They called the cow town Buffalo Springs, and it lay just north of the Davis Mountains of west Texas. Cutler came to it on a Saturday afternoon at the tail end of August 1894—a big man with a craggy face, a month’s black beard, clothes white with dust, a terrible smell, and a thirst that was tremendous.
It was payday for the surrounding ranches, and Buffalo Springs was crowded with riders come in to spend their wages. Thus, when Cutler’s outfit jingled down the single street, it drew a lot of curious stares.
A matched pair of sleek, young black mules drew the small covered wagon at a smart pace. Alongside, saddled, with hackamore rope looped around the horn, loped a riderless bay gelding of magnificent conformation, without any tether. Behind the wagon trotted a huge Airedale dog, curly coat a rusty red with a tinge of black along the spine. His tongue lolled and his open mouth showed strong, white teeth.
Cutler was aware of all the eyes on him, and paid them no attention. He was thinking of four things: a bath, a shave, a bottle, and the Victorio Wolf. He had come a long way for all of them. When he spotted a barbershop, he turned the rig toward it, and at the hitch rack, he said, “Whoa,” without putting any pressure on the reins. Both mules stopped at once, and so did the horse. Cutler put on the brake, arose stiffly and jumped down.
On the ground, he stood at full height something better than six feet, with broad, sloping shoulders and a barrel-chest tapering to lean waist and slim hips. The shaggy hair spilling beneath the dusty, flat-crowned sombrero was the color of a raven’s wing, and, though he was only in his early thirties, it was already faintly threaded with gray. His brows were great black marks above deep-set eyes the color of gunmetal, the planes of his big-nosed face rough and angular, his skin burnt to the color of rawhide by a life in the sun. He wore a filthy blue work shirt, a calfskin vest, jeans, fringed shotgun chaps, and flat-heeled boots made for walking as much as riding. A holstered .44 Colt with a strap to hold it in its scabbard for rough riding swung from a cartridge belt around his waist, and on his other hip was a Case sheath knife. As he stood there by the wagon, the dog came to him. Cutler stroked its head, said, “Guard, Big Red.”
With an amazing leap, the dog sprang to the seat of the wagon and stretched out, panting. Cutler did not even bother to tie the mules and horse. He said, “Stand, Kate, stand, Emma,” slapped the bay gelding on the rump. “Stand, Apache.” Then he went to the wagon’s tailgate, reached over, brought out a big, battered leather suitcase. Carrying this, he entered the barbershop.
In here it was comparatively cool—not over ninety degrees. Cutler pushed back his hat, sleeved sweat from his face. “I want a bath,” he told the barber, who was bent over another customer. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Have it waiting, okay?” He set down the suitcase, went out again. On the street, he halted. A crowd of curious onlookers had gathered around the wagon. The dog’s head swung back and forth alertly.
“You folks,” Cutler called, his voice deep and commanding. “Look all you want to if you never seen a trapper’s outfit before. But don’t touch anything, you hear? Not the mules, not the horse, not the wagon. You do, the dog’ll go for you, and when he goes, he goes to kill. Okay?” Disregarding the murmur that went through them, he turned, walked on.
In Buffalo Springs, a man didn’t have to travel far to find a saloon. Another minute and Cutler shoved through swinging doors into a barroom packed with cowhands. A couple of tired-looking girls circulated among them, dodging their pinches and grabs, keeping them buying. Cutler found a place at the bar, towering over the men around him. When the barkeep came, he said: “Old Crow if you got it. A quart.”
“Comin’ up.” The man set a bottle on the bar. Cutler paid him, and before the coin had hit the counter, he seized the bottle, grabbed the cork between his teeth, and pulled it out. People stared as he threw back his head and drank long and deeply, making gurgling sounds. When he lowered the bottle, letting out a shuddering sigh, a quarter of its contents was gone. Cutler dragged his hand across his beard, grinned at the onlookers. “What’s the matter? Y’all never seen a feller take a drink before?” He pocketed his change, tucked the bottle beneath his arm, went out. It was better now, a whole lot better. Those last few days in the desert, with the memories coming to life again, haunting him, had been pure hell.
