The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (13 page)

“Tiny,” Arm said, “he can make a bell quick as
can be, no? We get one an’ hang it on the stall
door an’ there ya go.”

It was a good idea.

“We ride when I feenesh grub,” Arm said, “get
the bell today.”

“Your ass we ride. You’re not ready for it. Ride
your bed today an’ maybe tomorrow…”

“
Mañana?
Boolsheet.”

We took it easy making the ride and Arm didn’t
seem to suffer any ill effects. We scouted out the
spot where Tiny had seen the hoofprints in the
snow and followed them into town, where they
were quickly lost in the ruts and the mass of other
tracks. There was no surprise there—we knew
where they’d lead us. Tiny said he could bang out
a bell with no trouble. “It’ll have the tone like I
made it outta a lump of soap—’cept it’ll be loud.

I’ve made these things before. I just gotta nail
some shoes on that gray over there, an’ I’ll whack
out your bell.”

“
Bueno.
We wait in the saloon.”

The bartender looked at us strangely as we
walked
in and said, “Where’s Tiny? He ain’t gave
up drinkin’, has he?”

“No,” I laughed. “He’ll be right over.”

“Whew,” the tender said. “The last time he give
it up my profits went to hell.”

Arm and I had just about sat down when Dansworth
walked over to our table. Even his gait
showed his anger—he was stiff-legged and his
heels struck the floor hard. His face was flushed
and both his hands were clenched in fists. “I lost
a good man yesterday,” he said.

“Well, I’ll tell you what. If we see him, we’ll tell
him you’re lookin’ for him,” I said.

“Nex’ time, hire on a gringo who can shoot,”
Arm said. “Maybe like Jake, here. You lookin’ for
ambush work,
mi
amigo?”

Dansworth worth reached into his suitcoat
pocket. “You pull that Derringer and I’ll kill you
right where you stand,” I said. There was a rapping
sound from under the table. “This .45 is
pointed at your chest, Dansworth. The table won’t
even slow the slug down.”

Dansworth removed his hand from his pocket,
empty. “I hear you covered that buckskin mare
with a good-looking mustang a couple times, he
said, his voice quivering with anger. “She might
throw a good foal. But I’ll tell you this: either the
mare or the mare and the foal are going to be
mine before I leave Hulberton.”

I looked at Arm.

He said, “Boolsheet.”

Dansworth sputtered a bit, little bits of spit escaping
from between his lips. He spun on his
heel and stomped back to where his cronies and
flunkies
sat at the rear of the saloon. “Nice visitin’
with you,” I called after him. “You might want to
send one of your scum out to pick up what’s left
of your buffalo man. Ain’t much left by now, but
maybe you could bury him in a cigar box.”

I slid my pistol back into my holster. Arm did
the same; his .45 had been resting on his lap,
muzzle pointed at Dansworth. “Seems he no like
us much,” Arm said.

“Hard to figure,” I said, “nice fellas like us.”

Tiny walked into the gin mill a half hour later,
carrying what looked like a gallon-size bucket
with a slight upward turn around its open end.
There was a curl of steel to attach a rope to at the
top.

“The theeng is,” Arm said as he waved to the
tender for Tiny’s drinks, “suppose the rope is cut.
Then the bell do nothing, no?”

“Yeah,” Tiny answered. “That’s why I made it
so you can bang together a little rectangle of
wood on the stall gate and nail the bell to it. Thataway,
anyone screwing ’round with it is going to
make noise.”

“How loud is this thing?” I asked.

Tiny banged the clapper against the body of
the bell. The tone was unmelodic, but it was loud.
He grinned. “You boys will hear that, I’m wagerin’.”

“Yeah, we will,” I said. “If it gets us through
the winter, we can set up a bunk for one of us to
sleep on as the mare comes closer to birthin’.”

“I was wonderin’ about the stud,” Tiny said.
“Any chance Dansworth will try to steal him?”

“I’d dearly love to see him try. That horse barely
tolerates
me, an’ anyone else he’d stomp into the
ground. He’s his own alarm system.”

“Damn. I had the thought of makin’ up a shoe
for that screwfoot—lift it up a bit and level it to
the ground. But unless we tied and threw him,
there’s no way I could work on the foot.”

“Even then you’d have a bushel of trouble,
Tiny,” I said. “And, hell, he’s gotten around on
that foot jist the way it is for a few years. I’d just as
soon let it be.”

