Unexpectedly, I found my suspicions confirmed—or at least supported—the next morning, when the door to the freight office opened away from my hand and I was face to face once again with Fielo, who hesitated, raised and lowered his hand-me-down silk hat, and stepped past me onto the boardwalk. There were any number of reasons why the manservant of a busy ranch owner would have business with a stagecoach line, but I was satisfied that he’d just posted a letter to Denver on Freemason’s behalf to test Brother Bernard’s story.
It was Monday and a coach stood ready before the door. That meant a waiting line inside and I joined it. Luther Cherry, looking every bit the scarecrow I’d met during the trip from Wichita Falls, in a morning coat plastered with lint and stray hairs, stood at the head of the line, arguing with the friendly clerk behind the counter.
“Four-fifty just to carry a letter to St. Louis? I might as well pay a little more and deliver it in person.”
“I’m sorry, sir; that’s the special delivery rate. Undoubtedly it will come down after they string a telegraph line from Wichita Falls. It always does—competition, you understand. But that won’t happen until after the railroad comes through.”
“Until which time, Wells, Fargo will behave as arrogantly as any of the Eastern trusts. My God, I could buy a decent suit of clothes and pocket fifty cents!”
Clearly this invited a suggestion, but being affable by nature the clerk made another. “Regular delivery is two dollars, if you don’t mind it taking an extra day or so.”
“That won’t do.” Muttering to himself, the lawyer produced four banknotes from a lank wallet and laid them on the counter, then snapped open a Scotchman’s coin purse and placed a twenty-five-cent piece, two dimes, and a nickel on top of them. The man behind the counter transferred them to a cash box, stamped a postmark on a long envelope in front of him, and poked it into a pigeonhole at his elbow.
On his way to the door, Cherry, grumbling still, nearly passed me without looking up.
“Life in the wilderness is not as reasonably priced as it was centuries ago, Mr. Cherry,” I said.
“Indeed it is not, friend.” He recognized me then and halted. “Good morning, Brother. I worked late Saturday night and overslept the next day, missing your sermon. I heard it brought down the house.”
“Hardly that, but the reception was most kind.”
“I’m sorry you overheard that altercation. I miss my wife, but if I continue to communicate with her at these rates I won’t be able to afford her fare.” He glanced down at
the envelope in my hand. “I hope your people are patient. The Overland is no place for a man sworn to poverty.”
“Fortunately, I made a new friend in Wichita Falls. The collection plate won’t suffer mortally.”
He was only half listening, preoccupied with the hands of his nicked watch. Presently he apologized for the demands of his workload, said good-bye, and took his leave.
When my turn came I handed the clerk my letter to Mr. J. Smith and paid its freight from the loose change in my pocket. He bent my ear over the excellence of the Sunday services until the people behind me began to clear their throats and shuffle their feet. A man tipped his hat and a woman dipped her chin as I walked past. I touched my brim to both. I understood then, a little, about the seductive nature of the Call. Edwin Booth was no more celebrated a figure on the streets of Chicago and San Francisco than a minister in a desert settlement.
Dawn comes early in flat country. I’d just entered the church Tuesday, carrying my second cup of cowboy coffee (paint stirrer required) when the creak of a harness drew me to the door. A Brewster-green Stanhope stood on red wheels beside the boardwalk, hitched to a round-bottomed sorrel with the shoulders of a Percheron; and good job, because it was pulling two passengers already.
Freemason, in a duster and flat-brimmed Stetson, sat holding the lines behind Luther Cherry. Today the sad-faced lawyer wore a straw hat and sturdy tweeds, out at the elbows but a happier union than his town coat. He clutched a battered
leather briefcase on his lap and held down his flapping hat with his other hand against a mild forty-mile-an-hour wind. As I climbed aboard, he pressed in close to the driver to make room on a seat properly built for two.
“Another good morning to you, Brother,” he said. “I apologize for the close quarters. I had a question about the boundaries, and Mr. Freemason was gracious enough to invite me to the ranch to see them for myself. No doubt you’re growing tired of me by now.”
He was a drab companion, and I’ve never warmed to skinflints, but I protested the opposite. Surreptiously I wedged my arm between us to keep him from pressing against the revolver in its scabbard. I didn’t want to take the chance of Mrs. McIlvaine finding it in the parsonage, and in any case I wasn’t about to venture into open country unarmed.
Freemason measured out a smile of contrition. “I yielded to an impulse. The cabriolet is at the ranch, and all the twoseaters are out on hire from the livery. I had this rig built to my order, so it’s sound, and Bess is accustomed to hauling furniture in tandem, but by the time we cross the river I fear we’ll be on rather more intimate terms with one another than we bargained for.”
I said, “I don’t mind. Mr. Cherry’s presence shortened my journey here.”
“A fine piece of fortune,” said the sheepman. “I engaged both of you sight unseen, on the strength of my judge of character. Cherry clerked in the St. Louis firm that handled most of my transactions. When he passed the bar with applied study in real property, I retained him immediately. The man’s knowledge is worth ten miles of fence.”
