Slocum and the Tonto Basin War Page 6

  “Howdy!” Slocum called.

  “Who’re you?” The leader of the three was unshaven and a little haggard, as if he had been on the trail for a month. His condition didn’t bother Slocum as much as the way the man leaned forward and slid his rifle partly from the saddle sheath.

  “Not very friendly, are you? I’m just passing through,” Slocum said, not wanting to mention Tewksbury by name yet.

  “Keep on ridin’, stranger,” the man said. He made no move to return his rifle to its scabbard. If anything, he pulled it a little farther out. Slocum saw the other two men moving their gun hands into position to throw down on him.

  “Been a while since I had a decent job. What’s the brand on those cows? Circle T?”

  “That’s the brand,” the man said.

  “Don’t fool around with him none, Murphy,” whined the man on his right. “We got work to do.”

  “Work’s what I’m looking for. You the Circle T foreman?” From the man’s reaction, Slocum knew these three weren’t Tewksbury’s hands.

  Rustlers. The entire Tonto Basin had to be filled with nothing but rustlers.

  “What if I am?”

  “Well, Mr. Murphy, I’d like to join up. Three squares a day and a place to rest my head at night sounds like heaven to me right now.” Slocum hoped he wasn’t too obviously lying. The three exchanged looks. Murphy squinted at him, looking more like a hunting wolf than a man now.

  “You work cows before?”

  “Now and then,” Slocum said.

  “Why don’t you drive these beeves and show us what you’ve got?”

  “Which way’s the ranch house?”

  “Why do you want to take ’em there?” One of Murphy’s henchmen looked agitated at the notion of taking the cows to Tewksbury’s house.

  “Reckon you were out here,” Slocum said. “There’s plenty of pastureland and water. You must want them to either slaughter for food or to dip against disease. Any Texas fever from ticks in this part of the country?”

  “Texas fever?” Murphy looked confused. Slocum knew then that the man wasn’t a drover. Truth was, he wasn’t much of a rustler, either.

  Something in Slocum’s expression warned the men. The two with Murphy went for their six-shooters and Murphy yanked at his rifle, pulling it free and swinging the muzzle around in Slocum’s direction.

  They were all a heartbeat too late. Slocum was quick, and being up against three desperadoes lent even more speed to his hand. He cleared leather and fired point-blank at the nearest rustler. The man grunted and clutched his chest. His six-gun slid from his numbed fingers and landed on a rock, discharging. This spooked his horse and caused a greater commotion than anything Slocum could have done.

  “Kill ’im, shoot ’im!” cried Murphy. He fired his rifle and the slug went wild. Slocum took a more careful aim and fired, but Murphy’s bucking horse ruined the shot. Slocum’s bullet took off Murphy’s hat but did nothing to stop him from firing his rifle again.

  That shot came closer, but Slocum was bent low over his mare’s neck now. He fired twice more at Murphy, then had to turn his attention to the other rustler.

  They exchanged shots. Slocum felt his hat jerk and knew the brim had another hole in it. He emptied his Colt and missed with every shot. Slamming his six-shooter into its holster, he worked to unlimber the rifle he had gotten from Tewksbury to replace his own lost Winchester. The cattle stampeded, the horses reared, and hot lead flew all around, adding to the confusion.

  By the time Slocum got control of his horse again, the three rustlers had hightailed it. He started after them, then paused. He took the time to fumble in his saddlebags and pull out a loaded cylinder for his pistol. Swapping the emptied one for a full load made him feel better. Slocum pulled up his rifle and sighted in time to see the three clumsy cattle thieves reach the top of the rise.

  Murphy silhouetted himself against the sky. Slocum was a good shot, and the range wasn’t more than a hundred yards. He aimed, squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil press into his shoulder. Even as he loosed the shot, he knew it was a good one.

  Slocum lifted his head and saw Murphy throw up his hands and fall from horseback. It was a tribute to cowardice that the two men with him both galloped off.

