Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The three men rode about a half mile south along the river.
To their left, the rocky bluff quickly lost its height, and the snow-speckled ledge gave way to a slope of tall spruce trees that spilled down to the edge of the valley and extended upward into the foothills like a white-dusted blanket.
Clouds obscured the higher elevations of the forest, but Caleb had seen those peaks before and had no interest in them today.
None of them talked about what just happened. There was no need to. Caleb was angry though, for it was his nudge that got them involved in the first place.
Deciding that they’d had enough for the day, they set up camp at a good place near an icy creek. Leaving the horses to graze in the shelter of the conifer boughs, and the men built a fire and unpacked their bed rolls.
Caleb hoped the snow would ease up before morning, but no matter what the Colorado winter held in store for them, they needed to press on.
Before they even had time to start their supper of beans and bacon and coffee, the sound of an approaching rider’s voice had them all reaching for their guns.
“Don’t shoot me, dang it.” Bill Clark rode up to their camp and dismounted.
They all holstered their weapons, though no one extended a warm greeting.
“I know y’all are hot about what went on back there, but don’t blame me.” Clark looked at Caleb. “You know I don’t hold with boneheads like that. I just got to take them through these mountains. Then I can wash my hands of ’em.”
Caleb figured Bill Clark was about ten years older than him, and he was starting to show the wear of his years on the frontier.
He’d seen him in passing over the years—trapping beaver up by the Canadian border, leading would-be prospectors out to Montana, even selling “hunting rifles” to a camp of Cheyenne up on the North Fork of the Platte in Wyoming.
They’d only gotten to know each other well while both of them were scouting for the army in the Dakotas.
Caleb and Bill and Henry had shared a bottle or two, along with some adventures that nearly cost all three of them their hair.
But Caleb also knew the scout didn’t cotton to the narrowminded thinking of the homesteaders he was leading west.
Receiving a shrug from Duke, he gestured for Bill to have a seat at the fire.
“Well, thankee, fellas,” the scout said. Before joining them, he pulled a large package from his saddlebags. Something wrapped in a bloody cloth. Their eyes were all on him as he tossed it to Caleb.
“As a token of my esteem and gratitude to y’all, I brung you a nice piece of elk that I shot day before yesterday. I can’t stay and join you in eating it…I need to be getting back afore my employers think I lit out and left ’em. But I don’t feel much like sharing this meat with ’em.”
Caleb laid the package aside for their supper. “Where you headed with that bunch?”
“You know that river that runs into this here Arkansas about a half day’s ride north of here? It comes in from the west.”
“I know it. There’s a deserted tumble-down cabin up on the northern bank.”
“That’s the one. I’m taking them up there.”
Caleb thought about the route. “Some mountain passes up that way are tricky even in the summer months.”
Bill shrugged. “Yup. And if we make it through, we got Ute territory for quite a stretch.”
“You knew them Utes ain’t particularly happy these days. The so-called ‘Great White Father’ in Washington just tricked them out of more of their land.”
“Yup. If we get through there with our scalps, we got Mormon country next. And they ain’t never overly happy, period.”
“So why take ’em that way?” Caleb asked.
“That was their choice. They hired me in Pueblo, showed me their gold, and said that was the way they wanted to go. There wasn’t no holding ’em over till spring, neither.
Them boneheads think they got some divine angels or something keeping watch of them.
Hell, they didn’t even know you three was their angels when they saw you today. ”
Bass snorted. “Can’t speak for Marlowe, but Duke and me ain’t no angels, Bill.”
Ortiz nodded. “But it sounds like you gonna need them where you’re going.”
Clark jerked a thumb at Caleb. “This fella here can tell you about some spots we been in. One or two of ’em was so tight, you couldn’t fit even a thimble-sized angel in there with us. And we got out. Didn’t we, Marlowe?”
Caleb nodded.
“And speaking of the angels and such, how’s that devil Henry Jordan doing? Ever hear from him?”
“Yep, we went partners in a ranch straight north of here near Elkhorn. He’s doing fine. Same as always.” Caleb didn’t figure he needed to share anything about Henry’s time in the Denver jail.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered. Never saw neither of you fellas settling down to ranching.”