The crowd had thinned out around the wagon; the dog still lay immobile on the seat. Cutler’s bath was waiting in the back room of the barber shop. He stripped off foul clothes worn too long, threw them aside. The holstered Colt he laid close to the tub, by habit, where it could be reached immediately. He set the bottle by it, then climbed in. He stayed in the tub a long time, soaking up cool water through his desert-dried pores like a frog. By the time he was dry, donning clean clothes from the suitcase, the bottle was better than half-empty. He took it with him to the barber chair.
“Well,” the barber said, as he settled in. “You look some better now.”
“Feel it,” Cutler said. “Take off about half the hair and all the beard, okay?” He had a long drink from the bottle.
The barber said, “You soak that up fast.”
Cutler grinned. “You spend a month down in the Big Bend country in Dog Days, you get powerful dry. Me, I can drink this one and most of another before I begin to feel it.”
“I heard you say you was a trapper. You trappin’ down in Big Bend?”
“Went after a cougar down there. A real stock-killer. Took me a month to get him. Ranchers had put a thousand dollars on his head.”
The barber let out a low whistle. “A thousand dollars ain’t bad for a month’s work. I’ll bet you’re here to try for the Victorio Wolf.”
“Sure enough,” Cutler said cheerfully and drank again. “Some outfit called the Davis County Stockraisers’ Association wrote me about it. Had a letter from their secretary, Fairfax Randall. Said there was two thousand dollars on the critter’s scalp. Thought I’d try to latch on to it.”
The barber’s shears paused. “Hell,” he said, a touch of awe in his voice. “I know who you are now. I’ll bet you’re John Cutler.”
“That’s me.”
“Well, Mr. Cutler, I’m mighty proud to meet you. They say you’re just as good a trapper as you used to be a lawman. I heard the Association people talkin’ about how they’d asked you to come. They say that when you go after a stock-killin’ rogue like the Victorio Wolf, you always git it.”
“Generally,” Cutler said quietly. “Not always.” Then, quickly, he drank again.
“I guess it’s sort of like manhuntin’, and they say you used to be the best Federal Marshal up in the Injun Territory.” He laughed. “After cleanin’ up the Boone gang up yonder and the Thomas boys the way you did, I reckon a wolf is mighty small potatoes.”
“Nothin’ that kills just for the fun of it’s small potatoes,” Cutler said, his face sobering now, and he helped himself to another swig. “Wolves or people . . .”
“Uh-huh.” The hair fell away beneath the shears in black, gray-streaked clumps. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Cutler did not answer. The barber took silence for assent. “It’s kind of funny,” he went on. “I mean, how come you give up huntin’ men and went to huntin’ animals?”
Cutler was silent for a long moment. And when he spoke, he did not answer the question. “Suppose,” he said, “you tell me about the Victorio Wolf.”
“Oh,” the barber said. “Oh, well, yes, sir.” He spun the chair around so Cutler could see himself in the mirror. His voice was chastened when he went on. “Well, he ranges all through the Davis Mountains, and it’s got to the point where he kill ’most every night. Not just one critter, either; he’ll pull down ten, fifteen head of cattle ‘twixt dark and dawn. The Mescans say he’s a devil, an evil spirit; they think he’s the ghost of the ole Apache chief, Victorio, that used to make the mountains his stronghold ten, twelve years ago. Say he’s come back to get revenge on the white men who took his country . . .” He tilted back the chair, began to use his shears on Cutler’s beard. “A lot of folks have tried to catch him—traps, set-guns, poison, dogs, they’ve used ‘em all. But nothin’ works. He jest keeps on killin’ and laughin’ up his sleeve at everybody. It’s reached the point now where he’s about to bankrupt most all the ranchers up there—’cept, of course, Gustav Holz. He’s too big for even the Victorio Wolf to hurt.” He turned the chair around again. “Holz is—” Then he broke off as a man came in the shop and Cutler, pushing him aside, sat up straight.
