Range War in Whiskey Hill

Vance McCrae stood on the lip of a deep gully, staring down in frustration at the rotting carcasses of two cows. At ten or twelve feet below him, he couldn’t see the brands clearly. This point on the east range was close to his uncle’s property, so the carcasses could be either Broken-M or Bar-M. They looked to be three- or four-year-olds, and should have been part of the herd driven over to the railroad holding pens a few weeks past. There was no need to climb down to the bottom of the gully to verify the cause of death to be from bullet wounds. This was not an unusual discovery during the past year. It had gotten to the point where circling buzzards were a daily occurrence on his grazing land. There was also little doubt who was responsible, but he felt helpless to do anything about it. He had no way of proving Frank Drummond responsible, and he could not ignore the fact that his father had been shot in the back after making accusations against the town’s wealthiest landowner.

Vance had faced Frank Drummond with the problem back in the early fall during roundup. He didn’t know what to expect when he rode over to the Rocking-D to confront Drummond, but he knew he had to do it. As he had expected, his complaints were met with smug indifference on Drummond’s part and the suggestion that maybe the McCraes were just an unlucky family. He offered to take Vance’s problems off his hands with a ridiculously low offer for his ranch. With no evidence to support it, Vance could not openly accuse Drummond as the source of the trouble, so he had no choice but to shamefully retreat, much to the amusement of two of Drummond’s henchmen, Lon Branch and Brownie Brooks. The thought now of the two sneering miscreants made his blood boil as he stared down at the carcasses.

Turning to go back to his horse, he hesitated when he heard the sound of another horse approaching. Standing by his mount, his hand on the butt of his rifle, he peered over the saddle at a rider approaching from his uncle’s spread. Thinking it to be one of his uncle’s hands, he relaxed his grip on the rifle, and waited. As the rider drew near, however, something very familiar about the way he sat the saddle struck Vance. It had been a while since he had seen anyone move with a horse quite like that, as if a part of the horse instead of merely aboard it. “Well, I’ll be damned . . .” he finally muttered.

He stood there staring at the man approaching. As Colt drew near, Vance made note of the obvious physical changes in his brother. Remembering the chasm between the two before Colt was sent to prison, he could only wonder what damage the years of incarceration had wrought.

Colt nodded, then remarked, “Damn, you didn’t waste much time, did you?” There followed an awkward moment of silence while both brothers searched for conversation. Finally, Colt broke the casual impasse. “Susan Sessions, I heard. Always figured you two would tie the knot.”

“Yeah,” Vance said, changing the subject. He nodded toward the big buckskin Colt had selected. “I see you picked out a good horse. Uncle Burt always liked Buck. Looks a lot like that horse you used to ride before. I reckon that’s why Uncle Burt named this one Buck, too . . .” His words trailed off. Changing the subject again, he nodded toward the saddle sling. “You got Pa’s Winchester?”

With both brothers feeling the strain of making casual conversation, Colt finally got down to business. After Vance showed him the carcasses at the bottom of the gully, Colt told him of the arrangement he had made with their uncle. “I guess that’s going to be my job, to try to cut out some of this business. I’m going to be ranging over both spreads, yours and Uncle Burt’s, so you need to tell your men they might be seein’ me when they’re ridin’ winter range. How many have you got?”

“There aren’t but two that’s stayin’ this winter,” Vance answered. “You know them—Bill Wilkes and Tom Mosley. They worked for Pa.” Colt nodded, and then Vance asked, “You stayin’ with Uncle Burt?”

“Yeah,” Colt said. “Uncle Burt told me, but I’m not figurin’ on workin’ this ranch. It’s yours as far as I’m concerned. You’re the one who’s been takin’ care of it. I’ve got a few things to take care of. Then I’ll most likely be movin’ on.”

The somewhat cautious reunion between brothers over, they climbed back in the saddle and started in opposite directions. As an afterthought, Vance called back over his shoulder, “You’re welcome to come by the house and meet my family.” Even as he said it, he knew Susan would raise hell with him for extending the invitation.

He reined the buckskin to a halt on a ridge overlooking the wide shallow valley that served as the Rocking-D headquarters. The last time he had ridden through this part of the hills, the valley was an endless sea of grass. Now he gazed at the huge white house with its expansive porches and the barns and outbuildings beyond. It was an empire, all right, with three separate corrals. “You’d think this would be enough for one man,” he remarked to his horse. “No explainin’ some folks, I reckon.” He nudged Buck with his heels, and proceeded down the gentle slope.

Although he saw only one or two hands over near the barn, he drew his Winchester from the saddle sling. Holding it with one hand, the butt resting on his thigh with the barrel straight up, he approached the house at a slow walk. No one seemed to notice him, except one man repairing a fence around the garden, who paused to stare at the stranger for a moment before resuming his work.

