pattison. “We’ll have a look at Abilene and the Texas orphan.”
“On our way!” said Nabours, and they mounted. Nabours rode off to accost one of his men. “We’ve sold the herd, Len,” said he. “I’ll pay off to-morrow in town. All you fellows that wants to hire out to these folks can do it. You split the men to-night, Len, and half of you come to town if you feel like it.
“Oh, yes,” he added, turning, as he started off, “I forgot to tell you. I forgot to tell you that Cal Dalhart got killed in town a little while ago. I heard it just when I left. Del Williams done shot him, looks like.”
“The hell he did!” remarked Hersey. “Well, it was plain enough the last three months they had it in for each other—both allowing to marry Miss Taisie.”
“And now they won’t neither of them will,” nodded Nabours. “Ain’t it hell how men fuss over a woman? Now Del’s gone somewheres. Both good cow hands as ever rid. That’s the fourth man I’ve lost since we left home, not mentioning several hundred cows. I’m the onluckiest man in the world.
“Yet,” he went on as he joined McMasters and Pattison, addressing the former, “I call this a good day’s work. We’ve brung our brand through, and we’ve done sold her out. I reckon Mr. Sim Rudabaugh has played in hard luck. He didn’t keep us out of Aberlene, now did he?”
“He did his best,” replied Dan McMasters. “He got here just a little too late. He came to town on the train just a little while ago. There are two or three of his men here already, maybe more.”
Nabours looked at him narrowly, suddenly serious.
“Some of us boys’ll be in town to-night,” said he.
As they rode by the jumbled heap of the camp-cart goods a very exact observer might have noted that the pair of wide horns carefully cherished by Len Hersey had disappeared since the first passing of the group from town. No one had particularly noticed Len as he rode up near the cart with a stubborn little yearling dogy on his rope; it was thought the cook had requisitioned beef. But now, as the party turned to leave the herd, the keen eye of Pattison caught sight of an astonishing creature, scarce larger than a calf, but bearing so enormous a spread of horns as would have graced any immemorial steer of the Rio Grande.
“My Lord!” he exclaimed. “What on earth is that? Is that the way cattle grow down in your country?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Len gravely, still holding the animal on his reata. “He’s a nice little yearling. Give him time, an’ he’ll raise right smart o’ horn. O’ course, he’s still young. Texas, she sort of runs to horn, in some spots, special seems like.”
“Spots? Spots? What spots?” demanded Pattison. “Where’d that critter come from?”
“He come from our range, sir,” replied Len. “He range over with a bunch near the Laguna Del Sol. They all watered in there, at the Laguna. Near’s we could tell there must be something in the water in the Laguna sort of makes the cows in there run to horn, like.”
“Well, I should say so! But still, you can’t make me believe that any steer less than a four could ever grow horns like that.”
“Oh, yes, they kin,” rejoined this artless child of the range. “My pap used to drive down to Rockport, on the coast—I’ve helped drive south, to ship cows on the Plant steamers. I reckon they was going to Cuby. We had to rope every steer and throw him down and take a ax and chop off his horns, they was so wide. That was to give more room on the boats. Some steers didn’t like to have their horns chopped off thataway. Well, here we got plenty of room for horns anyhow.” He swept an arm over the field of waving grass reaching on to the blue horizon. “Give me three years more on this dogy and I promise you he’ll have horns.
“Speaking of horns, Jim,” he resumed; “oncet when we were driving in a coast drive we turned in a lot of dogies, of course claimin’ a cow was a cow, an’ nache’l, four years old even if it was only a yearling. Well, the damn Yankee who was buying our cows he kicked on so many dogies. Of course, none of us fellers’d ever heard of a thing like that; a buyer allus taken the run o’ the delivery, head for head. Says he, ‘I ain’t buyin’ yearlin’s, I’m buyin’ fours.’
