Sipping Whiskey in a Shallow Grave (27 page)

 

Chapter 9

 

“You'll do anything to get out of butchering,” LG said.

John held a handkerchief to his forehead. It was soaked in blood. His hat was in his other hand — the brim was torn from the hoof strike.

“Got the skull cramps,” John said miserably.

LG led him by the elbow to the bunkhouse. He took him inside and sat him on the nearest mattress.

“Am I gonna die?” John asked. “Feels like I'm gonna die.”

He stretched out on the bed, looking piqued. His shut his eyes tight and kept the kerchief pressed against his head.

“Won't be no dead shine in camp tonight,” LG assured him, patting the top of his head like a dog.

Cassius appeared in the doorway, obviously out of breath from hurrying.

“I heard John got his head kicked in!”

LG reached in his vest pocket and took out a small quid of tobacco.

“Yep,” LG said and put a pinch in his mouth.

Cassius looked at John's blood-streaked face, then over to LG casually pinching off a bite of tobacco.

“I see you are wrought with concern over your fellow man.”

“This is medicine,” LG explained, holding up the package.

“
Climax Chewing Tobacco
.” Cassius said doubtfully. “Medicine?”
 

“Not only my favorite chew…makes a fine poultice.”

“Think I'm goin' to die,” John mentioned to Cassius.

Stepping over to the young man, Cassius reached down and lifted the handkerchief. John kept his eyes closed, fearing the worst. Dark sticky blood was all over his face. In the center of his forehead was a deep gash. The tear was several inches wide and the skin was bunched up.

“Got a good flapper there.”

“Oh me,” John moaned and pressed the handkerchief back on his forehead.

LG stepped over and lifted it again. He spit a glob of wet tobacco into his hand and liberally applied it to the wound, smoothing the skin into place as best he could.

“Stay,” LG said to John, and then nodded at Cassius. “One more thing, hang on.”

He left the bunkhouse and went over to the hay barn. On a dusty shelf in the tack room, he found a small can of
Thribble H Horse Liniment
. He took it and headed up to the kitchen. The cookie was there, working a lump of sourdough.
 

“Need some hot water,” LG announced.

“On the stove.”

A large cast iron wood stove dominated one corner of the room. The whole kitchen was uncomfortably warm, even with the windows wide open. Sitting on top was a blue ceramic kettle, steaming. LG found an empty drinking mug and poured some hot water in it.

“What happened to the kid?” the cook asked irritably. “You stole my helper, damn it.”

LG set the liniment can on the tabletop and used a butterknife to pry it open.

“Well, you ain't got no help no more.”

The cook paused over his lump of sourdough and glared unhappily at LG.

“John-boy took a hoof to the face,” LG explained, and then paused reflectively. “Nicen up…people might like you more.”

The cook ran a floury hand across his sweaty forehead, and then rested his palms on the countertop. He gave LG a forced, toothy smile.

“Can
you
gut that thing?”

“Cash got me milking cows.”

The cook punched the dough, rattling the counter and a rolling pin fell on the floor. LG shook his head. Yet another cantankerous cook, he thought. Every other cook he ran into had a chip on his shoulder, it seemed — except Emmanuel. He had a good attitude. LG stirred the liniment into the hot water with the butterknife.

Cassius was standing in the doorway of the bunkhouse, looking impatient, when LG finally came back.

“Here, John-boy, sit up.”

John sat up. LG handed him the mug.

“Drink it all.”

Cassius left without saying another word and marched back to the mine. His constant concern over ore theft hovered over him like a cloud. LG watched him go and was glad he was gone. People got too pent up, in his opinion. Why live life pent up all the time?

“Tonight, you have to sleep with your head pointed north. If you don't, gonna wake up with the Ursa Majors and the gangrene-itis.”

“Oh, me,” John said.

“Just point your head north, you'll be fine.”

John didn't know what the Ursa Majors were, but they sounded bad enough. And the gangrene-itis sounded horrible, as well. He wished he was back in New York.

 

Chapter 10

Texas Panhandle

 

“There…up ahead,” Lee pointed out. “Must be the eatery.”

“About time we happen upon it,” Davis said, squinting to see through the heat waves piping off the plains. “I'm getting surly.”

