Destiny Of The Mountain Man Read online

  “My God, they’re killing the cattle!” Carter shouted.

  “Who the hell are these people?” Barrett asked. “Where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know, but there sure as hell are a lot of them. Ramon, we need to get mounted! We need to get after them!” Carter said. “Ramon?”

  Looking over at Ramon, Carter saw the top hand leaning back against the overturned wagon. Ramon’s right arm was hanging down by his side, his pistol dangling from a crooked finger. His left hand was covering a wound on his right shoulder, and blood was spilling through his fingers.

  By now, the sound of gunfire was receding as the attackers had passed through the herd and rode off on the far side of the valley. The cattle, spooked by all the shooting, were milling around, but had not stampeded.

  “I think they are gone,” Barrett said.

  “Emil,” Ramon said to Barrett, his tight voice evidence of the pain of his wound. “Ride back to the big house, tell Mr. King what just happened.”

  “All right,” Barrett replied. He nodded toward the wound. “But you better get yourself into town and get that bullet hole looked at.”

  “I’ll see that he does,” Carter said to Barrett. “You better get started.”

  Richard King had never done anything on a small scale. When he was eleven years old, he became dissatisfied with his apprenticeship in New York and stowed away on a schooner. Discovered, he had to work for his passage. After a few years learning the shipping trade from the bottom up, including becoming a captain, King took a partner and formed his own shipping company. By the late 1840’s, his company was shipping supplies for General Zachary Taylor along the Rio Grande.

  Enamored with Texas, Captain King settled there, started ranching, and by 1860 he and his new bride, Henrietta, had grown their various enterprises into an 860,000-acre ranch along the banks of the Santa Gertrudis River in Texas.

  Ever the businessman, King invested in building railroads, icehouses, packinghouses, and harbor improvements in Corpus Christi, Texas, which was just forty miles from his ranch.

  Now, the ranch owner was planning the logistics of a cattle drive to Dodge City, Kansas. He had considered shipping them to Kansas by rail, but the circuitous railroad route it would require to make all the connections would take two weeks, and it would cost him approximately four dollars per head, or forty thousand dollars. Driving the herd to Dodge would take eight weeks, but it would only cost him about three thousand dollars total.

  King was sitting at his desk, working out the logistics of the drive, when Emil Barrett came in to see him. Standing in front of the big oak desk, holding his hat in his hands and nervously rolling it by the rim, he made his report to his boss. Barrett’s jeans and shirt were covered with dirt and dust and he smelled of sweat and cows, but Captain Richard King took no notice of that. He did wonder why the young cowboy was here, instead of out on the range, helping with the roundup.

  “What are you doing here, Barrett?”

  “Cap’n, we got trouble,” Barrett said, addressing him as Captain, as did all the cowboys.

  “What sort of trouble?”

  Barrett told of the predawn attack.

  “How about you, Barrett, are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, I’m fine. I would’a still been out there with the others iff’n Ramon hadn’t’a sent me back to bring you the news.”

  “Ramon was right, and you did well. Go to the kitchen, get yourself some coffee and whatever you want to eat.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Barrett said.

  After Barrett left, King stood up from behind the enormous oak desk in his study. He was an imposing figure of a man. Almost six feet tall, he had broad shoulders and heavily muscled forearms that made the paunch he was developing in his later years seem smaller. His hair was streaked with gray and was beginning to thin out a bit on top, but his mustache was thick and black and still full.

  He walked over to a clothes tree in the corner where there hung a right-handed holster rig. Taking it down, he buckled it around his waist with the familiar motion of someone who had worn a gun before. He pulled the Colt Peacemaker from the holster and spun the cylinder to make certain that every chamber was loaded. Satisfied, he put the gun back into its sheath, then took a large Stetson hat from the rack, placed it on his head, and adjusted the brim before walking out of his study and into a slightly smaller office next door.