“Something new for both of us.”
Caleb surprised himself by smiling. A few months ago, he wouldn't have believed it either.
Now he had land, a half-finished ranch, a boy waiting for an answer, and a woman who'd somehow convinced him that settling down was exactly what was called for.
The scout pulled off his feathered hat and scratched his head. “So what are y’all doing out in all this sunshine and butterflies?”
Caleb made a point of not looking at Duke and Bass. He didn’t want Bill Clark attaching any blame to them. “Some rustlers took a herd belonging to me coming from Texas. Killed some men. We’re out looking for ’em.”
“How big a herd?”
“A thousand longhorns.”
“Where’d it happen?”
“North of Charlotte Falls,” Duke answered, clearly interested in gathering whatever information the scout might have.
Bill pulled his hat back on. “I believe I can help you fellas out with that. One good turn for another. I seen a herd of longhorns a day or two after we come out of Pueblo. They was heading east—going the wrong way, seemed to me—but we didn’t get close enough to find out no more.”
“How long ago was that?” Ortiz asked.
The scout stared into the fire, thinking about it. “Mebbe ten days ago.”
Damn. That herd was still more than a week ahead of them.
“Did you get close enough to see the fellas driving the herd?” Caleb asked. “Any idea how many?”
“I just said we didn’t get too close.” Bill scratched his chin.
“But there was one other strange thing to the business. They had extra fellas back with the drag riders. Like they was keeping watch. And they looked like they meant business. Wherever they was headed, they was pushing them critters hard to get there.”
For the first time, Caleb wondered if it was no accident that it was his herd that had been stolen.
He thought of everyone in Elkhorn that knew he and Henry had the longhorns coming up from Texas.
Practically everyone, from the judge on down.
The town was counting on them to supply meat for the coming year.
Duke said the rustlers were waiting for them. This route was off the Goodnight-Loving trail. If they were gunning for this herd, for Caleb’s cattle, they’d have an easy time of it, knowing where to attack.
The realization settled heavily on him. This wasn't just about cattle anymore. The herd represented everything he and Henry had been building. The ranch. The future.
Caleb looked out from beneath the boughs of the trees into the snowy gloom, impatient for the storm to die.
After Bill Clark went back to his wagon train, Duke and Caleb bedded the horses. Ortiz cut the meat into steaks and prepared the supper, roasting the elk over the fire to have with their beans and coffee.
Sitting around the fire later, Caleb thought about the road ahead, the snow, and the thankless reception they’d received from the travelers. The other two men had settled back against their saddles, coffee cups in hand, lost in their own ruminations.
Duke broke the silence. “Them steaks were mighty fine.”
“Nothing better than the feeling of being full,” Bass added.
“Almost nothing, amigo,” Ortiz joked, drawing a laugh. He waved his cup at Caleb. “That friend of yours, he’s okay. Wouldn’t mind running into him again.”
“But not the folks he’s taking west,” Caleb said.
Ortiz shrugged. “I see all kinds along the trail, and folks don’t deal with you the same. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it gets real ugly. But Bass here come from Louisiana. I reckon what I seen over the years ain’t nothing to what you been through.”
“I seen changes. I can tell you that,” Bass said. “I didn’t come to Texas till I was fourteen. Come with my older brother.”
Caleb hadn’t spent any time in Louisiana or any other states around it, but he’d heard some stories from other freed men who left the former Confederate states and moved west after the war.
“My folks was both slaves on a plantation in Union Parish, Louisiana. That’s where I was born and drug up.
The place was famous for breeding horses.
For racing and for farming, both. Till the war got bad.
” Bass turned his gaze into the flames. “The master lost three sons in the fighting, and it was almost like he blamed us for it. Things got much worse than before.”
He poured himself more coffee and set the pot back by the fire.
“After the Union come in and General Butler captured New Orleans, everything went crazy. My older brother Win went off one night and joined the 1st Louisiana Native Guard. I was too young to sign up. Anyways, when old General Lee surrendered, black folk was getting strung up all over the place. Win said that he didn’t believe things would ever be put right, so we talked to our folks about it. The next day, we started walking west.”