“Well, we driv in another dogy right then, one of them Lagunies, an’ he had horns big as this one here. The damn little fool he put on more airs than any Uvalde mossy horn about his headworks. It was just like he said, ‘Look at me! I done riz these here horns in one year, where it taken you maybe a hunderd.’ Cows was their pride, mister, same as us. Uh-huh.
“But do you believe me? That damn Yankee wouldn’t take my word that the horns of them Lagunies gets their growth early sometimes. I says, ‘Mister, I’ll bet you a hunderd dollars that’s a four.’ ‘Well, maybe it is,’ says he. He scratch his haid. But he couldn’t git over it. When we come to load in at the boat he says, ‘Well I be damned ef that ain’t the littlest cow I ever seen fer a four.’ I was sort o’ hot by then, and I says, ‘Boss, you’re right—that ain’t a four, it’s a yearlin’.’
“Well, then he swung around the other way. Says he, ‘It kain’t noways be a yearlin’, not with them horns. I bought too many cows not to know that much. It don’t stand to reason that no yearlin’ can raise no horns more’n five foot acrost.’ You see, mister, that yearlin’ was carryin’ horns about like this one—one of our Lagunies. O’ course, I don’t say that all Texas cows has horns like that as yearlin’s; you can see that fer yore own self right here. Only way we could convince that gentleman was to show him.”
“Well, that may all be,” said Pattison, nettled. “Anyhow, I always take my own judgment in cattle, ages and all. I’ve known buyers who couldn’t tell long twos from threes. I’ve studied cattle.”
“I never did much,” said Len Hersey; “I never had time. But my folks couldn’t never break me of gamblin’—monte, you know. Sometimes I win a shirt, and then agin I’d lose one. Right now”—he looked ruefully at his elbow—“I’d like fer to win one. I’ll gamble that critter’s a yearlin’, now. I’d hate to take a man’s money on a cinch; but ef you, now, was feelin’ you’d like to peel off a couple of hunderd against my hawse an’ saddle, an’ what’s left of my shirt, why, I’d hate to rob you—I’d bet that that’s a yearlin’. I was goin’ to kill it fer beef. We don’t eat the horns, mister, but them Lagunies is special tender on account of that something in the water around there.”
“You fool Texans deserve to be trimmed,” said Pattison; “a boy like you putting your judgment up against that of one of the oldest buyers that ever saw Kansas City.”
“I know it—I know I’m foolish,” nodded Len Hersey. “I was borned thataway. I allus hatter be bettin’ on monte er somethin’. Still I’ll bet thataway on this here yearlin’ ef you insist. Does you?”
“I certainly do, just to teach you a lesson. Here, Mr. Nabours”—he pulled out his roll of bills once more—“take this couple hundred, against this man’s horse and saddle. You be the judge. He bets that’s a yearling. That suit you?” He turned to Len Hersey, who still was holding the mooted animal on his reata.
“Yes, all right,” humbly replied that youth.
“Throw him, Len,” commanded Nabours; “then we’ll all look him over and decide.” He was as solemn as his man.
Len sunk a spur and with a leap his pony crossed in front of the quarry, swept its feet from under it. It was thrown with such violence that one of its horns was knocked off and lay entirely free on the grass. Jim Nabours, dismounting, gravely held up the remaining horn, easily detachable from the normal stubby yearling growth on the dogy’s head. He looked at Pattison dubiously, none too sure how he would take this range jest. But the Northern man was a sportsman. He broke into a roar of laughter, which for hours he renewed whenever the thought again came to his mind.[1]
“Give him his money, Nabours,” said he. “He’s won it fair and I’ve had a lesson, and when your boys come to town the treat’s on me. Keep those horns for me,” he added. “If I don’t sell old Mitch or young Phil Armour at Kansas City with those horns I’ll eat them both!” Again he went off into gusty laughter, in which all could join.
“Sho, now,” said Len Hersey. “Now look at that! He must of got his horns jarred loose, like, in some night run in the timber. I’ve knowed that to happen.”
