The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (2 page)

“Well,” he said, “it’s $48.52, all told.”

I handed him a fifty. His face lit up like I’d
handed him the key to paradise. “Keep the
change,” I said. A thought struck me. “Damn,” I
said. “We forgot coffee. Add in twenty pounds.” I
had a scrunched-up ten-dollar bill in my pocket
and dropped it on the counter. “That’ll cover it,
no?”

“Oh, yessir—I can sell you twenty pounds for
that and give you change.”

“Give us the coffee and keep the change.”

Armando had tied the packhorse to the rail
outside. We fitted the rig to the horse and loaded
up. There was some weight to our purchases, but
not so much that it’d wear down the horse. He’d
carried before; we could see the places where the
straps had rested on his hide.

We led the horse down to the livery to pick up
our own mounts. Arm’s horse was a tall, broad-chested,
big-assed short-horse type, completely
black
except for two white socks in front and a
snip of white on his snout. Mine was an Appaloosa
that stood a bit more than fifteen hands and
was faster than a bolt of lightning and about as
dumb as a shovel. He’d go all day and all night,
though, without a complaint, and gunfire from
his back barely caused him to prick his ears. Arm
hadn’t had his black too long and the horse could
get jittery at times, but Arm could always ride
him down without a problem. We figured I
should hook up with the packhorse. I took a wrap
around my saddle horn with the lead rope and
we rode on out of Burnt Rock, headed east and
slightly north. We gave the bodies in the street a
wide berth. The best of horses got antsy when
they got the scent of human blood.

We filled our canteens at the livery pump, let
the horses have a last suck at the trough there,
and set out.

There were men peering through windows
and gathered in alleys as we left town. Before
long, the dead men’s boots, guns, cash, hats, and
anything else of value would be gone and the
boot-hill man would have six half-dressed
corpses to plant in unmarked graves.

We rode until just about dark, each smoking cigars
and having the occasional suck on a whiskey
bottle. Early on there was some nipping and
screwing around among the horses, but that
calmed right down. The pack animal figured out
that the other two horses ran the show and decided
it was easier to live with that than to have
chunks of hide and hair chewed out of him.

I guess maybe I didn’t mention that it was early
July when all this took place. The sun hung in the
sky ten or eleven hours a day, like a probing, blinding,
maniacal eye. It was the sort of wringing-wet,
oppressive heat that caused problems that otherwise
wouldn’t have taken place. Good dogs—
cattle dogs—tore into their owners—or their
owner’s kids, for no reason at all. Men who’d been
friends for years traded punches and rolled over
one another biting, gouging, and kicking in the
spilled beer and damp sawdust and blood of saloon
floors. Kids were listless and surly, ignored
their chores, sassed their folks.

I don’t know that it’s really possible to get used
to the sort of heat we were experiencing, but Arm
and I had done a good deal of traveling in it, and
we did generally all right. For instance, a few
years ago, I’d somehow developed the habit of
humming as we plodded along. It was a tuneless
sound and why I did it or where it came from, I
have no idea. Arm listened for a few days and
then said, “If you don’t queet that buzzing, I’ll
tear your stupid head off an’ stick it up your ass.”

I quit humming.

We made camp just before dark. We hobbled the
horses, gave them each a Stetson full of water,
which wasn’t enough but was a lot better than no
water at all. Armando and I each had a can of
peaches in syrup, a few solid hits of whiskey, and,
when our coffee was boiling, slurped down a
couple cupfuls each.

“This ain’t Arbuckles’,” Arm commented.
“Don’t have much flavor to it.”

“Don’t drink it then,” I said. “Next time, you
pick
out the brand. Far as I’m concerned it’s all
the same coffee in different sacks.” Arm grumbled
something I couldn’t hear, which was fine
with me.

Before our small mesquite fire had burned out
completely, we were both asleep.

Morning slides in real early in a West Texas
summer. I started the fire and put the coffee on in
near dark while Arm checked over the horses.
We loaded up our packhorse, saddled our own
animals, drank a pot of coffee, and were traveling
before the huge brass disc of the sun had cleared
the horizon.

