Paper Sheriff (6 page)

He moved back to put away the hammer, then headed for the corral, crossing the double-log footbridge ahead of Ames. This had been a pleasant, if driving, week, Reese thought. They had worked from sun-up till long past dark, at first sleeping with the sky above them, then with walls around them, then with a roof over them, and the work after the long days in court was the purest kind of joy.

They passed Sam who was limping a little. He grinned at Reese and said, “I'm going to drive back lying face down on the blanket rolls. I'm too sore to sit down.”

“Just don't go to sleep,” Reese said.

At the corral they caught their horses and saddled them. Steve Ashton and Walt Ryder, the other two hands, had saddled up and were halfway across the park by now. When Reese's grey was saddled, he watched Ames close the gate, then they rode off across the grassy park, headed for Bale and the Slash Seven.

When Reese and Ames caught up with the other two, Steve and Walt were already discussing how it would feel to drown in the Best Bet's beer. Steve was the younger, in his twenties, a lean, long-faced young man with a smouldering insolence in his eyes that never found its way to his speech. He was cynical, yet almost courtly in his manner, and women of a certain type found him irresistible. Walt Ryder was a taciturn, ruddy-faced Scotsman who had been imported by one of the big English owned ranches up north. A quarrel with the owners which he would never discuss had set him adrift to be hired by Reese's father. In his fifties, he would long since have been foreman if he had not shunned all the responsibilities that Ames Tolliver was willing to accept.

The wagon road, such as it was, snaked through the dark timber, and Reese paid little attention to the slow-paced talk of his crew. He had started the morning with a carefree sense of satisfaction at having accomplished some hard and necessary work, but as they approached the pinyon-clad foothills above Bale, his feeling of well being slowly wore off to be replaced by a vague depression. At the end of his ride today Callie would be waiting for him—a silent, rebellious and bewildered Callie with whom he had no communication whatsoever.

Reese dropped off the crew at the Best Bet, then turned off Main Street, heading for the court-house. Out in the distant prairie a storm was drifting in. He wondered what had come up during this past week that Jim Daley had had to handle. There couldn't have been anything serious for Jim would have sent for him, he knew.

Putting his horse in under the open-faced shed behind the court-house, he tramped up the court-house steps and entered the rear door of the corridor. He found his office was locked, which meant that Jim Daley was out on an errand. Since he carried no keys with him, he would either have to wait for Jim's return or query one of the court-house officials on what had happened in his absence. Then he thought of Jen who, though she seldom used her father's office, might be there today. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and turned left toward the Judge's chambers next to the court-room. The door adjoining the Judge's chambers was open and Reese felt a sudden rush of pleasure knowing that Jen was here.

Tramping into the room which held a small conference table and chairs plus the desk and files, he saw Jen seated in the swivel chair that she had pulled up to the low window. Her feet were on the windowsill and she seemed to be looking out over the summer-lazy town.

At his entrance she turned her head and smiled. “I saw you ride in, Reese, and hoped you'd come up.”

She was wearing a grey-colored, lightweight summer dress with a touch of white on the collar and on the cuffs of the short sleeves, a dress Reese remembered and liked.

“I had to find out if the court-house had burned down. Tell me what's been happening.” He came over to the big window, leaned down and gently shifted her legs so he could sit down on the sill facing her. She smiled lazily and affectionately.

“The same old nothing,” Jen said. “I came down to make a pass at working, but when I looked out the window, I saw that storm shaping up. I've been watching it.”

Reese nodded. “We'll be getting it at home but not near here, looks like.”

“What've you got all over your hands and clothes?” Jen asked.

“Pitch from logs for the new line shack,” Reese answered. Then he asked, “How's your father?”

Jen hesitated a moment. “Puzzled, I'd guess you'd call it, or maybe surprised.”

“At what?”

“At some gossip I picked up from the county clerk today.” She paused. “Reese, why is Callie going into the cattle and land business?”

