Ten years earlier, down in Texas, Pogue Quentin and three other men, Emil, Jason, and Stu Sinclair, had robbed a train. They waited alongside a water tower until the train stopped, then got the drop on the engineer and fireman. After that, they decoupled the express car from the passenger cars, and forced the engineer to take the express car a mile up the track before they let him stop. When the express agent tried to resist them, Pogue shot and killed him.
Killing the express agent wasn’t that hard to do. Pogue had ridden with Doc Jennison and the Kansas Jayhawkers during the Civil War. There were some who said that Jennison made Quantrill and his Bushwhackers look like Sunday school teachers. When the war ended, Quentin continued his raids, only now they were for personal gain. The train robbery in Texas was an example.
The train robbery netted five hundred dollars in cash. But because Quentin had set up the plan, he kept two hundred for himself, and gave one hundred to each of the other three.
The other three understood that the money would be divided that way and made no protest over the allocation of the proceeds. What they did not know, however, was the real reason Quentin had held up this particular train. Quentin knew that this train was carrying a bank draft worth fifteen thousand dollars, and that the draft could be negotiated by the bearer.
The Sinclair brothers also did not know Quentin’s name, since he identified himself only as “Joe.”
When Quentin went to Colorado, he cashed the draft, bought a ranch, then sent back to Wichita for his wife and eleven-year-old son. His wife died in the first year, leaving him with the responsibility of raising his son. It was not a responsibility he handled well. Billy Ray Quentin grew up almost like one of the feral cats on the ranch. Without the ameliorating influence of a mother or the concerned discipline of a father, Billy Ray was, as Quentin’s ranch foreman, Cole Mathers, once said, “as wild as an unbroken colt.”
Chapter Four
Big Rock
Emil got ten dollars for the saddle and thirty-five dollars for the horse. Both were worth more, but he had no proof that he was the actual owner, and he wasn’t in any position to answer questions. Besides, forty-five dollars in his pocket was better than no money at all. And if he had kept the horse, it would just be an extra horse to keep up with.
He waited until nightfall before he returned to Big Rock; then he didn’t go into town. Instead, he stopped at a little copse of trees on a small hill about a quarter of a mile from the western edge of town. Dismounting, he pulled a stem of grass from the ground, then stuck the root in his mouth and sucked on it as he stood there. From there, he could see the entire town, from the railroad depot on the east side of town to the white church with the high steeple on the west, and from the blacksmith shop at the north end of town, to the cluster of private houses at the south end. He decided to wait outside the town and not go back in until all the nighttime activity had grown quiet.
Although Emil had no watch, he knew that it had to be somewhere around ten o’clock, because by now, except for one of the saloons, there were no public buildings open at all. In addition, only a few lights showed in the residential district.
From where he was, he could hear a piano from the saloon, but he was too far away to hear any voices. Satisfied that most of the town was asleep, he got back into the saddle, picked up the reins of the other two horses, and rode into town.
He tried to ride slowly and quietly, but it seemed to him as if the hoofbeats of his horse and the other two were as loud as a drum each time they hit the hard-packed dirt of the main street. To make matters worse, the hollow, clopping sound rolled back in echoes from the buildings that fronted the street, and that managed to redouble the sound.
Leaving the street, Emil rode down the alley until he reached the back of the sheriff’s office. There, he tied off all three horses. then, pulling his hat lower, he stepped up to one of the windows of the jail and peered inside.
The deputy was sitting behind his desk with his feet up on the desk, his chair tipped back against the wall, and his hat pulled low over his eyes. Emil walked around to the front, pushed open the door, stepped inside, and started toward the deputy.
The deputy awoke just as Emil reached him. Before he could speak, or react in any way, Emil brought his gun down hard on the deputy’s head, and he fell from the chair onto the floor.
“I didn’t figure you’d just go off and leave us,” Jason said.
“Where are the keys?” Emil asked.
“In the middle drawer of the desk,” Stu answered.
Emil opened the desk, got the key, then unlocked his brothers’ cell.
“Let’s go.”
“Where we goin’?” Stu asked.
“What difference does it make, as long as it’s away from here?”
Sugarloaf Ranch
Early the next morning, Smoke stood by the fire, drinking coffee as he watched his cowboys gathering the cows into a manageable herd for the ten-mile drive into town. Behind him he heard the sound of pots and pans being moved around, and he smelled the aroma of frying bacon and boiling coffee.
Although Smoke employed a full-time cook for the cowboys of Sugarloaf, on this morning Sally had volunteered to help the cook prepare breakfast for those who would be pushing the herd into town. Her biggest contribution, appreciated by all, would be her bear signs, and the sweet smell of that confectionary treat rose above even the aroma of bacon and coffee.
“Whoo-wee,” Cal said when he bit into the bear sign. “Pearlie pure dee don’t have no idea what he’s missin’. I’ll bet he ain’t had nothin’ like this since he has went away.”
Sally shivered. “You mean Pearlie doesn’t have any—oh, never mind. That sentence is so ungrammatical that I don’t believe it is humanly possible to correct it.”
“You ridin’ into town with us, Miss Sally?” Cal asked.
“Yes, I thought I would. It’s been a couple of weeks since I was in town.”
“There’s a lot better ways to go into town than to ride along with a herd of longhorns, Miz Jensen,” one of the other cowboys said. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like.”
“Ha!” Cal said. “I’ll have you know that Miss Sally once helped us drive a herd of three thousand cows over a thousand miles. I reckon she knows what she’s doin’ all right.”
“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” the cowboy replied. “I was just commentin’ is all.”
Sally laughed. “And I didn’t take any offense. But you are right, it is different riding with a herd, no matter how far you go with them.”
After breakfast, all the cowboys saddled their mounts, then rode out to get the herd moving. The animals, used to the freedom of the open range, were now forced together in one large, controlled herd. That made them acutely aware of different sights, sounds, smells, and sensations, and they were growing increasingly anxious over the change in what had been their normal routine.
Embedded in the sounds of the crying and bawling of cattle, and the shouts and whistles of the wranglers as they started the herd moving, were the rattle and clacking of long horns banging together as the cattle got under way. That was a particularly poignant sound to Smoke, because he knew that the days of the longhorn were numbered.
It took them about three hours to get to Big Rock. The railroad ran north and south through Big Rock, with the track located to the east, just out of town. That meant it wasn’t necessary to push the herd down Main Street. They were able to bring them up to the depot by driving them parallel with the tracks, then across the tracks, where they began pushing them into the holding pens that had been reserved specifically for Smoke’s herd.