Colt walked his horse up to the front porch. Remaining seated in the saddle, he called out, “Drummond! Frank Drummond!” There was no answer, so he called out again, still with no response from anyone inside. He considered the fact that no one was home, but decided that they simply could not hear within the massive house. So he raised his rifle and fired it in the air. He got a response within a few seconds.

Frank Drummond, along with two of his men, both armed, came storming out on the porch, only to be stopped short by the sight of the stolid horseman calmly awaiting them. Colt, his rifle resting upon his thigh again, registered no emotion, except for a slight shifting of his eyes as he considered the men on either side of the commanding presence of Drummond.

Drummond paused a moment, scowling. “Oh, the jailbird,” he said with a sneer. “I heard you were out of prison.” He walked over to the edge of the porch and pointed a finger at Colt. “Let me tell you something, jailbird, it ain’t healthy to come into my home shooting off a rifle.” His rage was building, accelerated by the obvious cool disregard shown for his threats by his visitor. “Something like that could get a man killed. If I want you to set foot on my land, by God, I’ll send for you. Now turn that horse around and get the hell off my range.”

Colt shifted his gaze momentarily to the man standing to the right of Drummond. “Are you nervous?” The man did not reply, but moved his hand away from the pistol he wore. Looking back at Drummond again, Colt said his piece, speaking in a calm, unemotional voice. “I came to tell you somethin’. Bar-M and Broken-M cattle are no longer gonna be used for target practice. Any more cows I find with bullet holes in them, I will automatically figure were shot by your men, and they will be dealt with. Any missing Bar-M or Broken-M cattle found on Rocking-D land will be assumed stolen—”

Furious, Drummond interrupted. “Why, you insolent son of a bitch! You come riding into my home, talking to me like that. You don’t know who you’re messing with. I own this country! I’ll have you sent back to prison.” He paused for emphasis. “That is, if you get off my land without getting shot for trespassing.”

Already having considered that risk, Colt lowered the rifle barrel slightly in the irate man’s direction. “That could happen, I guess, but you can be sure of one thing. It better be a damn good shot because the next one is gonna get you.” He leveled the rifle, aiming it directly at Drummond’s gut. “Now you’ve been warned.” Pulling the reins with his free hand, he backed his horse slowly away from the porch. Drummond’s two men watched nervously, undecided on what to do until Drummond told them to let him go. Though still enraged, he was not brazen enough to kill a man right in his front yard. Colt backed up until clear of the garden fence before turning his horse and galloping away.

Lon Branch rode up to the wide porch that wrapped around three sides of Frank Drummond’s white frame house and dismounted. After looping the reins over the hitching post, he stepped over to the porch and knocked on the plank flooring, then stood respectfully waiting for Alice, Drummond’s housekeeper, to come to the door. Lon, like the other ranch hands on the Rocking-D, would not walk up on the porch and knock on the front door. He had never been told not to. It just seemed to be disrespectful to do so.

After he’d knocked three more times, Alice finally heard him and came to the door, properly gracing him with the scornful look she reserved for all Drummond’s hired hands. Lon respectfully told her that Drummond had sent for him, so she told him to wait. After approximately ten minutes, Drummond appeared in the doorway. He stepped out on the porch. “I got a little business I want you to take care of, Lon,” he said.

“I had a little visit today from another one of those McCraes, the ex-convict. And I don’t like brass-balled jailbirds ridin’ right up to my house and threatening me.” Drummond was trying to hold his temper as he spoke, but Lon could see that his boss was clearly irritated. “A man like that could very well have an accident, maybe his horse might throw him, or he might wind up gettin’ shot like his old man.”

Lon didn’t reply at once, slow to get the meaning of his boss’ pointed remarks. After a moment, it hit him. “Oh, yes, sir,” he then quickly replied. “Ain’t no doubt about it, a man like that is damn sure ridin’ for a fall. Me and Brownie was thinkin’ that same thing yesterday. We took a little ride over towards McCrae’s range, thought we’d thin out his herd a little more.” He paused to give his boss a wink. When Drummond failed to respond, he quickly continued. “Anyway, we found a bunch of strays near the creek, but before we crossed over, we spotted Colt McCrae settin’ on his horse on the ridge above the creek. He saw us, too, so we didn’t do nothin’. A couple of the boys heard some shootin’ over that way yesterday mornin’. When they rode over to take a look, they saw him takin’ target practice with a rifle.”

Confident that his wishes were known and would be carried out to his satisfaction, Drummond considered the problem solved. It was no more than a minor irritation, but an irritation nonetheless. He had felt certain that when he had eliminated Sam McCrae, the son, Vance, would crumple soon after. This latest development with the other son might serve to inspire Vance to stiffen his resistance just when Drummond figured he was close to breaking him.

