Slocum and the Bixby Battle Page 6

  “Yes, we need armed guards and the gates blocked at night. We can’t leave the ranch unguarded anymore. The women and children need protection,” Slocum said. “They killed your patron. They will kill more if they don’t get their way.”

  “I’m not used to such cruelty,” Montez said. “I will be more careful.”

  “Good. I need a boy to guide me around. I want to learn this country.”

  Montez nodded. “Pedro, he is a good young man. I will send him to you.”

  “Good. Was there anything to point to who ran the cattle off?”

  “Hoof prints.”

  “See anything different about them?” Slocum asked.

  Montez shook his head. “Nothing, except they were shod horses.”

  “Good. I need to know anything that you can find out about the ones that ran the cattle off.”

  “Oh, we found this,” he said and dug a paper out of his vest pocket. He handed it to Slocum.

  In the half light, Slocum turned it to examine the writing.

  Dear Lars,

  I have to write and tell you that your father passed away peacefully in his sleep last week. The funeral was very nice. Your brothers were all here. He’s been laid to rest in the New Field Cemetery.

  Your sister, Sarah Jane Griggs

  “A Lars work for Bixby?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go be with your family. I will keep this,” Slocum said to Montez and nodded.

  “You hungry?” Amanda asked.

  “Sure,” he said, realizing she was still there with him in the twilight.

  “We will go to the house then,” she said. “He has given you the boy Pedro for a guide. He would be my choice, too.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Oh, sixteen, but he is very grown up.”

  “Good.” His arm over her shoulder, they went for the house.

  In the early morning, Slocum used his telescope to study Bixby’s outfit. Nothing fancy—a rock house with low eaves, some adobe buildings, one that no doubt housed the men. No obvious guards that he could make out. Some Mexican people looked to be busy working around the place as laborers.

  Slocum turned to the fresh-faced youth beside him. Hatless so his sombrero couldn’t be spotted, he was bellied down beside Slocum.

  “Can we catch their saddle horses with the grain we brought?” Slocum asked.

  “We can catch several,” the youth said with a grin.

  “Let’s move around there and see how good we are at that.”

  Bixby’s spare horses were ranging north of the place in a trap of mesquites and live oak. Slocum carried a pair of nippers and a punch. He hoped to use them if they could catch some of Bixby’s horses. His plans were to try to remove at least one shoe off as many horses in the pasture as possible and hence put Bixby’s men afoot. A shod horse ridden barefooted would soon go lame in the rocky hill country.

  Pedro found the first ones and his grain lured them in fast so Slocum could pull off the shoes. The youth squatted holding six more horses by leads while Slocum bent over and pried free their shoes. He tried to find the ones that were loose—they came off faster. A pile of shoes began to build. So by noontime he had pulled over forty.

  He straightened his weary back and nodded. Pedro ran off the last loose horse and hurried to get their mounts. Slocum used some cedar branches to drag away their tracks. He hid the old shoes in some rock outcroppings, then hurried to where the boy held the saddled horses.

  “What next, señor?”

  “Tonight, we work on cinches.”

  “How is that, señor?”

  “Do these men go to some cantina?”

  “When they have money, they do.”

  “Good. If any go to town, we will work on their cinches.”

  “Then what?”

  “We will stop their windmills. I want them real busy fixing things.”

  “I see what you mean.” Pedro smiled broadly. “I am glad they sent me with you.”

  “Just remember, if they ever catch us, they won’t treat us nice.”

  “I savvy nice.”

  Slocum smiled. They might even jinx a few windmills now, on the ride back. Give them a taste of their own medicine.

  He pointed to a mill that was spinning in the strong south wind. When they rode up close to the machinery, they scattered a few spotted longhorns and their calves away from the tank.

  “Can you climb up and turn the fan off?” Slocum asked the boy.

  “Sure can.”

  “Be careful,” Slocum said and searched around the cedars to be certain they were alone.

