“HEAR ME GOOD and keep this in mind all the time we’re in there, boy!” Waggles Harrison growled as Counselor Edward Sutherland was leading him and his two Wedge companions toward the front entrance of the Arizona State Saloon. “We all know as how Texas is the biggest and best damned place in the whole wide world and there’re no cowhands anyplace as good as us Texans. Only, don’t you go telling it when we get in there. We’re just taking a couple of beers afore we start back for the herd and don’t want to get into a fuss.”
Reading the name of the establishment, the sign for which was lit by a couple of lanterns, the segundo of the Wedge had commented that the selection struck him as being a mite premature. Admitting that this was the case, the lawyer replied that the owner, Angus McTavish, was living up to the Scottish reputation for being “canny with the bawbees,” since he knew the choice would not need alteration when that status within the Union was achieved.
While talking, having studied the number of cow ponies standing hip-shot and fastened to the hitching rail outside the building and its closed neighbors—their own had to be left across the street after being led from Sutherland’s home, regardless of every cowhand’s hatred for walking when it was possible to ride—Waggles had decided that the caution he had given was called for.
“I’ll mind it good, Pappy,” Thorny Bush promised.
“You’d better, boy,” the mournful-featured older cowhand warned in a doleful tone of voice that seemed to quaver with anxiety. “’Cause I’m a man of peace and don’t never take to having it spoiled by trouble ’n’ fussing.”
“My daddy allus told me you was just that, Peaceful,” Bush claimed with a grin. He took no offense at either of his companions referring to him as “boy”; the way it was said implied they figured he’d right soon grow up and make a hand. “Fact being, he allows how you’d allus back off a good two inches from it if the river hadn’t riz over the willows and there was no real easy crossing to hand.”
Smiling at the reply from the youngster, which he concluded from studying and listening to the mournful-featured cowhand was a fair assessment, Sutherland allowed the trio to precede him into the spacious barroom. On entering and glancing around, he discovered that although none of the men he had hired to take care of what had been Cornelius Maclaine’s property until the new owner arrived were present, there were representatives from the three other ranches that had been created out of the original Spanish grant. Apart from the absence of a contingent from the Corn spread, as it was known locally, the sight did not surprise him. It was payday and the various crews were in town to get rid of at least some of their hard-earned cash.
As Waggles entered and led his companions toward the bar, he too subjected the room to a careful yet unobtrusive scrutiny. He found what he saw far from disturbing. Apart from the possibility that the horses left before each of the three buildings belonged to different crews, it having been a matter of first come, first served when they arrived in town, there was no sign of segregation to the point where the different outfits formed their own groups. Rather, there appeared to be a general and amiable mingling that suggested no animosity existed between them. What was more, although he looked especially for them, none of the hard cases who had been prevented from cutting the Wedge herd were anywhere to be seen.
Before their party had reached the counter, the segundo concluded that the lawyer was a popular member of the community. While the three Texans were being subjected to a careful yet in no way openly hostile examination, cheery greetings were called to him from all sides. Further, space was made for Waggles to be able to make his order for them from one of the bartenders more quickly than he would have expected. As was required by range-country courtesy, they were allowed to sample their drinks before anybody showed more than a casual interest in them. Nor did any of the onlookers offer to make the first move in the matter of becoming acquainted. Not that there was need for this.
“Waggles,” Sutherland boomed, using the segundo’s sobriquet instead of the formal “Mr. Harrison” for the first time. “I’d like you to meet with these good friends of mine. Steve Baird of the Vertical Triple E, Ed Leshin from the Arrow P, and Jimmy Conlin’s the pride and joy of the AW, as it is now. Boys, get acquainted with your new neighbor, Waggles Harrison of the Wedge.”
Even without the introductions, the segundo would have picked the men who moved forward as having the same status at their respective ranches. They wore the styles common in the northern cattle-raising states, with modifications to cope with the climatic conditions in Arizona. Their ages were around his own and, while of different heights and builds, each exuded the same kind of quiet and yet discernible authority. Competent and tough they all undoubtedly were, but there was no hint of the swaggering, gun-handy hard case about them.