“Len,” commanded Nabours, “I don’t want no more of this damned foolishness. Here’s ten dollars, and that’s enough to buy you a shirt, and I want to see you do it. He’ll only play the rest at monte or faro or something,” turning to Pattison.
“No, give it all to him,” the latter rejoined. “It’s his. Let him play it. I’ve done as much myself when I was younger. And monte’s a cinch compared to buying and packing and shipping cattle to the East.”
They turned and rode toward town, young in the youth of the open range, where to-morrow did not yet loom.
[1]The foundation of this anecdote is to be found in Saunder’sTrail Drivers of Texas.
[1]
The foundation of this anecdote is to be found in Saunder’sTrail Drivers of Texas.
CHAPTER XLIIILOU GORE
“COME right on in, you poor child.” When Taisie Lockhart first had climbed down from the lofty cart seat and approached the front door of the Drovers’ Cottage, she walked straight into the arms of sturdy Lou Gore, matron of the first cowman’s hotel of the North and Florence Nightingale of the frontier. That good soul took the girl to her bosom, patting her shoulder like a mother. “My!” she exclaimed. “To think at first I might have took you for a boy!”
When they entered the door she felt her young charge wince, draw back. A tall young man stood in the office near the door. It seemed to Lou Gore that these two must somewhere have met, although she scarce heard the voice of either now as they saluted, acknowledged.
“Why, you knew that gentleman?” she asked later.
“Yes,” said Taisie; “he was once a neighbor of ours down in Texas. He was with us part way on the trail.”
“Oh-ho! Well, he don’t seem so very neighborly now, up here. He don’t talk to nobody except Wild Bill. Them two were shooting at a mark over on the street. My husband says neither of them didn’t miss. My dear, don’t never have anything to do with a man who is a shooter—take my advice. Men is bad, and shooters is worst.
“But now you come on in with me, child; I’ve got to take care of you. Law me, is this all the clothes you got—and this the Fourth of July?”
“Yes”—Taisie turned on her the gaze of her troubled eyes—“it’s all I’ve got. I am poor—unless we sell the cows. In Texas no one has anything but cows.”
“Well, you ain’t poor if them’s your cows. You’ll sell ’em all right. Everybody’s howling for cattle right now.
“But come back into my kitchen, my dear, and I’ll fix you up. Who is that hollering out in front?”
“Oh, that’s Milly, my black woman,” said Taisie. “She’s out in the cart. Wait, I’ll go get her.” And presently she returned with Milly, in one hand carrying her long-barreled weapon.
“Miss Taisie, Ah cross my ha’ht,” said she. “Ah’m sho’ Ah done seen dat no-’count nigger man o’ mine right down the street. If he ever do come a leetle bit closter I gwine to blow the lights outen him. Ah sho’ is!”
“Law sakes!” remarked Lou Gore. “How you talk! Set that gun down and come on and help me get this lady fixed up. If I only had a change of clothes for her,” she added, finger at lip, dubiously regarding Taisie’s male apparel. “We don’t fit each other.”
“Change of clothes, ma’am!” exclaimed Milly. “In her trunk out in the kyart she got all kind of clothes!”
“My mother’s wedding clothes!” Taisie smiled sadly. “I brought them along because I had no place to leave them. My own are all worn out.”
“Well, that’s all right, my dear. We got to fix you up a little first, you’re so dusty. I reckon my big dishpan will do. You’d think they’d have washtubs over at the store, but they haven’t; not one. There ain’t a bathtub in the whole state of Kansas, and never was. Plenty of shooting, but mighty little washing.”
She pushed Taisie down into a kitchen chair and tenderly removed her broad-brimmed hat. Thus was revealed the heavy queue of hair that lay down the girl’s neck and shoulders.
“Did you ever!” exclaimed Lou Gore. “Lemme cut that string off.” Her scissors were at her belt; a snip or two, a shake, a running through of her fingers, and the glorious flood of Anastasie Lockhart’s tresses fell about her as she sat, a Godiva in a cotton shirt.
