Boswell's Luck Read online

  “Could be. Poor luck, bein’ kilt just settin’ out.”

  “Might’ve been halfway if he came up from way south o’ San Antonio.”

  “Not to Dodge City yet, though. All those miles just to drown or get bit.”

  “Some men don’t have much luck, Mitch.”

  “Or none at all,” Mitch said, shaking his head sadly. “Me, I got some. I still got Ma and Pa, and I don’t go to bed hungry. Still, it ain’t exactly lively ’round our place.”

  “It’s paradise compared to some places,” Rat declared, thinking of the Plank farm three miles south of the river.

  “You figure you got luck, Rat?”

  “Oh, yeah, lots o’ it. All hard. Truth is, if it wasn’t for hard luck, I’d not have a drop o’ it.”

  “It was good luck the sheriff fetched you from ole man Plank’s farm.”

  “No, I figure that was you,” Rat declared. “Maybe you bein’ my friend’s good luck, though.”

  “You might’ve done better if I was one o’ the Hanks boys.”

  “Oh, they got no time for the likes o’ me, Mitch. Nobody much does. Rat Hadley ain’t anything for folks to pay mind to. Most don’t, you know.”

  “Don’t sell yourself so short. I know Mr. Hanks won’t be settin’ any praise on my horsemanship. Shoot, he give you a twenty-dollar bonus, too.”

  “Most likely that was from feelin’ guilty ’bout sendin’ us packin’ after Pa got kilt.”

  “He promised to take you north next year.”

  “Well, guess I’ll have to see that ’fore I take it to heart more’n a little. It’s a long time till next spring, and lots o’ things can happen.”

  “Won’t any o’ them happen as we stand ’round here gazin’ at that grave. How ’bout tryin’ your hand at Iandin’ a big Brazos catfish for supper?”

  “Cut some limbs,” Rat answered. “I’ll tend the horses.”

  “Tie ’em good, Rat. Heard there were Comanches hereabouts.”

  “They got too good an eye for horseflesh to bother with yer mare, Mitch. Nor with this scraggly excuse for a mustang o’ mine, neither. Now get along to work and we’ll have time to swim some. It’s more’n middlin’ warm today.”

  “Hot ’nough to fry bacon on the rocks,” Mitch muttered. “Likely the Lord’s givin’ us a taste o’ what Ma’s sure to preach us on when we get home.”

  “Could be,” Rat said, laughing at the notion. “Or how our bottoms’ll feel if yer pa cuts a switch.”

  Mitch laughed along for a minute as he cut fishing poles with an oversized knife. Later, after Rat satisfied himself the horses had good grass, the boys dipped lines in the river and managed to snag a trio of fat river cats for their dinner. Then they splashed away the balance of the afternoon in the river before frying up the fish.

  “Never knew the night to be so quiet,” Mitch said as they spread their blankets on either side of the dying embers.

  “Oh, it’s mostly quiet,” Rat explained. “Gives a man chance to do some thinkin’. So Pa used to tell me.”

  “Think ’bout what?”

  “Anything. Everything.”

  “And what you thinkin’ on just now?”

  “Poor ole Boswell over there and his bad luck. Wonder what it feels like, dyin’ so young,” Rat mumbled.” ’Course, I suppose he might’ve been older.”

  “Older’n us maybe,” Mitch admitted. “But I’d guess he was young all the same. Elsewise they wouldn’t’ve thought it so ill luck o’ him to mark his board the way they did.”

  “Sure, you’re likely right.”

  “Rat, I worry ’bout dyin’ sometimes. It worries me.”

  “Not me. Ain’t no more hurtin’ when yer gone.”

  “No more anything. And that scares me plenty.”

  “Yeah, it does unsettle you some.”

  Chapter Six

  There were other nights spent along the river those next two years—interludes of adventure and distraction from a world of long, tedious days and stifling nights at the Morris place in Thayerville. A disappointed Rat Hadley listened soberly when Orville Hanks explained how sour cattle prices forced him to trim his trail crew and leave boys of sixteen behind.

  “I’d go ’long for the adventure o’ it,” Rat had pleaded.

  “Only ’cause you never tasted trail dust, son,” Hanks had answered. “Learn this much. Never do a job without demandin’ all that’s due you, Rat. Folks don’t respect a man doesn’t call for his wages. There’ll be another year for Kansas.”

