CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The storm blew itself out around three in the morning, and the stars became visible, the moon as round and bright as a new coin. The dust had settled and the air had been scrubbed clean, and out in the long grass the coyotes rose, shook themselves off, and yipped their hunger.
The sudden silence woke Ernie “Shorty” Key who’d been sleeping in Pete Doan’s back room. Shorty rode for the Mustang Ranch and was a top hand, but he kept right poorly, or so he imagined, and had been in town to buy a supply of Doyle’s Dixie Tonic that always made him feel better. Considering the medicine was 90 percent alcohol, that wasn’t too surprising, but Shorty swore by the stuff and would accept no substitute.
Despite complaining about the state of his health to all who would listen, Shorty Key was by nature a happy-go-lucky puncher who had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dirty stories about whores, brothels, madams, and preachers. But as he began the four-mile ride to the Mustang, he was seething with a fire-hot rage, incensed beyond measure, his fury painfully eating at him like a cancer. Shorty Key had never drawn down on a man in his twenty-three years of life, but that starry morning he was ready to kill.
Chance Hurd.
The name burned into his brain like a cherry-red branding iron.
Chance Hurd.
The two-gun braggart and bully who lorded it over the unarmed cowboys who came into town on Friday nights. The damned monster who’d dabbled his dirty paws in the blood of big Tom Calthrop and his family. The piece of human filth was now locked up in a cell in Thunder Creek and according to the townsfolk boasting that a judge would never convict him for being in cahoots with the outlaw Clay Kyle and having a hand in the Calthrop massacre.
Mike Sweet the blacksmith had told Shorty how Deputy Sheriff Dan Caine, a well-liked and respected young lawman, had turned vigilante and tracked Kyle to the Sierra del Carmen Mountains in Old Mexico where he’d destroyed him and his murderous gang.
“Hurd accused Caine of telling a pack of lies about Kyle,” Sweet said. “But my daughter rode with Dan, and she doesn’t lie.”
Cowboy loyalties went deep, all the way to bedrock, and Tom Calthrop was a highly respected cattleman who had a reputation as a rancher who treated his punchers well and stood by his word. Such a man was worth avenging, and Shorty figured that’s how the Mustang punchers would feel.
* * *
Shorty Key rode onto the Mustang an hour before sunup, and the hands were still snoring in the bunkhouse. He had no need to wake them. His news could wait until the coffee was saucered and blowed and they were prepared to listen.
Shorty stripped his pony, brushed him down, and then made his way to the cookhouse. The cook’s name was Idaho Barnes and the word around the ranch was that he never slept. An intuitive man, Barnes seldom initiated a conversation with a puncher in the morning when the average hand was as sparing of words as a rich young widow at her ancient husband’s funeral.
The cook stepped out of his kitchen, tossed away a basin of soapy water, and saw Shorty coming from the barn. He had a cup of coffee ready when the little puncher stepped inside and said his howdy.
After Shorty worked on his coffee and then built and lit a cigarette, he said, “I got news from town.”
Barnes was surprised. He handed Shorty a warm biscuit and said, “I never knowed Thunder Creek to make any news.”
Shorty wiped crumbs off his mustache and said, “Big news.”
Bacon sputtered in the pan, beans simmered in a cast iron Dutch oven, and coffee biled. The cookhouse was very hot, like an annex of hell.
“It’s about Sheriff Hurd,” Shorty said.
“What now? Did he shoot somebody?” Barnes said.
“In a manner of speakin’ . . . yes,” Shorty said.
Barnes used a dishrag to lift the lid of the Dutch oven, stirred his beans with a wooden spoon, and then said, “Spill, Shorty.”
“I was gonna wait until the boys have et.”
“Then wait.”
“Hell, I reckon I can tell you first, Mr. Barnes, you being the cook an’ all.”
“I reckon you can, me being the cook an’ all.”
And Shorty told him.