“I am going to take off that shirt, my dear,” said Lou Gore, and leaned Taisie’s head against her own bosom. She caught the garment by the lower edge and left the girl sitting, tousled, her arms now huddled to her.
“My Lord, my dear,” exclaimed Lou Gore, “you’re a beauty! You don’t belong here. And wedding clothes? You say you’ve got wedding clothes out in the cart? You’ll need them. Look at that hair! My dear, how do you make it curl up on the end that way?”
It was Milly who explained: “It just quoil up on de fur end dat way nacherl. She got more hair den ary lady in Texas.”
Lou Gore stood back and looked at Taisie once more.
“My dear,” said she, “you are a beauty! What’s more, you are good. Give me a hour or two with you fixed up in woman clothes and I’ll marry you to any man you’ll point out to me.”
“In her trunk, I done told you,” interrupted Milly, “she got all kind o’ clothes; all silk—pink an’ blue an’ everything. Her maw had the pertiest clothes in Texas. She brung her clothes out from N’Awlins. You-all knows quality, ma’am.”
Lou Gore pursed a lip.
“Well, we’ll get the trunk in,” said she. “Now, child, you go into my room there and lay down until I get the water het. You’re that nervous, you jump when you see a young man standing around.”
Taisie Lockhart, clinging to Lou Gore’s hand, flung herself upon the white bed, the flame of her hair all about her shoulders, concealing her face. She began to sob indeed, utterly unnerved. Lou Gore understood this to be the fatigue of a thousand miles.
She must have slept. It seemed hours later that she was awakened by what seemed to be the sound of a door slammed shut. A few moments later came the sudden sound of a horse galloping. That was Del Williams, passing out of town.
Lou Gore heard the arrival of the railway train, saw men passing from the train. When she met Hickok and McMasters at the foot of the stair they told her what she would see if she went upstairs. But to the sturdy soul of Lou Gore hysterics were unknown. She did go upstairs, did make a certain discovery, did perform certain offices for the first man in Abilene to pass with his boots on. Then, whether in care of Abilene’s reputation or out of kindness for her sleeping guest, she did not open the door of Taisie’s room to tell her what had happened. Well, a man was dead. There would be others. Lou Gore sighed, her great hands wrapped in her apron.
“Milly,” said she at length to the black woman, whom she found in the kitchen, “you come help me get supper. It takes an awful lot of fried mush. And these men keep coming here, though I ain’t got this hotel really opened yet.”
When the party from the herd jogged into town the first man they met was McCoyne, and now he had news of his own.
“Wild Bill told me about the little trouble upstairs.” He nodded toward the Drovers’ Cottage. “One man seems to have left town. I didn’t want anybody to think we’ve got a tough town here. Fact is we haven’t got any courthouse or coroner or anything. We’ve got to hold an organization meeting and get these things fixed up before long. I just got a couple of men that was standing out near the door to go over and dig a good grave on the hill yonder; you can see it from here. First grave in Abilene, July 4, 1867. Well, Mr. Nabours, they buried your man fine; they fixed up some sort of a box for a coffin. I seen them two carry him over to the hill all right. I declare, I don’t believe there is a coffin in this whole town—our storekeepers is that negligent, got that poor a notion of goods. Now think of my getting so busy, forgetting to have our merchants order plenty of coffins! I don’t want Abilene to be back of no town in Kansas. You understand, in the hurry of getting things started, gentlemen, a man’s liable to overlook a lot of things.”
They informed McCoyne of the sale of the Del Sol herd. He shook each by the hand effusively.
“Didn’t I tell you”—to Nabours—“didn’t I say you’d find buyers up here in Abilene? Sold out, the first day you hit town! Sold out at twenty straight right through! More money than you ever seen before!”
“That ain’t no dream,” said Jim Nabours, taking a chew of tobacco. “Say, Mr. Pattison, you couldn’t raise some silver money, could you? This paper money is all right, of course; and if Dan McMasters says so, that paper on the bank is all right and it goes too. But silver is the only money that’s money in Texas. I don’t reckon my men would take any other kind, and I know old Sanchez wouldn’t. You can’t pay no Mexican nothing but silver.”