“New neighbor, huh, Waggles?” Baird said in an accent that had its origins in Kentucky. “Would that be the C Over M?”
“Until we can vent ’em and give ’em our Wedge brand,” the segundo replied, the question having been permissible under the code by which all of the group lived.
“I thought you Wedge boys only took herds on contract to Kansas,” Leshin remarked. He sounded as if he hailed from Oregon.
“We’ve been a few other places,” Waggles answered. “Fact being, we run one into Tombstone for the big Cochise County Fair.”
“Now, wasn’t that a wing-ding,” Baird enthused, also exhibiting that he came from north of the Mason-Dixon line. “Even though he run some of us poor Northern boys ragged with his sneaky way of raiding in Arkansas, I forgave Dusty Fog for it when he took them fancy gold-mounted Colt Peacemakers Wyatt Earp was fixing to win.” xviii
“Was I you, Mel,” Conlin remarked in an amiable yet warning tone that had a timbre suggesting to Waggles he was more likely to have worn the Blue than the Gray if he had served during the War Between the States, “I wouldn’t go talking too often about us poor Northern boys getting run ragged afore the new boss. He was there with the New Jersey Dragoons and is real proud of it.”
“Cap’n Fog allus allows those Dragoons were the best he came up against all through the Arkansas campaign,” Waggles remarked, taking notice that the foreman of the AW showed no sign of animosity toward him, or awareness that the plan to cause trouble for the Wedge had failed. Knowing nothing of the other’s ability as a poker player, he could not decide whether the lack of reaction stemmed from an exceptional ability to conceal all emotion. “Fact being, he allows how one time a Yankee lieutenant he was escorting for a legal arranged trade for one of our’n escaped after giving his parole not to, and when a major in the Dragoons got told about it, he handed the cheating son of a bitch right back.” xix
There was more to the segundo speaking as he did than just a desire to prove he was on close enough terms to have heard at first hand of the incident from one of the South’s top military raiders during the War Between the States and since had won acclaim as being an acknowledged master of the cowhand’s trade. He wanted to get some idea of how his fellow foremen felt on the subject of the conflict. From what he estimated—and he had enough confidence in his expertise at poker to believe he could read at least some trace to supply a hint—none of them, not even Conlin, showed other than interest and perhaps approval for the behavior of the Dragoons’ major in conforming to an accepted convention of war.
“The War’s long over and best forgot, way I see it,” Sutherland put in. “And talking about it’s the thirstiest thing I know.”
“I’ll go along with you on that, Counselor,” Conlin said with an air of tolerance that appeared to be genuine. “Likewise, I don’t need the roof ta drop in on me afore I can take a hint.” Then he looked at the nearest bartender, a big and bulky man with a surly face who had contrived to do less work than the other two who were behind the counter, and called, “Hey, Mr. Medak, how’s about setting up a round for us on me?”
“I tell you, boys,” a young cowhand with a Kentucky accent announced to the other local cowhands gathered around, but with a pointed side glance at the two Texans. “It got so hot down here last winter, I sent a letter home to my folks in Knoxville and I was so dry I had to stick the stamp on with a pin.”
“Do it get that warm back to Texas, friend?” an older man asked, in the fashion of one born and raised in Iowa, after the laughter in which the Wedge pair and everybody else in the vicinity had participated had died down.
“That’s tolerable warm, I’ll admit,” Thorny Bush said, before Peaceful Gunn—to whom the question was directed—could speak. Wanting to meet what he knew to have been a challenge, Bush gestured with the half-empty schooner of beer purchased for him by his mournful-looking companion when they arrived, then went on, “But I bet you don’t get the kind of cold we do back home to Texas comes late summer. Why, it gets so cold that you can’t talk outside ’cause the words freeze solid as they’re being spoke. The only way you can tell what’s being said is to pick ’em up and go indoors to set ’em on the stove so’s they can thaw out ’n’ be heard.”
