The Oak Creek section had always been considered some of the sorriest rangeland in Postoak County. Its grass was stemmy and lacking in strength. The country had a tendency to go to scrub brush, which didn’t leave a lot of room for grass in the first place. In the days when no one had ranged this country but Captain Rinehart, most of his cattle had kept out of the Oak Creek section of their own will. Only a few scattering cows of the bunch-quitter type stayed down there much. There were cattle like that, just as there were that kind of men.
But the section had one thing in its favor, the creek itself. Water was always a big consideration in West Texas, where rainfall came only when it got good and ready and could never be depended upon.
So when the farmers began to move in, they started locating on Oak Creek. At first there was resistance on the part of some of the cowmen. A few of the earliest farmers took the hint and moved out again. But as time went on, it became obvious that the farmers couldn’t be squeezed out forever.
Captain Andrew Rinehart circulated the word, and the farmers were allowed to settle along Oak Creek. If there had to be farmers, then it was better that they be concentrated in one place than to have them bringing in the Texas Rangers and scattering all over the county, breaking up the rangeland, the captain said. Besides, there were some advantages to having a few farmers around. Cowmen could buy hay from them, and vegetables and butter and the like. When the farm work wasn’t pressing too hard, the ranchers could hire the farmers to do the menial jobs that most of their cowhands scorned doing.
Only one farmer had broken the pattern. Without a word to anybody, without even a tip of the hat to Captain Rinehart, Noah Wheeler had bought land scrip for four sections right in the middle of the best rangeland and moved his family out from East Texas.
There had been some bitter talk about it. Fuller Quinn, angry-faced ranchman on Wagonrim Creek, was in favor of riding over there in force and burning the farmer out before he could get himself fairly settled. “Let that nester squat there and he’ll attract others. They’ll crowd us right off the grass!”
Actually, Quinn was doing more crowding than anybody. He had built up his herd of Longhorns until it was too big for the range he controlled. He let them spill over into his neighbors’ country, let them trample across the planted fields along Oak Creek. The one thing about which he was careful was that his line riders keep them turned well back from Captain Rinehart’s country.
Unexpectedly, and without any explanation, Captain Rinehart had vetoed action against Noah Wheeler. “If any other farmers start looking over his way, we can quietly discourage them,” he said. “But Wheeler will stay where he is.”
So they’d left Wheeler alone, and some of the cowmen had come to like him. Wheeler was no ordinary squatter. He had a far-reaching way of looking beyond things as they were now and seeing how they could be. He had turned some of the cowmen into good customers for the feed he raised. A stockman himself, he had sold many of them on the idea of improving their beef by using better breeds of bulls.
But one thing hadn’t changed. The other farmers had stayed on Oak Creek. There, more or less congregated, they could turn back most of the stray cattle which worked in from the open ranges around them. True, when the crops were good, some of Fuller Quinn’s cattle always seemed to find their way into the best fields. Nobody ever caught Quinn or his men drifting them in there, and there probably wasn’t much a farmer could have done about it if he had. Still, it was a constant source of irritation that a good stand of corn might be ruined in a hurry if the farmer was not eternally vigilant.
So it was that Doug Monahan had received expressions of interest from several Oak Creek farmers even before he had started the ill-fated fencing job for Gordon Finch.
“Slick wire and brush enclosures just won’t turn them cattle when they’re hungry,” complained Foster Lodge. “It’s got so I have to chase three or four Quinn heifers out of my oat patch every mornin’. I’d like to try a little of that there bobwire, if the price was right.”
“I’ll make it right,” Monahan had promised. “Just as soon as I finish this job for Finch, I’ll be over.”
The Finch job had finished abruptly. Now, this sharply cool winter morning, Doug Monahan was on his way a-horseback toward Oak Creek. Short, burly Stub Bailey rode beside him to point the way.
“That yonder’s Lodge’s place,” Bailey said finally as they splashed their horses across cold Oak Creek. “I expect Lodge is about the best farmer there is along the crick here. But he don’t hold a candle to Noah Wheeler, even at that.”
Lodge’s place was smaller but neat and well kept, even as Noah Wheeler’s had been. Grubbed-up brush ringed his fields, giving the whole thing some appearance of a bird’s nest. Doug thought that was where the word nester came from. Lodge had a good set of pens for his work and milk stock. It struck Monahan that these pens were patterned after those of Noah Wheeler.
“They all copy Wheeler, don’t they?” he said.