“All right, then,” Drummond said, ending the meeting. “Just be sure you take care of business so that it’s neat and tidy.” He stood on the porch for a few moments more, watching his hired hand ride off to do his bidding. Lon was a good man—had just enough rattlesnake in him to take care of jobs like this, and enough sense to keep his mouth shut. That’s why he and his partner, Brownie, were well paid.

In Frank Drummond’s mind, there was no right or wrong when it came to his methods in building his cattle empire. It was simply business, and sometimes stringent methods were called for to eliminate problems that stood in the way of progress. He planned to own Whiskey Hill, and stubborn people like the McCraes were minor delays that, from a business viewpoint, had to be handled. Satisfied that this latest problem was as good as taken care of, he turned and went back inside.

The two old cowhands walked out of the barn to meet the rider on the buckskin horse, both men sporting grins on their faces. When he saw them, Colt couldn’t help but grin himself. He guided the horse up to them and climbed down. “I thought you two old coots would have dried up and blown away by now,” he teased.

Bill Wilkes stepped back, pretending to be shocked, turned to Tom Mosley, and exclaimed, “Damn, Tom, I thought this young whippersnapper mighta learnt some manners in prison. We might oughta turn him over a knee and dust his britches.”

Joking aside, they both descended upon Colt, shaking hands and back-slapping, all three grinning broadly. These two, Tom and Bill, had worked for Colt’s father since before his mother passed away. They had remained close to the boy even when he had shown his wild streak and got on the bad side of his father.

“I figured I’d better come by in case Vance hadn’t told you I’m gonna be ridin’ Bar-M range,” Colt said. “I don’t want you takin’ a shot at me if you see me pokin’ around after dark.”

“We can sure as hell use the help,” Bill said. “We’re losin’ cattle every day to lead poisoning, if you know what I mean.” He shrugged. “Vance is doin’ the best he can, it’s just that he ain’t Sam McCrae.”

Vance pulled the curtain aside and peered out the kitchen window. “That’s Colt out there talking to Tom and Bill. I oughta go out there.” He turned to look at his wife, who was stirring a pot on the stove. “Oughta invite him to eat supper with us,” he added.

“You should not!” Susan hastily informed her husband as she moved closer to the window to stare out. “I don’t plan on feeding that ex-convict. I don’t want him around here, and I don’t want him around Sammy. I don’t know why they let him out of prison.”

It was a mystery to Vance why his wife seemed to have developed such a strong dislike for his brother. As far as he knew, Susan had never really had much exposure to Colt before he went to prison. And although there was never a close bond between the two brothers, Vance had never overly criticized Colt. To the contrary, he had seldom even spoken of him during the nine years he was away. He decided it was just simply a mother’s natural tendency to protect her son from what she considered a dangerous individual. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the window. “I guess if he needs to see me, he’ll come to the house,” he said, preferring to keep peace with his wife.

Over at the barn, Tom Mosley asked Colt if he was going to the house to see Vance. Colt glanced in that direction and hesitated for a moment. “I reckon not,” he said. “I talked to Vance yesterday. I just came by to make sure you two old men didn’t accidentally take a shot at me.”

Colt laughed. “I’ve got to get goin’, anyway. I figure to camp over on the north ridge tonight. Uncle Burt said he found a couple more dead cows over that way, and I wanna stop by the house to pick up a few things.”

The two old cowhands stood watching the younger of the two McCrae sons as he rode away at a gentle lope. Still marveling over the transformation from boy to man, Bill Wilkes felt inspired to proclaim, “I got a feelin’ things is about to change in this valley.”

“I know what you mean,” Tom said. “I’ve got the same feelin’.” He pushed his hat back and scratched his head thoughtfully. “Damn! Don’t he remind you a lot of his daddy when he was about that age?”

“Come to think of it,” Bill agreed. The thought brought back memories of long ago when the four of them, Tom, Bill, and Sam and Burt McCrae, had first brought a small herd of cattle to the valley. And now everything they had helped Sam build was in jeopardy of being consumed by Frank Drummond. Bill and Tom were too old to be involved in a range war, but they both felt it was their place to try to help Sam McCrae’s sons hold on to the land. “Yessir, things is liable to get hot around here.”

Letting his horse set its own pace, Colt rocked along easily in the saddle, thinking about the two old ranch hands he had just left. Tom Mosley’s question—if he was going to the house to see Vance—stuck in his mind for a moment, for it brought back troublesome thoughts of a time when he and his brother were not so different. His mind drifted back to a summer day nine years before.