“Gilbert,” Cutler said, and his voice was cold now, like the clang of iron on iron. “Strick Gilbert.”
“Hello, Cutler,” the other said. He stood there before the chair, grinning, a few inches shorter than Cutler but probably heavier, almost apelike in the width of his great shoulders, enormous torso, and unnaturally long arms ending in huge, hairy hands. He wore an old army hat pushed up into a Montana peak, a greasy buckskin jacket over a dirty plaid shirt, and canvas pants also black with grease tucked into high, laced-up boots. His hair was a dusty, rust-colored shag, his beard a ginger fringe around a hard, rough-hewn face, and his eyes, set in fans of wrinkles, had, like Cutler’s, the squint that came from looking long distances in bright sun. Like Cutler, he wore both Colt and skinning knife.
“I seen your outfit outside,” Gilbert went on. “Looks like you come a long way. Too bad it’s for nothin’.”
Cutler said, “Is it now?”
“Will be after I talk to them Davis Mountain ranchers. You see, I got a new way of baitin’, Cutler. I can guarantee ‘em I’ll git that wolf and do it quick.”
“Yeah,” said Cutler harshly. “And take every livin’ thing in the mountains along with it, the way you always do when you lay out your poison.”
“It beats traps,” Gilbert said easily. “Poison’s fast and sure.” Then his voice turned mocking. “If you wasn’t so damned hard-headed about poison, you’da had that bear of yours long ago. But you never caught him, have you? And you know somethin’? You never will . . .”
Cutler half came out of the chair, big fists clenched. Then he sank back. “Hush, Gilbert,” he said hoarsely. “You hush about that, you hear?”
“What’s the matter? You don’t want folks to know that the one animal John Cutler really wants to snag he can’t git close to? That it’s outsmarted him ever’ time?” He took out a pack of cigarettes, clamped one between yellowed teeth. “Jest came back from Colorado, John. They say a grizzly’s showed up in Estes Park—a big, snake-headed silvertip with a stump where its left hind foot oughta be. A real rogue, John ...”
Cutler felt his heart begin to pound. “Gilbert, don’t you lie to me—if you’re tryin’ to send me off on a wild-goose chase so you’ll have a clear field with the Victorio Wolf ...” His fists opened and closed. “I’ll break your goddamned neck.”
“Oh, that was a month, six weeks ago. Likely he’s gone by now. He never stays one place long, does he, John. By this time he could be up in the Big Horn Mountains or the Judith Basin. You know how fast he moves ...” Gilbert grinned, smoke drifting from his nostrils. “On the other hand, maybe if you hurried you could git him before he dens . . . Just thought you’d want to know.” Then, slowly, coolly, he turned and strode out.
Cutler sat there rigid, watching him go, the bottle clenched tightly in one big hand. No, he thought. No, he’s lying. He’s trying to toll me off—But, by God, I’ll send a letter today to Friday on the Box F up yonder, and maybe by the time I have an answer, I’ll have already got that wolf . . . His hand was shaking as he drained the bottle. Then he leaned back in the chair. “Hurry up with that shave,” he growled. “I got things to do.”
Despite the quart of whiskey he’d drunk, he was still rock-steady on his feet when he got out of the chair, and his vision was clear as he looked at himself in the mirror. He no longer looked like a wild animal himself but like a human being once again, except, he thought, for the light in his eyes. What Gilbert had told him about the bear had kindled a kind of insanity in him, and it glittered in their gun-metal depths. A chaos of emotion swirled within him, and he knew it would take another full bottle to damp it down, quench it. He paid the barber. “Those clothes I left in there. Burn ‘em, okay?” Then, feeling something winding taut in him like a great, coiled spring, he went out.
The dog still stood guard on the wagon seat. Cutler was climbing up when Gilbert’s voice came again. “Hey, John.”
Reins in hand, Cutler stared at the man in the buckskin jacket. Gilbert’s face still wore that mocking grin.