  So there was, but it sometimes seemed to Rat it was an eternity coming.

  Rat could hardly conceal his excitement the day Payne Oakley strode into the mercantile with an invitation to join the Hanks roundup crew again.

  “The boy’s got duties here,” Mrs. Morris argued as she stepped between Rat and the veteran cowboy. “You haul him off, he and Mitch the both of them every spring, and I’m left with nobody to tend counter until you finish with them.”

  “Ma’am, I know it’s a hardship,” Oakley confessed, “but this town and this county eats off the money we collect at Dodge City. Can’t be a trail herd without boys to scare up strays.”

  “What about afterwards?” Rat asked. “Any chance o’ signin’ on for the ride north?”

  “That’d be Mr. Hanks’s say so,” Oakley answered, “but I’d judge you’ve earned your spurs. Little more o’ you than last year, too. Could just be you’ll measure up to what’s taken for a Texas cowboy along the Brazos.”

  Rat grinned as he discarded his apron and carefully closed out the daily totals in Mrs. Morris’s ledger. Then he gave the woman a faint smile.

  “That’s no kind o’ farewell,” Oakley barked, and the boy trotted over and gave Mrs. Morris a warm hug.

  “I’ll not likely keep a job open for you,” she warned with a softening frown.

  “No, ma’am. Wouldn’t expect it,” Rat told her. “I never was a man to tend counter all his days, though. I belong out on the range atop some shaggy ole mustang.”

  “Once,” she admitted. “But you’ve developed a fair hand, and you’re quick with the figures. I’d take you for a banker if I didn’t know better.”

  “Thanks, ma’am,” Rat said, sweeping a wayward hank of hair off his forehead. “I’ll be back to see you ’fore headin’ north. I promise you that.”

  “I suppose Mitch is sure to want to go, too,” she grumbled. “Well, you’ve got time to pack up some things. Get yourself a fresh shirt and an extra pair of trousers. You wear out the seats of them faster than anybody I ever saw. I’ll pack you up some food, too. No trail cook ever fed a boy enough to keep him from starving.”

  “Guess I’ll be a while,” Rat told Oakley. “I’ll fetch Mitch along with me. We’ll be in ’fore dark.”

  “Take your time. No hurry, Rat. Long as you’re ready to chase cows tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Yessir,” Rat said, grinning at the thought.

  Once Mary Morris had satisfied herself the boys had all that was needed for their stint in the roundup camp, Rat summoned Mitch from the store-room, and the two friends hurried down to the livery to get their horses. Once mounted, they returned to the mercantile so Mitch could make his farewells, and soon they were racing each other north to the river and to the Hanks place. They arrived to a mixture of taunts and cheers, for the cowboys had heard all about Rat’s extended good-bye.

  “Sure you don’t want to bring Ma along, sonny?” a lanky South Texan named Bob Tripp asked.

  “She’s too old for you, Bob,” Oakley cried. “And married to boot.”

  “Don’t take ’em old,” Tripp said, shaking his head as the other men hooted. “As to married, well … “

  It was good that Rat Hadley began that arduous week and a half of roundup with a grin, for there were few to follow. Most days he was too weary to share an evening swim with Mitch down by where the river flowed past unlucky Tom Boswell’s grave. Roundup was a world of dust and sweat and blood—more exhaustion than adv
enture. And where before men seemed to enjoy a boy’s company, they now expected a man’s labors.

  “They’re testin’ us,” Mitch observed as the two of them shared night watch. “Seein’ if we’re up to goin’ north.”

  “I am,” Rat declared. “But my backside’s nary so sure.”

  Mitch laughed. “Do better if you didn’t go draggin’ it through every bed o’ cactus in tarnation. Cain’t you stay atop a horse nowadays?”

  Mitch was referring to Rat’s efforts at breaking in a pair of range ponies. There was a fearful lot of learning due before Rat Hadley would pass for anybody’s notion of a bronc buster!

  “I didn’t notice you takin’ a hand at it,” Rat growled. “And wasn’t it you roped the corral yesterday chasin’ that heifer to the branders?”

  “Yeah, that was me,” Mitch said, hiding his red face. “I’m not much of a cowboy. But then it’s not me has to prove himself.”

  “Eh?”