  The youth went quickly up the ladder and disengaged the drive, and Slocum used a wrench from his saddlebags to undo the bolts on the connecting rod. They pulled the bolts out and let the pump rod drop down so it was barely visible. Then the boy took their horses and Slocum wiped out their tracks around the mill.

  “One windmill’s not working,” Pedro said with a big grin and handed him the reins to his horse.

  “There will be more,” Slocum said. “If he don’t get the clue.”

  “Plenty of work to reshoe those horses.” Pedro laughed aloud, and they loped over the hill for the ranch.

  Slocum met Montez at the corrals and the man nodded. “Let me return these,” Slocum said and removed the blacksmith tools sticking out from his saddlebags.

  “Sure. What did you do with them?” the man asked, falling in beside him.

  “Pulled one or two shoes off each of Bixby’s saddle horses.”

  “Huh?”

  “They’ll have to reshoe them. Keep them busy. We also shut down a windmill. I want some tough men to shut down some more of his windmills.”

  “I have some men could do that.”

  “We won’t wreck them this time. But I want them shut down all over. Maybe some just shut off all over his ranch. He doesn’t learn a lesson, we will do tougher things to him.”

  “He will be wary pretty quick and set up guards, won’t he?”

  “Right, but if he has to have men guarding every windmill, he can’t run off your cattle.”

  Montez smiled with pleasure and bobbed his head. “I like your ways, Slocum.”

  “We will start easy. Our lessons will increase as needed.” He clapped the man on the shoulder.

  The foreman agreed. Slocum headed for the house. Later that evening, Pedro and he planned to ride for the cantina where the Bixby men hung out.

  “Ah, you are all right,” Amanda said, rushing across the room to hug him. “How was your day?”

  “Backbreaking, but I took the shoes off forty horses.”

  “Why—you are not hired to be a blacksmith?”

  He told her his story and she shook her head in dismay. “I could have sent you men to help.”

  “No, we need to be quiet. He must not see us yet. I only do things now to show him what I can really do to him in return.”

  “But how will this—”

  “He’s busy fixing his own things, how can he harm you?”

  “Come and eat, it will soon be cold.” She dragged him by the arm to the table.

  He nodded in approval at the great spread she had prepared for him: a large roast of beef to be carved, dishes of food in red sauce and fresh vegetables from the ranch’s garden; tortillas and red wine; the silverware polished until it sparkled under the crystal chandelier’s light.

  Slocum ate until he could hold no more, then toasted Amanda with his wineglass. “To our winning the war.”

  “Yes. What will you do next?”

  “Oh . . . Pedro and I are going to some cantina and look for his men.”

  “Tonight?” Disappointment was written on her face.

  “Yes, but I will return before the rooster crows.”

  “Good.” She looked around, then lowered her voice. “Come to my room when you do get back.”

  “I shall.” He raised the glass again to her.

  They found the cantina when the quarter moon
rose. Music came from the inside and the sounds of women’s laughter carried on the night air. The place was set in a grove of trees, and the yellow light of Chinese lanterns spread out into the woods, giving long shadows from the trunks.

  The cowboys’ horses were standing hipshot in a line to the right at hitchracks. Slocum and Pedro slipped in, talking softly and easing their knife blades under the mohair cinches to saw them about in two. One by one they worked over the twenty or so girths, until they were satisfied that at the least strain past climbing aboard, the cinches would give way and dump their riders.

  Slocum moved closer and could see several of the gunhands having themselves a real fandango with the Mexican girls in low-cut dresses that they whirled around the floor. Drinking and dancing, they obviously were having a big time. The shrill laughter of the women rung in the night, and waiters rushed about delivering drinks to the halfway insulting rannies.

  Slocum tried to find sight of Wilson, but couldn’t make him out. He could see the wagon-wheel lamp in the middle of the room hung on a rope from the ceiling. If he could cut that down, the party would be over for a while.