“Be good to cross water today,” Arm said.
“Four canteens don’t go far between three horses
and two men.” Neither of us drank—the only water
we used was that for the coffee. The rest went
into our hats for the horses.

Long before noon the sun was enough to bring
the rattlesnakes out, seeking not prey but warm
rocks to rest upon, soaking up the heat. Every so
often one of us would draw and nail a rattler, especially
the big ones—and they got big out there.
Six-footers were fairly common and eight-footers
not completely rare. Sonsabitches were as big
around as a strong man’s forearm. I heard-tell
that a man can tell the age of a rattler by the number
of buttons on its tail, but Arm said that ain’t
the case. He said there’s a new button every time
the snake sheds, and that could be four or five
times a year. I’m not so sure about that, but it
wasn’t worth arguing about.

After four or so hours of riding our shirts were
soaked through with sweat and stuck to our
backs
and chests. We reined in and pulled the
cinches to let the horses breathe a bit, but we had
no water to offer them. After maybe twenty or
thirty minutes we cinched up and went on. The
afternoon lasted forever. Our horses plodded
along, heads much lower than usual, often scraping
their toes in the sand and dirt, indicating how
fatigued they were.

Arm’s eyes were better than mine. “Up there—I
see some scrub an’ maybe a few desert pine. Mus’
be water there, even should we have to dig for it.”
Moments later all three of the horses’ heads
perked up and their nostrils widened as they
caught the scent of the mud or water or whatever
was there.

There were a few scraggly-assed desert pines
in a clumsy half circle and some buffalo grass
that showed a tiny bit of green. The horses wanted
to run and we let them.

The water pocket was about the size and shape
of a good-size trough, maybe a foot deep. It was
sulphur water but there rodent tracks all around
it, so it wasn’t poisonous. Arm vaulted off his
horse into the muck and water and so did I. The
horses waded in and began to suck hard. After a
few minutes we had to drag them out still thirsty,
wait ten minutes or so, and let them have at it
again. Arm and I drank as much as we wanted
and then filled the canteens.

I’ll tell you what: there ain’t many things that
put out the stench warm sulphur water does, and
both Armando and I puked up some of it later,
but it tasted as good as fresh cream when we
gulped
it down. The animals didn’t have any
problems with it, though.

We decided to make camp there for the night.
The hobbled horses could graze through the buffalo
grass and stumble over to the water when
they cared to. Arm went out and returned in fifteen
minutes with a couple of nice jackrabbits. I
skinned them and cleaned them out and we
chowed down. Then we settled back with cigars
and a bottle of booze.

“Ya know,” I said, “this ranch is a perfect
chance for us to see if what we’ve been yapping
about for years can really work.”

“Is true. I have the same thought. Maybe we
run a few head of beef, but make our business the
breeding of the fine horses, no?”

“Finest ranch an’ working horses,” I said. “I
know we can do it, Arm, if we can gather up the
right stock.”

“Lotsa mustangs aroun’ there.”

“Yeah—mostly jugheads an’ tanglefoots, though.
But still, you’re right, there must be some good
ones.”

“Plus, we have plenty dollars if we need to buy
one we can’t steal—from another ranch, I mean.”

“We’ll need good fences an’ corrals.”

“
Sí.
Ain’ no problem, though.”

I took a good, long pull at the bottle and settled
back, enjoying the heat in my gut and the way the
booze kind of whisked away how much work
we’d have to do for a very unsure outcome.

“Look,” I said, as if I were explaining our idea
for the first time, “a cowpoke on a drive needs a
string
of five or so horses. Most are no damned
good—half broke, stupid, lazy, an’ clumsy with
the conformation of a damn goat. With the right
breeding we can bring along strong, smart, hardy
horses that a cowhand won’t need more than a
pair of, no matter how long the drive. We can get
big bucks for such horses.”

“We already got the big bucks an’ a ranch to
boot,” Arm said. He chuckled a bit. “You an’ me,
we want to make this horse even should we
starve to death, no? Is our dream, no?”

“Yeah.
Es verdad.
”

“Right.” Arm traded my Spanish for English.
“Is true.”

We kept tapping away at the whiskey, not
drinking hard, but regularly—a belt every few
minutes. Before long I heard Armando’s breathing
become quiet and slightly sibilant. He was
sound asleep.