“That red dog of yours. He any good?”
“He’s good,” Cutler said.
“I got a mastiff tied up behind the livery stable. I think he can take that Airedale. You wanta risk a hundred dollars?”
Cutler spat. “Big Red gets enough fightin’ when we hunt. I don’t aim to have him chewed up in town in a dog fight. I’m goin’ to the livery now. You be damned sure your dog stays tied.” Then he swung the mules around, and with the gelding trotting alongside, put his outfit up the street. Behind him, he heard Gilbert laugh. “If you change your mind,” Gilbert hollered, “lemme know.”
The mastiff was there, all right, tied short behind the stable, massive, a bundle of spring steel muscles encased in a gleaming hide black as the ace of spades. When he caught the Airedale’s scent, he came alive, threw himself savagely against his chain, barking furiously. Beside Cutler on the wagon, the red dog began to tremble, and its lips curled back from bone-white teeth, a deep, low growl rumbling in its chest.
“No,” Cutler said harshly. “No, Red.” Reluctantly, the dog, which had been about to leap down, checked itself. Cutler parked the wagon, reached inside, found a length of chain, snapped it to the heavy leather collar around the Airedale’s neck. Jumping down, he tied the dog to the wagon wheel on the side away from the black mastiff. Then he unhitched the team, turned it over to the hostler along with the gelding. He put a dish of water where Big Red could reach it, fed the animal its ration of beef and bones, the last of a supply wrapped in a gunny sack in the wagon. “My name’s Cutler,” he said. “I’ll be here all night. Keep away from the Airedale and don’t let anybody bother him.”
The hostler looked respectfully at Big Red’s fangs grating against a bone. “You bet.” Then he said, “Cutler? You’re the one there’s a message for at the office.”
In the livery’s office, Cutler opened the sealed envelope. The note inside was written in a firm, clear hand:
Mr. John Cutler:
If you should happen to be in town on this date, the Davis County Stockraisers’ Association will be meeting upstairs over the town hall until four o’clock. Otherwise, please come to my ranch, the Rocking R, per enclosed map. Sincerely, Fairfax Randall, Secretary, DCSRA
Randall was smart, Cutler thought, figuring him about due, knowing he’d have to check by the livery. He asked the manager, “Where’s the town hall?” and got directions. Since Buffalo Springs had only one main street, it was not hard to find: a weather-beaten board building with a tin roof. Cutler climbed the outside stairs behind it, begrudging the time this was going to take when he needed another bottle. But, he supposed, he might as well get this out of the way while he could still walk and talk. He knocked at the back door, and he was faintly surprised when it was opened by a round-faced, freckled boy of not more than ten and probably less, in work shirt, overall pants, and copper toed boots. The boy’s eyes widened, impressed at the size of the gun-hung man towering over him. Behind him, Cutler saw benches like those in a courtroom occupied by eight or ten men, and standing before them was a woman. “You must be Mr. Cutler,” she called out. “Please come in.”
As he entered, she came to him in greeting, and Cutler halted, staring unabashedly.
She was tall, not over thirty, with an abundance of chestnut hair piled high on her head. Her skin was tanned, but it was still smooth, not yet leathery as was that of so many Texas women. Her eyes were enormous, a deep sea green in color. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted, her mouth wide and generous, lips full and red, her chin firm. Despite the heat here under the roof and the long, sweeping green dress she wore, touched with lace at throat and sleeves, she looked cool. There was not a drop of sweat on her brow, not a hair out of place. Beneath the tight bodice of the dress, her breasts were high and round, her waist was slim, flaring out to curved hips soon lost in the fullness of the skirt. It had been a long time since he had seen a woman so lovely, and even without the whiskey in him, he would have felt the impact of her closeness.
She shook hands with him like a man. “I’m Fairfax Randall, secretary of our association. I’m glad you and Mr. Gilbert both got here in time for our meeting.”
“Gilbert?” Cutler repeated.
