As he spied more bred-up beef in the draw beyond, Longarm knew why their owner was going to that much trouble. During the long depression of the early ‘70s the folks back East had been as glad to eat any sort of beef as the poor folks of Spain who got the leavings of the bullring. But now that things had picked up under President Hayes and good old Lemonade Lucy, housewives who’d been lucky to serve corned beef and cabbage once a week were demanding filet mignon, or marbled steaks leastways, and turning up their noses at range beef.
He came upon more black longhorns wallowing hock-deep in what a greenhorn might take for wild rye. But Longarm had seen Mex stockmen play that same slick trick. They’d learned it from some of those old-time Moors before they’d chased them back to North Africa.
He’d read somewhere that the desert goatherds of that big Sahara still sowed quick-sprouting seed in those draws they called something like waddies in their own lingo. Most of the time nothing happened, or at best the birds got a free meal out of you. But every now and then your underfilled and labor-free seed set root, and the next time you came by with your stock it was their turn to feast. Longarm was still working on why anyone ought to cast bread on water. But risking a sack of oats or rye you could sow without getting down from your saddle made good sense. He made it close to two dozen critters out there in all that rye getting fatter by the minute.
A distant sky rumble seemed to give the grazing cows pause. More than one gazed his way as if he’d done it. He chuckled and quietly said, “Don’t look at me, ladies. I think it’s silly too.”
He topped another rise to gaze at a bigger and neater version of the trail town and surrounding farms he’d just left. Fields of wind-shimmered golden grain stretched clean to the skyline behind the bigger whitewashed structures of what had to be the Mennonite community of Sappa Crossing. But the way ahead seemed to be a matter of some dispute.
The critter had to be a Cherokee steer. No stockman kept more than one or two bulls if he wanted his cows to get any peace and quiet to fatten on. But sometimes the cutting went a mite awry as the spring roundup crew was turning bull calves to steers, and they called such results queer-steers. Impotent geldings, with enough meat left in their loins to behave like horny bulls who couldn’t get it up.
Longarm could sympathize with such a critter, even when he hadn’t just been used and abused by a horny Osage widow. But he didn’t think much of the way the queer-steer was pawing up dust as it held its horns low and its tail high. So he calmly hauled his Winchester from its saddle boot and levered a round in the chamber as he softly suggested, “Don’t you do it, Cherokee. I’d play tag with you if I had only one mount to worry about. No way I’m fixing to fool around with two to manage as you charge. So don’t charge.”
He’d naturally reined in to show he wasn’t disputing the right of way just yet. But the queer-steer had its tail up stiff as a poker now, and as it gathered all four hooves together, cocked its head to aim, and lowered it again to get going, Longarm muttered, “Aw, shit,” and fired. It was much easier to stop half a ton of madness on the hoof before it could really get moving.
He knew he’d done right when the critter exploded into an all-out rip-snorting charge despite two hundred grains of .44-40 aimed where all the other members of its species were supposed to have their hearts.
As his pony spooked under him, Longarm fired again and gasped, “I reckon you’re right, paint. Anywhere you say!”
So he let go of the lead line, and the two hired ponies took full advantage of his invitation to get the hell off the beaten path as that shot-up queer-steer charged down it like a railroad locomotive on hooves!
It collapsed a furlong on in a cloud of dust, of course. By the time Longarm had chased down the bay and retrieved the lead line, the critter who’d been out to gore the three of them had snorted its last and just lay there, not quite useless yet, damn its valuable hide.
He read the dead critter’s brand as he cussed it, and saw it went with those friendlier black Cherokee they’d just passed. Then he said, “Well, Lazy B, I sure hope the same folks who owned you own that windmill off to the west. For this day ain’t getting any shorter and they never sent me all this way to discuss the price of beef!”
As he headed for those winking blades, he knew he had to track down the queer-steer’s lawful owner and settle up. For shooting stock and leaving it to rot was as bad as stealing it, and there was nothing much lower than a cow thief.
Somebody from that more distant spread must have thought so too. For a trio of riders was coming to meet him as he bee-lined toward that one visible sign of their outfit. They reined in on a rise in a thoughtful manner, likely discussing his unexpectedly honest approach. He’d naturally put his Winchester back in its boot by this time.
As he neared them he saw the one in the middle was a gal, wearing a big white Stetson but seated sidesaddle on her white pony. The two men with her looked more like regular hands. One rode a buckskin and the other a cordovan with white stockings and blaze. All three of them were holding Winchesters across their saddles.
As he got within easy shouting distance, Longarm called out, “I’d be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long and I just now shot a queer-steer branded Lazy B. Might it have been the property of anyone you all might know?”
The gal, somewhat softer-looking up close, called back in a hard enough tone, “That would have been Old Reb. We’ve been trying to catch him through three roundups now. We know what he was and why you done it. But you’d still best come with us and see what my athair has to say about all this.”
He said he had to get on to Sappa Crossing. She said it would still be there after he’d had some coffee and cake—or a running gunfight, should he make that choice. So he allowed coffee and cake sounded swell.
He doubted she’d really meant it as mean as it had sounded. The imperious snip was old enough to know you didn’t gun a federal lawman over a cow. But she was young enough, and pretty enough, to act a tad spoiled. The two hands riding with her shot sidelong glances at her, as if they were trained poodles anxious to please a stern mistress. As they all crested another wave in the sea of grass to spy rooftops and twin silos ahead, he tried once again to ask her what she figured her dead steer had been worth. She told him her athair would likely reward him for getting Old Reb before he killed someone on the wagon trace and got them sued. Then she repeated it was up to her athair and that Himself wouldn’t like it if a stranger snubbed their genuine Arbuckle Brand coffee and the finest pastry west of Saint Lou. She said her athair had taught their Chinese cook to bake cakes like Granny used to make, at the peril of his heathen life.