It was a one-story frame house, but it had a tall false front, which made it seem bigger than it was. The walls had been painted white at some point but had been successfully sandblasted by the prairie winds. Big black letters stenciled across the storefront read:
Singer's Store, Merchandise.
 

A buckboard was parked in the shade. The mules stood sleepily in their harnesses, lulled by the Texas heat. There was one horse, a sorrel, at the hitching post out front. Clumps of white and blue sage dotted the area. Besides short grass and wildflowers, it was the only vegetation on these wide empty flats.

Inside, it was such a contrast from the bright sunlight that it took several minutes to get used to it. It was much cooler inside, too. They saw a long boarding table situated against one wall, and the rest of the room was cluttered with supplies and shelves. Three men were already there eating a meal. Lee and Davis walked over and sat down wearily. As they took their seats, the proprietor appeared from the back.

“Fifty cents,” Sam Singer told them, wiping his hands on a towel. “Biscuits, pickles and beefsteak.”  

“Suits me well,” Lee said.

“Keep the coffee coming,” Davis added.

Sam Singer looked down at Davis sourly. Of
course
there would be coffee. Cowboys came through here every single meal, every single day. It went unspoken that he would serve up coffee. In fact, Sam Singer prided himself on good coffee. He ground it fresh every morning with a cast iron mill. And he rinsed the pot out good every night.

Glancing down the boarding table, Lee nodded in a friendly fashion towards the three strangers. Two of them appeared to be middle-aged, and the third seemed half that. One of the older men was dressed like a working cowman — from the wide-brimmed hat to the worn leather chaps to the rawhide gloves tucked in his belt. The other two wore dapper suits and, Lee imagined, were undoubtedly used to city lights more than starry nights.

“Sam, them was fine eats and a bellyful to think on,” the cowman called to the store owner.

Sam Singer ignored the comment. He worked his way back to the table with two heaping plates for Lee and Davis. Sam rarely spoke while carrying hot plates. It was hard to do two things at once. At least to do two things at once, and do them both well. It had been over a year since he dropped the last plate while trying to carry on a conversation. And he hated dropping plates. It was embarrassing and wasteful.

“You boys riding for anyone?” the cowman asked.

“Looking for cow work,” Lee replied and bit into a dill pickle. “Been up in Colorada punching for the B-Cross-C.”

“Thought we might latch onto a wagon down this a'way,” Davis told him. “Thought to check the XIT…or head on down to the King.”

The cowman looked over at his city companions, but they were busy sopping up gravy with their biscuits.

“I'm AG Boyce,” he said, and introduced his friends. “This here is Mr. AL Matlock and his colleague Mr. George Findlay.”

“Afternoon to you,” Mr. Matlock said in a sober Southern drawl, raising his gray eyes up from his plate. He looked them over thoughtfully, taking in their gear and demeanor.

“Hello there. And how are you?” Findlay added, in a surprisingly deep voice and an equally surprising thick Scottish accent.

Lee and Davis both looked straight at him, curiously. George Findlay was barely twenty years old and clearly out of his element. He kept glancing back and forth between Matlock and Boyce the whole time he sat at the table. Lee stared at him. He had a young boyish face, and not a hair on his chin — Mr. Findlay's deep voice simply did not match the look. Lee pondered the incongruity while he cut into his beefsteak. It was downright bizarre.

“I'm the new general manager of the XIT,” Boyce continued. “Things there are…changing.”

Matlock and Boyce exchanged a look of firm resolve.

Lee glanced up from his plate with immediate interest, but Davis was chewing mindlessly on a biscuit. He looked like a horse, with his jaw rolling around and his eyes half-closed. The two of them had been riding for too long in too much sun, and Davis was too sore and hungry to realize an opportunity was at hand. Of course, the pickle was fresh, the beefsteak well-seasoned and the coffee so tasty that even in the middle of this Texas heat Davis was enjoying it thoroughly. Emmanuel only knew how to scorch coffee. How many times had he told the man
, you don't boil the water.
You let it simmer, but never boil. And since they quit the B-Cross, neither Lee nor Davis had thought to purchase a coffee pot for their kit…which became a daily gripe.

Lee elbowed him.

“You are just the man we need to speak with, then.” Lee said to Boyce. “Changing? How so?”