  “I figure if the old man takes you, he’ll ask me. And I’d judge he wouldn’t leave you back again. Not with you sproutin’ chin whiskers and growin’ out o’ yer trousers.”

  “Ain’t size makes a cowboy,” Rat said, sitting up straighter so that the four inches he was shy of Mitch wouldn’t seem so much. “It’s what he can do on a horse. And I’ll put myself up against the best in the outfit.”

  “ ’Specially at collectin’ cactus spines,” Mitch said, laughing.

  Rat continued to put his all into the roundup. Each time he saw Orville Hanks, the boy spoke of the trail drive and hinted at his eagerness to join the outfit.

  “Yessir, be a fine chance for a man,” Rat remarked. Hanks nodded, but offered nothing further.

  Finally the roundup came to an end. The trail herd grazed beside the river, and the younger boys rolled their possessions into their blankets and prepared to set off homeward. Hanks paid them off one by one. Rat and Mitch stood to one side, nervously dreading the moment when their own names might be called.

  “Rat Hadley,” Hanks called, and there was a murmur of complaint among the cowboys. “Rat?”

  “Here, Mr. Hanks,” Rat said, stumbling forward with bowed head.

  “Figured you made the trail crew, did you?” Hanks asked.

  “We all thought he did!” Bob Tripp shouted.

  “Well, I never took a boy to Kansas with toes stickin’ out o’ his boots,” Hanks explained. “And that poor excuse for a hat you got wouldn’t keep cloud spit off your face. Try this out.”

  Payne Oakley stepped forward with a broad-brimmed gray hat fresh off a store shelf, and Hanks himself offered a pair of polished black boots, with spurs securely attached.

  “Don’t know what to say,” Rat mumbled.

  “The boots come from me,” Hanks explained. “Hat’s from the boys. We got one somewhere for Mitch, too. You’ll the both o’ you need ’em where we’re headed.”

  “Dodge City?” Mitch cried.

  “And the devil’s own country ’tween here and there,” Hanks announced. “Get along to town and say your good-byes. We leave at dawn.”

  “Yessir!” Rat yelled, tossing his old hat aside and pulling the new one down over his ears. “Thank you all, fellows. Mitch and I won’t be lettin’ you down.”

  “Sure won’t,” Oakley barked. “We’ll see to that.”

  And so Rat Hadley and Mitch Morris finally set off northward toward Dodge City along the overgrazed and wagon rutted Western Cattle Trail. Not so long ago wild Indians raided herds beyond the Brazos, and renegade whites prowled the empty country north of the Trinity and south of Red River Station. Eighteen-eighty was on the horizon now, though, and what Indians a cowboy saw were mostly toll collectors in the Nations or strays come to beg a steer or two.

  Nature hadn’t had the wild worked out of her, though, and peril aplenty remained. The outfit fought back a stampede just north of the Trinity, and the Red River crossing was mired in quicksand. Ten steers were lost to the bog, and three others broke legs and merited shooting. The sole solace was a fair feast afterward.

  “I feel like I’ve been mashed like a potato,” Mitch muttered as he collapsed in his blankets that night. “Never ate so much dust in my whole life, and then they near drowned me today! If I never see another cow it’ll be too soon.”

  “You wanted to come,” Rat reminded his friend. “Me, even if I ate drag dust a lifetime, I’d rather be out here’n back o’ yer ma’s counter. Long as there’s stars up there to look at, and good company nearby, I got no complaints.”

  Shortly thunderheads rolled in, swallowing the stars. Mitch only grinned.

  It was up near the Cimarron crossing that real trouble found the Circle H. Just shy of the river three dust-covered riders appeared near the left flank. As they swung along the fringe of the herd to where Rat struggled in the dusty wake, one of them made a move to cut out a few steers.

  Ain’t much a man can do ’bout it, Rat told himself as he turned his horse to the right and galloped to fetch Payne Oakley. Orville Hanks forbid his men to shoot off handguns for fear of stampedes, and a bullet was the best reply to attempted thievery. There were a handful of armed riders, though—experienced hands like Oakley. When Rat reached the foreman, Oakley nodded his understanding of the muddled alarm.

  “Don’t you worry for now, Rat,” Oakley replied. “It’s an old trick, just a way to draw off the crew while raiders hit elsewhere. We’ll bring in the strays tonight.”

  “And for now?”

  “Nudge the herd a little harder. We’ll be on the near bank o’ the river this afternoon. That’s when they’ll hit.”