  Robert Justus Kleberg looked up from his desk and frowned when he saw the old man wearing his sidearm. “Going hunting, Boss?” he asked. Kleberg was young, in his mid-thirties, and rail-thin, without an ounce of fat on his six-foot-one-inch frame. His face was pleasant without being classically handsome, and his hair, the color of caramel candy, was slightly rumpled in front as if he’d been out in a strong wind.

  “Get your pistol and follow me, Bob. Seems that we have a problem,” the old man ordered gruffly.

  Kleberg looked slightly startled. King had hired him a couple of years earlier to handle the legal tasks for his Santa Gertrudis Ranch, and as such his duties didn’t normally entail wearing a pistol. Not that it mattered much. Kleberg had grown up in the nearby town of Corpus Christi, which was a haven at the time for Mexican bandidos and Civil War deserters, so he’d been proficient with a six-gun from the time he was old enough to carry one.

  Kleberg took his holster and pistol rig off a peg in the wall and blew the dust off before he buckled it around his hips. He started to put his suit coat on, but decided against it since it looked as if he and the old man were going for a ride. No need to get the coat dusty and dirty.

  As they walked through the enormous rooms of the ranch house, Alice King, Richard’s daughter, stepped out of the kitchen with a pan dulce pastry in one hand and a cup of steaming coffee in the other.

  When her eyes met Kleberg’s, her cheeks flushed crimson and she stopped in her tracks. Her eyes traveled down, and she noticed both her father and the man she’d fallen in love with were wearing pistols.

  “Where are you two going?” she asked, glancing down at her hands. “I was just bringing Bob a pan dulce and a cup of coffee.”

  In spite of his sour mood, King grinned. He loved his daughter with every fiber of his being, and to make matters even better, he approved of her choice of Bob Kleberg as the man in her life. He knew Kleberg to be smart, ambitious, fearless, and he also knew that Kleberg loved his daughter as much as he did, which was just icing on the cake.

  Kleberg stepped quickly to her side and took the sweet roll from her hand. “Thank you, Alice,” he said. “Your father is going to show me something and I’ll eat it on the way.”

  “But Bob,” she asked, a worried look on her face, “why are you wearing a gun?”

  King moved up next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “There’s been some rustlers seen out on the range, dear. We’re just being cautious. Nothing for you to worry about.” He leaned down and pecked her on the cheek. “We’ll be back before you have time to miss us.”

  “Before I have time to miss you?” Her eyes cut to Kleberg and her lips turned up in an impish smile. “That won’t take very long, Papa.”

  Now it was Kleberg’s turn to blush.

  King laughed and put a hand behind Kleberg’s back and shoved him toward the door. “Come on, Bobby, we’re burnin’ daylight.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  King and Kleberg rode for almost an hour until they finally came to the banks of the Santa Gertrudis River. The river, for which the ranch had been named, was running swiftly over rocks and sandbars and while as deep as eight feet in some places, here it was only about three feet deep. They urged their horses out into the water, rode across quickly, then climbed up onto the bank on the other side.

  From there they could see the cow camp where the cows to be driven north were being gathered. Several men were standing around the wagon. One of the wheels was broken on the wagon, and the side was stoved in. It was obvious, even to the most casual observer, that the wagon had been
turned over and set back upright. As they got closer, they saw at least thirty cows, maybe more, lying sprawled in the pasture. Closer still, and they saw a row of bodies lined up neatly on blankets. Five were uncovered, three were covered by tarpaulins.

  “Damn,” King said as Carter came out to meet him. “Damn, how many?”

  “We had eight killed,” Carter answered, nodding toward the bodies.

  “Oh, shit,” King said, looking at the bodies. “Stan Harbin is one of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carter said.

  King pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just got a nice letter from his mother. He was going back East to go to college.”

  “Yes, sir, he was tellin’ us all about it,” Carter said. “Goin’ around here quotin’ poetry and all that.”

  King saw two other bodies lying to one side. They had been drawn together, but they weren’t lying on a blanket, or even a tarp.

  “Those two part of the rustlers?” King asked, pointing to the two dead men.

