Flint (1960) (11 page)

"I suppose. All Western men are from somewhere else, when it comes to that. At the stage station in Alamitos I heard German, Swedish, and Irish accents in just a few minutes, but I suppose being a Western man is a matter of psychology. The mere fact that a man chooses to come West indicates a difference of temperament or attitude, and then there's bound to be changes due to the landscape and the conditions. I suppose the basic difference is that men want to survive, to mate, and to have security . . . and out here the other considerations are out-weighed by the necessity to survive."

"Mr. Flint --?"

"Call me Jim. I am used to it."

"All right -- Jim. When you found Ed, was he able to talk? He was on a business trip for the ranch, and we don't know whether he was shot when he was going out or coming back."

"He was worried. He muttered something about Santa Fe, and about someone called Gladys, that was all. No, he was never conscious while he was with me."

She led the way to the long table, and he seated her. "Thank you," she said. "That is a courtesy I do not often encounter."

The hands came in slowly and sat down, stealing glances at Flint.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" he asked. "I know you are in trouble. Maybe I can help."

"Porter Baldwin is going to need a lot of land for forty thousand head of cattle," Nancy said. "It's as simple as that."

He needed to ask no more questions. Few pioneer ranchmen had ever filed on their land. Indeed, when many of them settled in the West there was no legal way to file and nobody to dispute their claims but wild Indians. Later, the courts and the congressmen of settled states were inclined to dismiss all the ranchers might have done and open their grazing land to settlement. Such action was not, naturally, appreciated by the cattlemen.

In some cases ranchers had purchased land from Indians, but the government rarely accepted such purchases as legal. Flint was completely aware of all these factors, and knew what the usual steps were.

"Have you had your hands file claims for you?"

She looked up quickly, and he was aware of the sudden attention from down the table.

"Isn't that illegal?" Nancy asked quietly. "But to reply to your question: yes. We have no choice, and if any of the men wish to keep their claims, they may. If not, we will buy their rights from them. It is either that or lose the ranch my father and uncle worked so hard to build."

"There may be other alternatives," Flint replied. "Are you running cattle on railroad land?"

"No, we are not. Tom Nugent does, and some of the others. Of course, Port Baldwin is. But we never have used any of that graze that we know of, as we hold our cattle farther south."

Long after dinner they sat on the wide veranda and listened to Johnny Otero singing near the bunkhouse.

Flint led Nancy to talking of the ranch, and learned the whole story of her efforts to improve it. He was surprised by her appreciation of the grazing problem, and what she had done about it. One of her hands had been a German who remained at the ranch an entire summer making repairs in the house, building cabinets and furniture. He had told her about grazing methods in Germany and Switzerland, and from him she learned the use of spreader dams, dams built to spread the runoff from hillsides instead of letting it trickle away. Wells had been dug, seeps cleaned out, herds trimmed to avoid overgrazing.

"My father was a great believer in children being given responsibility, Jim. He gave me things to do as early as I can remember. And he used to talk to me about the ranch, and explain everything he did, and why he did it."

"You know how children are. They are always curious and they want to know something about everything. I don't remember a single question of mine that he left unanswered. Sometimes when I would ask him something he thought was intelligent he would give me a gift or take me somewhere that I wanted to go."

"He never gave me anything really big that I didn't earn. Sometimes I had to do very little to earn whatever he gave, but it was usually something. Why, before I knew the ABCs I could name every cattle brand in this part of the state, and I could recognize all the plants that poison stock such as loco weed and larkspur."

Long after he lay in bed he thought of her and the long talk on the darkening porch. He could not remember ever talking so long to any one person, not even Flint.

He was very stiff, and no matter how he turned there was a sore spot. For three days he loafed about the ranch, and during all that time he was aware that Pete Gaddis, Johnny Otero, or a hulking brute of a man with a good-natured face, Julius Bent, was always around.

He learned that Baldwin had tried to get a warrant for his arrest but the local judge refused. "I saw what happened," the judge rasped, "and as far as I am concerned it was justified. It was self-defense."

"He wasn't defending himself," Baldwin replied angrily, "he was attacking!"

"Attack can be the best defense," Judge Hatfield replied grimly. "You had attacked him without provocation, and he had every reason to believe you would attack him again. I am only sorry he stopped shooting when he did."

Baldwin had stalked angrily from the office, and Hatfield had chuckled and returned to his work.

Baldwin was worried, and he did not know why. Shrewd as he was, he often trusted to purely animal instincts, attacking whenever weakness was evident, biding his time when faced with strength, and trusting to a sharp instinct for danger to save him from going too far.

He felt that warning of danger now and it worried him all the more because he was not sure where the danger lay. As he carefully sifted the events of the day through his mind there was one comment that remained. Flint had asked him whether it was cattle he was interested in -- or land.

Was that a guess? Or did Flint know something?

The latter was unlikely, yet it did not pay to overlook possibilities. The swiftness of Flint's action both at Horse Springs and on North Plain had shocked Baldwin's men. They were wary of Flint now, and there was an old story being revived -- something about another Flint who had been a notorious killer.

Baldwin decided there was something here he did not understand. He was aware that some of his riders believed Flint was insane, especially after he shot up Alamitos.

Baldwin chewed his black cigar thoughtfully, sitting on the edge of his hotel bed in his shirt sleeves. Thus far things had gone according to plan. Flynn was not dead, but his death was not essential, merely that he be out of action. Kaybar was no longer a serious obstacle, and he had taken steps to eliminate Tom Nugent.