Barely a week past his eighteenth birthday, he had gotten into an argument with his father because he had slipped off the day before to go hunting for antelope, leaving his chores unfinished. The argument was pretty heated, and being a hardheaded young rebel, he took off again in protest, instead of mucking out the barn as he was told to do. Since it was a rather warm day, he decided nothing could be better than a dip in the creek that ran along the north ridge and, at that time, divided his father’s range from that of Walter Sessions. The picture of that day came back to him clearly, for it was a day that would influence the rest of his life.

The water was cool and deep, and he wasted no time shucking his clothes and plunging in, thoughts of stables and chores far from his mind as he splashed around in the dark water. He had not been in for a quarter of an hour when he was suddenly startled by a voice from the bank behind him. He turned to find Susan Sessions leaning against a cottonwood tree, watching him, a mischievous smile displayed across her face. She was holding his clothes in her hand.

“I’ve not decided yet,” she teased and made a motion as if to throw them in the creek. “Maybe I’ll just hold them and let you come get them.” She held them out toward him. “You want them? Come on out and get them.”

“Why, Colt McCrae, you’ve got a sassy nerve to think I’d be found in the same creek with the likes of you.” She reared her head back, pretending to be shocked. “I’ve got a good mind to tell your father about your sassy mouth.”

Colt shook his head slowly, the cruel irony of that day so long ago having returned to his thoughts many times while he had languished in his prison cell in Kansas. They had made love on the grassy bank of the creek. Susan soon abandoned her veil of innocence and aggressively offered her body, demanding his most virile response to her hunger. When it was over, she climbed back in her clothes and assured him that if he breathed a word of what had just happened, she would denounce him as a liar. The cruelest stroke of irony, however, was the fact that while this illicit encounter was taking place, twelve miles away in Whiskey Hill a bank robbery was in progress, resulting in the death of a bank guard.

“Nope. I don’t figure on bein’ much help to you and Vance if I’m stayin’ around here at night. If I’m gonna help you at all, it’s gonna be out scoutin’ the ridges where I can maybe see what’s goin’ on.” When Burt started to protest, Colt stopped him. “Let me do it my way. All I need from you is some grub from time to time, and cartridges for my rifle. Fair enough?”

“Why, yeah,” Burt stammered, “fair enough. Now come on in the house. Rena’s got supper on the table.” Colt followed his uncle inside where Rena, his Indian cook, had loaded the table with food. While Colt filled his plate, Burt sat back and grinned. “It’s damn good eatin’, ain’t it?”

Colt did not reply, instead looking up at the silent Cheyenne woman, and nodding in agreement. Pleased, she smiled in response. Rena had been his uncle’s cook for as long as Colt could remember. His aunt Vera had been dead since Colt was no more than a baby, and as far as he ever knew, there had never been any other woman in the house but the somber Rena.

Thoughts of a wild young Colt McCrae returned to Burt’s mind as he watched the imposing figure of a man seated at his supper table. When he gave it a second thought, he was not surprised that Colt chose to sleep under the stars, rejecting a bed in the front room. The boy had always been more at home in the hills and the open prairie. Rena had always been partial to his nephew. She used to say that Colt may have been born to a white woman, but his heart was Cheyenne. It struck Burt then how cruel a penalty it was to lock this free soul away in a prison cell. Burt continued to study his nephew intensely, so intensely that Colt wondered if something else was on his uncle’s mind. “What is it, Uncle Burt?” he asked.

Burt didn’t answer at once, still wrestling with the decision to broach the subject or not. Maybe it was best to let old wounds alone. It had been almost ten years. Maybe Colt preferred to let past sins and grievances lie in the past, but Burt thought he should at least let him know. Finally, he said what was on his mind. “I don’t know if you still care or not, but I was over to Cheyenne last week and I saw an old friend of yours.” Seeing Colt’s interest, he went on. “Ronnie Skinner—I saw him comin’ out of Bailey’s Saloon on the edge of town. I’da recognized him anywhere—still the sneaky little rat he was ten years ago, only a little older.”

“Nah,” Burt replied. “He didn’t look like he even knew me. I didn’t have nothin’ to say to him, anyway.” Colt just nodded thoughtfully. Burt continued. “The bartender said Ronnie hangs around the saloon most of the time—when he ain’t in jail. Seems like he’s stayed in some kind of trouble around Cheyenne for the last several years. I don’t think he’s been back to Whiskey Hill since you and them other fellers were sent off to prison.”

He continued to study Colt’s face closely, but his nephew gave no indication of his reaction to news of his boyhood friend. Behind the expressionless face, however, Colt’s mind brought back the image of the man guilty of the crime for which he had served time. “Well, I’ll be goin’ along,” was all Colt said. Then he got up from the table, nodding a thank-you to Rena as he went out the door.