Authors: Brett Cogburn

Panhandle (3 page)

BOOK: Panhandle

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Maybe we all carry a touch of the old home with us, packed away in its own little cubbyhole. They say home is where the heart is, but I was a restless, traveling sort of man. Those gusting winds drifted my wandering horse back and forth across the plains of endless grass until I was an orphan by my own choosing. I'll always remember home, not as a quaint picture of the place where I was born, but as a feeling. It was a rhythm of one hoof after another cutting prairie ground.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

S
winging west of a little stage station, our stomachs be damned, we lined out north across a rolling, short-grass country, scattered with gyp-rock canyons here and there. About noon we topped a hill and could see a long, flat descent down to a little creek cutting across our way. A small trickle of smoke drifted up from a camp below. I could make out what looked to be a cart with a couple of horses tied alongside.

Billy came loping back down the line and pulled up beside me. “What do you think?”

“My stomach thinks my throat's been cut.”

Without another word, he lit out back to the front of the herd. We headed on down to the creek, the camp still some mile or so off. A hundred yards out, the horses in the camp nickered, and a few of ours answered. A sawed-off, bearded man with a Muley Sharps rifle in his hand came up to lean against the wheel of his cart.

Leaving the herd to scatter on grass, the three of us rode up and stopped about ten yards out from the fire. Billy spoke for us. “Howdy.”

“Hi,” the man beside the cart replied.

“We're driving north to Kansas and are all but out of grub. Was wondering if you might have a bit to spare.”

“I might.” The whiskered gent looked us over for a bit, and then strode to the fire. “Light and set.”

All three of us ground-tied our mounts, and then stepped up to the fire, where the fellow had a pot of beans simmering. And I'll be danged if he didn't have a little batch of sourdough biscuits warming there. He dug out some plates from a kit in back of the cart, and we went at that food like a starving bitch wolf with pups. There wasn't enough silverware to go around. I came up short, but just raked mine off the plate with my knife straight into my mouth.

I slowed down long enough between bites on my second plate to study the wizened fellow across the fire from us. He sat Indian-fashion on the ground with that Sharps nestled across his thighs. He still eyed us suspiciously, or maybe there was a crafty look about him. He was extremely short, with an old, slouchy hat that hung down almost to the bridge of his nose. His gray beard draped over his potbelly. He might have been sixty, but his round little eyes were bright and sharp.

I noticed Billy was watching him just as closely as I was. I noticed too, that he was especially eyeing that Sharps Borchardt rifle on the old man's lap. It looked to be brand spanking new. Depending on who you asked, cowboys had taken to calling that model a Muley Sharps either because it kicked like a mule, or because it was a hammerless design and muley cattle were those without horns.

Now I carried only a pistol, but Billy carried a Winchester too. He was always armed like a bandit. He claimed he carried a long gun for shooting meat, and to keep some disagreements at a distance. He had a love for firearms, and that Muley Sharps had caught his eye.

“You boys taking those horses to Dodge?” Whiskers asked.

“Probably, or wherever we can find a buyer,” Billy answered.

Now even at a distance a person could tell those horses for what they were. Up close, not more than four or five wore so much as a single brand. I could tell Whiskers was a trader, and he was eyeing that herd like Billy was eyeing that Sharps.

“I'm Billy Champion, this gent here to my right is Nate Reynolds, and the skinny galoot to my left is Andy.”

“Andy Custer,” Andy threw in. He insisted on telling everyone he was kin to the late general.

Billy gave him an impatient look and continued, “If you've got a bit to spare, we could use a little grub to get us on through. We ain't got much hard money, but maybe we could deal you out of a bit of salt and beans.”

Whiskers didn't answer about the food. He looked past us out to where our horses grazed. “I heard of you. You're the man who backed John Jay down. Do you know you're on his range right now?”

Billy ignored the question just like Whiskers had done. Everyone in Southwest Kansas, the western half of the Indian Territory, and probably back down the trail south into old Texas knew about Billy's run-in with Jay.

Jay's outfit took in a big chunk of country, and was running a lot of cattle. Billy had brought a herd up from South Texas a year ago, and delivered it to Jay's headquarters in Kansas. That's how Billy and I had met; I worked under him on that drive.

Billy and Jay disagreed on the delivery count, and things got a little heated. Like a lot of self-made men, John Jay thought a lot of himself, and he was used to running roughshod over lesser men. He cussed Billy for losing too many steers on the trail, cussed about their condition, and generally let Billy know what he thought about his poor abilities in regard to managing a trail herd. The recount on a hot day had clipped everyone's fuses pretty short. Before Jay had gotten good and wound up, Billy put his hand on his Colt and told him they could settle things between them real quick if he had the guts. Jay backed down in front of our crew, and his. He paid up according to Billy's count, and the taste of humble pie didn't set too good with either he or his hands. He ought to have counted himself lucky that Billy didn't kill him right then. In those days, nobody would have denied Jay deserved anything he got. You had best be careful how you spoke to prideful men with pistols on.

I was just damned glad it didn't end up in a killing that day. It probably would have gotten both crews into it.

“Lot of trouble, driving horses,” Whiskers said.

“What trouble?” Billy answered.

“The market can be doubtful, and it can take time to find a buyer.”

“That's a good set of horses, and we've got time.”

“It'll be tough to sell them in their winter clothes.”

“The grass is greening; they're putting on weight as we speak. They'll be fat and summer-slick in a couple of weeks.”

“It's hard to see them from here.”

“I don't guess I'd mind showing them to you.”

Two traders had met. Whiskers went behind the cart, and untied a horse from the off-wheel. Billy rose and eased out to the paint. I mean he
eased
. The horse raised his head and snorted, and made two bounds away from Billy before he managed to con his way up to him and get a hold.

