The fencing job went off smoothly enough. The ground near Oak Creek was not rocky, so the digging was not too hard work. By themselves Doug Monahan and Stub Bailey set the posts and strung up the red barbed wire. It was a square corral about a hundred feet long on each side, with a wire gate in one corner and short wings just off the gate to help in penning cattle.
Because it was a temporary job, just for exhibition, they hadn’t dug the holes as deep as usual, nor done as tight a job of stringing wire. But it was sufficient for the purpose.
“There she is,” Doug told Foster Lodge. “Ready to go. The more people we can get out, the better.”
He looked toward Lodge’s milk pen. “Folks’ll always come out if you offer to feed ’em. You got a fat calf we might butcher?”
Lodge frowned. “Well, there’s one out there, but I’m not a rich man, Monahan, and I got a family. You know, I can’t…”
“I figured on buying it from you, Mr. Lodge. I’ll give the barbecue.”
Lodge brightened. “In that case, now, I reckon maybe I could.…”
When they got off to one side, Stub Bailey worriedly caught Monahan’s arm. “You sure you know what you’re doing? That’s a wicked-lookin’ corral. One bad break and you’ll own a bunch of cut-up cattle.”
Monahan said, “I don’t think so. We’ll let them ease in there and get a smell at the fence. Once they know the wire will stick them, they’re not apt to hit it very hard.”
“I hope you’re right. But you’re sure givin’ a cow-brute credit for an awful lot of sense.”
It looked for a while as if the milk-pen calf wasn’t going to be enough. Even Foster Lodge was amazed at the size of the crowd which turned out for the exhibition. Every farmer on Oak Creek was there, along with his family. The kids played up and down the creek and among the trees. They hadn’t been there long until one of them fell in the icy water, and a farmer had to grab him up and rush him to the Lodges’ dugout, where the women gathered to exchange gossip. Mrs. Lodge was an unwilling hostess, but she managed to cover it up fairly well when the rest of the women began arriving.
Even though Doug had hired a couple of out-of-work ranch cooks to prepare the dinner, many of the women had brought along cakes and pies anyway. It was a good thing, because most wagon cooks couldn’t have baked a cake, even if they’d wanted to.
A good many people from Twin Wells were on hand, too, for a look at this new curiosity. Albert Brown, the portly old banker, had left the lending institution in the able care of his teller and was at the barbecue. He was shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with everybody he could get around to. He seemed to be laughing all the time. One banker who could refuse you a loan and make you feel good about it, Monahan thought.
Three or four of the smaller ranchers from up at the head of Oak Creek were there, too, rubbing shoulders with the farmers and townspeople. These were likable men, and Monahan spent what extra time he could find visiting with them. They were like the neighbors he had known in South Texas, before the drought.
Most of the men spent their time down around the corral, feeling of the wire, testing its strength. More than one of them tore his shirt.
“A taste of this,” Doug heard one of them say, “oughta ruin the appetite of them Fuller Quinn cows.”
“If Quinn had to pay me for all the feed his stock has ruined, he’d be out twistin’ rabbits, he’d be so broke,” another said.
Sheriff Luke McKelvie rode out about mid-morning. He didn’t have much to say, just stood around and watched, and listened. Once he walked up to look the fence over. He shook his head distastefully as he fingered the sharp barbs.
Still siding with the captain, Doug Monahan thought. He wondered if McKelvie had something up his sleeve.
“Monahan,” the sheriff asked, “what do you figure on getting out of all this?”
“A living, Sheriff. You make yours keeping the peace. I make mine putting up fences.”
McKelvie grinned dryly, and there wasn’t much humor in him. “You’re making it darned hard for me to keep the peace. There’s lots of people around here who don’t like your bobwire.”
“But there are lots who do like it and need it.”
McKelvie frowned. “It’s your right to build it, I reckon, and I can’t stop you. But I’ll tell you frankly, Monahan, I don’t like the stuff. It’s been a pretty good country, just the way it was. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t want to see it changed.”
“Change is the only thing you can be sure of in this world.”
McKelvie hunkered down and watched the farmers examining the corral. “Look at it like a cowman—that’s where your main opposition is going to come from. Bobwire, once it gets started, will cut him off from a lot of watering places, and a lot of free range he’s always used. It’ll cut him off from the trails he’s accustomed to following to market.
“Then there’s the extra cattle you always find on the open range. They don’t belong there, but you got to figure on ’em. Maybe the barber or the saloonkeeper or the mercantile man have twenty or thirty head apiece. A lot of cowboys, too, have a handful of cattle in their own brand. They just turn ’em loose and let ’em run on the free range.
