Savagery of The Mountain Man Page 4

  “Yes, but I saw four of them riding into town,” Smoke said. “There’s another one somewhere.”

  Across the street from the Mercantile, Emil Sinclair had seen Smoke go in, though he had no idea who he was. Then, hearing the shots fired, he waited no more than a couple of seconds for Taylor and his two brothers to come running out. When they didn’t, he tied off the three horses, then rode on up the street a little way so as not to be obvious. By the time the sheriff went into the store, Emil was all the way back to the blacksmith shop. He was watching when the sheriff came out of the store with Stu and Jason in front of him, both holding their arms in the air.

  Emil noticed that Taylor wasn’t with them, and he had a pretty good idea what happened to Taylor.

  Stu and Jason were actually Emil’s half brothers, all three of them sharing the same mother. Because their mother was a prostitute, not one of the three knew who their fathers were. Their mother, who was called Big Nose Mary by everyone, was actually Millie Sinclair, and she had given her last name to all three of her sons.

  Emil and his brothers had met Logan Taylor while all four were in the Colorado State Prison. Taylor got out three months before the Sinclair brothers did, and it was he who set up this job.

  Emil waited until the sheriff and his brothers were off the street; then he returned to the horses, untied them, and led them away. The sight of a single rider leading three horses wasn’t all that unusual, except that these three horses were saddled. Emil was sure that must be a very curious sight, but he rode slowly and kept his eyes straight ahead as if there was nothing at all unusual about what he was doing.

  Taylor’s horse had a fancy saddle with some brass trim. As soon as he could, Emil planned to transfer that saddle to his own horse. After all, Taylor wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He could take the saddle and sell the horse.

  He wondered how much the horse would bring. For that matter, how much would the fancy saddle bring? Then, as he thought about it, he decided he would sell not only the horse, but the saddle as well.

  The closest town was Mitchell, which was about fifteen miles away. He made it there in an hour and a half.

  Tumbling Q Ranch

  “Wait a minute,” Peters asked. “You sold all the longhorns and bought Herefords?”

  “Yes. That was our arrangement, wasn’t it?”

  “How much did you get per head?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “Two dollars? I could have gotten five dollars! I thought the whole purpose of us putting our herds together was to control the market and get more money?”

  “Yes, well, we actually did six dollars per head, but we paid our broker two dollars per head, and our board voted to keep two dollars per head back for capital improvement.”

  “The board voted? When did the board vote? I don’t remember any board meeting.”

  “As I represent eighty-seven percent of the vote, we didn’t really need a board meeting,” Quentin explained. “I also bought Herefords.”

  “How many head of Herefords did you buy?”

  “I bought a thousand head at twenty-five dollars per head. In addition, I updated the feeder pens and the barn, and I put in a series of sluices and canals to give us a more dependable water supply,” Quentin said.

  “What do you mean, give us a more dependable water supply? Hell, the creek coming through my ranch has all dried up.”

  “It isn’t your ranch anymore, remember? You used your ranch to buy into the corporation.”

  “Yeah? Well, I want my ranch back. I want out of this corporation.”

  “All right. As soon as you pay your share of the debt we have accrued, I’ll sign your ranch back over to you.”

  “My share of the debt?” Peters asked, his voice strained. “What is my share of the debt?”

  “Mr. Gilmore?” Quentin said. “Would you like to answer Mr. Peters’ question?”

  Gilmore consulted his ledger for a moment, did some figuring, then cleared his throat.

  “The gross income from the sale of thirty-five hundred longhorns came to twenty thousand, nine hundred and sixteen dollars.”

  “All right,” Peters said with a broad smile.

  “The cost of shipping came to three thousand, four hundred and eighty-six dollars. The holding pen cost was one thousand, forty dollars and eighty cents. The broker fee was six thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two dollars. Likewise, capital improvement for Tumbling Q Ranch incorporated was also six thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two dollars. That leaves a net profit of one thousand, five hundred twenty-nine dollars and twenty cents. At six percent, your share of that comes to ninety-one dollars and seventy-five cents.”