Caleb had walked away from everything he’d known too, but his situation—as bad as it was—was nothing compared to what this fella went through. “Must have been tough leaving them behind.”
Bass nodded. “It was, but there was nothing we could do for them or ourselves there, and my folks was too old and set to go anywhere. Still had little ones to feed too.”
“So, you walked all the way to Texas.”
“Yep. I was fourteen. When we got to Parker County, we both found work on a ranch that broke horses. We growed up with horses, and my brother had a special way with ’em.
For the first time in our lives, things was looking up.
We was never the same as the white cowboys on that ranch, but we had work and got paid decent wages.
And when we was out on the range, we was all the same, no matter a man’s color. ”
“Unless you was Mexican,” Ortiz put in.
“I reckon that’s right, Duke.”
“Tell Marlowe how you come to work for me.”
“And you said you and your brother was working together,” Caleb said.
“Yup. Like I said, Win had a way with them horses, especially the wildest ones. He made a real name for hisself.” Bass took a deep breath. “Till he got stomped by one.”
Caleb glanced at Ortiz, who frowned and nodded. He must have known this.
“We was in Texas six years when he died, and I didn’t want to work breaking horses no more.
So I got me a job on a cattle ranch, but I found out there was better money driving them critters north.
Life on the trail was mostly pretty good, if you can get used to the snow and the damn cold.
And, as far as folks go, there’s a few places way up at the northern end that I wouldn’t mind never seeing again.
Anyways, after a couple years on the trail, I signed on with Duke. ”
“And he never got treated so good or paid so fair, so he stayed.” Duke laughed and slapped Bass on the knee. “Ain’t that the truth?”
“Sure is.” Bass turned to Caleb. “Them homesteaders don’t mean nothing to me. Not after all I seen. But if your friend gets fed up and decides to leave ’em up in one of them mountain passes, I ain’t about to lose no sleep over it.”
They all listened for a while to the crackle of the fire and the wind sighing in the trees until Duke broke the silence.
“And then, you got me. Folks come and go. Governments rise and fall. And, all the while, my family been on the same land for over two hundred years…and the so-called ‘Texans’ still treat us like dirt.”
“You showed me that land grant your family got,” Caleb put in. “All in Spanish with wax seals and stamps and ribbons and all.”
“And we still had to fight to keep our ranch.”
Caleb knew a few things about the Mexicans in Texas.
The old landowners changed from being Spanish to Mexican to American in only about twenty years…
and never had to move an inch. First, they stopped being Spanish when Mexico declared its independence from Spain.
Later, after Santa Ana gave up the war against the US and they all signed the Treaty of Hidalgo, that made them Americans.
But afterwards, regardless of what they owned, they were treated like defeated foes.
A lot of them, rather than putting up with the abuse, just up and went to Mexico, leaving everything they owned behind. Duke Ortiz’s family stayed.
“You’re a good man, Duke, and you done good with what is yours.”
Ortiz nodded and pulled at his red silk bandana.
“I wear this to honor my heritage, but my father and his men were the last of the true vaqueros. It was from them that the white newcomers learned to handle the longhorns that roamed free across the land. Without the knowledge of the Mexican hacendados, there would be no cattle trails north. The Americans in the East would be eating only chickens and pigs.”
Caleb nodded. Listening to Bass and Duke, he was reminded that a man’s worth had precious little to do with where he came from, the color of his skin, or the language his parents spoke.
The best men he knew came from all over creation. Old Jake. Henry. Duke. Bass. Doc Burnett.
A strange collection of souls, maybe. But he'd trust any of them with his life.
And when he thought about the kind of place he wanted the ranch to become, he found himself thinking about that more and more.
A place where a man was judged by his character and his actions. A place where a boy like Paddy could belong. A place where no one had to prove their worth before being welcomed to the table.
The wind stirred the spruce boughs overhead.
“That’s why I am here in the snow with you, Marlowe. It’s a matter of my family’s honor—and the honor of those men I lost—that I make good on our deal.”
Caleb squeezed Duke’s arm.
“And at dawn tomorrow, my friend, we go after the low-down bushwhackers that took the herd.”