Burning Read online

He walked over to the bodies that were sprawled outside the bunkhouse and placed a flower on each of them—flowers that came from Maria’s funeral bouquet.

  He climbed on his horse, whistled shrilly for Dog to follow him, and rode off to the west without ever going back to the home he’d fashioned on the banks of a creek in New Mexico. He’d been drifting ever since.

  * * *

  Frank stopped his musings as a couple of men rode up to his fence and reined up. Pete Dancer and Zack Spence swung down from the saddle and looked at Frank.

  “Howdy, boys,” Frank greeted the pair of gunslicks. “Come on in. Coffee’s on the stove.”

  “Friendly of you, Morgan,” Zack said, pushing open the gate.

  The men stepped into the yard and Dancer nodded at Frank. “Afternoon, Morgan.”

  “Pete. You passin’ through or hirin’ on?”

  “I work for the Diamond, Frank. Me and Zack both.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “I hate to see anyone get tangled up in a nasty range war.”

  “And you’re not tangled up in this one?” Dancer asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You really believe that, Frank?” Zack asked.

  Frank busied himself for a moment rolling a cigarette before replying. Popping a match into flame with his thumbnail, he said, “I bought a little farm, boys. I’ve got people working the crops on shares. I’m not bothering a soul by living here. I want to be a good neighbor. But if I’m pushed, I’ll push back.”

  “We’re not here to push you, Frank,” Dancer said.

  “Who sent you to see me?”

  “Nobody,” Zack said. “We was on our way into town and seen you sittin’ out here. In case you done forgot your directions, the Diamond spread is yonder way.” He pointed. “This is just one way into town.”

  Frank’s smile came and went very quickly. “So it looks like I’m in the middle of the two spreads.”

  “Shore looks like it, Frank,” Dancer said.

  “That might put me in a bad position if push comes to shove.”

  “It might, Frank,” Zack agreed. “Was I you, I’d consider sellin’ out. I’d bet that the Diamond or the GP spread would give you a right nice price for this land was you to ask.”

  “And if you were me, you’d sell out?”

  “I’d give it some serious thought. I shore would.”

  Frank looked at first Zack, then at Dancer. “No deal, boys. I like it right here.”

  The two hired guns finished their coffee and set the cups on the bench. “You been warned, Frank,” Dancer said.

  “Indeed I have.”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” Zack said.

  “Don’t mention it”

  “We’ll be goin’ now,” Dancer said. “I reckon we’ll see you around now and then.”

  “Count on it, boys.”

  “We ain’t got nothin’ agin you, Frank,” Zack told him. “This here war ain’t nothin’ personal.”

  “That’s nice to know.”

  “You takin’ all this mighty calm, Frank,” Dancer told him. “’Tween the Diamond and the GP, they’s about fifty or sixty men ready to fight at the drop of a hat. I’d give that some thought was I you.”

  “If nobody sent you boys, why are you telling me this?” Frank asked.

  “’Cause you one of us, Frank,” Zack replied.

  “One of you?” Frank said softly.

  “You know what we mean,” Dancer said. “You been gunslingin’ for a long time.”

  “But I never hired my gun, Pete.” Frank stood up quickly, and both men backed up, their hands instinctively dropping to the butts of their guns. Frank smiled. “You boys are sure jumpy.”

  The men relaxed, Zack saying, “You know how it is, Frank.”

  “Do I, Zack?”

  “You takin’ sides in this fracas, ain’t you, Frank?”

  “Only if I’m pushed.”

  “Frank,” Dancer said, “I’m tellin’ you, if you stay here, you’re gonna be in the middle of this thing. The big creek runs right through your property.”

  “That’s nice, Pete. I might decide to go swimmin’ from time to time.”

  Dancer shook his head. “You’re actin’ the fool, Frank. That ain’t like you. Man, you don’t want no part of this here war.”

  “You boys want some more coffee?” Frank asked.

  Both gunmen shook their heads. They glanced at each other and without another word, turned and walked out of the yard and mounted up, riding away.