  The smile left Peters’s face and he staggered back a few feet, then sat down, hard, in a chair.

  “You mean, all I made from this deal we did was ninety-one dollars?”

  “Actually, you have a net loss. Your share of the money we borrowed to buy the Herefords comes to fifteen hundred dollars. Minus the ninety-one dollars and seventy-five cents, that leaves you with an obligation of one thousand, four hundred and eight dollars and twenty-five cents.”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad you came over, Mr. Peters,” Quentin said. “How soon can I expect that money?”

  “I—I don’t have fourteen hundred dollars,” Peters said.

  Quentin stared at him for a long, hard moment.

  “Well, now,” he said. “That does present you with a problem, doesn’t it? I mean, we all agreed, when we entered into this arrangement, to share in the profit, and to be responsible for the debt, in accordance with our ownership percentage.”

  “But there is no profit.”

  “Not yet. We are in the process of building now,” Quentin said.

  “All right, it looks as if I have no choice but to remain in the corporation,” Peters said.

  “Good, good, I was hoping you would decide that. How soon can I expect the money?”

  “How soon? How soon does the loan have to be paid back?”

  “It was a short-term loan,” Quentin said. “It’s due by the end of the week.”

  “By the end of the week?” Peters gasped. “That’s impossible.”

  “It was the only way we could get that much money that quickly,” Quentin said.

  Peters shook his head. “I would have never agreed to anything like that.”

  “Like I said, Mr. Peters, as eighty-seven-percent owner, I didn’t need your agreement. Now, when can I expect the money?”

  “I don’t have that much money. Can’t you, personally, carry me for a little while?”

  Quentin shook his head. “You do understand, don’t you, that I am obligated for eighty-seven percent of the debt? How much is that, Mr. Gilmore?”

  “That is twenty-one thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars,” Gilmore said.

  “I’m sure that you realize that twenty-one thousand dollars is an enormous amount of money. And I have to come up with it by tomorrow. I can’t carry you beyond tomorrow.”

  “But what am I going to do?”

  “You could sign over your interest in the ranch to me.”

  “You mean, just give it to you?”

  “You wouldn’t be giving it to me, you would be selling it to me for fifteen hundred dollars. And I will even let you keep the ninety-one dollars that was your share from the sale of the cattle.”

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Peters, that you have no choice,” Gilmore said.

  “What about the others?”

  “Baker and Gillespie? Unfortunately, they found themselves in the same boat as you,” Gilmore said. “They have already sold their interest back to Mr. Quentin. I suggest you do the same.”

  “This isn’t right,” Peters said.

  “It’s business, Mr. Peters. Business is a risk. Sign here.”

  Peters stared at the piece of paper Gilmore pushed in front of him, then, after a long moment, affixed his signature.

>   “I will get your ninety-one dollars,” Gilmore said.

  “No,” Quentin said, holding up his hand. “Mr. Peters has been a good neighbor. I hate it that this has happened to him. Give him one hundred dollars.”

  “That’s a very generous offer, Mr. Quentin,” Gilmore said.

  “I just wish it could be more,” Quentin replied.

  Peters took the one hundred dollars, then left the house without saying another word.

  Quentin stepped out onto the front porch to see Peters off. When he went back inside, Gilmore was putting all his papers away. “How do you think it went?” Quentin asked.

  “That was the last of them. All the land they pledged to the corporation has now accrued to you, and that means that you own everything but Colby’s land. And, with the redirection of the water that has left him only one small creek, Colby won’t be able to hang on to that much longer.”

  Quentin laughed. “I have to hand it to you, Gilmore. Only a lawyer could make stealin’ legal.”

  “Oh, but it isn’t stealing, Mr. Quentin,” Gilmore replied. “It is all quite legal. That’s how I earn my fifteen percent.”

