It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own (Code of the West) (11 page)

“I believe you did,” Tap replied.

“And then we had to stop for a while at that horrid roadhouse at Pingree Hill. I, for one, will never step into a place like that again,” Pepper insisted.

“Robert told me it’s a regular hurdy-gurdy over there,” Tap offered.

“Did he mention how he knew so much about it?” Mrs. McCurley demanded.

Bob McCurley sat straight up in his chair and looked at his wife. “Why, I’ve heard others talk. That’s how. You know me better than that, Mrs. McCurley.”

“I hear that might be the hangout of those boys who rode in here,” Tap added.

“No! Are you sure?” Pepper gasped.

“They mentioned they were workin’ for an hombre named Jordan Beckett. Bob said he’s a regular over there.”

Jordan Beckett? Oh no. No, no, no! He’ll ruin it all. He’ll come over and shoot .
 . . I don’t want him ever to enter my life again.

Pepper’s stomach twisted into knots, and her head began to pound. She took several deep breaths.

“Are you all right, Miss Pepper? You look pallid.”

“The poor dear has gone through quite a tough week. Honey, you go on and lie down for a while. I’ll straighten up here,” Mrs. McCurley suggested.

“I think perhaps I should go wash my face. There’s so much excitement today. It’s a little stuffy in here, isn’t it?”

“I’ll crack the door a bit,” Tap answered. As he scurried to the door, he tripped over the gray and white cat, who let out a squeal and flew toward the kitchen.

But no one mentioned the cat.

5

T
ap was standing in the yard the next morning as Pepper and the McCurleys
pulled out. He watched as the rising sun lit the tops of the trees and then crept its way to the ground. He could feel the slight September morning chill start to fade in the light of a cloudless morning. Brownie pranced in the corral, demanding to be ridden. Tap pushed his hat back and sighed as the gray and white cat rubbed his ankle.

“Cat, do you know that six weeks ago I was down in the d
esert pit, locked behind iron bars? If A.T.P. is Hades, then this is Heaven.”

He sauntered back to the house and refilled his coffee cup.

Even the house seems different. Fresh . . . sweet . . . lived in. A man could get used to that—real used to it.

He spent the morning using Onespot to drag the two dead horses away from the barn and into a steep, short ravine, where he caved the dirt in over the top of them.

“I shouldn’t have shot those horses. It just caused more problems than I wanted,” he muttered to himself as he mounted Brownie and set out to inspect the ranch.

Taking a grub sack stuffed with leftovers from the night b
efore, Tap rode east up Village Belle Creek toward the crown of the Medicine Bows. At first, the land was rolling and rocky, but otherwise barren. The brown grass of September was thick and ungrazed.

Huge white clouds hung like clean sheets on a clothesline strung over the mountains. The dark blue sky and bright sun didn’t produce as much warmth as Tap thought it would. Within an hour he had dug out his jacket and pulled it over his vest.

There’s somethin’ about this—ridin’ over your own ranch, looking at rocks, trees, grass, and a stream that belong to you. It’s like comin’ home to a place you only knew in your heart. Somehow the saddle’s softer, the breeze more tolerable, and every breath of air tastes sweeter.

After reaching a stand of lodgepole pines, Tap turned northeast and followed an animal trail through meadows, trees, and rocks until he came to the summit of the range.

“Brownie, as much as I can figure, this is the property line. From here, north to the state line is all ours. If I had a spyglass, I could probably see the ranch house from here. I suppose someday we’ll have to stretch some Glidden’s wire across this crest. But if we feed the cows down in the valley, they should hang around without wandering too far off. There isn’t much of a reason for a bovine to meander up here in the rocks.”

The bleat of an animal rolled up the mountain.

“Brownie, that sounds like a cow.”

He rode the horse off the crest and back into the trees. Every few feet he stopped and listened to the bellow of the cow. Dropping down a slight incline, Tap came to the hea
dwaters of another stream, which he guessed was Camp Creek.