“You see a man doing the right kind of a job, you’re foolish if you don’t model after him some.”
Foster Lodge still lived in the original dugout he had carved back into a hillside. A sign of improving times was that he now had a tin covering over the original sod roof. It would turn the water, where the sod never did. There was a fairly new lean-to, built of lumber, probably raised for propriety when the children began to grow up.
Lodge heard the barking of his dogs and met Doug and Stub at the door. “Come in, come in. Too cool to stand around outside. Did all my chores and hustled myself back in here where it’s warm.”
A castiron cook stove threw welcome heat. Dry mesquite stumps and roots were piled in a box behind the stove, along with axe-cut dry mesquite limbs.
Mrs. Lodge, a thin, morose woman who acted as if she resented the company, came out and poured them some coffee. Lodge avoided the sharp cut of her eyes. Doug figured she had him buffaloed. Like too many others, she probably had resented leaving security and the small comforts somewhere farther east to try to build something better out here in a raw new land. He was glad when she retreated into the lean-to room and closed the door.
Doug said, “I came to see if you’re still interested in having some fence built. We’re not busy now. We could start any time.”
Lodge made no sign that he knew what had happened to the Finch job. He hadn’t been to town, Doug guessed.
“Well, yes I am,” Lodge said. “I’ve talked with some of my neighbors. We been thinkin’ we might all have some fence built and share the cost where we can share a fence.”
“It would sure save you a lot of damage from stray cattle.”
Lodge frowned. “Right there’s the only hitch, Monahan. All of us own a little livestock, too—milk cows, work horses and mules, a few beef critters. Some of the boys don’t quite trust this bobwire. If it cuts up some of Fuller Quinn’s strays, so much the better. But they’re afraid it might cut up our own stock, too.”
“It won’t,” Doug assured him, “not after they get used to it.”
“I don’t know,” Lodge commented doubtfully. “It’s mean-lookin’ stuff. They’re goin’ to have to see proof, I’m afraid, before they’ll go through with it.”
Monahan chewed his lip, thinking darkly. How could he show them proof when there wasn’t a barbed wire fence anywhere around? Then he remembered an exhibition he had seen in San Antonio.
“I believe I can prove it to where it’ll satisfy all of you,” he said. “Would you be willing to gamble a few head of cattle on it?”
Lodge frowned. “Gamble? Well now, I’m not a rich man. I ain’t got enough livestock to go gamblin’ with them.”
“Then I’ll do the gambling,” Doug said. “I’ll guarantee to pay you for any cattle that get crippled or cut up bad.”
“What do you figure on doing?”
“I’ll pick out a spot someplace on the creek here, where everybody can see it. I’ll put up a good-sized barbed wire corral and turn cattle into it. You’ll see how quick they learn what the wire’s there for.” He studied Foster Lodge. “If it proves out all right, and you men are satisfied that it won’t hurt your stock, will you contract with me to build the fence?”
Lodge thoughtfully rubbed his jaw. “Personally, I’d go along with it. I think I can speak for the others. You give the boys a good show and you’ve got yourself a job, Monahan.”
* * *
CAPTAIN ANDREW RINEHART swung stiffly down from his big gray horse and stood a moment holding on to the horn, steadying himself. He was bone-tired after a full day in the saddle. This weariness made him angry at himself, for he used to ride all day and half the night without tiring so.
“Need some help, Captain?” Archer Spann had walked up behind him, leading his own horse.
“No, thank you,” Rinehart said firmly.
“You’re tired. I can unsaddle for you.”
With a flare of impatience the captain replied, “I’ve always saddled and unsaddled my own horses. I see no need to change that now.”
He loosened the girth and slid the saddle and blanket off the gray’s back, letting them ease to the ground. He patted the horse on the neck. The captain had always loved horses. Especially gray horses. That was all he rode anymore. There was something about a gray horse that gave a man stature.
He pulled the bridle off and watched the horse turn away. The gray walked across the broad corral, nose to the ground. When he found a place that suited him, he dropped down, hind legs first, and rolled in the dust. This was a sight that had always been restful to the captain. Out of ancient habit he counted the rolls. One, two, three. A horse is worth a hundred dollars for every time he rolls over, the old saying went. Three hundred dollars.
I couldn’t roll over once anymore, he thought. I’m not worth much.
“Anything else that needs doing tonight?” Archer Spann asked.