  His plan was to shoot up the place to get them to run out and charge after him and Pedro. It might work. He drew the .44-40 out of the scabbard and laid it across the saddle.

  “Get on your horse,” he said softly to Pedro. “We ride out after this.”

  He took careful aim and the rifle report shattered the night. The lamp came crashing down and the music stopped. Aside from the screams of the women, the night grew silent.

  “Get the hell out of the hill country!” Slocum shouted. “Or you’ll all be dead.”

  He turned Buck and set out after Pedro. A few pistol shots answered him, but he knew if they returned some gunfire from the far side of the woods, the half-drunk, angry rannies would take up chase. So he shoved the rifle in the saddle scabbard and drew his Colt. He gave five quick shots back at the cantina. They answered with more in his direction, but by then he was out of their range.

  Men shouted, “Get to your horses and get them bastards!”

  Slocum nodded at Pedro and they tore off in the night. From the top of the ridge, they watched the riders in the starlight charge out of the woods and lash their horses. Under the strain, riders and saddles began to fall off their horses. The confusion caused other horses to shy, and their girths gave way, with spilled riders cursing and shouting blue obscenities in the darkness.

  “Time we got us some sleep,” Slocum said to Pedro and headed Buck northeasterly for Amanda’s place. He drew in a deep breath of the pungent cedar aroma that flooded the night air, and laughed. “They’re going to learn, Pedro.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Both men chuckled as they set their ponies in a long lope for home.

  10

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Bixby asked the Mexican wrangler.

  “Someone pulled de shoes off the saddle horses.”

  “You crazy sumbitch, no one pulls the shoes off someone else’s saddle horses. What’ve you been drinking?” Totally put out at the dumb bastard with the sombrero clutched to his chest, he stared out the window at the open dirt yard. No way that someone could sneak up on this ranch and pull the shoes—

  “Where are the shoes at?”

  “Señor, I have no idea.” The wrangler shrugged his shoulders. “Gone. They vamoose like a ghost done it.”

  “Shit, I don’t believe a word of it. You go catch some of them horses and bring them up here. How many are there?” Bixby slapped his hat on and followed the Mexican out the front door.

  “Mitch!” he shouted at one of the gunhands walking toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah, Boss?”

  “Someone’s taken the damn shoes off our horses, Juan says.”

  “In the horse pasture?” Mitch asked, shocked.

  “They ain’t been nowhere’s else. Get someone who can track and we’ll see about this deal.”

  “Sure. Alex can track. I’ll get him.”

  “Don’t be all day, either.”

  “Right.” And the gunslinger began to run for the long, low bunkhouse.

  How in hell’s name could someone get those horses and take off their shoes?

  “See your good sorrel, he has only two shoes.” Juan pointed at Bixby’s favorite horse he had led up to show him.

  “They were just put on.” Bixby ducked through the corral bars and caught the red horse. He lifted the front hoof and could see how freshly the shoe had been pulled. He swore when he let go of the hoof.

  Several of the hands joined him and began searching the ground. Bixby shook his head. “They can pull shoes off our damn horses, they can shoot us as easy, remember that.”

  “Down here,” Alex called and they all hurried over to the wash.

  “They used grain to lure them back here,” Alex said, pointing at the hulls on the ground.

  “How many were there?”

  “Two or three.”

  “Two or three pulled all those shoes off that many horses and we never saw them?”

  “They were out of sight back here.”

  “Everyone can get busy reshoeing them.”

  “Señor, we don’t have that many horseshoes.”

  “What did they do with them?”

  “Stuck them up their ass,” Alex said. “I doubt that they left any.”

  “One of you take a buckboard to town and go buy a keg—make it two kegs of shoes. When you get back—if it takes all night, I want this bunch reshod.” He looked over the men.

  “Yes, sir,” came their reply. Bixby shook his head in disgust. This new man she hired was behind all this then, because them dumb Messikins never knew to do anything like this before he got there.