  “Yes, sir, sort of,” Carter replied.

  “Sort of? What do you mean, sort of?”

  “Well, sir, they were part of the group that attacked us, but they wasn’t exactly rustlers,” Carter said. “Leastwise, not so’s you could call them as such.”

  “Well, if they weren’t rustlers, what were they?” Carter shook his head. “I don’t know as I can rightly answer that question,” he said. “They just come in here and commenced shootin’. Wasn’t interested in stealin’ nothin’ as far as I could tell. All they was interested in was killin’ as many of us as they could. They shot the hell out of us, along with all the beeves they could hit.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t nothin’ more’n a slaughter, I mean, what with us not suspectin’ anything ’n all. Most of us wasn’t even wearin’ guns at the time.”

  “That wasn’t very smart, was it?” King asked. “Not wearing your guns, I mean?”

  “Cap’n King, it was just breakin’ dawn. We’d just rolled out of our blankets. And why would we need our guns then? I mean, who would’a thought . . .”

  King waved him down before he finished. “I’m sorry,” King said. “Of course you wouldn’t be armed. And why should you be? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Well, here’s the thing, Cap’n. Two of them fellers was wearin’ Army uniforms.”

  “Army uniforms? Wait a minute, are you telling me the Army did this?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so. I mean, they was only two of ’em wearin’ anything like that, and they was just wearin’ the jackets of a uniform is all.”

  “I’ll be damned. That’s strange,” King said. He looked around. “I don’t see Ramon. Where is he? Is he all right?”

  Carter shrugged. “Far as I know, he is. He took a bullet in the shoulder, never said nothin’ about it till he’d already seen to all the others. I talked him into lettin’ one of the boys take him into Benevadis in a buckboard so’s the doc could take a look at it. He still didn’t want to leave, but I told ’im there wasn’t nothin’ more he could do out here.”

  “You did right to send him into town. How many would you say there were in the group that did this?”

  Carter snorted. “A hell of a lot of ’em,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you. There was just a hell of a lot of ’em.”

  “What? Five, ten, twenty?”

  “More’n twenty,” Carter said. “More’n fifty I would say.”

  “Fifty?” King replied, surprised by the number. “Are you telling me that fifty men did this?”

  “At least fifty, maybe more.”

  King shook his head and turned away to look out over the carnage. “Bob, what the hell are we facing here?” he asked quietly. “Who would get fifty men together to steal a few cows?”

  “Especially since they didn’t steal any,” Kleberg observed.

  That was when King saw that three of the bodies were covered. He turned back to Carter.

  “Who are the three men under the tarps?” Kleberg asked, pointing toward the three covered cowboys.

  “That’s Noble, Gillis, and Tanner,” Carter said. “Only thing is, we ain’t real sure which one is which.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They ain’t got no heads,” Carter said.

  “What?” Kleberg gasped.

  “They ain’t got no heads,” Carter said again. “Their heads was cut off.”

  “Their heads were cut off?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  King was quiet for a long moment, and he stroked his chin as he considered the situation. “I wonder if . . .” he started, then he stopped. “No, it can’t be,” he said.

  “What can’t be?” Kleberg asked.

  King shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “It probably isn’t the same thing at all. I’m sure I’m just imagining things.”

  “What are we going to do about all these fellas that was killed?” Carter asked.

  “Send someone in town to get the undertaker,” King said. “And bring them back to the ranch. We are going to give them a decent burial. And find their heads,” he added, pointing to the three tarp-covered bodies.

  “Yes, sir. We need to do something about the cows that was killed too.”

  “Take the hides, get what meat you think we can use, then get them in a pile and burn them,” King ordered.

  “And . . . what about them two galoots?”

  King looked over toward the two bodies of the raiders, then hawked up a spit.

  “Burn them with the cows,” he said coldly.

  Big Rock, Colorado:

  Smoke Jensen was in Longmont’s, enjoying a beer, when someone stepped inside.

  “Is Smoke Jensen in here?” he called out.