  “I have been warned,” Frank said to Dog, who had been lying in the shade near the corner of the house. “I guess I have officially taken a side.” Frank stood up and hitched up his gun belt. “All right. So be it.”

  He moved into the house and picked up the tools and nails. Might as well get some fences fixed up while I got the chance, he thought. He took the coffee off the stove, figuring he’d had the last of the visitors for the day, and walked out the door toward the corral, intending to start there.

  Six

  Frank slept well that night and was up before dawn, as was his custom. He washed his face and put water on to boil for coffee. He let Dog out to run the yard and do his business. The predawn was chilly, but the heat from the woodstove in the kitchen would warm the house sufficiently. He lit a couple of lamps in the living area and brightened up the house. The coffee ready, Frank poured a mug and took a chair at the table. He sweetened his coffee and then rolled a cigarette. After a cigarette, Frank got out the skillet, sliced some bacon, and laid out the thick strips to fry. He sliced some bread and laid that aside. He got ajar of jam out of the cupboard and put that on the table. The bacon sizzling in the skillet was making his mouth water. Dog scratched at the door, and Frank let him in.

  His breakfast ready, Frank laid a strip of bacon on a thick piece of bread, sopped the bread in the grease, and gave the sandwich to Dog. The big cur took the snack, went to his corner of the living area, and ate his breakfast. He would not bother Frank at the table for food again.

  Just after dawn, Frank began a walking tour of his newly purchased land, Dog padding along silently beside him. The land was rich and fertile; Frank could smell the strength of the newly plowed and planted earth. Standing on the bank of the creek, gazing down at the flowing waters, Frank could understand fully why the ranchers wanted to regain control of this land. But he also knew that times were changing all over America. The nation was growing and the people needed food, food that came from the earth as well as food on the hoof.

  The farmers and the ranchers were going to have to learn to coexist, but Frank knew that blood was going to be spilled and men were going to die before that happened. But it would happen. It would happen even if federal troops had to be brought in to enforce it. And that had happened before.

  Gazing across the creek, Frank watched a few head of cattle grazing peacefully in the distance, on ranch land. Frank wasn’t sure whose land. They were too far away for him to read the brands. Frank walked back to the house and saddled Stormy. He did not lock the house. If someone was hungry, they could help themselves to food. That was the way it was in the West.

  “You stay here and stay close,” he told Dog, swinging into the saddle. “And behave yourself.”

  Dog trotted back into the small barn and lay down. He lay with his head facing the door to the barn, and woe to anyone who entered who wasn’t known by the cur to be a friend.

  Frank headed out. He was determined to meet as many of his farmer neighbors as he could this day.

  The first house he came to on the road was that of Claude and Mavis Hornsby. They greeted him warmly and invited him in for coffee and conversation.

  “Did two gunmen come to see you yesterday?” Claude asked, again mispronouncing the term.

  Frank smiled. “Yes. Pete Dancer and Zack Spence. I was warned not to take sides in this range war.”

  “They used the term war?” Mavis asked, worry lines a
ppearing on her face, tanned from days in the sun working beside her husband.

  “Yes, Mavis, they did.”

  “I guess it’s all out in the open now,” Claude said.

  “Go armed at all times,” Frank told the settlers. “Short gun and rifle. If you don’t have weapons, I’ll get them for you.”

  “You’d do that for us?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re a very complicated man, Mr. Morgan,” Mavis opined. “I just don’t understand you at all.”

  Frank smiled that away without comment. “Have you met the new settlers yet?”

  “Yes,” Claude said. “Four families. They filed on sections west of here. Down at the end of the last valley.”

  “Good folks?”

  “They sure seem to be. They’re all from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Came out here to get a fresh start. They’re all in their early thirties. With young kids.”

  Mavis refilled Frank’s coffee cup and with a smile, pushed the sugar bowl across the table toward him.

  “When we finish our coffee, I’ll saddle up and we’ll ride together,” said Claude. “We’ll spend the rest of the day visiting every farm family we can. Those we miss, we’ll see tomorrow.”