  Slocum levered a new round into the rifle chamber and rode up the hill slowly. Something didn’t feel right to him. He heard Murphy moaning in pain. Slocum had known his shot wasn’t a killing one, but he had no idea how seriously wounded Murphy might be. The man had fallen from his horse, but might be playing possum now. If Slocum rode up bold as brass thinking he was going to finish off the rustler, he might be the one getting shot.

  Rather than continue up to the ridge, Slocum rode parallel, going a couple dozen yards before cutting back for the high ground. He was glad he did. Just on the other side of the ridgeline crouched the unwounded rustler, his rifle out and aimed where Slocum would have appeared if he hadn’t gotten suspicious.

  “Looking for me?” Slocum asked.

  The rustler jerked around, startled. Before he could train his rifle on Slocum, he caught a bullet in the gut. The rustler staggered and fell to his knees, but he was tougher than he looked. He fought to bring up the rifle and shoot Slocum. Slocum waited a moment and finally saw that the man was going to succeed through either sheer determination or outright meanness. It didn’t matter which. Slocum took an easy shot. The rustler sighed and collapsed, dead.

  Of the other cattle thief, Slocum saw nothing. He jumped to the ground and went to the man he had just killed. A few dollars in the rustler’s vest pocket disappeared into Slocum’s pocket. There was nothing else giving a hint who the man might be.

  On foot Slocum went to where he had left Murphy. A small curl came to Slocum’s lips. He had been right about Murphy, too. Not only had his partner waited in ambush, but Murphy wasn’t all that badly hurt. Slocum’s bullet had hit him in the left arm. Clutched in the man’s right hand was a big six-gun.

  “You lose again, Murphy,” Slocum said.

  The man jerked around.

  “Wait, don’t shoot me. I ain’t worth it.” He tossed away his six-shooter. “Let me go. I’ll disappear and you won’t never see me again.”

  “If I shot you where you are, I’d never see you again,” Slocum said.

  “Ain’t worth it, mister. It ain’t. You don’t want to make Tom Graham mad at you. You work for Tewksbury? Graham’ll offer you more money. Hell, Tewksbury ain’t got two nickels to rub together.”

  “You work for Graham?”

  “I’m his foreman.”

  Slocum laughed. Murphy hardly knew which end of the cow the moo came from. Calling himself a foreman insulted every other foreman on every other ranch in the West.

  “You able to walk?”

  “No, mister, I can’t. I think I busted a leg when you shot me off my horse.”

  “Too bad.” Slocum leveled his rifle and waited a second for the predictable answer.

  “Not so fast, please,” begged Murphy. “I can walk. A little. More of a hobble, but I can at least stand.” He got to his feet. Slocum didn’t see anything wrong with the man other than the bullet hole in his left arm.

  Murphy watched nervously as Slocum considered what to do.

  “Look, mister, Graham will pay you a ransom for me. I’m valuable to him.”

  Slocum laughed again. “You aren’t even decent buzzard bait. If they dined on you, they’d puke out their guts. I have too much respect for buzzards to let them do that. Start walking. Toward Tewksbury’s house.”

  “He’ll kill me! I was rustling his cows.”

  “Fancy that,” Slocum said. “Start hoofing it or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “You killed Barney?”

  “Didn’t ask his name before I shot him,” Slocum said.

  “Or do you mean the other yahoo? The one I gut-shot back at the herd?”

  “Hate to have to tell Barney’s family you killed him.”

  “If you don’t
start walking, you won’t have to tell anyone anything.”

  Slocum waited for Murphy to begin the trek back to the Tewksbury house. He went and fetched his mare, then caught up in a few minutes. Murphy wasn’t much of a rustler. He wasn’t much for walking, either.

  Slocum herded Graham’s foreman all the way back, to let Tewksbury handle the matter.

  6

  “Think this is a smart thing to do?” Slocum asked. He watched a naked Murphy hopping down the road away from Circle T land. “He’s going to be looking to shoot you in the back, first chance he gets.”

  Tewksbury laughed.

  “Given the chance, that son of a bitch’d done that no matter what. Murphy is a low-down, no account, mouth-breathin’ son of a bitch. Wait,” Tewksbury said, scratching his chin, “I said that already. Goes to show he ain’t worth the effort to think up new ways of describin’ him, his habits and his mama.”