“Yep, John, I’m here, too,” that mocking voice came from across the room, and Gilbert stepped out of a corner.
“I see,” Cutler said thinly. He followed Fairfax Randall to the front of the room, where she had been addressing the men on the benches like a teacher talking to her class.
“Gentlemen, Mr. Cutler, of whom you’ve all heard, I’m sure. Mr. Cutler, the Davis County Stockraisers’ Association . . . Tom Fellows, our president, Jud Bobbitt, the treasurer, Sam Kelly . . .” She reeled off names. Cutler looked them over. They bore the stamp of cattlemen, all right, and they bore something else, too—the mark of poverty. Even in their town clothes, they were shabby, down-at-the-heels . . . “And,” Fairfax Randall concluded, “the young gentleman who let you in is my son, Jess.”
Tom Fellows stood up, a lanky, weathered man in his early forties, sweating and uncomfortable in suit and tie. “All right, Fair,” he said. “I reckon I better take over now. Let’s git down to the real important part of the meeting. Mr. Cutler, Mr. Gilbert, why don’t you two sit up here in the front row?”
Cutler nodded, sat at one end of a bench. Gilbert shambled across the room, grinned at him, took the other. Cutler could smell him in the heat: the rank taint of many wipings of a skinning knife on leather, the usual odor of the wolfer. Then Fairfax Randall sat down between them, and the fragrance of her light perfume covered Gilbert’s stench. Cutler grinned a little as she wrinkled her nose and slid closer to his end of the bench.
“All right,” Fellows said. “For six months now, the Victorio Wolf’s been givin’ us fits. Fall’s comin’ on, and we got to make our roundup and sell our gather. At the rate the wolf’s been killin’, we’ll be lucky if we got anything left to sell, and all of us have got mortgage payments comin’ due to Gustav Holz. Somebody’s got to git that wolf and git him quick, or he’ll ruin every one of us. Now we’re in luck. We got not one but two expert wolfers here. Fair Randall got in touch with Mr. Cutler, and Mr. Gilbert here come in on his own, but he’s got quite a reputation, too. We’ve all dug down in the sock and scratched up two thousand dollars to put up as bounty money on that lobo’s ears. Now, what we got to decide today is whether Mr. Cutler goes after him or Mr. Gilbert or both . . .”
“Both won’t work,” Gilbert called out. “Got to be one or the other. Two wolfers can’t work the same range. Not when they work different, like me and Cutler.” He stood up. “You give me exclusive rights to go after him, I’ll guarantee to stretch that loafer’s hide within a month. Not only that, I’ll clean out every other wolf and coyote on your land, not to mention bobcats and pumas. Take care of the eagles and the hawks along with ‘em. When I git through, you’ll not only have your Victorio Wolf, there won’t be another meat-eatin’ critter left on your range.”
Fellows looked impressed. “That sounds good to me, Mr. Gilbert. A tall order, though. How you go about it?”
“Poison,” Cutler said. He stood up. “Poison’s what he uses.”
“Why, shore,” Gilbert said. “That’s why they call me ‘Strick.’ Short for strychnine. And believe you me, folks, ain’t nothin’ at’ll clean up a range quicker than strychnine and cyanide in ole Strick Gilbert’s special baits. It’s a lot faster and surer than Cutler’s steel traps.”
“Poison . . .” Fair Randall said, distaste thick in her voice. “You just spread it all around, Mr. Gilbert?”
“That’s right, ma’am. The secret’s to lay it down thick. I got a way of hidin’ it inside of chunks of beef and flavorin’ that beef with scent that no wolf can resist, a special formula I worked up myself. Put down enough of it and sooner or later that Victorio Wolf’s gonna sample it and ...” He snapped his fingers. “One bite’s all it takes. Meanwhile, it gits the other varmints, too.”
Fellows turned to Cutler. “That what you aim to use, Mr. Cutler?”
“No,” Cutler said. “I don’t use poison.”
“Why not?”