Reese felt a shock he tried to hide and couldn't. “I didn't know she was.”

“Martin Farmer filed the incorporation papers of the Hoad Land & Cattle Company this morning. Callie's named as President of it.”

Reese shook his head in bewilderment. “That happened while I was gone.” He smiled faintly. “She doesn't own any land and hasn't got a cow to call her own.” He paused, then asked, “Who are the other officers?”

“Martin Farmer is secretary. The names of the president and secretary are all that the State requires, although most companies list all officers. That's what puzzled Dad and me. And now you too, I suppose.”

Reese rubbed his jaw in thought and the gesture made a faint rasping sound on his week's dark beard-stubble. “Well, her father's been a trader of sorts all his life—all kinds of stock or anything he could swap for. Sounds like it might be Ty's idea.”

Jen nodded. “That's probably it.”

“But why Callie's named president I can't guess. Maybe he did it to humor her.”

Jen smiled. “Everybody should be president of something in a lifetime. I was president of my fifth grade class. As I recall it, it was very satisfying to my little ego.”

Reese grinned. “You probably let the boys kiss you if they'd vote for you.”

Now Jen laughed. “No, it wasn't that complicated. All the boys were monsters but there were more girls than boys. I just organized the girls.”

Reese knew they were both talking just to be talking about anything but Jen's strange news of Callie. Certainly this was the oddest way any husband ever learned that his wife had launched into a business venture. Was it a result of their last quarrel or had she been planning it all along? He felt a new restlessness now and it was touched with irritation. He hated to be surprised by plans that he should have known at their inception, and now he rose.

“Jim got any problems?”

Jan shook her head. “The jail's empty, and Jim might even be fishing.”

Reese bid her an abrupt goodbye, tramped downstairs and outside to his horse. Mounting him, he put him directly through town, knowing as he passed the' Best Bet that his crew was still there.

He took the short cut across the prairie toward the Slash Seven and felt the chill ground breeze, which preceeded the coming storm. He paused long enough to untie his slicker and don it and then saw that the rain had already blacked out the distant trees at home. The same questions kept troubling him now. Should he challenge Callie immediately, demanding to know what she planned and why she planned it? No matter what their relationship, she was his wife and he had a right to know of her activities. But would she tell him any more than he already knew? It came to him then that demanding an explanation of her might be precisely the wrong way to find out what she was up to. Why not pretend ignorance and let events develop as they would? After all, it was only through chance and then curiosity that Jen had learned of the new corporation. The few people who would learn of it would think it was Reese's idea and that it was his whim to make his wife president. If he didn't bring it up to Callie, then she would assume that he knew nothing about it or that he was so indifferent to her and her doings that he didn't care.

The first few drops of rain quickly turned into a slashing downpour as the storm rode over him. Yes, that was what he could do, he thought then—say nothing and watch, say nothing and wait.

When he rode in to the Slash Seven, it was raining in great driving sheets; the bare barn lot seemed to boil with the rain that hit the hard ground and, now muddy, bounced up a foot before settling again.

Reese put his grey in the open-faced stable, rubbing him down with a gunny sack, then headed through the driving rain for the kitchen door to the house. The usual smoke from the stove was missing, Reese noted, or else the battering rain had beat it down.

He stepped through the kitchen doorway and closed it behind him and looked about the room which was empty. He stood there, water channelling down his slicker around his boots and called, “Callie.”

There was no answer and only then did he notice the piece of paper on the kitchen table held down by a salt cellar. Moving over to it, he picked it up and saw that it was in Callie's nervous handwriting. The note read, “You had your week. Now I'll have mine. Callie.”

2

Big John's message, brought home to Orville by Emmett, was that there was a herd of two thousand Texas cattle on its way up the National Trail and that it would be in the vicinity of the Little Muddy in three days. The message came four days after Reese started work on the line shack and Ty immediately came over to Slash Seven with a wagon-load of grub, picked Callie up and then headed for Ty's line shack in Copper Canyon to get the Hoad camp in readiness.