He crossed the small creek slowly, as the smooth i
mmersed rocks were thick with dark green moss. Once across, he spurred the horse toward the far side of the meadow that had not yet turned brown. There among the tall weeds and fallen logs he observed a big brown and white bull trying to haul its hind hooves out of a bog. Spotting Tap and his horse, the bull yanked in desperation to extract itself from the mud. He only succeeded in getting the front hooves stuck as well.

“I don’t know where you belong, but it’s not there.” Ci
rcling around to its left hindquarters, Tap spotted an old Rafter R brand barely visible in its hide. “So you’re supposed to be up there in Wyoming, are ya? I might as well drive you there. It’s right on my way.”

Tap jerked his rope off the right side of his saddle while the horse stared at the complaining bull.

“Brownie, let’s edge up a little closer and see if I can’t toss a lasso over him. That old boy’s lookin’ weak. There’s no tellin’ how long he’s been stuck.”

The runoff from the spring was minimal, which allowed Tap to ride up within twenty-five feet of the animal and still keep Brownie on dry land.

“Now you listen up, horse. I don’t know if you’re a ropin’ mount or not, but you’re goin’ to learn real soon. I’m sure not goin’ to tie him hard and fast. If that old boy gets free and has enough strength to break to the trees, we’d get beat to death on the timbers.”

Building a loop in his well-worn fifty-foot hemp rope, Tap stood in his stirrups, circling the coil above his hat. With a skill that takes years to learn and is never forgotten, he floated the rope over the horns of the large animal.

The bull didn’t seem to be bothered by the rope, and Tap dallied the other end on the saddle horn. Turning Brownie on an angle away from the spring, he spurred the horse and tugged on the rope. The bull continued to bellow as the rope grew taut.

After several minutes of horse, bull, rope, and rider strai
ning, he slacked up on the rope and rode a bit further north.

“Let’s try it at a different angle.”

This time the violent tugging produced its intended result. The bull lunged, one foot at a time, out of the bog of the springs and onto dry ground. Tap had released the dally and was ready to drop the rope if the animal bolted. Instead, the huge multi-colored longhorn dropped to its knees and collapsed in the grass.

Tap rode close enough to loosen the loop and slip it off the animal.

“Come on now. Don’t go down on me. You need to walk this off, or you won’t be able to move by mornin’. He-yah! Git up! Git up!” He slapped the now-coiled rope against his chaps. “Come on, bull. Let’s go!”

By continual whacking of the coiled rope on the animal’s rump, he got the bull to struggle to its feet. “That-a-boy. Keep it goin’.”

The animal staggered a few feet and then stopped to eat some grass.

“Dinner time? I can’t argue with you there. But just a little bit. You’ve got to keep movin’. That’s enough. Now you move along. Hay-yah! Git on! Git on!”

The bull turned away from the pair, and instead of trotting ahead of them to the north, he spun south and tottered right back out into the bog.

“No, you chunkhead. Look at that. You’re stuck again.” Tap shouted in frustration. “I’d leave you right there to die, but you’ll foul my stream.”

Once again he roped the animal and began to tug it out of the morass. This time it took four different angles to finally get the animal to dry land. Again the bull collapsed in the grass.

This time Tap circled behind the animal and positioned himself between the bull and the spring. He gave the bull a few moments to catch his breath.

Slapping his chaps, he hollered, “
Otra vez, el toro! Otra vez!
” Inching the horse forward, he beat on the bull’s rump until it staggered to its feet. It glanced to the right, as if to spot the spring for another repeat, but Tap cut the brown horse in that direction, blocking the bull’s line of sight.

The struggling bull spun and made a pass at Brownie, tr
ying to hook the horse in the right shoulder. Brownie reared and jerked to the left so fast that Tap slipped over the back of the cantle. He tumbled to the ground, his rope still clutched in his right hand.

