Catlow (1963) (4 page)

"Somehow or other those boys just naturally saw this here telegram and by this time they're far down the trail to somewhere. You can look for em if you want to waste time, but you won't find 'era in a coon's age."

"Bijah, don't be a damned fool. You leave out of here now and I'll give you an hour's start. If I know you, you won't need any more than that. You know Parkman has the courts in his pocket. He'll see you hang."

Catlow picked up the chilled wine bottle and filled their glasses. "That waiter's too durned slow." He looked up, his eyes dancing with deviltry. "Sure, you're right as rain. Park-man will sure enough try to string me up, but remember this, Ben, it's a long way from here to Texas!"

Two weeks later Ben Cowan looked up from his desk where he was making out his final report.

Roots stopped by the desk. "Your transfer came through, Ben. You go to New Mexico." He turned away, then stopped again. "Oh, by the way, that prisoner you brought in ... Catlow, was it? He escaped."

"Escaped?"

"Uh-huh ... four or five riders held up the stage and took him off."

"Anybody hurt?"

"Hell, no. From what I hear Catlow had made friends with everybody on the coach, including the driver, and they were glad to see him get away. We did get an identification of one of the men in the bunch that took him, though. The officer escorting Catlow recognized one of the men as Rio Bray."

Bijah Catlow had been right ... it was a long way to Texas.

The legend of Bijah Catlow had begun before this, but from this point on, it grew rapidly. The Houston & Texas Central was held up, and Catlow received the credit, whether he was guilty or not. Of one thing men were certain: Bijah Catlow had not forgotten Parkman.

Parkman sent three herds to Kansas the following year, and lost the first one before it was fairly into the Nation. Somebody stampeded the herd, and it vanished.

Nobody could offer more than a guess at what happened to it. Herds of three thousand head are not swallowed by the earth, yet vanish they did.

Meanwhile, it suddenly appeared that Bijah Catlow had registered a brand, the Eight eighty-eight Bar, and around the chuck wagons and in the saloons throughout Texas, men began to chuckle. For three eights and a bar could very neatly swallow Parkman's OP Bar ... and apparently they had done just that.

Catlow was never at home, but a very tough, very seasoned cowman, Houston Sharkey, was ... he was not only at home, he was at home with a Winchester and a crew of hard-bitten cowhands who kept strays out of the Eight eighty-eight Bar grazing lands, and allowed no casual visitors.

Several times the law came looking for Catlow, and they were welcomed to look around all they wished.

Parkman came, too, and he came with a couple of tough hands, threatening to butcher a steer and read the hide from the wrong side, where the alteration of the brand would be plain to anyone.

Sharkey levered a shell into the chamber of his Winchester. "You go right ahead, Colonel Parkman," he said, "and you better hope that it's an altered brand, because if it isn't I'm going to lay you dead right where the steer lies."

Parkman looked at Houston Sharkey and the Winchester. He looked at the roped steer. He was sure that it was an altered brand ... but suppose it wasn't?

If it was not, he had called this man a thief, an insult anywhere, and no court in the country would convict Sharkey of murder. Not with the viewpoint of Texans what it was at the time.

Parkman looked, hesitated, and backed down. But he went away boiling mad, determined to catch both Catlow and Sharkey.

Two weeks later, a tall, cold-eyed rider headed into the rough country south of the Nueces--a tall man with a Winchester and a tied-down gun.

Bijah Catlow spoke Spanish as well as any Mexican in the country. He spoke it smoothly and easily to the senoritas, and he was a popular man about Piedras Negras, across the river from Eagle Pass. He laughed easily, was friendly, and swapped horses and bought drinks. He was so popular that when the tall, cold-eyed man rode into town and asked questions, Catlow was informed within half an hour.

There had been rumors that Parkman had sent a hired killer after him, and the rumors had reached Catlow as well as most of the population of the Mexican village.

Matt Giles was a methodical man. He had begun his killing as a mere boy in the Moderators and Regulators wars of northeast Texas, and had graduated to a sharp-shooter in the Confederate Army.

Discharged when the war ended, he drifted back to Texas and the word got around that he was a safe, reliable man for the kind of job he did. Parkman had retained him twice before this.

Matt Giles had never seen Bijah Catlow, but he had listened to all the stories, knew what he looked like, and privately decided that Catlow was a bag of wind. Arrived in Piedras Negras, he had no trouble locating Catlow--he was the talk of the town.

The local law approached Bijah ... in fact, they had been drinking and poker-playing companions for some weeks now.

"Our jail," the person of the law suggested, "will hold another prisoner ... for years, if necessary. This man--this Senor Giles--I could arrest him."

"Leave him alone," Bijah said. "If he wants me, I'll make it easy for him."

Bijah Catlow, whose entire life had been predicated on the impulsive and the unregulated, suddenly became the most regulated of men. He took to rising at a certain hour, going to the cantina at a certain hour, taking a siesta according to Mexican custom, and exercising his horse by a ride each afternoon, and each afternoon he went the same way.

The people of Piedras Negras watched and worried. Bijah Catlow was, indeed, making it easy for the gringo killer.

Giles watched, and studied Catlow's movements. Never having known the man, he could not guess his pattern of living had been altered, and to such a methodical man as Giles, the methodical ways of Catlow seemed right and logical.

Carefully, he studied the route to the cantina, but it offered no good cover. By this time Giles knew that Bijah had friends in Piedras Negras, and he knew there might be trouble before he got away. Therefore the killing had to be done where he was offered a good chance of escape, and where he could, preferably, kill with one shot.

Going to or from the cantina, Catlow was always surrounded by a group of friends, and it soon became obvious to Giles that the only place where a killing would be safe would be along the road where Catlow exercised his horse. It also became obvious that along this route there was only one place that offered Giles the opportunity he wanted.

