Max Collins - The Legend of Caleb York

“We’re ready,” Whit told the two other middle-trench cowboys.

Stubby Jerry Morris, not as dumb as his close-set eyes made him look, said, “You see anything out there, Whit?”

“Not yet. It’ll come.”

Roughneck Rafe Connor, black handlebar mustache falling below his face, said, “I sure as hell hope Old Man Cullen knows what the hell he’s doin’.”

Two utterances of “hell” in one outburst seemed disrespectful to Whit, but he let it go.

Jerry said, “I ain’t known ol’ Cullen to be wrong yet.”

“Me neither,” Rafe admitted with a sigh. “But there just ain’t enough of us.”

Jerry shook his head. “We can’t know how many men Gauge’ll send.”

All three men were peering over their Winchesters into the nearby tall grass, which riffled in the breeze, tickling the legs of the handful of cows.

Calmly, Whit said, “Don’t matter how many there are. Not if we’re ready and they ain’t.”

Rafe, always something of a complainer, said, “But how do we know we’re in the right spot? They could come in over there, or over yonder, and we’d never get wise till it was too late to do a damn thing about it.”

Whit placed a patient hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “We’re right where we need to be. Out there is where the high grass is. Gauge knows our line shack is just over the ridge behind us, and figures to run them cows right on through it. Losin’ Mr. Cullen some steers and maybe a man or two and cost him considerable.”

Jerry said, “Sure glad we moved them beeves out. You think we left enough of them scrawny ones to sucker ’em?”

“Should be just what they want to see,” Whit said. “They’ll just figure the rest of the herd’s bedded down. Anyway, they wouldn’t risk a fire right by the main herd.”

“Why not?”

“Think about it, boyo. A fire would stampede ’em right onto Gauge’s range. All his cows would join in and there’d be hell to pay.”

Rafe said, “Would that be so bad? Maybe that’d be the last of Gauge, then.”

Whit shook his head. “Too high a cost. Steady your rifle, boy, and don’t think about nothin’ but what’s out there and about to come at you.”

“Okay,” Rafe said, and shivered, though it wasn’t all that cold. “I just hope we ain’t the Alamo and they’s Santa Anna.”

The men with rifles watched in quiet silence for five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Then a few along the line began to chat in their boredom.

“You know,” Rafe said, “those dumb cows’ll get caught in the cross fire.”

“That just means,” Jerry said, “we’ll have a hell of a barbecue tomorrow.”

Whit whispered harshly, “ Hold it down. I heard something...”

Silence took over again.

Then: snorting horses and metal clanking.

Whit pointed.

Shadowy figures on horseback were moving toward the edge of the high grass. Somewhere a steer bawled, and horses were brought to an abrupt whinnying halt.

Silhouetted men climbed down from their saddles. Across the grass, orange flashes, chest-high, lit the night like plump fireflies. Then lower, bigger pops of yellow-orange-blue seemed to float toward the watchers while half-a-dozen intruders with torches dropped blossoms of flame onto the grass. For now, the cattle ignored them.

Whit said, “They’ve made their move. Now! ”

The Bar-O cowhands down in their trenches let go with a fusillade of rifle fire over the heads of the scrawny beeves.

One man howled and dropped. Another man fell without a sound, disappearing into a fire he’d just set. Dead already, or he’d be screaming.

“It’s a trap!” somebody yelled on the other side of the grass.

Deputy Vint Rhomer’s voice! Whit thought.

The remaining intruders — four? five? — tossed their torches and ran to their horses, mounted them, and tried to head across the burning grass, but their horses protested, neighing, rearing, damn near throwing them. Bullets falling around them like deadly rain, Rhomer and his raiders retreated, the deputy’s voice rising above the crackle of flames: “Clear out! Clear out!”

Then the intruders were swallowed back into the night, leaving a field whose fiery edge was spreading, the cattle starting to bray in fear, stirring but too far apart from each other to stampede in any meaningful way.

Whit raised up in the trench and held his rifle high in one hand like an attacking Apache. “Bring those horses and blankets up!”

The men scrambled from the trenches and circled behind the water-barrel-loaded wagons to get the horses. The cowhands climbed up into their saddles and rode across the high grass to where it was burning, then cut across the edges of the burning patch of range, never exposing the horses so directly to the flames that they, too, would protest, cutting in, cutting out, expertly dragging those soaked blankets across the burning grass, making it smaller and smaller, until in minutes the fire was doused and only gray wisps of smoke remained. That, and a scorched smell to the air and a strip of blackened prairie.

Most of the cows had just stood there through all this; a few had wandered off, but two had been drilled by one side of the fracas or the other. Jerry had been right — there would be good eating tomorrow.

The men gathered between the trenches and the wagons. Everybody was breathing hard and grinning, some laughing. Whit remained somber.

He said, “Anybody hurt?”

Holding on to his arm, some red seeping between his fingers, Jerry said, “I got grazed. Nothin’ some alcohol won’t cure.”

Whit knew the cowhand probably meant alcohol poured down his gullet, not onto the wound.

Rafe said, “We got two of them.”

“Yeah,” Whit said, nodding, letting out air. “I saw them go down and nobody of theirs bothered pickin’ ’em up. Let’s check ’em out — pretty sure one’s dead, but the other may just be wounded. So six-guns ready, gents.”

Whit was on his way to one of the fallen when, from over to his left, he heard Jerry call out: “This here’s Stringer!”

The foreman went over for a look. Bending for a closer view, he said, “Stringer, all right. Part of the first batch Gauge brought to town. Dead as hell — head shot.”

Whit went over to the second fallen man, found him also deceased, bullet in the chest. The foreman said, loud enough for all to hear, “This one’s Bradley! One of Gauge’s men, all right.”

They removed one empty water barrel to make room in one of the wagons for the two bodies. Whit figured Mr. Cullen would want a look at them. They loaded up the two dead steers, too, in another wagon.

Cocky and confident now, Rafe ambled up to Whit and asked, “Think they’ll be back again?”

“Not tonight, they won’t,” Whit said, allowing himself a grin, finally. “We won this battle.”

But all of them knew one battle wasn’t a war.

Sheriff Harry Gauge sat quietly in his darkened office and enjoyed a few fingers — well, maybe more than a few — of the whiskey from his bottom desk-drawer bottle. Then the big blond man rolled and smoked a cigarette as he mulled his situation, and barely noticed when, around nine, arriving in groups from the various ranches, cowhands started roaring into town, whooping and hollering and firing off rounds. Similarly, he’d barely noticed when the more timid storekeepers boarded up their windows in anticipation of the monthly hooraw. He hadn’t stuck his nose out of his office in either case.

Just past ten, feeling loose but in no way drunk — at least from where he sat — the sheriff gave his sidearm, a. 44 Colt, a cursory check (he’d cleaned and oiled it earlier) before locking up the office and heading down to the Victory Saloon, Trinidad’s only watering hole.