  “I appreciate that, Claude. If we’re going to win this fight, the first thing we have to do is get organized.”

  “No point in my packing you a lunch,” Mavis said. “You’ll be invited to noon by somebody.”

  Frank smiled, Mavis noticing that the humor did not reach his pale eyes. They remained unemotional. A dangerous man, she thought. A very dangerous man. “Take your pistol,” she told her husband. “I’ll keep the rifle here with me.”

  * * *

  The next house belonged to Dan and Lucille Jones. Frank and Claude were greeted warmly and invited in for coffee and conversation. Lucille had just baked bread and the smell was tantalizing.

  “Got fresh-churned butter and some good jam,” she told the men.

  How could they refuse?

  While Lucille slathered butter and jam on her homemade bread, Frank began to tell Dan Jones why he and Claude had ridden out to visit. At Frank’s mention of the words “range war,” Dan frowned and glanced over at his wife. Lucille’s face flushed, but she kept her eyes on the bread she was preparing for her guests.

  Frank noticed the look on Dan’s face. “I can see that the thought of fighting in a range war bothers you some, Dan.”

  Dan pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “It ain’t that, Mr. Morgan,” he said in a low voice.

  “Please,” Frank said, holding up his hand. “Call me Frank.”

  “All right, Frank,” Dan said. “Like I said, it ain’t that Ma and me are afraid to fight to defend our land in a range war. It’s just that we been through all this before.”

  “Oh?’

  Dan paused while Lucille moved to the table and handed Frank and Claude plates with thick slices of warm bread covered with melted butter and fresh strawberry jam and two mugs of steaming coffee.

  While the men dug in, Dan told his story.

  “Ma and me had this little hardscrabble farm over in Missouri a few years back. It wasn’t much, just a few dozen acres, but the land was good and we were happy. We’d started our family and had two kids, a boy named Daniel after me and a little girl name Francis after Lucille’s mama.”

  Frank glanced around the small house as Dan talked, and he noticed there were no signs of children in the place, no toys or small clothes or any other indication of anyone living there other than Dan and Lucille.

  “Well,” Dan continued, “we had this pond on our place that was fed by an artesian well, so it never went dry, no matter how bad a drought we was having. That’s what started all the problems.”

  Claude nodded. “Other farmers wantin’ your water?” he asked.

  “No,” Dan answered. “The railroad. Seems a group of real important businessmen in the nearest town had talked the railroad into building a line that would go near my place. Trouble is, there weren’t no good rivers or streams nearby where they could get water for their steam engines. After lookin’ around a bit, they approached Ma and me to sell them the rights to our water and to let them build the tracks through our property.”

  He glanced at Lucille, and took her hand when he saw her eyes were full of tears at the memories he was dredging up. “Anyway,” he continued, “when I told them no, they got these Pinkerton detectives to start harassin’ us.”

  “What’d they do?” Frank asked, though he had a pretty good idea, having seen the Pinkertons at work before.

  “Oh, the usual things,” Dan answered. “They’d burn our crops, tear down our fences, scatter our few head of cattle.” He shook his head. “It got so bad, I was afraid to let Ma go into town by herself.”

  “Did you finally give up and sell to ’em?” Claude asked.

  Dan’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “Not then. But when I wouldn’t give in to ’em, they waited until Ma and me were out at the barn doing our milking one mornin’ an’ they set the house on fire.”

  Lucille, unable to stand any more, sobbed, got up from the table, and left the room.

  Dan’s eyes followed her as he continued his story. “I really don’t think they meant to kill us, but our two children were still in the house and must’ve gotten trapped, ’cause they never made it outta the place ’fore it burned to the ground.”

  Frank reached across the table and put his hand on Dan’s arm. “I’m sorry, Dan,” he said, knowing the death of a man’s children was one of the worst things that could happen to someone.