We left within an hour, Arm and I both hot to
build the little rectangle and attach it to the stall
gate. Tiny refused money for the bell. I stuffed a
bill into his pocket.

Our carpentry ain’t much, but we didn’t need
much skill. The rectangle was a foot deep and attached
to the stall gate with large nails. We banged
the bell into place and swung open the gate. Tiny
was right—it was pretty loud. “I’ll go on up to my
room an’ you open an’ close the gate,” I said, “an’
see how much sound reaches me.”

I sat on my bed. The thunking of the bell would
have awakened me, I’m sure of that. Since both
Arm’s and my rooms faced the barn, I was sure
the alarm would raise my partner, too. I went
back out.

“Theese I don’ like much,” Arm said. He unlatched
the stall gate and opened it very slowly.
There was barely a sound from the bell.

“They gotta get in the barn, open the gate, get a
halter on the mare, an’ lead her on out to wherever
they’re takin’ her,” I said. “That alone would
wake us up. They gotta have at least two men—
maybe three. There’ll be some noise. I’m gonna
sleep with the Sharps loaded up an’ leanin’ right
next to my window.”

“I do same with my rifle, Jake. Ain’ nobody
gonna steal our mare.”

The next day, the mare refused the stud, dropping
her head to kick at him, and twisting and
turning to get away. For his part, the bay didn’t
seem overly interested, either. “She took good,
no?” Arm smiled. “Now all we do is wait ’leven
months an’ we see what we get. Ees funny—a
woman can make a baby in nine months, but a
horse, she need eleven.”

Winter lasts forever in West Texas. Arm and I did
our chores and I continued working with the stallion,
trying to get some of the shyness and aggressiveness
out of him. I had no real reason to
do that except that I liked the horse—he’d certainly
never be a riding or ranch horse because of
his warped foot.

The mare was a low-care animal. She was
affable—sweet, even—and she never gave anyone
any trouble. Even Teresa and Blanca would
come out to the barn every so often and give the
mare a treat, scratch her muzzle, stroke her neck.

The colt was a good horse, too. He was going to
grow into something pretty large; his chest and
the length of his legs showed that.

We were pretty sure the mare had taken. On a
clear day we led her out to the corral and brought
her in with the stud. He paid little attention and
she was even less interested. Obviously, she was
out of her heat cycle, but having the colt and the
stallion around didn’t arouse any interest on her
part. We took that to mean that she was pregnant,
but it was really far too early to tell.

I put some time in with the Sharps and became
right handy with it. I got to the point where I
could fire it from my horse’s back, too. Arm went
out target shooting with me every so often, but
didn’t have a ton of interest in the buffalo gun.
“The 30.30, it does what I want it to do,” he said.
“I don’t need no cannon.”

We bought a little carriage for the ladies for
Christmas and bought a trained horse—a nice
bay that had some age on her—from Tiny to pull
it. Blanca had mentioned how much they missed
going to Mass on Sundays and holy days. They
both learned to drive quickly and every Sunday
they rolled out to Hulberton in their best clothes,
and a buffalo robe covering their laps.

“The church, it is important to them,” Arm
said. “The surrey is good. It ain’t like we can’t afford
to feed that ol’ hoss.”

It was coming spring when we began discovering
more tracks around our place. The hoofprints
didn’t come terribly close to the house, barn, or
corral, but they were within seeing distance. I
wasn’t surprised by the visitors. Dansworth was
used to getting what he wanted in any manner he
had to, and it was real clear he wanted the mare
and probably the stallion, as well. Meanwhile, the
damned fool was paying a dozen men or more to
hang around the saloon, drink, play poker, grab
an occasional whore, and to be available.

The mare had the slightest curve to her belly
and Arm and I would have bet that she was pregnant.
I
don’t think that curve got by Dansworth’s
men.

“You know,” Arm said one morning as we
stood outside the barn, smoking, “Dansworth can
do theese one of two ways: he can attack with his
men and keel us, or he can steal out the horses.”

“I think I’d go with the attack—he not only
wants our horses but he’s pissed off at us enough
to want to see us dead.”

“We need some supplies, then, no? To make us
an’ the women safe?”

“Yeah—a ton of ammunition, a couple more
rifles that we can post by the windows and in the
barn, and whatever Teresa and Blanca want.”