John Cutler sucked in a long breath, turned to look at the ranchers on the benches. “Because I don’t believe in it,” he said. “Any of you ever seen an animal that’s taken a bait of strychnine? It dies hard, mighty hard. I . . . saw a man die of it by mistake one time. Since then, I wouldn’t touch the stuff.”
“A man die of it—” Fellows looked at him.
“That’s right,” Cutler said thinly. “I . . . used to have a ranch, over in Arizona. I bought some of it one time to get rid of coyotes. Put some in every line cabin. One of my riders got hold of it by mistake one time, thought it was soda, put some in some biscuits he was cookin’ ... I come in to find him rollin’ on the floor, screamin’, in convulsions . . . He . . . kept beggin’ me to shoot him, put him out of his misery ... I had to listen to that until he finally died. The next day I got rid of every bit of poison on the place, and I’ve never used any since.”
The room was silent. Then Gilbert said, wryly: “Me, I know how to use it. I don’t put it in biscuits.”
Cutler turned on him. “No. You’re a good poisoner, Strick, the very best. You know your stuff all right. But it just so happens that I hate the stuff. I hate what it does, the way it kills, slow and hard, anything and everything that eats meat.”
His eyes swept the room. “Maybe y’all think it would be a good idea to wipe out all the predators in the Davis Mountains. Maybe you think it would increase your calf crop and make you rich. Well, it might for a season. Then it’d have the opposite effect.”
He paused. “You think about it. What keeps down the rats, the mice, the prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, and the jackrabbits? Coyotes, wolves, bobcats, the like. Sure, they take a calf now and then, but they eat a thousand times more weight of other vermin than they do of beef. You clean ‘em all out and you’ll see some strange things happen. Things that might ruin your range.”
They were listening closely to him, and he disregarded Gilbert’s angry gesture.
“There are a lot of critters that compete with cows for grass. You don’t know how many until you wipe out their natural enemies and give ‘em a season or two to breed. And then, when a plague of jackrabbits and rats and gophers has fought for every root and stalk of grass, you’ll see. When there’s nothin’ to check the deer up in the mountains and their numbers seem to explode overnight . . . When even all the skunks and harmless ground critters like that are gone, the ones that eat the locusts and the crickets . . . And the eagles and hawks that feed off of rattlesnakes have all been poisoned and you get a plague of sidewinders . . . You think it can’t happen? You broadcast poison, kill all the meat-eaters, you’ll see . . .”
“All the same,” Fellows began, “if it could get that wolf ...”
Cutler laughed harshly. “That’s the whole point. It wouldn’t.” He turned on Fellows. “That wolf kills every night, don’t he? And always more than he can eat. One of the things that means is he’s wise to poisoned baits already. He won’t touch dead meat lyin’ on the ground. He’d laugh every time he saw a chunk of poisoned carrion and go take himself another calf. And it just might happen that all of a sudden he’d have some company ...”
“Meaning . . .?” Fellows asked.
“Meanin’ that wolves and coyotes ain’t stupid. The poison would wipe out most of ‘em. But some would get the idea when they saw the others die. Then they’d shun dead meat altogether, eat nothin’ but what they killed themselves, fresh every night. You got one educated cattle killer now. Poison the range, you may make another half a dozen.” He paused. “And, of course, you’ll lose your dogs. Either that, or you’ll have to shut ‘em up, and it may be months before they can run free again without the danger of swallowin’ a capsule of cyanide Gilbert’s gone off and left . . . But if you want to take a chance, go ahead.” He shrugged. “Me, I’ve always got more calls than I can answer.”
For a moment, the sweltering room was silent. Then Fair Randall’s voice rang out. “All right, Mr. Cutler. We’ve heard your views on poison. But suppose you tell us how you’d get the Victorio Wolf?”
Cutler opened his mouth to answer. But before words came out, Gilbert’s harsh laugh sounded. “About like he got that stump-legged grizzly that killed his wife! Ask the great John Cutler about that! About how long he’s been chasin’ that man-killin’ bear he’s followed all over the West for five years and never has caught up with!”