  “You should burn his clothes,” Slocum said, looking at the pile at his feet. He didn’t cotton much to humiliating a man. Better to have put a slug through Murphy’s head than to do this to him, but Tewksbury knew what to do. He lived here and Slocum could always ride out.

  “Where’d the lice live then?” Tewksbury asked, smiling broadly. “You got to loosen up, Slocum. Things are different here than other places.”

  “I noticed,” Slocum said, his eyes drifting to where Lydia hung her laundry on a long line. She caught his eye and saw that her father had his back to her. She gave a wiggle, then turned and hiked up her skirts, showing Slocum her bare bottom. Lydia dropped her skirts and went back to clothes-pinning laundry until she was sure her pa wasn’t looking. Then she lifted her skirts while facing Slocum to give him a flash of auburn fur nestled between her creamy white thighs. Then she dropped her skirts, hiked up her undergarment and went back to work, as if nothing had happened.

  Slocum felt stirrings that he tried to deny. He shook his head. Tewksbury was right. Things were entirely different here than elsewhere.

  “Where’d you come across those varmints tryin’ to rustle my cattle?”

  “I was taking your advice and getting the lay of the land,” Slocum said, thinking how precisely accurate that was, “and I ran into them a mile beyond the lake.”

  “In a draw? I think I know the place. Cattle end up there and can’t seem to get out. Or maybe they’s lazy animals and not wantin’ to hike all the way back up that hill to get out.”

  “There was plenty of grazing for them. I didn’t have a chance to see if there was water.”

  “There is, ’bout a mile deeper into that valley. Saddle up and let’s go see. I kin use them beeves, especially after the redskins stole those other strays I’d rounded up.”

  “That’s a shame,” Slocum said. “Where are the rest of your cowboys? I thought Murphy and his cronies worked for you. Good thing I didn’t come right out and ask or they’d have filled me with holes instead of it being the other way around.”

  “I ain’t got a powerful lot of ’em. Caleb’s gone to fetch the ones left. You’re a smart galoot, Slocum, as if it took a genius to figger out the Circle T is about bankrupt. In spite of the grass, there’s no market for cattle anywhere around here. Not in Prescott, not south in Tombstone, nowhere. If this was Texas, I’d know what to do. The trail drives are dyin’ out there, but the railroads are there to take cattle to markets on the other side of the Mississippi. Ain’t nuthin’ like that ’round here.”

  Slocum stayed silent as they rode back to where the cattle had been bunched together for rustling. It came as a surprise when he didn’t find the small herd.

  “They were here. Murphy and—”

  “Don’t get so worked up, Slocum,” Tewksbury said. “Cows got a way of vanishin’ real fast around these parts.”

  Slocum ignored the rancher and rode to the spot where he had shot Murphy’s henchman. The ground was cut up from both horse and cattle hooves. He mentally followed one set of tracks going to the ridge. Murphy and his partners were responsible for those. But other tracks came in and mingled with those from the cattle.

  “That way,” Slocum said, pointing down the valley. “At least two horsemen drove the cattle that way.”

  “Probably more of Graham’s thievin’ crew,” Tewksbury said. “You up for a fight?”

  “You don’t want to get your cattle back?”

  “Easier to steal some others,” Tewksbury said. When he saw Slocum’s shocked expression, he added, “That’s the way things’re done round here. Ain’t sayin’ it’s right, but it’s the way they are.”

  “Don’t you want to know for certain who stole your cattle?”

  “Don’t matter that much to me, but if it does to you, let’s ride. For a while.” Tewksbury snapped his reins and got his swayback horse trotting in the direction Slocum had decided was going to show them the rustlers the quickest.

  In less than an hour they had overtaken the thieves. Five men circled the small herd and kept them moving off the Circle T land.

  “Ain’t worth it, Slocum,” Tewksbury said anxiously. “Five of them and only two of us.”

  Slocum had to agree. The men weren’t as scruffy as Murphy and his men. They rode with more authority, and even at this distance Slocum could tell they kept their six-shooters ready for action. Riding up on these men, pretending to be a stranger and asking after employment would get him a bullet in the back.

  “You know them?”

