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“I’m telling you”—Judd’s voice had a hard edge to it—” there has to be a reason for Calder to suddenly suspect something after all this time. Someone let it slip about those brands. One of your so-called hand-picked men, probably while he was likkered up.”
“No.” Loman Janes stood gaunt and tall in the middle of the room, his pride unbending. “They know better than to breathe a word if they want to ke
ep their tongues. He was only guessing when he said that to you.”
Judd Boston didn’t like that answer. All his plans had been flowing along smoothly until Chase Benteen Calder had muddied the waters with his suspicions.
“I had the feeling the old man had gotten wise to what was going on when he bunched his herd close in to the ranch.” His mind went back over the recent events before he turned the force of his hard eyes on his foreman. “He waited until Benteen came back before showing his hand. Now you say Shorty Niles and Trumbo are drawing their pay to go to work for Calder.”
“They claim he’s putting a herd together to take north,” Loman explained stiffly. “As many trail drives as he’s made, he’s probably got his eye on makin’ a big profit with a herd of his own.”
“And if he makes a bundle, what will he do with it?” The question was asked aloud, but Boston wasn’t interested in Loman’s opinion. He didn’t trust any man’s judgment but his own. “Dump it into the Cee Bar,” he concluded grimly.
“Trumbo was spreadin’ talk about Calder stakin’ claim to some land in the Montana Territory,” the foreman inserted.
“Talk.” He showed his contempt for cowboy gossip. “There’s nothing up there but Sioux and Cheyenne. It’s only been two years since they wiped out Custer and his men. He’s just trying to throw us off the track.” That’s what Boston would have done in his place, so he could believe nothing else.
“They’re talkin’ about free grass up there.” Loman knew cattle and cattlemen—and the magic of that phrase.
“And they’ve got grass right here—and water and cattle,” Boston retorted. “I’ve waited ten years to get my hands on that water on Calder’s ranch. With it, I’ll have the whole area sewed up.”
He had directed a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get Seth Calder in his present desperate situation. Judd Boston had coveted the Cee Bar land since he’d arrived, but he had soon learned that no amount of gold could buy it. Long ago, he had learned to bend with the wind or run with it. He knew when to push and when to bide his time. Patient and inscrutable, he had waited. The Cee Bar was on the verge of collapse. This was the time to push.
“I want you to find out where Benteen is now, how many men he has with him, and what he’s doing,” he ordered.
“And the old man?” Loman asked.
“He hasn’t got much of an operation left.” A cold, humorless smile lifted the corners of his heavy mouth. “Soon he’s not going to have any.”
Loman knew better than to ask what his boss planned. He was in awe of Boston’s intelligence and respected the ruthless determination in the man. There was a perverted sense of pride in being associated with the kind of power Boston held. Loman Janes was content to be the brawn to Boston’s brains. He knew Boston needed someone as closemouthed and merciless as he was to carry out his plans. In Loman’s mind, they were a team. Boston gave the orders and he took them, but they were dependent on one another. The more powerful Boston became, the more powerful Loman became by association.
4
There were no trails in the brush country of Texas. There wasn’t any room for trails. The brush grew in a dense thicket, defying the passage of man or beast and choking to death the prairie grass that had once covered these millions of acres of Texas land.
It was downright unfriendly country, with every plant baring its forbidding set of clawlike thorns and needle-sharp spines. Among the scrubby mesquite trees dominating the landscape grow the palo verde, its green-black thorns more visible than its leaves, and mounds of prickly-pear cactus. There’s the catclaw that the Mexicans call “wait-a-minute,” a much more descriptive term, as anyone snared by its thorns would testify.
No one claimed that God had a hand in making this black chaparral. It was said He gave the land to the devil as his playground.
The short-tempered and sharp-tusked javelinas called it home, as did the rattlesnake. No horse and rider ever rode the thickets without the constant company of a rattler whirring its warning. There wouldn’t have been any reason to venture into the brush if the cunning and wild Longhorn cattle hadn’t hidden themselves in it.
The hardy Longhorn wasn’t much to look at; flat-sided, narrow-hipped, with a swayed back and big drooping ears, it was a caricature of a cow. The long, sweeping set of horns that gave the breed its name would normally span four feet but they were rarely straight. One tip might point down and the other up. They drooped, twisted, and spiraled in unusual convolutions. The Longhorn came in all colors: washed-out earth colors, dull brindles and blues, duns and browns, and drab clay-reds—solid, speckled, or spotted.
Slow to develop, a Longhorn didn’t reach its maximum weight of eight hundred to a thousand pounds until it was eight years old or better. But the tall, bony beast could travel for miles, fight off wolves, bears, and panthers, endure the droughts and blizzards, and adapt to the wildest land and roughest climates.
So cowboys penetrated the thorny ramparts of these boundless thickets in search of maverick cattle that belonged to anyone who was man enough to catch them and drive them out. Cowboys fought the vicious brush country, cursed it, and acquired a healthy respect for it.
With Shorty Niles riding beside him, Benteen walked his line-backed dun horse into a sparse section of the chaparral. It was late afternoon, time for one last sashay through the area before they lost the light. Two days before, they’d spotted a couple of cows with yearling calves in this vicinity, but they hadn’t been able to put a rope on them. Benteen wanted to make another try for them.
Winter was the best time to search these thickets. The sharp-edged leaves had fallen, enabling a rider to see farther. The weather was cooler, so horses could run longer without becoming wind-broken, and there was less chance of cattle dying from overheating.
Cow hunting in the brush country required clothes and equipment that offered the most resistance to the thorny vegetation. The leather chaps protecting Benteen’s legs were smooth and snug, without any ornamentation that could be snagged by a prickly branch. Tapaderos hooded the stirrups of his saddle to prevent a limb from poking through to gouge his boot or prod his foot from the stirrup. His jacket fit snugly around his shoulders, ribs, and waist, leaving no loose folds to be snared by the spiked brush, and his hat was lowcrowned.
Benteen wore leather gloves to protect his hands from the skinning thorns, but Shorty didn’t, claiming they choked him. His hands, littered with painful scratches and scars, paid the price.
Being a small man, Shorty always figured he had a lot to prove. He was ready to risk life and limb at the blink of an eye. There were some who wondered how he managed to reach the age of seventeen and still be alive. His short, stocky build had the iron muscles of an older man, and the experience of countless frays was etched in his broad-featured face. Shorty was always the first to volunteer and the last to quit. He was a feisty friend, but Benteen wouldn’t have wanted him for an enemy.
Neither man spoke as they slowly walked their horses through the brush. Talking required effort, and energy was saved for the chase. They rode past a coma bush with dirklike thorns. Its winter blossoms of small white flowers scented the air with a cloying fragrance; even that couldn’t cover up the stench of the four-foot-long rattlesnake lying in their path, trampled to death two days before. It was a sickening but familiar smell to any man who frequented the thickets, emitted by angry rattlers in their death throes.