“You don’t need very much money,” smiled McMasters. “But, Jim, did you ever stop to figure how much money you’d have if you got it all in silver?”
“Why, no, I don’t reckon I ever did.”
“Well, a thousand dollars in silver weighs about sixty-three pounds—somewhere in there. Now, sixty times sixty is thirty-six hundred, isn’t it? You’d have pretty near two tons of money. You’d have to load a cart to get it home. If the Comanches didn’t get it, it’d sink any wagon you tried to ford.”
“My Lord!” said Jim Nabours. “My good Lord! Look what we escaped, coming North! Tell me, has Miss Taisie got that much money now?”
“She certainly has if she gets it all in silver,” smiled Pattison. “You begin to see what banks are good for?”
“By gum!” exclaimed McCoyne, slapping his thigh. “We certainly have got to have a bank in Abilene, right off! Anyhow, for looks we’ve got to have a church and a school; but a bank is almost as useful as a livery barn.”
“I’ll see what can be done about that when I get back to Kansas City,” said Pattison. “I’d not be surprised to see a million cattle come up the trail in the next two seasons. Think of the silver it would take to pay for them!”
“Mister,” said Jim Nabours, in a very genuine mental distress, “how much silver money would a million cows come to at twenty straight—I mean how many pounds?”
“So much that pretty soon we’ll have to have banks at both ends of the Texas trail,” said Pattison quietly. “So much that before long we’ll have to have railroads north and south instead of trails. So much that before long there’ll be a dozen towns instead of one handling the cattle coming North. So much that all this country north and west of here is going to be settled with people—farms, towns, railroads. Trail makers? The first trail maker of the world was a cow!”
He dropped his chin for an instant in thought.
“And the men who’ll be in on that,” he added presently, “are the ones who can see it now and not after a while. My new partner and I can see it now. We traded quick. I always trade fast or not at all.”
Nabours still remained uneasy.
“I’ve got five thousand paper dollars in my saddle pockets,” said he. “Where’s Miss Taisie at? I want to pay off the men. They’ll be wanting a little frolic. Won’t you come along and find her?”
He looked at Dan McMasters keenly, a little sadly. But though McMasters directed him to the Drovers’ Cottage, he excused himself. For this reason not even cheery Lou Gore could make Taisie Lockhart smile.
McMasters went after Wild Bill, whom he found, hands in pockets, watching a faro game.
“I’ve watched your men,” said Hickok, quietly getting McMasters to one side. “There are three or four of them. They don’t show any signs of leaving town.”
“The herd men are coming to town to-night,” said McMasters. “If we want help I can get it.”
The border man stroked his long yellow mustache.
“You and I wouldn’t need any help if we didn’t need any of them alive,” said he. “I’m going to sit in with you on this, because you can hold up your end. We can stick around for a while. Of course, your man Rudabaugh knows you are here. He’s got horses over at the Twin Livery Barn; I know that much. He may pull his freight any minute. Or he may be laying for a chance to plug you from around a corner.”
McMasters nodded quietly. Hickok went on: “Well, they didn’t keep your herd from coming through, did they? What price do you think your cattle will fetch?”
“They’re already sold,” said Dan McMasters.
He gave the details of the late transaction, including his own arrangement with Pattison for a northern-ranch venture. Hickok listened indifferently.
“I’m glad you took my advice,” said he. “That’s all out of my line. I only keep the peace. Looks like before long there’d be plenty of peace to keep.
“And that girl in the boy’s clothes is rich, eh? Well, I’m glad, aren’t you?”
“No one is gladder.”
“Where is she now? She’s vanished. Has she heard of the sale?”
“Not yet. Her foreman has just gone over to tell her. I think Lou Gore has been taking care of her. No, she doesn’t know yet that she’s rich.”