“As the country closes up, those people will find themselves crowded off first one place, then another. They’ll double up wherever the range isn’t fenced yet, and make it hard on the ranchers who hold out to the last before they give in and fence too. Eventually it’ll freeze the free-grass man plumb out.
“Then, look at it the way the cowboy will. It takes a lot of cowboys to keep a cow outfit running, the country wide open like it is. But you cut this land up into little pieces, it won’t take near as many men to work it. A lot of those boys’ll be out of a job, and they’re smart enough to see that already.”
Monahan nodded soberly. “You’ve got some good points there, Sheriff, but look at it from the other side. As long as the range is wide open, how can a man develop his own land, other people’s cattle crowding into his water and onto his grass? A range hog like this Fuller Quinn keeps throwing more cattle on the range all the time and squeezing the other outfits. The rancher can’t breed up his own herd much because so many stray bulls are running around loose. Cow thieves can latch onto a man’s cattle and carry them off, and he’ll never miss ’em till branding time.
“But you put a fence around him, now, and he can do what he pleases. He can build up the best cattle in the country if he’s a mind to. He can fence the range hogs out. He can put a crimp in the cow thief because it won’t be easy to put stolen cattle across half a dozen fences and not get caught somewhere.
“What I’m getting at, I guess, is that with the fence the country will finally be permanent. It’ll produce more and make a living for more people. There’ll be more towns, and they’ll be bigger ones. Sure, barbed wire is going to hurt some people. But it’ll help a lot more of them than it hurts.”
McKelvie had rolled a cigarette. He licked the edge of the brown paper and stuck it down, then sat there with it in his fingers. He eyed Monahan keenly.
“We’re both putting up some pretty talk, Monahan. Now let’s just break down and get honest with each other. I meant all I said, but I reckon the main reason I’m against your wire is because it’s going to hurt the captain. You can’t understand this, maybe, but he’s been a great man in his day.
“And when we come right down to it, you’re not really much interested in the people of Kiowa County, or whether they get their land fenced or not. If it hadn’t been for what happened in your camp the other day, you’d’ve probably left here and everything would’ve been peaceful. But now you’re mad, and you got a hate worked up for the captain. You’re determined to stomp on him, and nothing else matters much to you.”
Monahan shifted uncomfortably. “I’m going through with it, McKelvie. It’s too far gone to pull back now, even if I wanted to.”
McKelvie nodded. “I knew you would. But I wanted you to know how I stand.” He stood up stiffly and started to move away. He paused a moment and turned back around. “There must be an awful emptiness in a man, Monahan, when all that matters to him is revenge.”
* * *
THE BARBECUE WAS about done, and Monahan was getting ready to call the crowd to dinner when a young cowboy rode up looking for McKelvie.
“Sheriff,” he said when he found him, “there’s been a fight down at the T Bars. They sent me to get you.”
McKelvie studied the boy, debating whether he ought to go. “What kind of a fight? Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff. I wasn’t there. They just sent me to get you.”
McKelvie cast a worried glance at the barbed wire corral, then at Monahan. “All right, son,” he said then, “let’s go.”
Monahan ladled out red beans to the crowd. Stub Bailey stood beside him, forking barbecue onto tin plates as the people came by in single file.
“When that banker Brown comes up,” Monahan said, “be sure you give him plenty. He’s liable to be lending the money for a lot of fence.”
After a while the crowd had finished eating.
“They sure didn’t leave much of that calf,” Bailey remarked ruefully. He had been one of the last to get to eat, and he hadn’t found much that was to his liking.
“So much the better,” Doug said. “The more there are, the more fence we may get to build.”
Once fed, the crowd was getting restless, wanting to see something.
“All right, Stub,” Doug said, “it’s time to give ’em the show.”
The cattle they wanted were scattered in a green oat patch behind Lodge’s barn. The two horsemen circled them slowly and eased them down toward the creek. Some were gentle milk stock, but a few showed a strong mixture of wild Longhorn blood. These part-Longhorns were quick to take the lead, stepping long and high and holding their heads up, looking for a booger.
They didn’t have much trouble finding it. With women’s billowing skirts and the shouting of playing youngsters, the cattle kept shying away from the crowd. Not until the third try did Monahan and Bailey manage to get them to the wings and push them into the corral. Monahan rode through the gate, stepping down to close it from inside.
The cattle pushed on to the far side of the corral and stopped there, nervously smelling of the barbed wire. This was something new to them, and they distrusted it, especially the high-headed Longhorns. Some of them jerked their heads back and pulled away when they touched their noses to the sharp barbs. A couple of the gentler cows licked at the wire until they hit a barb.
Monahan allowed the cattle a few minutes to get used to the enclosure. Then he rode in behind them, slapping his rope against his leg to get them milling. They circled around and around the fence, looking vainly for a way out, but never did they let themselves brush against the wire.