Barnes seemed to take the news in stride, silently fussing over his breakfast vittles, not looking at Shorty. Then he took a deep breath as though he suddenly needed air and said, “One time I worked as a trail cook for Charlie Goodnight and he loaned me out to Tom Calthrop for one drive, repaying a favor. Big Tom was a gentleman, a kind man, always making jokes and laughing, and he’d talk forever about his young’uns, the funny things they done and said and about how proud he was of them, stuff like that. You know that trail cooks like nobody?”
“Yeah, I heard that,” Shorty said, being diplomatic.
“Well, I liked Tom Calthrop. I liked him a lot.”
Barnes busied himself with his cooking, his talking done for now, but his wide, florid face wrinkled in thought. Shorty took the hint and stepped outside with his coffee, smoking cigarettes, waiting for the hands to stir. The long night slowly brightened into morning, and the sky was aflame, burning away the stars.
As men coughed and stumbled into the bunkhouse Shorty said finally, “Mr. Barnes, every puncher from miles around will be in the courthouse when Hurd goes on trial, depend on that.”
The cook’s silence finally erupted into noisy anger. “What trial?”
“The Hurd trial,” Shorty said.
“And see that damned lowlife walk out the door a free man, arm in arm with a fast-talking lawyer?” Barnes said. Shorty couldn’t come up with an answer and the cook said, “There ain’t gonna be a trial.”
“But . . . but Hurd’s in jail,” Shorty said.
“I know where he is,” Barnes said.
“But a circuit judge will . . .”
“I said there won’t be a trial. If what you’ve told me is right, Hurd is as guilty as hell. And that don’t surprise me none. I always took him for a snake.”
“I said it how it is,” Shorty said. Then it slowly dawned on him. “Mr. Barnes . . . no trial. Are you talking vigilantes?”
Barnes said, “I’m talking justice . . . justice for Tom Calthrop and his family. Yeah, we’ll become vigilantes if that’s what it takes.”
* * *
Eight Mustang hands with their foreman, a hard-eyed, dour man named Burt Wells who numbered among his friends the equally morose Frank James, gathered in the cookhouse to eat breakfast. It was there that Shorty Key lit the fire and Idaho Barnes fanned the flames of cowboy wrath.
Wells slammed his fist on the dining table so hard the salt and pepper shakers jumped, and said, “I always knew there was something crooked about Chance Hurd. He was always a damned bully who talked big until he faced somebody a sight meaner than himself. Then he backed down pretty damn fast.”
“Burt, remember that night at Doan’s when Hurd got drunk and waved a revolver around and said he planned on killing a cowboy for breakfast?” a young puncher said. “You put the crawl on him.”
“Yeah, I recollect,” Wells said.
“You told him to get to using the Colt or put it back in the scabbard, pronto!” the puncher said. “He said he was only funning and holstered that gun mighty quick.”
“All gurgle and no guts. He’s yellow,” Wells said.
Idaho Barnes wanted the hands to stay focused on the Calthrop killings. He needed a hanging mob, not just a bunch of riled-up cowboys.
“Hurd said if he’s charged with having a hand in the Calthrop family massacre, he’ll walk free from the court,” Barnes said. “He’s telling everybody in Thunder Creek that they can’t convict him because they don’t have a shred of proof. He says Deputy Caine is spreading lies about him.”
As Cornelius Massey later wrote in his newspaper, two things conspired to seal Chance Hurd’s fate that morning: Dan Caine was liked by both ranchers and punchers while Hurd was universally detested. And secondly, there’s a thin, fragile line between an angry crowd and a mob.
It was Friday, pay day. The night punchers from the surrounding ranches crowded into Doan’s store to drink their wages. Idaho Barnes had experienced out-of-control mobs before and he knew they were easily led. Raw whiskey was kerosene thrown on a fire of cowboy resentment of Chance Hurd . . . and the resulting blaze of hatred and madness would consume them.