  “Well, after we buried ’em, we just packed up an’ left. Neither Ma nor me had the heart to stay in the place after that.” His eyes raised to look into Frank’s and Claude’s. “Now, we’re set up here, an’ there ain’t nobody gonna make us run again.”

  Frank smiled grimly. “That’s the spirit.”

  He and Claude went over the precautions Dan and Lucille would have to take, and then they thanked Lucille for her hospitality and rode on toward the next farm down the road.

  “We’re not going to be able to eat any lunch,” Frank said, riding away after talking with the Jones.

  “I’m so full I’m about to pop,” Claude said.

  “It’s not that for me,” Frank said. “It’s the story Dan told us about the Pinkertons. It plumb ruined my appetite. Whenever I think I’ve heard just about the worst thing people can do to one another, someone always manages to show me something even more terrible.”

  “But we’ll have to eat something if we’re invited,” Claude said. “You know that.”

  “Yes. It would be an insult not to. But coffee only at the next house,” Frank said, rubbing his sour stomach.

  “Agreed.”

  And a thick slice of apple pie, as it turned out. Jessica Watson had just baked several pies, fresh and hot out of the oven, and she insisted the men try some.

  How could they refuse? To do so would not be neighborly.

  After a few minutes of eating pie and talking with Hugh Watson, the men climbed into the saddle—with an effort and a grunt—and rode on to visit the next home.

  “This has got to stop,” Frank said, stifling a belch. “I’m stuffed.”

  “Me too,” Claude said. “But we might be in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Edna Roykin makes the best stew you ever put in your mouth. She adds a lot of spices to it.”

  “I couldn’t eat another bite,” Frank said.

  But he did manage a small bowl of stew. And another cup of coffee. And, at Edna’s insistence, a piece of fresh-baked cake.

  “Good God!” Frank said, riding away after chatting with Pat and Edna Roykin. “I think I’m going to die.”

  “We might be in luck,” Claude said.

  “About what?”

  “Callie Hastings is just about the worst cook in the county. Burl fixes most of the meals.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all morning
.”

  When they rode up to the Hastings farmhouse, they found Burl Hastings hoeing some weeds in the small vegetable garden at the side of the house. He looked up and grinned at Claude as he sleeved sweat off his forehead and leaned on his hoe, obviously glad for an excuse to stop work for a spell. “Howdy, Claude. How’re you doin’?” he called.

  “Just fine, Burl. And you?” Claude answered as he and Frank climbed down off their mounts.

  “Can’t complain, I guess,” Hastings said.

  “I wonder if we might come in and talk to you about something very important,” Claude said.

  “Of course. Come on in and set a spell,” Hastings said.

  As they entered the house, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Can I offer you boys somethin’ to eat?” He looked around. “Callie ought’a have dinner ’bout ready soon.”

  “No,” Claude said quickly. “We really can’t stay that long, Burl,” he added as an excuse not to partake of the infamous Callie’s cooking.

  Burl smiled and winked, knowing what Claude meant. “I really can’t say as I blame you, son,” he said good-naturedly.

  Callie Hastings appeared from another room, and Frank could see why Burl Hastings stayed married to a woman acknowledged as the worst cook in the county—she was beautiful. She had long, flowing hair the color of corn silk, eyes that were as blue as the sky, and the kind of a figure men dream about on lonely nights under the stars.

  She was holding a small swatch of material that was obviously a quilt in the making.

  “Hello, Claude,” she said in a low, husky voice.

  “Howdy, Mrs. Hastings,” Claude said, quickly taking his hat off and giving a slight bow of his head.

  “Callie’s a right fine seamstress,” Burl said with pride, his eyes aglow with love for his wife.

  “Can I offer you gentlemen a cup of coffee, or some cold lemonade?” she asked, putting her quilting aside and moving toward the kitchen.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Frank said, smiling. “We just want to have a few words with you and your husband and then we’ll be on our way.”

  They sat in the main room of the cabin and told Burl and Callie why they’d come and what the couple had to do to protect themselves. Burl asked few questions, and indicated that he would fight with the other farmers if it came to that.