The crowd had worked down to the corral now.
“By George,” a farmer exclaimed, “that’s not half as bad as it looks. They got onto it in a hurry.” He pulled back from the fence and ripped a hole in his coat.
“They learn faster than you do,” his wife commented.
Deciding the crowd had seen enough to convince them, Monahan stepped down and led his horse through the gate. He left the cattle inside.
Walking up to Foster Lodge and a dozen others who had gathered around him, Monahan asked, “Well, what do you think now?”
Lodge replied with satisfaction, “I reckon you proved what you set out to. And you don’t owe for any cattle. We’re ready to talk business.”
“There’ll never be a better time.”
Monahan had been so intent in watching the reactions of the bystanders that he hadn’t seen anything else. Now he heard a murmur of alarm move through the crowd. He saw a woman point excitedly, and he turned quickly to see what the trouble was.
A group of cowboys, maybe twenty in number, had ridden up to the opposite side of the creek. Now they came spurring across, splashing the cold water high. Gaining the bank, they spread out in a line and moved into a lope, yelling and swinging ropes. A few fired guns into the air.
Women screamed and grabbed up their children. Bigger boys and girls lit out for the protection of the oak timber. Men pulled back in a hard trot away from the corral.
Caught by surprise, not carrying a gun, Monahan only stood and watched the cowboys coming, the dust boiling up behind their horses. The line split. The riders circled around his corral. Ropes snaked out and tightened over fence posts loosely tamped in the dry dirt. Riders spurred away, their horses straining as they began pulling the fence down.
The cattle inside were running wildly from one end of the pen to the other. Now, seeing the fence go down, they made a panicked break for the opening. Some cleared the wire, but others jumped into it, hanging their legs and threshing desperately as cowboys yelled and pushed them on. Most of them watched as the cowboys finished destruction of the corral badly. Two steers were hopelessly enmeshed, legs tangled in the vicious wire. They lay there, fighting in terror.
Archer Spann rode up, gun drawn. He stared coldly at Monahan and leaned over, firing twice. The steers stopped threshing.
Most of the crowd had retreated to the oak timber and watched as the cowboys finished destruction of the corral. Monahan stood in helpless rage, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it.
In a few minutes it was over. The corral was down, a hopeless tangle of wire and posts. The cowboys gathered on either side of Archer Spann. One who somehow had fallen into the wire had his woolen shirt ripped half away, and he was holding one arm that appeared to be badly cut. A couple of the others were looking it over. Spann turned his horse so that he faced the crowd in the trees.
“You folks listen to this,” he said loudly, “and you’d better remember. The captain says tell you there’ll not be any bobwire fences!”
He turned away from the crowd and faced Monahan, who stood alone out there in the open. “As for you, Monahan,” he said evenly, “this means you pull out of the country and stay out. The next time, you’ll eat that wire!”
Monahan’s fists were clenched, and his face darkened. “I swear to you, Spann,” he said bitterly, “I’ll even up with you if it takes me twenty years.”
* * *
SHERIFF LUKE MCKELVIE solemnly looked over the tangled wire and pulled-up posts and the two dead cattle. “I got back out here as quick as I could. I thought there was something suspicious, that boy being sent to fetch me. It was a trick, all right, to get me out of the way.”
Monahan shrugged angrily, not knowing whether to believe the sheriff or not. It could have been a put-up job.
“Not much we can do about it now, Sheriff, unless you’re willing to arrest the men that did it.”
McKelvie caught the doubting edge in Monahan’s voice, and it irked him. “I can and I will, if you’ll sign the complaints. But even if you get them in jail, there’s not much you can do. Under Texas law it’s nothing more than a misdemeanor to cut or tear down another man’s fence. If I throw them in jail, the captain will bail them out, and the judge will give them the lightest fine he can because he’s in debt to the captain.”
“Wouldn’t hardly pay me then, would it, McKelvie?” Monahan asked with bitterness.
McKelvie shook his head. “Not hardly.”
Monahan and Stub Bailey rode back to town with the sheriff.
Monahan said, “I thought of one thing I could get Spann for. It’s a felony to shoot a man’s cattle, isn’t it?”
The sheriff said, “Yes, but they were Foster Lodge’s cattle at the time they were shot. Do you think Lodge would prefer charges?”
Monahan grudgingly answered, “No, I don’t reckon he would.” Disappointment was still heavy on his shoulders. He had come so close to selling those farmers. Then, suddenly, the whole thing had blown up in his face. They had backed away from the project as they would from a loaded shotgun.
