CHAPTER 38
There was lots to check up on. To keep that year’s crop of heifers as cows they’d need more grass, so he planned to talk to the land agent about other land around him for sale.
How much steel did a windmill require, that plus the works to make up the pump? He sat making notes on an Indian Chief tablet of the things he must do.
Ira came by still looking tired and asked for a week off.
“You find a girl?”
“Well I want to see if she is still available.”
“You need money?”
“Half that money belt you gave me will do me for a very damn long time. We got paid well for doing that, I figure.”
“Carter is going to build you a house if you stay.”
“That’s good. I ain’t going nowhere else. You go somewhere, you make sure to take a good man with you while I am gone.”
“I will. Ride easy and good luck.”
The next day, Harry rode with him. The cowboys were hauling supplies to the fence builders plus posts from the cutters and wire from the blacksmith. The place buzzed.
The surveyors were nearly to the southeast corner. That would mean the ranch was half fenced.
The two men trotted their horses to town. He stopped to see Lawrence at the bank who stood up and shook his hand. “Your money from Abilene arrived this week.”
“Four hundred thousand?”
“Real close to that. You knew about it?”
“Harp wired my wife it was coming. You have any large ranches you have foreclosed on?”
“I do. You want more?”
He noticed that Lawrence had lowered his voice. “Yes.”
“I have a hundred forty thousand on one place we had to foreclose on.”
“Many cows on it?”
“Not enough. That’s why he can’t pay me.”
“How big?”
“Thirty sections.”
“Nineteen hundred acres. Is it good grass?”
“It hasn’t been grazed. He went too far into debt buying it to get any more credit. He had a small herd he branded to get started. But to get a steer to go to market he has to be two years old. I warned him.”
“What would it cost me if I want it?”
“One hundred sixty-five thousand.”
That made it around eight an acre. Less than Texas prices. “Lawrence, draw me a map and I’ll look. Hold it. Unless it is real broken-up country I will buy it.”
“It isn’t. I will hold it. Not a word.”
“No, not a word.”
He stepped out in the sunshine and saw a man on horseback go for his gun, swearing, “You fence-building son of a bitch.”
Too slow. Long had his short pistol out of his holster and shot him in the chest. He fell off his horse.
Harry came running down the boardwalk to help him. Spooked horses at the hitch rack broke loose and traffic blocked the street. Two marshals blowing whistles were trying to get through all the folks who ran out of the stores to see what had happened. Downtown Junction was in a mess Long decided.
Lawrence caught him by the shirt to drag him inside the bank for safety.
“Hold up. I shot him. He ain’t hurting anyone.”
“Well thank God you’re all right. You knew him?”
“He’s an anti-fencer.”
“Why?”
“I guess he grew up hating barbed wire.”
Harry said, “I was getting a new cinch and saw him go by. There are sure a lot of people in town today.”
“I’m fine. I don’t think he is.”
A man walked into the bank and right up to Long. “I’m Marshal Cline. What in the hell is going on here? It’s against the law to discharge a weapon inside the city limits.”
“He was fixing to kill me.”
“You know shooting with all these women and children in town today could have caused more deaths?”
“I do understand, Marshal Cline, but when he swore at me and went for his gun I had to decide if it was him or me going to the pearly gates. I decided he could go first.”
“What is your name?”
“Long John O’Malley.”
“You own the Three Star Ranch?”
Lawrence shook his finger at the lawman. “And I saw it all. He was about to be shot by that man, and Long shot him instead.”
“How is the shot one?” the marshal asked his partner, who had been standing with the body lying in the street but had now joined them in the bank.
“He’s dead.”
With a wry look on his face, he turned to Long. “He beat you there, sir.”