  “Think so. Tough hombres. They don’t have land around here, either, if you’re thinkin’ on stealin’ back the beeves. Pure rustlers, mean through and through.”

  Slocum considered a different story to get closer to them, but he had rustled enough cattle to know what these men would do if he rode up to them. As that thought crossed his mind, he forgot about approaching them. He knew rustlers, and there wasn’t any reason for them to leave witnesses. They might be related, as many of the gangs of rustlers were, and wouldn’t be looking to increase their number.

  “You can always tell the sheriff,” Slocum said. “There is a sheriff somewhere, isn’t there?”

  “Over in Prescott. Not even sure what his name is, and nope, I ain’t gonna ride all that way just to tell him five varmints stole a few head of my cattle. He’d laugh in my face.”

  “If you don’t know him—”

  “I don’t know who wears the damn badge,” he said, “but that don’t mean he won’t know me.”

  Slocum nodded slowly as he thought on that. Wanted posters had a way of staying tacked to a lawman’s office wall for a powerful long time. He had been in some marshals’ offices where not one of dozens of yellowed, old posters showed a living, breathing outlaw.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Got me a new scheme for makin’ a few dollars,” Tewksbury said, “and it’s honest. Don’t worry none on that score, Slocum. Folks in these parts might not like it much, but my back’s against the wall. If I don’t do something quick to make money, I’ll have to abandon the Circle T. I’ve done worse things in my life, but not since we come to Arizona.”

  “What’s this moneymaking scheme?”

  “Sheep,” Tewksbury said. “I know, I know, I hate them damn woollies as much as the next drover, but there’s a big market for what they got. I kin even sell the wool to the Navajos and Hopis up north, as well as mutton over in Prescott. Too many cattle but not so many sheep.”

  “They pull up the grass by the roots. You’ll turn this entire basin into a desert, like down south,” Slocum said.

  “That’s what I hear, but a desert eventually or me and mine starvin’ now?”

  Slocum had no love for the smelly, bleating critters.

  “I’ll be riding on, if you’re turning this into a sheep ranch.”

  “There’s one other chance to keep going. You ever broke mustangs?”

  “Enough,” Slocum allowed.

  “There’s herds of wild horses runnin’ throughout the Tonto Basin. If we kin catch enough, break ’em and sell �
��em, well, there’s more market for horses than sheep.”

  “Breaking horses is hard work,” Slocum said. His backside hurt from the long hours he had spent in the saddle getting this far north from down in the Sonora Desert. Every bone in his body would hurt by the time he finished breaking a few horses.

  “I know that,” Tewksbury said, patting his horse’s neck. “Ole Sunfisher here earned his name. I was the only one what could ride him. He’d buck, get all four legs off the ground and then arch his damn back, spin around in midair and then hit so hard it’d chip my teeth. Took the better part of a week to break him.”

  “Looks like you did a good job,” Slocum said.

  “This ole body ain’t up fer it no more, Slocum. Caleb could do it, but his arms ain’t all healed up yet. He has a way with horses, but his grip’s still a mite weak to hang on tight enough to keep from gettin’ bucked off more’n he’s in the saddle.”

  “What other hands do you have?”

  “Four, last I counted at dinner. But then, they might have drifted on. Never can tell who’ll show up for chuck.”

  Slocum glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the rustlers and their small, stolen herd of Tewksbury’s cattle. It galled him to let anyone ride off like that, considering those beeves belonged to the Circle T, unlike others that must be on the range.

  “Where’re the mustangs?”

  “To the north,” Tewksbury said. “You thinkin’ on bustin’ a bronc or two fer me?”

  “How’ll you pay me?”

  “That is the crux of the matter, ain’t it?” Tewksbury rode in silence for almost a mile before speaking again. “Beeves. You kin take whatever cows you want. If I’m gettin’ out of the cattle growin’ business and puttin’ them smelly white puffballs in their stead, you might as well be the one who takes ’em.”

  “What would a cow go for over in Prescott?”

  “You might git five dollars fer it. Me, I’d lose money on the deal.”

  “If you get twenty dollars of work out of me, you’d come out ahead.”