“Well now,” Boyce went on. “Been a big change-up in management. And soon there will be a ranch-wide turnover of hands. We are in fact on our way out to the Yellow Houses headquarters right now to set this thing to spin.”

AL Matlock studied them both closely. As a lawyer by trade, Matlock was in the business of distinguishing truth from lies. Experience gave him the sense to gauge a man's reliability in a relatively short time. He liked how the Good Book put it:
Ye shall know a tree by its fruits.
A fig tree produces figs.
 

“You boys interested in cow work?” he asked them.

“Yessir,” Davis said, perking up. “Punching cattle, peeling broncs. Gather prairie chips if need be.”

“May be part of it. We're gonna need ropers, bulldoggers, men to handle the irons and the knife.”

“All that and more,” Lee said, very genuinely. He could not believe their luck. Every single operation they rode through since quitting the B-Cross was no longer hiring. It was the middle of the season and most outfits had their quota.

“The B-Cross-C,” Boyce said. “Beaver Creek. That's Til Blancett's outfit.”

Lee and Davis both looked at him with surprise. The B-Cross was just a local brand in the backcountry of Colorado. There were a lot of small outfits tucked up in the Rockies. For a big Texas foreman to even be aware of the B-Cross was unusual, let alone know the fellow's name who ran it.

“Yes sir, it is. Mr. Blancett is a top notch boss.”

“Why are you no longer there? Blancett turn you out?”

“No sir, we got along famously. Top hands on crew, too, but…there was an incident. Ran across some hard cases on the drive.”

Lee's eyes fell to the table and he tapped his fork on the top of his biscuit. Some time had certainly passed since then. Lee tried to push it out of his mind after they cashed out with Til. Lee had not known the B-Cross boys long, but they all came to be pards pretty quick. It was hard to believe Ira and Edwin were bickering one day and shot dead the next. Lee wondered how Casey and Steve were healing up, and whether LG was alive at all.

Matlock was studying them both carefully.

Boyce leaned closer.

“Yes? Go on.”

“Some bad men shot up the crew. Scattered the herd. Lost some of our boys to gunplay a'fore we even knew what the hell was goin' on.”

“Still not sure the whereabouts of some of them,” Davis mentioned. “It was an ugly time.”

Davis ran a sleeve across his chin and pushed his plate away. The memory of Steve and Rufe galloping past came to mind. Steve's shirt was drenched in blood. Rufe kept shouting that his brother was shot. Davis could still see them, riding by like the devil was coming. Rufe was a mess of worry. They all made camp in the glen and waited for the rest of the B-Cross to ride in. But they never came. The raiders did, though, later that night. But just at the right time, Til appeared and flushed them out like quail.

“The whole crew about got wiped out.”

Matlock softened and exchanged another inside look with Boyce. Boyce nodded his head, as if he were agreeing to some unspoken question. He turned toward Lee and Davis and raised his cup in a respectful gesture.

“You boys can tie on to the XIT,” Boyce announced. “Come along with us. We're riding on as soon as we're done with our feed.”

“Thank you sir,” Lee said. “Much appreciated.”

“Listen here,” Matlock began. He paused and looked over the two cowmen again. Listening to them talk about the B-Cross, he could hear loyalty in their words. That was what he was looking for. Loyal men who rode for the brand. And men who could handle hardship, as well. With things as bad as they were at the XIT, hardship was not only expected. It was guaranteed.

“The XIT has in its employ some hard cases of its own. It's done up. That's why
I've
been brought on. Syndicate in Chicago hired me to fix it. And I aim to.”
 

George Findlay sat quietly the whole time but was following the conversation closely. The Scotsman with the unsettling baritone voice nodded at the remark.

Boyce leaned back in his chair and began rolling a cigarette.

“The ranch is harboring all kinds of ilk. Gambling. Horse thieves. General lawlessness is rampant,” Matlock went on. “I've surveyed the conditions myself. I was just telling Mr. Findlay here, on top of all this crud, last week I recognized Billy Ney. He's now
ranch boss
right under Barbecue Campbell. I saved Ney from a hanging down in Vernon a couple years back, you see. Thought I
did right at the time but I recognized my error soon after. He's rotten. And him being at the XIT is evidence that something is wrong as wrong is.”