  Quentin stood at the front window and watched as Gilmore drove away in his surrey. Turning away from the window, Quentin walked back over to the table where Gilmore had left the papers that turned all the other ranches in the valley over to the Tumbling Q Ranch and Cattle Company.

  Gilmore had made a point to tell him that it wasn’t stealing. Quentin chuckled at the lawyer’s insistence upon legality. Quentin didn’t mind stealing if that was the only way he could get something. That’s how he got enough money to buy this ranch in the first place.

  Ten years earlier, down in Texas, Pogue Quentin and three other men, Emil, Jason, and Stu Sinclair, had robbed a train. They waited alongside a water tower until the train stopped, then got the drop on the engineer and fireman. After that, they decoupled the express car from the passenger cars, and forced the engineer to take the express car a mile up the track before they let him stop. When the express agent tried to resist them, Pogue shot and killed him.

  Killing the express agent wasn’t that hard to do. Pogue had ridden with Doc Jennison and the Kansas Jayhawkers during the Civil War. There were some who said that Jennison made Quantrill and his Bushwhackers look like Sunday school teachers. When the war ended, Quentin continued his raids, only now they were for personal gain. The train robbery in Texas was an example.

  The train robbery netted five hundred dollars in cash. But because Quentin had set up the plan, he kept two hundred for himself, and gave one hundred to each of the other three.

  The other three understood that the money would be divided that way and made no protest over the allocation of the proceeds. What they did not know, however, was the real reason Quentin had held up this particular train. Quentin knew that this train was carrying a bank draft worth fifteen thousand dollars, and that the draft could be negotiated by the bearer.

  The Sinclair brothers also did not know Quentin’s name, since he identified himself only as “Joe.”

  When Quentin went to Colorado, he cashed the draft, bought a ranch, then sent back to Wichita for his wife and eleven-year-old son. His wife died in the first year, leaving him with the responsibility of raising his son. It was not a responsibility he handled well. Billy Ray Quentin grew up almost like one of the feral cats on the ranch. Without the ameliorating influence of a mother or the concerned discipline of a father, Billy Ray was, as Quentin’s ranch foreman, Cole Mathers, once said, “as wild as an unbroken colt.”

  Chapter Four

  Big Rock

  Emil got ten dollars for the saddle and thirty-five dollars for the horse. Both were worth more, but he had no proof that he was the actual owner, and he wasn’t in any position to answer questions. Besides, forty-five dollars in his pocket was better than no money at all. And if he had kept the horse, it would just be an extra horse to keep up with.

  He waited until nightfall before he returned to Big Rock; then he didn’t go into town. Instead, he stopped at a little copse of trees on a small hill about a quarter of a mile from the western edge of town. Dismounting, he pulled a stem of grass from the ground, then stuck the root in his mouth and sucked on it as he stood there. From there, he could see the entire town, from the railroad depot on the east side of town to the white church with the high steeple on the west, and from the blacksmith shop at the north end of town, to the cluster of private houses at the south end. He decided to wait outside the town and not go back in until all the nighttime activity had grown quiet.

  Although Emil had no watch, he knew that it had to be somewhere around ten o’clock, because by now, except for one of the saloons, there were no public buildings open at all. In addition, only a few lights showed in the residential district.

  From where he was, he could hear a piano from the saloon, but he was too far away to hear any voices. Satisfied that most of the town was asleep, he got back into the saddle, picked up the reins of the other two horses, and rode into town.

  He tried to ride slowly and quietly, but it seemed to him as if the hoofbeats of his horse and the other two were as loud as a drum each time they hit the hard-packed dirt of the main street. To make matters worse, the hollow, clopping sound rolled back in echoes from the buildings that fronted the street, and that managed to redouble the sound.

  Leaving the street, Emil rode down the alley until he reached the back of the sheriff’s office. There, he tied off all three horses. then, pulling his hat lower, he stepped up to one of the windows of the jail and peered inside.