  Suppertime, Bixby took the meal in his office and was cutting a tough steak when someone burst through the open double doors.

  “Señor?”

  “What now?” he said, not looking at the flush-faced man in the doorway.

  “They have broken the windmills.”

  “What?” He threw down his napkin and looked at the tin tiles in the ceiling for help. “How many?”

  The man shrugged. “Several—I couldn’t fix all of them.”

  Bixby closed his eyes. As soon as they got his red horse reshod, he planned to ride down and find McKlein and see why in the hell he hadn’t arrested this Slocum or whoever.

  It was past midnight when Bixby rode up to the small wooden bungalow. He dropped heavily from the saddle. His spurs gave a clang and he went through the picket-fence gate. Something was blooming and he thought it might be sweetpea flowers.

  “McKlein!” he shouted from the open front door into the dark house.

  A boy’s voice gave a startled yelp and it was cut off by someone gagging him. “Shut up. It’s only Bixby. I’m coming.”

  “I didn’t know,” the youth protested.

  “Shut up.”

  Bixby scowled. He never knew McKlein had any boys of his own. Then he saw the sheriff in the doorway. “What in the fuck is going on with you—my horses been crippled and my windmills wrecked by that sumbitch Slocum.”

  “When?” McKlein asked, buttoning his shirt in the starlight.

  “Today, stupid. They got the shoes off my horses and then wrecked my windmills.”

  “All of them?”

  “How should I know? We ain’t been to all of them.”

  “Who do you figure is behind all this?”

  “Why, that sumbitch Slocum. No one else ever figured all that out before.”

  McKlein sighed. “I’ll go arrest him.”

  “If you’d done that in the first place, this would never have happened. It’s costing me big money.”

  “All right, I’ll arrest him in the morning.”

  “Need me to go along?”

  “No. I can handle one man by myself.”

  Bixby wasn’t so certain about that even. McKlein hadn’t done a damn thing so far. Law or no law, he was gettin
g this Slocum and making an example out of them greasers that they wouldn’t ever forget.

  11

  “The sheriff is here,” she whispered in Slocum’s ear.

  “So soon.” He rose up. His eyes filled with grit and he tried to focus them on her concerned face. Light filtered into the room. “What’s he want?”

  “Says he has a warrant for your arrest for murdering Cave Bixby.”

  Slocum blinked. “From whom?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “I do.” He threw his legs out of the bed. “It’s an excuse to take me in and shoot me in the back on the way, saying that I tried to escape.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I’ll read the warrant first.”

  “But—”

  “He have a posse?”

  “No, he came alone.”

  “Good. He figured I would not go with him and would run off. Then he’d have an excuse to run me down, right?”

  “I don’t know how such men think.” She looked upset. “What can I do?”

  “Stand back.” He pulled on his pants, then socks and boots. He put on a fresh white shirt she handed him and buttoned it up the front, then knifed it into his pants with the flat of his hands. The six-gun strapped on, he nodded for her to go ahead.

  She looked questioningly at him, then obeyed.

  Slocum saw the man as he looked up at him with his squinted right eye holding the gaze. “Sheriff Talbot McKlein. I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Let me see it,” Slocum said and took the paper to study it.

  “It’s filed in this county,” Slocum said, looking over at the man.

  “It’s valid. Signed by Judge Norstrum himself.”

  Slocum shook his head. “This Cave Bixby was not shot in this county. No way you can file a felony warrant in another county than where the alleged crime occurred.”

  “I have his body and he was shot three times in the back. That’s murder.”

  “McKlein, even in a crooked court of law that won’t work.”

  “You some kinda damn lawyer?”

  “I know the law. This paper is worthless and I’m not surrendering to this piece of crap.”

  McKlein went for his gun butt, but Slocum pulled his own out first. The lawman blinked in disbelief at the muzzle pointed at him. He let go and his pistol fell back in the holster. “I’ll have you know I’m law in this county—”