Roosevelt stepped down. “There’s the mother cow. You can see plainly it’s not my brand.”
Wil Dow said, “It’s De Morès’s brand, sir.”
The hired hand said, “I know what I’m doing here—I know who I work for.” He had a big hat, rusty spurs and a sly confidential smile.
Roosevelt said, “Put down that iron. I’ll give you your time. You’re fired.”
The hired man reared back on his haunches. “I always look out for my boss’s interests. What’s wrong in that?”
“By George, a man who will steal for me will steal from me. We don’t need your kind here.”
After they had distributed the cattle among the greening pasture lands there was one more halfhearted storm. Huidekoper loomed through the rain. “They scared out George Medlock, Bill Roberts and Jim Monroe. Three good men by my reckoning. They heard the Stranglers were coming, and they rode out of the country.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Roosevelt.
“The Stranglers went on down Beaver Creek and yesterday they hanged Tom Allen. He stood up against his house with a cocked rifle and taunted them—I hear he winged one before they knocked him down. They put a rope around his neck and demanded information, and when he didn’t tell them anything, they hanged him.”
Wil Dow said, “I heard Tom Allen had a habit of branding cattle that weren’t his, that he acquired in ways that wouldn’t stand up to research.”
“He couldn’t stand up to a lynching,” Uncle Bill Sewall said.
Roosevelt stood with Sewall and Dow on the covered piazza. “For Heaven’s sake step down and come in—don’t sit there drowning.”
“No thank you. I won’t stop. I’m on my way to the Killdeers. But I felt I had to warn you about the Stranglers. They don’t leave room for doubt, these boys. They give every suspect the benefit of the noose.”
Wil Dow said, “Seems to be having the desired effect. I haven’t heard anyone complain of stock theft just lately.”
Huidekoper let it go by. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Theodore. But the Stranglers are vigilante-ing in force. Your small outfit is a very possible victim, especially since you’ve sided against De Morès more than once.” Huidekoper took a long breath. “They have killed more than twenty men.”
“Twenty?”
“Including more than one through carelessness and mistakes. One of the masked fellows went to a new widow last week and admitted a slight mistake had been made when they hanged her husband. They tell me the fellow in the mask said, ‘Madam, the joke is on us.’”
“You made that up.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t,” Huidekoper said. “I’ve heard this also—that two of the so-called rustlers were found shot dead by exploding bullets. I know only one man on this range who uses such things.”
“A serious accusation requires more than hearsay evidence. You know that.”
“Of course I do. But I’ve been gathering facts, and some of them are of uncommon peculiarity. For example the lynchings seem to be directed entirely against permanent settlers—men with houses or at least cabins. Doesn’t one ordinarily think of horse-thieves as migratory transients? If so, why are all the victims men who live in their own houses? Also I put forth for your attention the singular fact that, in spite of twenty-odd killings, and in spite of their having frightened and driven scores of squatters out of the country, not one stolen horse or cow has been recovered.” He lifted the reins. “Not one.”
The rain left with him.
Bill Sewall went about grumbling in his beard but Roosevelt refused to allow his spirits to be daunted. “Right, lads. Bring out the tally sheets if you please.”
Having consulted the round-up records they concluded they had lost no more than twenty-five head all winter from cold, wolves, bogs and illness. “They seem in admirable shape,” Roosevelt said. “We’ve got thirty-three hundred and fifty head of cattle, market value about eleven thousand dollars, and it appears our cows have dropped eleven hundred and forty calves this season. I’m certain now—I shall make this my regular business. Old fellows, I count us a resounding success!”
Bill Sewall said, “Give or take a Strangler or two.”
The boss gave him a tough square look and, after a moment, reluctantly nodded.
Sixteen
From The Bad Lands Cow Boy:
We neglected in our last issue to mention the minstrel entertainment given by home talent at the rink on the evening of the Twenty-sixth of June. The variety part of the entertainment would have been a complete success if we had brought our guns along and killed all the performers at the beginning of the first act. The orchestra led by Mose de Spice was simply indescribable. To escape a popular uprising Mose fled the next morning for the Pacific Coast.
Several men have been hung for horse-stealing, most recently Modesty Carter, but the plague of outlawry still goes on. We wish to be placed on record as believing that the only way to cure horse-stealing is to hang the thief wherever caught.
Pack took a running start to trundle his wheelbarrow-load of papers up the embankment to the depot platform. The train chuffed to a halt and Pack handed the newspapers up to a porter, an armload at a time. While the porter stacked them in a corner of the vestibule, Joe Ferris came out of the car past him and stepped down off the train.
Pack said, “I wondered where you were. Another buying trip to Bismarck?”
“Just so.” Joe picked up one of the copies of The Bad Lands Cow Boy and glanced through it, stepping aside to allow a handful of passengers to climb aboard. Joe looked up and Pack saw his head rear back; Joe blinked rapidly, then gripped Pack’s elbow and steered him rapidly away from the train steps.
Pack said, “What’s wrong?”
“You see who just got on the train?”
“No, I didn’t notice. Why?”
“The fellow in the Mexican hat? That was Modesty Carter.”
“What of it?”
Joe folded the newspaper and pushed it in front of Pack’s face. “Read your own column. Modesty Carter got hanged for horse stealing, did he?”
“Now, I had it on the best authority,” Pack muttered, while he allowed Joe Ferris to haul him away from the embankment.
“If he picks up that newspaper,” Joe said, “you’ll be explaining things to him down the business end of a six-shooter. You had better arm yourself.”
“I never carry a gun.”
Joe regarded him with narrowing suspicion. “This best authority of yours. Did it tell you Modesty Carter was dead—or was going to be hanged?”
Pack turned a palm upwards. “It was three days ago. I assumed by now they’d have had the job done.”
On the Fourth of July Pack dressed in his good suit and groomed himself appropriately for the speakers’ platform and went outside with a stern scowl on his face to indicate his disapproval of the bursts of shooting that cluttered the morning. The boys never seemed to think about the fact that when bullets were fired into the air they had to come down somewhere. Last Christmas McKenzie’s mule had been killed outright by a shot that appeared to have been fired straight down into the top of its head. McKenzie was still upset about it and whenever the subject came up it still caused uproars of laughter from Redhead Finnegan and that irresponsible short-sighted crowd of Irish hunters.
Joe Ferris emerged from the store, locked up and joined him. Joe had a sour reluctant expression on his round face. “You heard they took Modesty Carter off the train and killed him.”
“Did they. Too bad he didn’t read the Cow Boy.”
“Too bad for him he couldn’t read at all. So now lynching’s the price of illiteracy, is it?”
“The man was a horse-thief, Joe. I even heard him brag about it one night.”