The lawyer laughed. “If I may speak for Brother Bernard as well as for myself, it’s handy there’s just the one seat. You might otherwise have been tempted to bring along our friend the wire drummer, and expose us all to an exhaustive lecture on the relative merits of Glidden versus Reynolds, and whether Sunderland’s Kink is as effective a deterrent as the Brink Twist.”
“I’ve had my life’s portion of those fellows.” Our host released the brake and gave the lines a flip; Bess rolled her haunches and we were in motion. “They make no distinction between the walrus hide of a bull and the tender membrane of a ewe. Great patches of scar tissue are as devastating to the harvest of wool as blight to corn. Barbs are designed to contain cattle, dumb brutes that wander away from sure feed to graze on dead thistle in the desert. A week-old lamb knows better than that. No doubt Bo Peep abused her flock.” No hint of a smile cracked his countenance.
I changed hands on my hat and shouted across the wind. “If you don’t mind my asking, why, then, did you lobby so hard to strengthen the fence-cutting law?”
“Not to keep sheep in, you can be sure of that. I fought for it in order to keep the damn cattlemen out.”
At length we crossed Wild Horse Creek at a point where deep ruts left by other vehicles marked the ford. The waters had just begun to recede from the spring runoff, and lapped at our hubs. When we rolled up the bank on the other side, the big mare shrugged, sprinkling us all. “A second baptism,” offered Cherry.
For a mile or so we rode alongside four strands of wire strung between crazy crooked scrubwood posts that any
rancher in good timberland would have scorned in favor of straight pine or cedar, while the tough short stubble of buffalo grass gradually gave ground to a lush expanse of bluestem nearly three feet high, ideal for grazing. Freemason had chosen his location well. The relentless wind combed the tops in hypnotic waves, like the pattern on the surface of an inland ocean. I directed my gaze away from it toward the level horizon to keep from becoming drunk on the sight. The grasses of the High Plains are proof that you can get seasick on dry land.
I spotted the horse and man in the road first, just ahead of the rancher, who stiffened at the sight. The man was out of the saddle and kneeling near the fence in the attitude of cutting the wire. Freemason leaned forward and drew a brass-receiver Winchester from the footboards at the base of the seat onto his lap. This alerted Cherry.
“What a place to come bang up,” he said. “It’s lucky for him we happened along.”
Trust a lawyer to size up a situation at one glance. I could see then that the man was too far from the fence to threaten it. At first I thought his horse had thrown a shoe, but as we drew near I saw that the man down on one knee with his back turned toward us was scraping at its right forefoot with a knife, paring the hoof or prying at a stone or some other object that had gotten wedged inside the iron. Our host relaxed, loosening his grip on the pistol stock of the repeater.
“Need help, friend?” he called out.
The man spun on his knee without rising, cocking and leveling a long-barreled Colt at Freemason across the crook of his right arm. He wore a gray hat, range flannels, and a blue bandanna that covered the lower half of his face.
My reflexes were a split second faster than the rancher’s; my hand made an entirely involuntary move toward the revolver under my coat, but I stopped it through sheer force of will before it had covered a half inch. The masked man was concentrating on Freemason, who snatched at the carbine across his lap. The Colt flamed and something struck a post holding up the Stanhope’s canvas roof. Freemason abandoned the Winchester to seize the lines and calm Bess.
The report seemed to serve double duty as a signal. From the fence and road, the grass-covered ground sloped gently toward the river, forming a shaggy apron some thirty feet wide between hardpack and water. In one smooth motion, a handful of horses scrambled to their feet, seeming to rise from the earth itself as if on hinges and levitating riders into their saddles.
I was more impressed than frightened. It takes more than just good horsemanship to keep eight hundred pounds of nervous animal down on its side without snorting or tossing a head or a tail; two hands are hardly enough to keep it calm and its nostrils covered and man and horse hidden in grass not much more than knee high, and simple athletic ability alone won’t let him rise with it, slipping one foot into the stirrup and swinging the other leg over its back in the same movement, man and beast uniting as one. It was like something out of Revelation:
The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within …
Only there were five beasts, clad in pale dusters, gray hats, and blue bandannas, and when the man in the road swung aboard his horse, the muzzle of his revolver remaining on point like the needle of a compass, we faced six armed men, the others kneeing their mounts forward until they formed a half circle about us with weapons in hand.
A sharp double-clack rang out across the wind, and I turned my head as a seventh rider cantered our way from Freemason’s property on the other side of the fence with a fresh round levered into a Spencer rifle. He wore the uniform of the pack, a strip of tanned and weathered face showing between the top of his bandanna and the brim of his hat.
“What does the Good Book say about seven angels?” Cherry asked me in a low voice.
“These aren’t angels.”
Ten yards from the fence, the newcomer shouted and smacked his reins across his horse’s withers, breaking it into gallop. It closed the distance in seconds and left the earth with no more apparent effort than a balloon rising, clearing the top strand of wire with inches to spare and braking to a halt short of the road, forelegs stiff and its rider leaning back on the reins, the repeater cradled along his right forearm.
Cherry did a foolish thing. Startled by the feat of athletic horsemanship and the thud of the landing, he shifted on the seat and his briefcase slid from his lap. He lunged to catch it. The Spencer bellowed and there was one less lawyer in Texas.