Orville Hoad was ready and had his organization planned, his men primed to go when the message arrived. Buddy, Ty's boy, would pick up the two young Plunkets, Abner and Marvin, who were the sons of Sarah Plunket, sister to Orville and Ty. Another sister, Amy Bashear, had three boys, grown and married men, who had agreed to make up a second unit. The third, of course, would be Orv with Emmett, Junior and Big John.

Nine men traveling together would attract attention and be remembered, Orville knew, so he directed the units to travel separately to their rendezvous with Big John at the Little Muddy. Here they would learn from Big John the location of the herd and agree on the date and time for stampeding it. Afterwards they would split up again and once they had stampeded the herd they would make their gather separately and take different routes to Ty's Copper Canyon line shack. Orville had cautioned them not to be greedy; the more cattle they had to drive, the slower the pace would be. The idea was to strike swiftly and get out in a hurry. If the stampede succeeded, the drover and his trail crew would have to spend days rounding up the herd and counting it, and by that time the cattle should be well through the rough badlands country that covered twenty of the forty miles between Bale and the National Trail. Even after they reached the Wheelers they must approach Copper Canyon by different routes.

The night the three units rendezvoused at Big John's camp, it was raining and Orville learned from his eldest son that the herd was bedded down less than five miles down the Trail. The three units set off immediately, separating. Orville would fire the first shots that would start the stampede an hour before dawn. It was unlikely that the trail crew could start the cattle milling since they already would be wet, miserable and spooky. They would, Orville hoped, stampede west into the broken country before the brakes, which would make the job of rounding them up twice as difficult as if they were stampeded up the Trail.

The plan worked to perfection; the trail crew was double-guarding the restless herd, but Orville's shots simply turned the storm-caused uneasiness of the cattle into instant panic. His shots drew a return fire from the night herders that only increased the panic and, since Orville's station was on the east side of the herd, the cattle ran west as Orville hoped they would. The attempt to turn the herd and get them to mill in a circle failed and the herd running west spread out where the other two units hazed them by gunfire. When daylight came two units started their roundup of the lead cattle before the trail crew on their weary horses could begin their search for the scattered bunches of cattle.

The rain held on all that day, alternating between a drizzle and occasional downpours that, Orville knew, would erase all tracks. He and his boys had sixty head in their band as they headed into the brakes in mid-morning. Whatever trails they left around the rocks at the base of the clay dunes and canyon floors were erased by the rain. By afternoon they were on the range that held other cattle whose tracks and signs would confuse any possible pursuit.

By the third day after the stampede the three units had arrived at Ty's line cabin. Together they had got away with one hundred and ninety-eight double-wintered Texas beeves. Ty's log line shack consisted of a single room fronted by an open park where the men immediately set about vent-branding the cattle and re-branding them with the HL connected brand which was already registered as the brand of the Hoad Land & Cattle Company. During these days the eleven men of the Hoad blood line slept in two dirty grey tents pitched back of the line shack. Callie cooked and served the meals and slept alone in the line shack. She worked as hard as any of the men and each night before darkness set in she would look out across the big meadow at their newly acquired wealth and a renewed determination mixed with pride came to her. Big John, while waiting, had learned the name of the approaching herd's owner, so that Callie could forge a bill of sale with the name of the Texas owner. If by some unlikely chance anyone strayed into the remote Copper Canyon and was curious, the bill of sale would be ready for him.

This day, the branding finished, the Plunkets and the Bashears and two of Orville's boys and Buddy had left for home, leaving Ty, Orville and Big John in camp with Callie. That evening after supper Orville lighted the lantern and hung it on a piece of baling wire over the big deal table.

Callie, dressed in levis and a man's shirt, distributed the four tin cups, two on each side of the table before the saw log stools. She poured the coffee, then watched the three men moved toward their seats.