“Nothing, thank you,” the captain said, jerked back to reality. He hoisted his saddle up onto a wooden rack, placing the blanket on top of it to dry the sweat out. He watched Spann walking away from the barn, and he felt a momentary regret for having spoken so sharply to his foreman.
Spann was quiet and coldly efficient. There was nothing in the way of ranch work that he couldn’t do, and do better than anyone else on the payroll. He would get it done quickly and well, with little lost motion, or emotion. Just as the captain himself had done in his younger days. With others, Spann was sometimes harsh, even overbearing. He had little patience with other men’s errors, and he seldom made one of his own.
He had an inner, relentless drive that the captain had seen in few men. Occasionally, without warning, Spann could burst into sudden violence, as he had done that day at Monahan’s fencing camp.
The captain had instantly regretted that killing. If anybody had needed killing, it had been Gordon Finch, a land-hungry coward who had tried to use someone else to take for him what he lacked the guts to take for himself. Doug Monahan, the captain was convinced now, had been no more than a victim of circumstance. There had been a time, the next day, when the captain would have been willing to make restitution, if it could have been done quietly and honorably.
Now it had gone too far. However innocently Monahan had wandered into this situation, he had now set himself up against Rinehart. From now on, he could only be regarded as an enemy.
Darkness was drawing down over Rinehart’s ranch headquarters, and with it came the sharp chill of the late-winter night. Rinehart drew his coat tightly around him. Even the cold bothered him more than it used to. Rheumatism had set up a dull ache in his shoulder, where he had stopped an arrow in a fight with the Comanches way back yonder, while he was a Ranger.
Rinehart wearily climbed the wooden steps to his high front porch. His boots clumped heavily, the spurs jingling sharply in the cold night air. He pushed open the door of the big rock house, and he heard Sarah call, “Is that you, Andrew?”
She always asked that, every time he came in. It had been the same for forty years. With Sarah, it was a manner of greeting rather than an actual question. She had never failed to greet him at the door in the good young years.
Now she was ailing and often had to remain in her bed. Age was catching up with Sarah, too. But she was never too sick to call out to him as he came in. He dreaded the day he would walk into this big old house and not hear that voice.
Automatically he removed his hat. The ranch might be the captain’s, but the house was his wife’s. He walked into the bedroom and saw her lying there in the gloom.
“You’re awfully late, Andrew,” she scolded, but her voice was soft with affection.
“It’s so dark in here,” he said. “Why didn’t you have Josefa light the lamp?” He struck a match and lighted the wick, clamping the shining glass chimney back into place.
“Dusk,” she said. “It’s restful to tired eyes.”
She reached out and touched his hand. The captain sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at her. It angered him somehow that he could do nothing for her. He had always been a strong man. All his life, what he had wanted to do, he did. What he wanted to have, he took. When he spoke, men moved. His power had been great.
Yet now he had no power to help this woman he loved. Sometimes she was up and about for two or three weeks at a time. Then she would be down again, weak and helpless as a child. Lately he had begun to consider how life would be without her. It was an empty and terrible thing to contemplate.
“Doctor been out today?” he asked.
She nodded. “He just left some more of those awful pills. I think he uses them to keep his patients sick, so he’ll have a steady income.”
He was grateful for the good humor he could see in her eyes. Sarah had always been his refuge. When things went wrong, Sarah always seemed to be able to muster a smile from somewhere and make misfortune easier to take.
“I sent for Luke McKelvie,” he said. “Has he been here?”
“He came in about sundown. He went down to the cookshack to eat.”
Rinehart stood up. “I’ll go on down there, then. I need to talk to him.”
Sarah reached out and caught his sleeve. “Andrew, I want to ask you about Charley Globe.”
“What about Charley?”
“He came up here today and told me he’s quitting. Andrew, Charley’s been with us ever since we came up to this country. He’s one of the few real old-timers.”
The captain frowned. “What’s eating Charley?”
“It’s Archer Spann. Archer’s too abrupt with him. Charley feels he’s entitled to some extra consideration around here occasionally because he’s been with us so long. He’s getting old, and he can’t always keep up. He doesn’t like to be browbeaten by some younger man. And what happened over at that fencing camp the other day didn’t set well with Charley, either. Andrew, you’ve got to do something about Archer Spann.”
Rinehart said defensively, “Archer’s a good man, Sarah, the best man we ever had. Sure, he’s hard. But it takes a hard man, sometimes.”
“But you’ll talk to him, won’t you? And to Charley?”
“I’ll talk to him. And I won’t let Charley quit.”