“Little wild, ain't he?” Whiskers said as he rode up.

Billy stepped aboard. “He's a little green, but he's a traveler.”

He reached down to rub the horse affectionately on the neck, and that paint traveled about twenty feet sideways in one jump. Whiskers cackled like an old hen, and the two of them made off for the herd.

Never one to pass on a chance to nap, Andy sprawled out in the grass. Me, I took the opportunity to study that peculiar little layout. The cart was not of the Mexican type, but rather a spoke-wheeled job with a single seat, and tarp on the bed. A one-eyed, brown mare stood hip-shot alongside. She was galled with harness sores, and so skinny you could almost see through her. The cart was a one-horse rig, and it was amazing to assume that she was responsible for pulling it.

The sun was busting through the clouds and hitting the ground, promising for a pretty day. Andy must have been enjoying it, because he brought out the band, snoring to a tune all his own.

I took up a piece of sourdough and wiped the last of the bean juice from my plate. I watched Billy and Whiskers in the distance. They were drifting lazily through the grazing horses, stopping to study this one and that one from time to time. I knew the haggling was getting serious when at one stop I heard, even at a distance, Whiskers go to cussing until he gagged on his tobacco.

After what must have been half an hour, I decided to leave the bean pot, and join the fun. As I rode up Billy motioned me on over to him.

“Put Driblet through his paces so this man can see I've told him correct.”

Paces?
Billy sat there smugly with a twinkle in his eye, like he expected me to have something to show him. With a sigh of surrender, I rode out from the herd and put on a little demonstration of what that sorrel nag couldn't do.

I pedaled him up to a lope with a good dose of my guthooks, and with a little finesse, managed to ride him in a big circle to the left. He was so sore-footed it was a job to keep him from breaking stride, and he had a trot that would jar the front teeth out of a beaver. He wrung his tail in frustration, and jacked up his head and gaped his mouth against the bit. I pulled him down slowly to what you could call a stop, made an attempt to roll him back the other way, and loped a couple of circles to the right. I headed back to the horsetraders, not aiming directly at them, as I wasn't sure I could stop short enough to keep from crashing into their midst. I took a severe hold, and bit-bumped him into the ground.

Whiskers grunted his approval and spat tobacco juice out in a thick black arc. “Stops hard, don't he?”

I didn't want to tell him just how hard it was.

“Just like I told you, he can turn around like a cat in a stovepipe, stop on a dime, and get back like a bad check,” Billy chimed.

“Smooth, ain't he,” Whiskers added.

I was beginning to get a good handle on his horse appraisal skills. “I'd say so.”

“See there, and he's pretty to boot,” Billy said.

The sorrel did have a flaxen mane and tail, a big blaze face, and two socks on his hind feet. Beyond that, you couldn't tell where the ugly stopped and the horse began. He was so narrow you couldn't have passed your fist between his front legs, and he had a long, thin bottle head that was disproportionately large in comparison to the rest of his body.

The horses were drifting farther down the creek looking for grass, and I left to go bring them back a little closer to camp. When I returned, Billy left Whiskers and rode up to me for a private discussion of the kind that happens when parties are horsetrading.

“You know, we might get ten to twelve dollars a head for those horses in Kansas
if
we found a buyer. And those soldiers down south may have got word we stole them, and wired the news north. It's happened before,” Billy said solemnly. “If we could make a good trade here, it'd be better than going to some farmers' calaboose over a bunch of ten-dollar Cheyenne ponies.”

“What's the trade?”

“Five dollars a head, and we take the cut with us, or throw them in.”

“Cash money?”

“Well, that's a lot of hard money. Let's see.” Billy made a show of tabulating on his fingers. “Fifty head minus one that's got a knocked-down hip, one with an eye put out, and five that a coyote wouldn't eat. Let's say ten head of cuts. That's forty head at five dollars.” He fired up his finger adding machine again.

“Two hundred,” I said impatiently.

“Yeah, two hundred. How's that sound?”

“Hard money?”

“Well . . .”

“How much hard money?” I could see where things were headed.

Billy tried one of his smiles to frame the wonderful price he was fixing to shoot at me. “Sixty-five cash, that Sharps gun, fifty rounds of friction for it, and a little sack of victuals.”

“Who gets the gun?”

“You can have my old Winchester.”

“What about Andy?” We sometimes forgot about Andy, and I felt it my job to see that he was treated in a Christian fashion.

“I've got an old converted Colt Navy in my bedroll that he's been wanting. I'll give it to him so we all get a new shooting iron. We'll split the cash three ways.”

“That old Navy ain't worth ten dollars.”

“Once I tell Andy that Wild Bill Hickok favored Navy Colts he'll think he's getting a hell of a deal. He'll probably become a two-gun bad-ass himself,” Billy snorted. “Besides, the boy's gotta pay something for the education we've been giving him.”

“That'll work.” I agreed readily, satisfied that things were divided equally enough.

“Just think, partner. We can drift down to Mobeetie and have a sure enough good time with that money.” He slapped his thigh in sheer exuberance.

Billy felt it was his job to always keep my spirits up. After two years of riding with him I'd come to learn how to get at the truth of things when he told me something. When Billy was trying to convince you to go along with what he suggested, whether good news or bad, you just had to divide or multiply everything by two. Things were just generally halfway like he said they were. If he told you about a trip, and you didn't want to go, he would tell you it was only a two-day ride. It would wind up taking four. If he told about a hundred dollars to be made at something, and you went along, you might make fifty. He wasn't a liar; he just got too enthused with convincing you to go along with his plans.

“You can have my saddle horse,” Billy said.

“What are you going to ride?” I was shocked by Billy's generous mood.

BOOK: Panhandle

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