There was a pile of boulders and brush about sixty yards from the trail Catlow rode, and a gully behind that pile which offered a hidden approach to the position. It was made to order.

Giles was a painstaking man, but not an imaginative one, and it was his lack of imagination that brought him to the fatal climax. He watched, and he made his choice, and on the seventh day after his arrival in Piedras Negras he slipped out of town and took his position among the rocks. He sighted the exact spot where Catlow's head would be, planned his second and third shots if such were needed--although they never had been.

Then he settled down among the rocks and waited.

Suddenly, some distance off, he saw Catlow coming, riding easily on the handsome black horse. Giles felt a moment of swift envy ... how he would have loved to own that horse!

He lifted his rifle and waited. Only a few minutes more.

Suddenly the rider on the black horse veered sharply from the trail, and Giles swore. Now, what the--!

An instant later a voice behind him said, "Fooled you, didn't we?"

It is given to few men to know the moment of death, but Matt Giles knew it then. With a kind of wild despair he knew he had been trapped, but he was game. He wheeled and fired.

Two bullets tore into him, one going through his shoulder and emerging from the front of his chest, leaving a wound spattered with bone splinters. The second went into his ribs, and for the first and last time he looked directly into the eyes of Bijah Catlow.

His own bullet whistled away into thin, thin air, high above the Mexican landscape.

Parkman lay in his four-poster bed staring up at the ceiling. He had spent a restless night. In fact, he had spent several restless nights since receiving word from Giles in Eagle Pass that he had found Catlow. Each day he looked forward to the news of the death of Bijah Catlow.

Finally, he could stand it no longer to stay in bed, and he got up and dressed. As he entered the kitchen he stopped abruptly. The table was littered with dirty dishes ... his best dishes, brought from Carolina.

Nobody, simply nobody used those dishes but himself, and then only when he entertained guests more distinguished than the usual run.

Also, the cook was not at work, and he should have been up--Parkman glanced at his watch--at least an hour ago.

Parkman was a man who came easily to anger, and he was angry now. He stepped out the door toward the bunkhouse and brought up short.

Something was wrong--radically wrong.

The corral was empty of horses. The bunkhouse was dark and silent, and over each bunkhouse window was a blanket, hung on the outside of the building. From the doorknob to a snubbing post ran a rope, holding the door shut, and against the snubbing post was tied a double-barreled shotgun aimed at the bunkhouse door. It was rigged in such a way that anybody tugging on the doorknob from the inside would fire both barrels of the shotgun. It was obvious that nobody had tried, so those within must have been informed of this.

Parkman went to the post and gingerly unlimbered the shotgun. Then opened the door to the bunkhouse.

"What the hell's going on around here?" he shouted. "By the Lord Harry, I've had enough of these practical jokes, and--"

From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of his front porch, invisible to him until now. There, seated in his own favorite chair on the broad veranda was somebody.... Park-man shouted, but there was no reply.

Finally given somebody on whom he could vent his anger, Parkman started for the front porch, almost running. The stranger sat with his hat over his eyes, apparently asleep.

Leaping up on the porch, Parkman jerked the hat away, his mouth opened to roar angry words.

And he looked into the still, cold eyes of Matt Giles.

By nightfall the story was told in every bunkhouse within miles, and within a few days it was riding north with the trail herds.

Parkman had sent a paid killer after Bijah Catlow, and his killer had been returned ... dead.

Moreover, Bijah had stolen Parkman's corral of fine riding stock, including his own favorite mounts. He had eaten in Parkman's own house, and on his best dishes. Even Parkman's own riders chuckled.

When they buried Matt Giles they noted the position of the wounds, and speculated. Catlow had outsmarted the hired gunman, had come up behind him, given him his chance, and it was quite obvious that Giles had been shot as he turned.

From Piedras Negras the rest of the story was not slow to arrive.

And the legend of Bijah Catlow added another chapter.

Chapter
Five.

Deputy United States Marshal Ben Cowan rode into New Mexico to conduct a quiet investigation into the reported theft of cattle by Comanches, cattle which were traded to Comancheros and sold in New Mexico or elsewhere. Several Texans had created incidents by riding into New Mexico to recover stolen cattle. Childress had done so, as had Hittson, and they had driven the recovered cattle back to Texas. There had been some shooting, and there was apt to be more.

Cowan heard of the killing of Matt Giles by Catlow before he ever left Fort Smith. He was not surprised. That Parkman had been behind Matt Giles's mission was obvious, although it was impossible to prove. Giles had been the wrong man to send after Catlow. He was too methodical. A man of method himself, Cowan knew that against Catlow method was not enough. Bijah was a man of quick, instinctive imagination, and might on impulse discard all the accepted ways of doing things and do something radically different.

Whatever their former relationship, Cowan and Catlow were now unalterably opposed. There was a line beyond which a man might not go, even in the tolerant West. Cowan had himself been a cowhand, and knew enough of conditions in Texas to feel Catlow and his friends were right in branding and driving to sale their herd of mavericks. The killing of Giles was obviously self-defense, but when Catlow drove off Parkman's saddle stock he had stepped beyond the pale.

Many were amused, but all recognized it had been a theft. In Laredo, Catlow shot an officer who attempted to arrest him and escaped below the border. It was apparent that Catlow had accepted the role of the outlaw.

As for the train robbery, Ben Cowan was sure that had been done by the Sam Bass gang, but Catlow got the credit--at least in the minds of some.

For three months Ben Cowan rode the lonely trails of New Mexico. He trailed outlaws, dodged Apaches, accepted meals at lonely sheep camps or ranches, and drifted on.

He said he was hunting range and planning to settle, that he was intending to trail a herd from Texas, but would buy cattle in New Mexico to avoid the drive, if the price was right.