Like Waggles Harrison, who was still engaged in conversation with the other foremen and Edward Sutherland, Peaceful was devoting his attention to studying the men around him. He had arrived at much the same conclusions as his segundo and could detect no suggestion of animosity toward himself and his young companion among the men from their level of cow-country society. In fact, it might have been a group gathered in any trail-end town saloon at the end of cattle drives. Wanting to learn more, he was not sorry that Bush had taken up what he, too, had realized was a challenge tossed their way. Going by the response to the story it was being well received, and he expected there would be attempts to top it. Nor was he kept waiting long for it to happen.
“You should go up ’round Flagstaff way for real cold,” a third of the local cowhands suggested, he too sounding as if his sympathies would be those of a Yankee rather than a Johnny Reb. “We don’t get any eggs for breakfast comes the middle of summer. The hens’re so cold they try laying ’em standing up and they all get bust.”
“That’s surely cold,” Peaceful conceded when Bush seemed at a loss for a way to produce a better story. “But I mind one time we was hunting up in the Texas Panhandle ’bout the start of the one day of summer we get there-abouts’d come. Found us a real ole grizzly b’ar a-hibernating—which is what real educated folk calls a-sleeping through the cold spell. Well, he woke up and would you believe he looks at us and says, ‘Did they ever find out who chopped down Mrs. Martha Washington’s cherry tree?’”
“There’s one thing you can allus count on with beef heads and nothing else. They can come up with bigger lies than anybody else.”
This came in what would almost certainly have been only a brief hiatus following the mirthful response to the latest piece of Texas wit, while the local audience were trying to come up with something to counter it; the words were spoken in a harsh and somewhat slurred voice having an obvious Northern intonation. They were delivered by a big and burly man with black hair longer than was considered acceptable by cowhands and framing a brutal, sneering face. He was clad in less-than-clean range attire, and the most noticeable thing about him under the circumstances was that he did not have a gun anywhere to be seen on his person. However, a knife larger than Peaceful’s was sheathed on his waist belt. Teetering unsteadily, as if carrying more than a sensible quantity of bottled brave-maker, he gave the impression of having drunk not wisely but too well. For all of that, there were indications that he would be “dangerous when wet,” as the saying went.
“Why, y—!” Bush began indignantly as silence began to descend over the barroom, starting to move forward with the intention of avenging the insult to his home state.
“Now, easy, boy!” Peaceful ordered, catching the youngster’s right biceps in a grip like steel and bringing his movement to a halt. “You’re too quick to temper. The gent’s only exercising his rights under the Constitution of these here United States by saying what he did.”
“Time was not long back you beef head sons of bitches didn’t give a shit for the Constitution, nor the United States,” the burly man snarled, still swaying a little as he took a step closer to the mournful-looking Wedge hand.
“That was way back like you said, mister,” Peaceful pointed out, giving the impression that he was close to being overawed by the other’s menacing demeanor. “So there ain’t no call to bring it up.”
“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t bring up,” the seemingly drunken man warned. “Even if you are toting two guns and I haven’t but this here knife.”
“Would it make any difference was I to take my guns off?” the Wedge cowhand inquired mildly. “’Cause, ’cepting I’m a man of peace, I’d just natural’ have to take you up on what you said about us Texans.”
“Then shed ’em and pull out that big knife you’re toting,” the man suggested in a belligerent tone. “’Cause it’s been too long since I last killed me one of your goddamned yeller-bellied scum, and I’m fixing to change that right now again’ you or that nose-wiping kid.”
“You mean you want to fight me, with a knife?” Peaceful inquired, if such a term could be applied to the way his words sounded.
“That’s just what I mean,” the man confirmed.
“Then, much as I hate violence and such,” Peaceful said, unbuckling his gunbelt and handing it to Bush, “I’m going to have to take you up on it.”
“Who’s that big jasper?” Waggles Harrison asked, watching what was happening, as was everybody else in the room.
“I’ve never seen him around town,” Edward Sutherland stated, and the foremen of the local spreads murmured a similar lack of knowledge. Then, despite knowing that what he was going to say would be impossible under the code by which men like the leathery-faced Texan at his side lived, he went on, “Aren’t you going to intervene?”
“Why should I?” the segundo inquired with no show of concern for the fate of his apparently very worried companion. “I’ve never seen that big son of a bitch afore, so why should I care what happens to him?”