Nugent's swift action against the nesters had alienated the feelings of a lot of people at Alamitos. It would stand against him in Socorro or Santa Fe, if it ever came to that. Nugent would have few friends, anyway, for he was a hot-tempered, arrogant man who made enemies. Several of his hands had quit, already.

Port Baldwin had come up the hard way. It had been his experience that victory paid off, and losers got exactly nowhere. The government was inclined to a hands-off policy, and a man could get away with as much as he was big enough to handle. Port Baldwin was, he reflected, pretty big.

He had made his money through speculation, intimidation, and conniving, getting in quick and getting out with a profit. The future of the country did not interest him. He thought only of himself and what he could get out of it now.

He had speculated in railroads, town-site developments, in mines and shipping, but the railroad land situation, and the state in which government land stood appealed to his instinct for a fast deal.

Word from Washington was that a change was due in the land laws, and Baldwin foresaw enormous profits for those in possession. But he decided there was a profit to be made without awaiting the legislative action.

He knew it was almost impossible for the railroad to dispose of their land. They had been given the odd-numbered sections along both sides of the railroad right of way, but the cattlemen, accustomed to free range, grazed government and railroad land with equal disregard for ownership, and under the existing laws it was impossible to prevent such trespass.

Where railroad land had been sold the contracts usually stipulated that if the purchaser failed to make payments on schedule all profits from the land in question would revert to the railroad, after default in payment. If payments continued to be defaulted for three months, the land purchase price became due and the company was free to foreclose.

Thousands of land-hungry men were coming West, most of them with a little money to invest, and few of them knowing anything about the land itself. Little of the land in which Baldwin planned to deal could be farmed. It was grazing land, thin-soiled and of value for little else, and to make money from grazing land, thousands of acres were necessary.

Once he had driven the Kaybar and Nugent from their holdings, Baldwin meant to sell the land to dry farmers, using the same contract the railroad used. He had also secured from the railroad tentative approval of a plan to sell their land, and it was this fact he planned to use in advertising land for sale. Most of the buyers would be, he knew, innocent of the procedures of land purchase, and most of them would believe he was selling only railroad land. Others would believe he was selling off the big ranches to which he had obtained title. Few would go to the extent of a title search, and for those few he had methods of persuasion. If they talked too much they would find themselves on a train going East, in an empty box-car, badly beaten up.

Few would be able to keep up payments on the land they bought, and the land would revert to him. Whenever possible he meant to assure himself of a reasonable title, but Baldwin knew few of the buyers could afford extensive litigation.

Once he had sold the land, he would sell off his cattle and go East, retaining title only to that land on which payment had been defaulted. Quite coolly he planned to sell land to which he had no title at all, knowing that if the matter went to the courts, he would no longer be within their jurisdiction.

It was a swindle, and he regarded it as nothing else, but a swindle it might take years to unravel, and there were always ways of getting such cases delayed or thrown out of court.

Baldwin knew that few of the ranchers in the area had title to the land they grazed, and he had thought of ways to make that fact work for him. Rolling his black cigar in his jaws, Baldwin contemplated the future with satisfaction. He had lost a good bit of money, but this deal would give him more capital, and it would also give him a good deal of collateral.

Flynn was out of it. Nugent soon would be. That Kerrigan girl would cause him no trouble. Pete Gaddis he had estimated and dismissed. Undoubtedly a tough man in a fight, he was no businessman and no leader.

Flint had no real stake in the fight, and his friendship with the Kerrigan girl must be scotched at once. Buckdun could take care of that.

Baldwin was pleased. He allowed himself ninety days to be in complete possession of three million acres.

He picked up his newspaper that had been delivered to his room and took it down to the restaurant. Harriman was in the midst of a fight with the Morgan-Vanderbilt interests, and Kettleman was expected to intervene. Baldwin stared at the name irritably. He had lost money on the Union Pacific stock deal, for he had attempted to follow Kettleman's lead and had been caught short.

Kettleman had been a major stockholder and a director. He gained control of the Kansas Pacific and declared his intention of building another transcontinental railroad to rival the Union Pacific. Frantic at the thought of competition, the Union Pacific moved to buy Kansas Pacific stock. That stock was way below par, and when Kettleman sold he forced the Union Pacific to buy at par, and cleared ten million on the deal.

Port Baldwin learned from Kettleman's father-in-law that Kettleman was buying Kansas Pacific stock. Rushing in, he bought Kansas Pacific himself, but the deal with Union Pacific was made secretly, and Kettleman had sold out before Baldwin knew it. The stock took a nose dive, and Baldwin was all but cleaned out.

Ten million! Baldwin rustled his paper angrily. Every time he thought of it, he was enraged. Lottie would have it all, someday, if she just outlived Kettleman.

How could Kettleman have killed that gambler? The man was notorious on the Mississippi riverboats, and had been hired several times for killings, each of which had gone off successfully. Baldwin had been careful not to be close by, yet from all accounts, the gambler had drawn his pistol and was about to shoot when Kettleman produced a gun as if by magic and killed him.

Baldwin had worried ever since the failure of the attempt. Kettleman had the reputation of a man who did not forget an injury, and it was whispered that the gambler had talked before he died. How much had he talked? That was the question.

Baldwin had seen a chance at a tidy profit. If Kettleman was killed there would be an immediate reaction on the market. Baldwin prepared for it -- but lost again.

There was nothing to do now but wait and let Buckdun handle his part of it, and the cattle would do the rest.

Baldwin had never seen Kettleman. For that matter he had never seen Jay Gould or Commodore Vanderbilt, either. He had seen Harriman, a shrewd young man who would go far, and he knew Jim Fisk.