“You saw them, Monahan,” Foster Lodge had said excitedly, his face half white. “The captain’s men and some of Fuller Quinn’s, too. We can’t fight those big outfits. We don’t aim to try.”
The sheriff pulled up as they passed the big rock courthouse. “Whatever you decide, let me know. But I think you should forget it and leave town.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Monahan said angrily, not even looking back at him. He headed across the street for Hadley’s saloon. If there had ever been a time he needed a drink, this was it.
Oscar Tracey, the mercantile man, saw him from the front porch of his store and hailed him. Monahan hesitated, not knowing whether he wanted to talk to anybody right now or not. But he reined his horse over to Tracey’s.
Tracey, a tall, sickly-thin old man, came down off the porch steps in great agitation. “Come around back with me, Mr. Monahan. I’ve got something to show you.”
Monahan and Stub Bailey followed the old storekeeper around the side of the building and out the back. There, in a smouldering pile of ashes and snarled black wire, lay all that was left of the many spools of barbed wire Doug had stored in the shed back of the mercantile.
“They came in here a while before dinnertime,” Tracey said. “They took out your wire and piled it on a bunch of old lumber scraps that was lying there. They poured kerosene on the whole mess and set it afire. They said if I ever had another roll of barbed wire in my place, they’d burn the whole store down.”
The storekeeper’s voice was high-pitched with apprehension. “I’m sorry, Mr. Monahan. I’d like to do anything I could to help you, but you can see what I’m up against. I’m too old to start over again. I’ve got to protect what I have. You see that, don’t you?”
Monahan nodded gravely. “I see it, all right. I’m obliged for all you’ve done, and I won’t ask you to take any chances for me. Looks like I’m out of the fence-building business around here anyway.”
Shoulders slumped, he pulled his horse around and headed across to Hadley’s saloon. Bailey caught up with him.
“You mean you’re giving in, Doug? You’re leaving?”
Doug Monahan shrugged. “I don’t see what else I can do.” His jaw tightened. “But on my way out, I’m going to hunt down Archer Spann and beat him half to death!”
They walked into Chris Hadley’s place and moved toward the back. Hadley brought a bottle and a couple of glasses. In his eyes was a quiet sympathy. The news already had reached town.
“Tough day,” he said.
Monahan nodded sourly and took a stiff drink.
Hadley said, “So Captain Rinehart’s still the big man on the gray horse.” He shook his head regretfully. “It could be a good country for a lot of people, but it’ll never amount to much as long as the captain’s sitting up there like God, holding it back with his fist. For a little while I thought maybe this would be the time. I thought we’d fight our way out from under.”
Noah Wheeler moved through the front door, closing it behind him. He sighted Doug Monahan and came walking back, his big frame blocking off much of the light from the front window.
“Been looking for you, Mr. Monahan.”
Monahan stood up and shook the old farmer’s hand. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Wheeler.” He motioned with his hand, and Wheeler sat down.
“Have a drink with us?”
Wheeler said hesitantly, “Well, I’m not much of a drinking man.…”
“Neither am I,” Monahan replied morosely, “but this seems to be an occasion for it.” Trying to shake his dark mood, he asked, “How is everybody?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Did your cow ever have that calf you were looking for?”
Instantly he saw that he had touched a nerve. Wheeler’s lips tightened. “She had the calf.” He fingered the glass, frowning. “Best cow I ever had, old Roany. And Sancho, there’s not a better bull in all of West Texas. For months I’ve waited, wanting to see what that calf was going to turn out like. Well, it got here, all right.”
He turned his glass up and finished it. “It wasn’t from Sancho atall. It was from one of Fuller Quinn’s scrub bulls. Big, long-legged calf, spotted with every color in the rainbow. Just a pure-dee scrub.”
The old farmer turned his eyes to Monahan, and Monahan could see keen disappointment in them. “I want to have a good herd, and the only way I can build it is with good calves out of cows like Roany. I’ll never get the job done as long as any old stray bull can come across my land. So I want one of your fences, Mr. Monahan!”
Monahan almost choked on his drink. He got it down. “Are you sure you know what you’re saying?”
Wheeler nodded. “I’m sure. Three days now I’ve thought it over. I want you to build me a fence.”
“Haven’t you heard what happened today out on Oak Creek?”
“I heard.”
“And you still want to go on?”
“It’s my land,” Wheeler said stubbornly.
Deep inside, conscience was telling Doug Monahan not to agree. Angered because of that scrub calf, the old man might not fully realize what he was letting himself in for. Conscience said to turn him down.
But Doug Monahan paid no attention to his conscience. Suddenly he felt a wild elation, a soaring of spirit. Out of defeat had come his chance.
“Then, come hell or high water,” he declared, “we’ll build you that fence!”