“Ees early yet,” Arm said. “Might jus’ as well
go today, no?”

That’s what we did. We decided to take the
packer along, because the ladies needed sacks of
flour, coffee, and sugar. “Sumbitch!” Arm cursed
as he strapped the rig on the packhorse. “Theese
boy almos’ too fat for the rig. He is a
gordo
—eat
allatime an’ do nothin’.”

“Well, why not give the ladies money when
they go to the church, an’ let them haul what they
need? Ya know? They got their surrey and all we
got is a lard-assed packer.”

Arm agreed immediately.

That’s the way it went. I handed over sixty dollars
for whatever they needed to Teresa an’ Blanca
an’ sent them on their way that Sunday morning.

The extra rifles and ammunition would be tabbed
by the mercantile owner and we’d pay him next
time in town.

We stood outside the barn watching the surrey
pull away, the women bundled in their heavy
clothes, the big buffalo robe covering both their
laps. There hadn’t been much snow lately, but
there’d been lots of wind. There were some bare
spots on our land an’ on the road to town. “Winter
is ’bout over,” I said.

“No it ain’t,” Arm said. “We ain’t had the beeg
one yet—the storm that people, they talk ’bout for
years after. Nossir, winter is no over.”

It turned out Arm was right.

But, the storm hadn’t caused all the bloodshed
and dead men.

You see, Blanca and Teresa set off for Mass that
Sunday morning, and by afternoon, they hadn’t
come back.

“We can follow the tracks, no? Theese is too
goddamn long they be gone.”

It was about then that one of Dansworth’s boys
rode in. I recognized him, although I never knew
his name. I saw him kill a man in a saloon in Laredo
with a knife he pulled from his boot—sliced
the poor guy’s throat—and then walk outside
and draw on the sheriff—kill him, and drop the
law’s deputy, as well.

He was awful handy and awful quick with his
Colt. The sheriff of Laredo wasn’t half bad, but he
wasn’t a gunfighter. The deputy couldn’t outdraw
a goat.

The gunman got on his horse—although there
were lots of men who wanted to put a bullet into
him. He hauled ass out of town before I had a
chance to face him.

I was one of the men who thought he should be
dead.

Killing like he did ain’t nowhere right—’specially
the deputy. He was maybe twenty years old, a
towhead, whose badge was polished so much he
musta worked on it every night.

The killer had a wolflike face—one I’ll never
forget. His eyes were set closely together in a narrow
forehead and his nose and mouth stood out a
bit, like the muzzle of a dog or a wolf.

The gunslinger rode up to our barn and dismounted.
He stood there holding his reins, letting
us walk from the house to him. His horse
was a nice-looking black mare with a blaze on her
face, but she needed some weight, and their were
spur marks on her flanks. A large Mexican bit—
what’s called a “spade bit,” which is a cruel bit of
tack—was buckled too tight over her muzzle.

“I’m here to pick up a buckskin mare for Mr.
Dansworth,” he said. “Wanna fetch her out for
me?”

“The mare isn’t for sale,” I said. “You know that
and so does Dansworth. You’d best get on your
horse and get the hell—”

“You got things all wrong,” the gunslinger interrupted.
“I ain’t talkin’ about buyin’ the mare—
I’m talkin’ about a little barter between us.” He
stepped away from his horse, dropping the reins
to the ground. The mare stood—she’d been
taught to ground-tie.

The gunfighter wore a Colt .45 low an’ tied
down. He pulled off his gloves by grabbing them
with his teeth and let them, too, fall to the ground.

“You got nothin’ we want to trade for,” I said.

“You can get on your horse an’ ride out, or you
can ride out dead, tied over your saddle. That ees
up to you,” Arm said. He took a couple steps
away from me, to the side.

The gunslinger went on as if Armando hadn’t
spoken. “I think we do have somethin’ to trade
for the horse,” he said. “A pair of fat Mex hags an’
a surrey. I take the mare with me now an’ we let
the
putas
go. Simple as that. They’d be back here
in an hour, maybe less.”

My hand had already dropped to my side,
and my fingertips brushed the grips of my Colt.
“Where are they?”

The gunfighter was in a pose much like mine,
hand hovering near his weapon, his body turned
slightly to make a smaller target.

I could barely hear what Arm said. “Lemme
have this sumbitch.”