“That was a long time ago,” Tolliver growled. “Things change.”
Frank wasn’t really interested in the history of the feud between Tolliver and Don Felipe Almanzar. He said, “Where were you men headed?”
“Back to the Rockin’ T,” Tolliver replied. “We’d been to San Rosa for supplies.” He shook his head in disgust. “All the boxes done bounced out back along the road, when that bunch jumped us and we had to take off so fast. We’re lucky the damn buckboard didn’t rattle itself to pieces.”
“San Rosa’s the nearest town?”
“Yep, right on the river about five miles upstream from here. The name’s fouled up—it ought to be Santa Rosa—but the fella who stuck the name on it didn’t savvy Mex talk. Still a pretty nice place.”
“I’ll pay it a visit,” Frank said. “I was looking for a place to get something to eat and somewhere to stay.”
“You don’t have to go to San Rosa for that.” Tolliver jerked a thumb at the buckboard. “Help us set that wagon up, and then you can ride on to the Rockin’ T with us. You’ll be our guest for as long as you want to stay, Mr. Morgan.”
“Call me Frank. And I wouldn’t want to impose—”
“Impose, hell!” Tolliver had picked up his hat and now he slapped it against his leg to get some of the dust off. As he settled it on his head, he went on. “After what you done to help us, I’ll consider it a personal insult if you don’t let us feed you and put you up for a spell.”
Frank smiled. “In that case, I accept.”
He whistled and Stormy came out of the chaparral, followed by Dog. Tolliver and Ben looked with admiration at the big Appaloosa, but were more wary where Dog was concerned. “That critter looks a mite like a cross between a wolf and a grizzly bear,” Tolliver commented.
“He’s all dog,” Frank said with a grin. “Just be sure you’ve been introduced properly before you go to pet him. Unless you’re a little kid,” he added. “He’ll let kids wool him around like he’s still a pup.”
Frank took his rope from the saddle and tied one end to the buckboard. Ben saw what he was doing and brought over the surviving three members of the team. The rope was tied to their harness, and the horses did the work as the buckboard was soon pulled upright again. Frank hitched Stormy into the empty spot in the team. The Appaloosa didn’t care much for that, but he was willing to tolerate it if that was what Frank wanted him to do. Stormy turned a baleful eye on his master for a moment, though.
“I’d watch out for that horse if I was you, Mr. Morgan,” Ben said. “He looks like he might sneak up on you sometime and take a nip out of your hide.”
“I fully expect that he will,” Frank agreed with a chuckle. He grew more sober as he gestured toward the bodies again. “What about them?”
“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna get their blood all over my buckboard,” Cecil Tolliver said. “When we get to the ranch, I’ll send a rider to San Rosa to notify the law. In the meantime, a couple o’ my hands can come back out with a work wagon to load up the carcasses. The undertaker can come to the ranch to get ’em for plantin’.”
“There’s law in San Rosa?”
“Yeah, a town marshal who don’t amount to much. But there’s a company of Rangers that’s been usin’ the town as their headquarters for a spell, while they try to track down some bandits who’ve been raisin’ hell around here.”
Frank’s interest perked up at the mention of Texas Rangers. Over the past year or so he had shared several adventures with a young Ranger named Tyler Beaumont. Beaumont was back home with his wife in Weath-erford now, recuperating from injuries he had received in that fence-cutting dustup in Brown County. Frank respected the Rangers a great deal as a force for law and order, even though his reputation as a gunfighter sometimes made the Rangers look on him with suspicion.
He wasn’t looking for trouble down here along the border, though, so it was unlikely he would clash with the lawmen.
Tolliver and Ben climbed onto the seat of the buckboard. Frank tied his packhorse on at the back of the vehicle, then sat down with his legs dangling off the rear. When he snapped his fingers, Dog jumped onto the buckboard and settled down beside him. Tolliver got the team moving and drove on toward his ranch, the Rocking T.
Frank saw cattle in the chaparral as the buckboard rolled along. They were longhorns, the sort of tough, hardy breed that was required in this brushy country. Longhorns seemed to survive, even to thrive, in it where other breeds had fallen by the wayside. The ugly, dangerous brutes had been the beginning of the cattle industry in Texas, back in the days immediately following the Civil War. Animals that had been valuable only for their hide and tallow had suddenly become beef on the hoof, the source of a small fortune for the men daring enough and tough enough to round them up and make the long drive over the trails to the railhead in Kansas.
As a young cowboy, Frank had ridden along on more than one of those drives, pushing the balky cattle through dust and rain, heat and cold, and danger from Indians and outlaws. Since the railroads had reached Texas, the days of such cattle drives were over. Now a man seldom had to move his herds more than a hundred miles or so before reaching a shipping point. As much as he lamented some things about the settling of the West, Frank didn’t miss those cattle drives. They had been long, arduous, perilous work.
With an arm looped around Dog’s shaggy neck, he turned his head and asked the Tollivers, “How much stock have you been losing lately?”
“Not that much,” Ben said.
His father snorted. “Not that much at one time, you mean. Half a dozen here, a dozen there. But it sure as hell adds up.”
Frank knew what Tolliver meant. Rustlers could make a big raid on a ranch, or they could bleed it dry over time. Either method could prove devastating to a cattleman.
“The Rangers haven’t been able to get a line on the wide-loopers?”
“They’re too busy lookin’ for the Black Scorpion.”
“The Black Scorpion?” Frank repeated. “What’s that?”
“You mean who’s that. You recollect what I said about the Rangers huntin’ for a gang of owlhoots? Well, the Black Scorpion is the boss outlaw, the son of a bitch who heads up that gang.”
Ben laughed. “Now you’re talking like the one who’s been reading dime novels, Pa.”
“The Black Scorpion’s real, damn it,” Tolliver said with a scowl. “Folks have seen him, dressed all in black and wearin’ a mask, leadin’ that bloodthirsty bunch o’ desperadoes.”
That sounded pretty far-fetched to Frank too, like the creation of one of those ink-stained wretches who made up stories about him. There might be some truth to it, though. The West had seen mysterious masked bandits before, such as Black Bart out in California. Frank was going to have to see this so-called Black Scorpion for himself, though, before he would really believe in such an individual.
Ben was equally skeptical, saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it. It seems to me that Captain Wedge and the Rangers are wasting their time looking for phantoms when they ought to be hunting down rustlers.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna argue about that,” his father said. “I wish they’d do something about the damn rustlers too.”
Frank sat in the back of the buckboard and mulled over what he had heard. He had come down here to the border country looking for someplace warm and peaceful. It was warm, all right, but evidently far from peaceful, what with the feud between Cecil Tolliver and Don Felipe Almanzar, the rustlers plaguing the Rocking T, and another gang of bandits led by a mysterious masked figure. With all that going on, it seemed like trouble could crop up from any direction with little or no warning—or from several directions at once.