His left foot hit a granite rock and twisted until his ankle touched ground, and he stagger
ed back and crashed on his backside. Sitting up quickly, he saw the bull pawing at the ground not fifteen feet from him. Dropping the rope, Tap leaped to his feet to sprint to Brownie, but his left ankle collapsed, slamming him back to the ground.

Lying on his left side, Tap yanked his Colt from the holster and fired a shot over the animal’s head just as it began to charge. With the next bu
llet aimed for the bull’s head, he pulled back the hammer of the gun. This time the animal veered left and staggered into a clump of pines.

“On second thought, maybe we’ll just leave that old boy up here. If they want him, they can come get him.” He m
otioned to Brownie, who wandered up to Tap once the bull was out of sight.

He stood gingerly on his ankle and hobbled over to grab the reins. Tying his rope back to his saddle horn, Tap stayed  on the ground.

“I’ve got to walk this thing off, or it will stiffen up, Brownie. So come on. Let’s find out what other surprises are hidin’ on this ranch.”

As he walked slowly down a gentle slope, the ankle r
egained its strength. After about a mile Tap remounted the horse and trotted north.

“We know some of the Rafter R beef got through that drift line. ’Course, that old boy might have been down here for a number of years. Now you’d think that a bull would get awful lonesome and want to go home to visit with the ladies. Unless, of course, he brought the whole harem with him.”

He hadn’t ridden more than a mile when he spotted a longhorn cow, a yearling, and a calf.

Here’s the rest of the family, but they aren’t branded. Not even the cow. If I ran them back down to the ranch, no one could prove .
 . . but I don’t think that’s what Hatcher would have done. No, sir, I’ll play it by the book. I’m going to be the perfect neighbor.

It was late afternoon by the time Tap reached the Wy
oming border and the edge of Hatcher’s ranch. He was pushing ahead of him six longhorn cows (two of which were pregnant), two heifers, three yearlings, and two calves. None of the bunch wore any brand at all. They were skittish about being driven along, but the cows were too close to dropping calves to put up much resistance. Brownie had turned out to be a first-rate cow pony, never allowing any of the herd to stray too far.

“Brownie, it’s green down at the bottom of that draw. We’ll push ’em down there and then leave ’em. I imagine some of the Rafter R boys will spot ’em in a day or two. It’s gettin’ late. If we don’t get a good moon among these clouds, it might be a long ride home in the dark.”

They had ridden halfway down the slope when a rifle shot burned the air near Tap’s head, and he heard the report from the trees. He dove for Brownie’s neck, shifting to the right side and swinging down, Indian-style. Spurring the pony, he raced toward a buckskin pine that leaned like a broken flagpole, offering the only shelter besides the trees that housed the attacker.

Reaching the standing dead tree, Tap pulled his Winche
ster and jumped off the horse, allowing it to wander on down the mountain. Flipping up the long-range sight mounted on the upper tang, he took aim on the trees and waited for someone to show himself.

This is just like Arizona. I’ve been here two days, and a
lready someone is taking a shot at me! I don’t even know anyone in Wyoming, do I? Besides, they can’t see from that far away. How do they know who I am?

After a few minutes, Tap saw two riders swing out deep to the left and three start out to the right.

They think they’re going to flank me? I’ll put one on the ground right now.

He took aim on the one riding a blue roan. The small peep hole centered on the man’s chest. He cocked the hammer and began to pull the trigger.

A blue roan? Wiley was ridin’ a . . . Wiley? Quail? These are Rafter R boys. And they don’t have any idea who I am or whether I’m bringing cattle back or stealin’
’
em. That was mighty close, Andrews. If you don’t get yourself under control, you may never live long enough to get to that weddin’.

As the men circled in the distance, Tap pulled off his ba
ndanna and tied it to the end of his rifle.
I don’t have a white one, but red ought to get their attention.

He looked up to see a short man and the man on the blue roan swing together toward his position. The others stopped their circling and waited.

“At the buckskin,” the little man hollered. “You want to talk before we kill you?”