Well, they’d seen that first shot. She was nigh three hundred yards off and in the saddle when she pulled down on that moving rider, and she’d cut his spine in two. They only had their six-shooters and there was Ma with her Spencer, and Barnabas an’ me with our Winchesters.
Where they stood, there wasn’t shelter for a newborn calf, whilst we were partly covered by the roll of the hill and some brush. They decided to take a chance on the law, so they dropped their guns.
We brought them out and hustled them to the nearest jail and then went to the judge. We were a hundred miles from home then, and nobody knew any of us. “Cow thieves, eh?” The judge looked from Ma to me. “What you think we should do with ‘em?”
“Hang ‘em,” Ma said.
He stared at her, shocked. “Ma’am, there’s been no trial.” “That’s your business,” Ma said quietly. “You try them. They were caught in the act with five hundred of my cattle.”
“The law must take its course, ma’am,” the judge said. “We will hold them for the next session of court. You will have to appear as a witness.” Ma stood up, and she towered above the judge, although he stood as tall as he was able. “I won’t have time to ride back here to testify against a couple of cow thieves,” she told him. “And the worst one is still runnin’.” She walked right down to the jail and to the marshal. “I want my prisoners.”
“Your prisoners? Well, now, ma’am, you—“
“I brought them in, I’ll take them back.” She took up the keys from his desk and opened the cell doors while the marshal, having no experience to guide him, stood there jawing at her.
She rousted them out of their bunks and, when one started to pull on his boots, she said, “You won’t need those,” and she shoved him through the door. “Now, ma’am! You can’t do this!” The marshal was protesting. “The judge won’t—“ “I’ll handle this my own way. I’m the one who made the complaint. I am withdrawing it. I’m going to turn these men loose.” “Turn them loose? But you said yourself they were cow thieves!” “They are just that, but I haven’t the time to go traipsing across the country as a witness, riding a hundred miles back home, then a hundred miles up here and maybe three or four such trips while you bother about points of law. These are my prisoners and I can turn ‘em loose if I want.” She herded them down to the horse corral in their long Johns, where she picked out two rawboned nags with every bone showing. “How much for them?” “Ma’am,” the dealer shook his head, “I’d not lie to a lady. Those horses got no teeth to speak of, an’ both of them are ready for the bone yard.” “I’ll give you ten dollars apiece for them, just as they stand.”
“Taken,” he said quickly, “but I warned you, ma’am.” “You surely did,” Ma agreed. Then she turned to the cow thieves, shivering in the chill air. “You boys git up on those horses .. . git!” They caught mane-holts and climbed aboard. The backbones on those old crow-baits stood up like the tops of a rail fence.
She escorted them out of town to the edge of the Red Desert. We rode a mite further and then she pulled up. “You boys steal other folks’ cows, but we ain’t a going to hang you … not this time. What we’re goin’ to do is give you a runnin’ start.
“Now my boys an’ me, we got rifles. We ain’t goin’ to start shootin’ until you’re three hundred yards off. So my advice is to dust out of here.” “Ma’am,” the short one with the red face pleaded, “these horses ain’t fit to ride! Let us have our pants, anyway! Or a saddle! Those backbones would cut a man in two, an’—“ “Two hundred and fifty yards, boys. And if he talks any more, one hundred yards!”
They taken out.
Ma let them go a good four hundred yards before she fired a shot, and she aimed high. That old Spencer bellowed, and those two gents rode off into the Red Desert barefooted and in their underwear on those raw-backed horses, and I didn’t envy them none a-tall.
That was Ma, all right. She was kindly, but firm.
3
We drove our cattle home, but Ma never forgave or forgot the man we knew as Henry. He had betrayed a trust, and to Ma that was the worst of sins. Now he was here, across the table from me, blind and only a shell of the fine-looking big man we remembered.
Without a doubt, his hired hands had no idea of the kind of man he had been and still might be. As cowhands they were typical. When they took a man’s wages, they rode for the brand, for loyalty was the keynote of their lives. They would suffer, fight and die for their outfit at wages of thirty dollars a month … if they ever got them.
They did not know him, and could be forgiven their ignorance. I did know, so what was I going to do? It was a question I did not consider. It was Balch who had made my decision for me, back there at our first meeting. For there was something about such a man, prepared to ride roughshod over everybody, that got my back up.
There was range enough for all, and no need to push the others off. “I’ll stick around, Rossiter,” I said. “Hinge tells me you’re going to round ‘em up soon?”
“We are. There are only six ranches in the Basin, if you want to call it that, but we’re going to round up our cattle, brand them, and drive to the railhead. If you want to stay, we can use you. We’ll need all the hands we can get.” There was a checker game going in the bunkhouse when I walked in. There were not enough checkers, so Hinge was using bottle corks—of which there seemed to be an ample supply.
Hinge threw me a quick, probing glance when I came in, but offered no comment. Roper was studying the board, and did not look up. Danny was lying on his back in his bunk with a copy of a beatup magazine in his hands. “You stayin’ on?” he asked.
“Looks like it,” I said, and opened up my blanket roll and began fixing my bed on the cowhide springs.
Hinge made his move, then said, “You’ll take orders from me then, and we’ll leave the stock west of here until the last.
“We’ve got one more hand,” he added. “He’s away over east tonight, sleepin’ in a lineshack.” He glanced at me. “You got any objections to ridin’ with a Mexican?” “Hell, no. Not if he does his work. We had four, five of them on my last outfit.
They were good hands … among the best.”
“This man is good with stock, and a first-class man with a rope. He joined up a couple of weeks back, and his name is Fuentes.” Hinge moved a king, then said, “We start rounding up in the morning. Bring in everything you see. We’ll make our big gather on the flat this side of the creek, so you’ll just work the breaks and start them down this way. “There’s grub at the line-shack, and you and Fuentes can share the cooking. You’ll be working eight to ten miles back in the rough country most of the time.”
“How about horses?”
“Fuentes and Danny drove sixteen head up there when he went, and there’s a few head of saddle stock running loose on the range.” Hinge paused. “That’s wild country back in there, and you’ll run into some old mossyhorn steers that haven’t been bothered in years. You’re likely to find some unworked stuff back there, too, but if you get into thick brush, let Fuentes handle it. He’s a brush-popper from way back. Used to ride down in the big thicket country.”
At daybreak the hands scattered, but I took my time packing. Not until I had my blanket roll and gear on a packhorse and my own mount saddled did I go to the house for breakfast. Henry Rossiter was not in sight, but there was movement in the kitchen. It was Barby Ann.
“You weren’t in for breakfast, so I kept something hot.”
“Thanks. I was getting my gear ready.”
She put food on the table, then poured coffee. She filled two cups.
“You’re going to the line-cabin?”
“Is there only one?”
“There were two. Somebody burned down the one that was west of here, burned it down only a few weeks ago.”
She paused. “It’s very wild. Fuentes killed a bear just a few weeks ago. He’s seen several. This one was feeding on a dead calf.” “Probably killed by wolves. Bears don’t kill stock as a rule, but they’ll eat anything that’s dead.”