  “You sure?”

  “Been up this way before, son. There’s three, four outfits prowl the Cimarron country, and not a one of ’em’s ever snatched a Circle H beef and not paid a price.”

  Rat nodded although he had no idea of what lay ahead.

  It was Bob Tripp began pulling in riders from the fringes. He handed others pistols or rifles. The best guns went into the steadiest hands. Tripp led Rat and Mitch to a narrow slit of a ravine crowning a low hill near the river.

  “It’s a cowboy fort o’ sorts,” Tripp explained. “I expect the first to fight here shot it out with Comanches. We got a different sort o’ varmint to tend.”

  “Rustlers?” Mitch asked nervously.

  “Oh, a rustler comes by dead o’ night, swipes a few head off the range. These fellows travel in small armies, and they take a whole herd.”

  “And the cowboys?” Rat asked.

  “Shoot the varmints full o’ lead or else get peppered ’emselves. Now you boys pay attention. I got a pair o’ Colts for you. They’ll kick you to Missouri, but they kill sure and quick. Trick’s to hold ’em steady—with both your hands. Don’t go tryin’ to spit fire like a circus clown. Aim, hold her straight, and squeeze off each shot. You got to double click the hammer, you know. Do it with your right thumb. Then all you do’s pull the old trigger. And be ready for the kick. It’ll throw you some the first few times.”

  “I never shot at a man before,” Rat confessed. “Never even thought on it.”

  “Me neither,” Mitch confessed.

  “Ain’t men you’re shootin’ at now,” Tripp barked. “Varmints wearin’ pants. Ain’t so important you hit anybody, you know. Just that you make ’em know you’re up here ready to.”

  Tripp then turned to go, and Rat called out anxiously.

  “Ain’t no boy ever signed on to trail beeves,” Tripp howled angrily. “I showed you what I could. Now I got to go look after the other ones.”

  Rat nodded. As Tripp rode back to the herd, the boys fingered the cold steel of the pistols and stared off across the flat, ravine-scarred land. Was there ever so empty a place? And Rat thought back to that little hill above the Brazos and the lonely grave of Tom Boswell.

  “It’s Boswell’s luck we’re havin’,” he sighed. Mitch grinned sourly, then nodded.

  The raiders came as promised. Their first strike was against the herd itself,
but a half dozen cowboys poured a hot fire on them, and they bounced off and charged the hill instead. As Rat waited for the first outlaw to get within range, he counted the horsemen. There were ten, eleven, twelve of them. The lead man wore a great sprawling moustache. Rat motioned for Mitch to take him. Rat himself drew a bead on the second rider, a fresh-faced boy no older than himself. The horsemen hurled themselves closer, but they had to slow to ascend the hill. Then, as they got to within fifty feet of the ravine, Rat cocked his Colt and fired. The pistol exploded, numbing his fingers and showering the air with a dark powder cloud. Mitch shot, too. The young men blinked the stinging powder from their eyes and fired again. And again. They had no inkling as to the accuracy of their shooting. It was the noise and the powder smoke more than anything that surprised the raiders and flung them back.

  “I think I got one o’ them,” Mitch shouted excitedly as he stared at a lump frozen on the slope below. “Or you did.”

  “Look there,” Rat cried as Bob Tripp led seven vengeful cowboys after the confused bandits. Again the raiders made a move toward the hill, but they soon vanished in a swirl of smoke and fire. When it was all over a pair of riders managed to flee down the Cimarron. The others clutched bleeding arms or bellies. Or lay in the dust where they’d fallen.

  “You did just fine,” Tripp declared afterward as he joined the shaken novices. “Held ’em at bay, let us close in from behind.”

  “Was a close thing,” Rat said, popping open the cylinder of his Colt. “I only had one bullet left.”

  “I shot all six o’ mine,” Mitch added.

  “Bob Tripp, you’re an addled fool!” Tripp cried. “You forgot to give ’em shells. Lord, I’m sorry, boys. Could’ve got you kilt.”

  “Wouldn’t’ve been time to reload anyhow,” Rat muttered. “Any o’ our people hurt?”

  “Bert Cobble’s dead. Luke Granger’s close to. Took a pair o’ bullets in his side. Payne’s got a shattered wrist.”

  “And the outlaws?” Mitch inquired.