“Hold hard, there!” Peaceful yelped in what appeared to be trepidation, as the burly man started to draw what proved to be a bowie knife with saw-like teeth in the back of its edge. “We haven’t settled the rules yet.”
Rules?” the man repeated. “You expect rules in a knife fight?”
“You mean there ain’t any?” the Texan asked, looking more than a little perplexed and quite terrified.
“Of course there ain’t!” the man confirmed, and glanced around to see what effect the conversation was having on the customers and saloon employees who were watching with rapt attention.
The action proved to be a bad mistake.
“Oh! Well, in that case—!”
Having gone no further in his comment, Peaceful changed from being apparently frightened and passive.
Instead of attempting to bring the bowie knife from its sheath on his belt, the Texan responded in a way that an expert at the French style of fist and foot fighting called savate would have considered masterly. Rising swiftly, the toe of his right boot passed between the man’s obligingly—albeit inadvertently—parted thighs. Caught with considerable force on the most vulnerable portion of the masculine anatomy, the recipient of the attack gave proof of just how seriously he was affected. Agony distorted his already unprepossessing features and rendered them even less pleasant to see. Turning an ashen gray, eyes rolling back until only the whites showed, he collapsed to his knees.
However, the stricken man was not granted an opportunity to gain whatever relief might have accrued had he been allowed to move any further. For all that, he might have regarded the means by which he was prevented from doing so as something of a rescue from his immediate suffering. Pivoting rapidly and again with precision, his assailant sent another equally power-packed kick, only on this occasion the target was his chin. With his head snapping around under the impact, he was pitched onto his back, and as he descended the merciful blackness of an unconscious condition swirled in upon him.
“Well,” Peaceful said, now speaking in an apologetic-seeming fashion as his would-be attacker quivered once, then went limp. “He did say there wasn’t no rules.”
“Give you one thing, amigo!” Bush enthused, returning the gunbelt to his companion without delay and showing a respect plain for all to see. “Pappy was wrong. You waited until you’d backed off a whole two ’n’ a half inches hoping to stay out of trouble.”
“Why did you let that long-haired bastard pull a stupid game like that?” demanded the shape that could only just be discerned as being masculine and whose voice, except that it had in all probability been east of the Mississippi River, was unidentifiable by accent yet held a timbre suggesting that it belonged to one long used to giving orders.
“His jaw’s broken, from what I hear, so he won’t be able to do what he’s been brought and paid for to do.”
“He come in the back way and said he wanted to take some liquor back with him,” Peter Medak replied sullenly. The man he was addressing was speaking from the gloom of a dark alley, having attracted Medak’s attention as the bartender was going to the accommodation he rented after the Arizona State Saloon had closed at the conclusion of a night’s business, which—since he never cared to do any more work than was absolutely necessary—had been far too strenuous, to his way of thinking. “Didn’t have no money. So, seeing as how the idea’s to stir up trouble with the beef heads, I figured he might as well earn the price of his booze by doing something to help with it.”
“You thought?” the shadowy figure snarled. “All your thinking achieved is that the beef heads still wound up leaving on good terms with the local cowhands, including the ones from my ranch, and Hayes won’t be able to do what he was brought here to do for long enough that it will be of any use.”
“You’ve said all along we should do something to cause trouble between ’em,” the bartender repeated, unable to conceal the resentment he always felt when listening to the other, since he considered himself to be an equal partner in the enterprise upon which they were engaged, even though he had only recently arrived to participate. “Why didn’t you send somebody to gun ’em down as they was headed back to their herd?”
“Who could I have sent, you?” the other man inquired savagely. “Korbin and his crowd are at my place and those six knob heads your bunch from back east sent weren’t around the saloon, even if they’d have had the guts to take on something like that.”
“I’ve been told to make use of them,” Medak said in tones implying a discounting of all responsibility for an error in judgment.
“Then you can put them to doing it starting tomorrow,” the other man ordered. “Hart’s going to need extra hands for the roundup he’ll have to make if he’s figuring to change brands on all of Maclaine’s stock, which I’m sure is the case, as one of the men with Korbin who knows about such says his herd’s all marked with his Wedge brand. Use them to see he doesn’t get any, and make sure it’s done the right way.”