  “I’m over here, Howard,” Smoke said, holding up the mug of beer he was drinking. He was sharing a table with his friends, Sheriff Carson and Louis Longmont, the owner of Longmont’s Saloon and Restaurant.

  “Maybe you better step outside, Smoke,” Howard said. “There’s a couple of fellas out there givin’ Miss Sally a hard time.”

  “Are they town people?” Sheriff Carson asked, standing at the table.

  “No, Sheriff, I ain’t never seen either one of ’em before.”

  “I didn’t think anyone from town would do anything like that,” Carson said.

  Still carrying his beer, Smoke walked over to the front door and stood there, looking over the top of the batwings out into the street. He took a swallow of his beer.

  “Ain’t you goin’ to go out there and help her?” Howard asked.

  “Nah,” Smoke said. He chuckled. “There’s only two of them. Let Sally fight her own fights.”

  “What do you think, Speeg? You think you can show this little lady a good time?”

  The speaker was a young man, around twenty, tall and gangly, with large teeth and a scraggly beard.

  “That ain’t the question, Hoke,” Speeg answered. “The question is, is she going to show us a good time?” Hoke was standing at the hitching rail, holding onto the team that had pulled Sally’s buckboard into town. Speeg was alongside the buckboard, and both of them were smiling up at Sally Jensen, who was sitting in the buckboard seat.

  “Let go of my team,” Sally said.

  “Nah,” Hoke said, his leering grin growing larger. “I don’t want to do that. If I do that, you might run off a’fore we have a chance to get to know each other.”

  “Yeah,” Speeg said. “If you’d get to know us a little better, why, you’d like us.”

  “I doubt that even your mothers like you,” Sally said.

  Speeg laughed. “Whooeee, she’s a feisty little thing, ain’t she, Hoke?”

  “I like ’em feisty,” Hoke said. He grabbed himself in the crotch. “What do you say, little lady? Let’s me’n you’n Speeg there get us a bottle and go off an’ have us a good time some’eres.”

  “I don’t suppose it matters to you that I’m married,” Sally said.

  Speeg shook his head. “Nope. I
t don’t matter to us none a’tall.”

  “You see, we ain’t exactly wantin’ to marry you,” Hoke said. “We just want to borrow you for a bit.”

  “Yeah,” Speeg said, laughing at the concept. “That’s what we want. We want to borrow you for a bit.”

  Sally took the whip from its holder. “I’m warning you,” she said. “Go away and leave me alone.”

  “Ha! And if we don’t?” Speeg said, starting toward her.

  Moving more quickly than Speeg could react, Sally jammed the butt of the whip into Speeg’s nose, breaking it. He let out a yell and took several steps back, putting his hand to his nose to stop the bleeding.

  “What the hell?” Hoke shouted, but that was as far as he got before the whip slashed across his face, instantly blackening both eyes.

  “Why, you bitch!” Speeg shouted in anger. He started toward her, but stopped when Sally shot his hat off.

  Sally sensed Hoke coming toward her, but she didn’t turn to face him. Instead, she aimed her pistol at Speeg’s groin.

  “Unless you want to squat to pee for the rest of your life, you’ll call your friend off,” Sally said, calmly.

  “Hoke, no, wait! Wait! Hold it!” Speeg shouted anxiously, holding out his hand.

  “You two men are strangers to our little town, aren’t you?” Sally asked.

  “Yes . . .”

  “Ma’am,” Sally said.

  “What?”

  “When you speak to me, it’s yes, ma’am.”

  Speeg glared at her, and Sally pulled the hammer back on her pistol. The sound of her cocking the gun was quite audible.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Speeg said.

  “I thought so. And that being the case, I think everyone would be happy to see the two of you climb up onto your horses and leave.”

  “You ain’t the sheriff. You don’t have no right to run us out of town,” Hoke said defiantly.

  Sally smiled, a cold, frightening smile. “What about it, Mr. Speeg? Do I have the right?” she asked, waving the end of the pistol around menacingly, but never moving the aim from his genital area.