  The deputy was sitting behind his desk with his feet up on the desk, his chair tipped back against the wall, and his hat pulled low over his eyes. Emil walked around to the front, pushed open the door, stepped inside, and started toward the deputy.

  The deputy awoke just as Emil reached him. Before he could speak, or react in any way, Emil brought his gun down hard on the deputy’s head, and he fell from the chair onto the floor.

  “I didn’t figure you’d just go off and leave us,” Jason said.

  “Where are the keys?” Emil asked.

  “In the middle drawer of the desk,” Stu answered.

  Emil opened the desk, got the key, then unlocked his brothers’ cell.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where we goin’?” Stu asked.

  “What difference does it make, as long as it’s away from here?”

  Sugarloaf Ranch

  Early the next morning, Smoke stood by the fire, drinking coffee as he watched his cowboys gathering the cows into a manageable herd for the ten-mile drive into town. Behind him he heard the sound of pots and pans being moved around, and he smelled the aroma of frying bacon and boiling coffee.

  Although Smoke employed a full-time cook for the cowboys of Sugarloaf, on this morning Sally had volunteered to help the cook prepare breakfast for those who would be pushing the herd into town. Her biggest contribution, appreciated by all, would be her bear signs, and the sweet smell of that confectionary treat rose above even the aroma of bacon and coffee.

  “Whoo-wee,” Cal said when he bit into the bear sign. “Pearlie pure dee don’t have no idea what he’s missin’. I’ll bet he ain’t had nothin’ like this since he has went away.”

  Sally shivered. “You mean Pearlie doesn’t have any—oh, never mind. That sentence is so ungrammatical that I don’t believe it is humanly possible to correct it.”

  “You ridin’ into town with us, Miss Sally?” Cal asked.

  “Yes, I thought I would. It’s been a couple of weeks since I was in town.”

  “There’s a lot better ways to go into town than to ride along with a herd of longhorns, Miz Jensen,” one of the other cowboys said. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Ha!” Cal said. “I’ll have you know that Miss Sally once helped us drive a herd of three thousand cows over a thousand miles. I reckon she knows what she’s doin’ all right.”

  “Didn�
��t mean nothin’ by it,” the cowboy replied. “I was just commentin’ is all.”

  Sally laughed. “And I didn’t take any offense. But you are right, it is different riding with a herd, no matter how far you go with them.”

  After breakfast, all the cowboys saddled their mounts, then rode out to get the herd moving. The animals, used to the freedom of the open range, were now forced together in one large, controlled herd. That made them acutely aware of different sights, sounds, smells, and sensations, and they were growing increasingly anxious over the change in what had been their normal routine.

  Embedded in the sounds of the crying and bawling of cattle, and the shouts and whistles of the wranglers as they started the herd moving, were the rattle and clacking of long horns banging together as the cattle got under way. That was a particularly poignant sound to Smoke, because he knew that the days of the longhorn were numbered.

  It took them about three hours to get to Big Rock. The railroad ran north and south through Big Rock, with the track located to the east, just out of town. That meant it wasn’t necessary to push the herd down Main Street. They were able to bring them up to the depot by driving them parallel with the tracks, then across the tracks, where they began pushing them into the holding pens that had been reserved specifically for Smoke’s herd.

  The cattle broker met Smoke as he came in with the first batch of cows.

  “I have wire confirmation of a contract with the Malone Meat Packing Company in Kansas City for seven dollars a head,” Steve said, showing Smoke the telegram.

  Smoke nodded, and took the wire contract from him. “Thanks, Steve.” He turned to look at the cows as his drovers moved them into the pens. “When will the cars be here?”

  “Sometime this afternoon.”

  “That’s good. At least I won’t be eaten up by holding-pen charges.”

  “Speaking of which, I need to get over there and make certain all the pens are ready,” Steve said.

  “Smoke!” someone called to him as Steve was leaving, and looking up, Smoke saw Sheriff Carson approaching.