The moonlight out on a desert area such as
where we were is awfully pretty. It’s like a soft gossamer
fog has descended to soften everything—so
that there were few, if any, sharp angles or jagged
terrain. I finished off the bottle, set it aside, and
closed my eyes.

I saw the ranch clearly; the fences were arrow-straight
and tight. The snubbing post in the center of
the corral was stout and stood at attention. A coil of
rope hung over the gate post. The house was freshly
painted—white, of course—and its lines were true
and
sturdy-looking. There was a porch around the front of
the place with a couple rocker-type chairs waiting to be
used of an evening.

The barn was a two-story, ten-stall structure. The
roof looked good and the red paint dusty but not worn
away by the elements.

A bay horse stood in the corral, tearing mouthfuls
from a flake of hay. He was tall—every bit of sixteen
hands—with a chest like the front of a locomotive. He
stood squarely and the muscles of his forelegs bulged
slightly against his flesh. His tail—black, of
course—
swished lackadaisically at flies. His flanks were tight
and perfectly formed, and not a rib showed. Very suddenly,
I was standing in front of him, looking into his
eyes. It was like looking into the eyes of an eagle, but
without the taint of aggression an eagle would show.

The horse snorted…

I came awake immediately. During my sleep a
thick cloud front had moved in; there was no
more light than there’d be in a tomb. The snort
was real, not part of my dream—and it was the
snort of a horse coming upon others he didn’t
know: half challenge and half greeting.

I felt Arm’s finger tap my shoulder three times.
He must have been crouched next to me but I
couldn’t see him. So—there were at least three
men out there, perhaps one or two more. Arm
had hearing like no other man I’ve known and he
must have heard boots scuffling in the sand.

I’d been sleeping with my Colt under my saddle
blanket, which I used as a pillow. I eased it out
and thumbed back the hammer. In reality, the
sound was a minuscule, oiled
click
—but in the
dark that night it sounded like a couple of cooking
pots being slammed together.

Armando drew his boot knife. I could hear the
ten-inch blade slide out of its leather sheath sewn
into his left boot, which left his right hand free to
draw his pistol.

I didn’t know of any hostile Indians in the area,
but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Then I
saw the image of the six dead men on the street in
Burnt Rock. Each of those cowpokes had friends,
relatives, maybe partners, and they’d want revenge.

Arm drew an arc on my shoulder, pointing me
off to the left. I got my feet under me and duck-walked
very slowly and as quietly as I could about
twenty feet. I assumed Armando was doing the
same to the right, but I couldn’t hear a sound from
him. A bat swooped past my face, its high-pitched
squeak announcing it. I damned near fired on it
before I got my wits back about me.

All of a sudden, the place where we’d been
sleeping erupted dirt and stone and sand into the
sky. The hollow, deep boom of at least one shotgun
mixed with the sharper, quicker pistol reports.
One shot—and then another—was deeper
and louder than the others. One of those boys
was firing a Sharps.

Arm and I opened up on the muzzle flashes. It
was almost too easy. I still had a round left in my
pistol when the attackers were totally silent. I felt
like a goddamn executioner, but I didn’t see that
we had a choice in the matter—those men were
out for our blood and if they were stupid enough
to offer us targets the way they did, it wasn’t our
fault.

There was no wind—not even the lightest
breeze—and a thick cloud of acrid gunsmoke
hung
about chest level all around us. As we drew
closer to the attackers the unmistakable coppery
smell of fresh spilled blood melded with the gunpowder
stink.

I struck a match. There were four of them, three
obviously dead and the fourth, gut-shot, clutching
at his stomach and moaning quietly. Bleeding
out from a gut shot is no way to die. Before my
match burned down, Armando put a bullet between
the fellow’s eyes.

“Ten lives we took this day,” Armando said
quietly. “Surely we’ll fry in hell.”

“We would have with or without the ten today,”
I said, but I knew what Arm was feeling
because I was feeling the same thing—a weight
in my chest and a profound awareness of what
we’d done. There was no joy in killing for us. We
protected ourselves, and we realized that. Still,
the weight and the realization remained.