The cookshack and bunkhouse were combined in one long L-shaped frame building. Captain Rinehart walked up the steps and onto the porch where the washbasins were. He found Luke McKelvie sitting there in the near-darkness, smoking a cigarette.
“Evening, Captain,” the sheriff said, standing up.
“Evening.” They shook hands.
McKelvie said pleasantly, “The place never changes, Captain. It’s just the same as it was when I worked here. Even after all these years, this is the only place that seems like home to me.”
“No,” the captain agreed, “it doesn’t change. As long as things suit us, there’s no reason why they should ever change, is there?”
McKelvie shook his head. “I reckon not.” Then he said, “Cook’s got a good supper fixed in there. You ought to eat a bite.”
Damn it, the captain thought, they’re all trying to take care of me like an old man. “Supper’ll wait. I’ve got something more important. Have you heard what that fellow Monahan is up to?”
The sheriff nodded. “A little.”
“You know he’s been keeping some wire down at Tracey’s Mercantile. He’s taken some of it out, and he’s hauled several loads of cedar posts out to Oak Creek. He’s putting up some sort of a barbed wire corral.”
McKelvie said, “I know. I was out there. He’s going to run a bunch of stock into it to show the farmers that bobwire won’t kill their animals.”
“You know what he’s fixing to do, don’t you, Luke? He’s trying to get those farmers to let him fence their land for them.”
“I understand he’s already got them sold, if he can show them that the stock won’t be hurt.”
Already sold! That jarred the captain a little.
“Luke, you’ve got to stop it.”
“Stop it?” McKelvie dropped his cigarette and ground it under his boot. “How?”
“I don’t care how. Throw him in jail. Run him out of town. Why should I have to tell you how?”
“Look, Captain, I can’t just jail a man or run him out of town because I don’t like him, or don’t like what he’s doing. As long as he’s not breaking the law, I can’t touch him.”
“Luke, you know what that wire can do to this country! It’s always been an open range. It’s been our range. Once a few of the farmers start, some of the ranchers will. In a couple of years they’ll have the range cut up into a hundred pieces. We’ll be fenced off from half of our water. The cattle won’t be able to graze free with the rain and the grass. When the dry spells come, they won’t be able to move the way they used to. They’ll stay right there and graze it and tromp it into the dust, and there won’t be anything left.”
McKelvie sat down again. “I don’t know how we can stop it. If it’s a man’s own land, it’s his land, and that’s all there is to it. There’s no legal way.”
The captain’s voice grew heated. “If we can’t stop it legally, then we’ll stop it some other way. But stop it we will!”
“If we find a legal way, fine. Otherwise, Captain, you’ll have to count me out.”
“Luke, are you forgetting who put you in there as sheriff? Are you forgetting who you’re working for?”
“I’m not forgetting anything. Sure, you got me put in office a long time ago. You’ve kept me in, and I’m grateful for it. You’ve been like a father to me, Captain. Over the years, I’ve admired you more than any man I ever knew. But there are other people in the county now. I’m working for them, too. Don’t make it any harder for me than it already is.”
“I counted on you to stand by me, Luke. Sometimes it seems like I haven’t got many friends I can rely on anymore.”
“I’m your friend, Captain. And as your friend, I’m telling you to not do anything rash. The old days are gone.”
McKelvie stood up again and extended his hand. “Good night, Captain.”
Curtly Rinehart said, “Good night,” and turned away.
The old days are gone, McKelvie had said. Not yet they weren’t!
Old age may be beginning to slow me, but it hasn’t got me down, the captain thought angrily. I’m not going to quit while there’s any fight left in me. There was a time when nobody ever questioned me. I knew what was good for this country, and I saw that it got done. People recognized that I was right.
Now I’m slowing down. I can’t get around like I used to. My eyesight’s getting bad. I can’t see all that’s going on around me. But I can see enough to know that they’re beginning to point their fingers at me and talk. They’re coming in all the time now, these new ones, looking enviously on what I have and plotting to steal it away from me.
Damn them, if it hadn’t been for me there wouldn’t be anything here! I fought for this range, and bled for it and sweated for it. Now they think because I’m getting old that they can take it away from me! But I’ve still got friends. I’ve still got men with the old spirit. They’ll find out the R Cross is as strong as it ever was.…
Archer Spann walked out of the cookshack.
A hard man, some said about Spann. But he was a man you could depend on when you needed something done.
“Archer,” the captain said, “come walk out to the barn with me. We’ve got some talking to do.”