Ralph Compton - Bullet for a Bad Man

Ned asked the old man to write directions on how to get there, but the old man could neither read nor write so he sketched a map. The map was not much of one, but Providence once again showed it was fond of Ned and he found the valley without much difficulty.

And what a wonderful valley it was. Everything the old man, whose name Ned never asked, had said it would be. A great circle of green with a single red butte at its center. Ned named the valley Circle Valley and the butte Red Butte and claimed them for his own.

Naming the stream proved harder. Ned wanted to call it Lillian, as a gesture to his wife, but she said she did not want animals drinking out of her and people washing their unmentionables in her and she would rather not have a stream named after her, thank you very much. Ned thought that was just about the silliest thing he ever heard, but he honored her request. From then on, it was just ‘‘the stream.’’

Ned hauled timber from the mountains and built a house and a barn and a corral. His idea was to take up farming. But then he was in Tucson one day buying supplies and he struck up another fateful conversation. This time it was with a drummer who was selling everything under the sun, and then some.

The drummer asked Ned what he did for a living and Ned proudly mentioned he was going to raise wheat and corn.

‘‘And do what with it, Mr. Scott?’’

‘‘Why, sell the surplus, of course,’’ Ned informed him.

‘‘Who to?’’ The drummer pointed out that Arizona did not have enough hungry bellies for Ned to make much money. ‘‘What you need to do,’’ the drummer then said with the air of a man who knew all there was to know about the business of business, ‘‘is to go into cattle.’’

‘‘Cattle?’’ Ned said dubiously. ‘‘Do you mean raise cows?’’ He made it sound about as smart as raising chickens for a living, and no one in their right mind did that.

‘‘Not the kind of cows you are thinking of,’’ the drummer said. ‘‘The kind you find in Mexico and can bring north.’’

The drummer had traveled all over, and he had talked to a lot of people and everyone swore that the demand for beef would soar now that the war was over. All those people in the East liked to eat meat and there just wasn’t enough of it.

‘‘Those same people will need wheat and corn too,’’ Ned pointed out.

‘‘Yes,’’ the drummer conceded. ‘‘But you don’t have to plant cows. You don’t have to fertilize cows and keep them free of weeds and worry they will be destroyed by high wind or hail. Cows take care of themselves. All you need is grass and water, and to round the cows up now and again. Cattle are a lot less work than crops.’’

Ned liked the idea of not having to work as hard to get his due. He liked it a lot. A month later he hired two local men to help and they drifted into Mexico and helped themselves to some cattle they came across. It was that easy. Ned had the start of his herd.

The years passed and Ned prospered. His herd grew. The Circle Valley Ranch became known far and wide for its fine beef.

By 1880 Ned had twenty hands minding his thousands of head of cattle. He smoked five-dollar cigars. He wore the best of clothes. His boots were polished daily by his servants. When he went into Tucson he did so in a carriage, not a buckboard.

Ned liked having money. He liked the trappings that went with having money. He liked it so much, he did not think of much besides money.

Lillian didn’t mind. She liked money too.

As for their sons, each had a different opinion.

Eppley was twenty-two. He was fond of good clothes and good food and he grew fond of Tucson’s sporting houses, as well. He often complained of the days he wasted getting there and back. As for the ranch, he did the work his father asked of him, but he did not like doing it. He did not like to work at all.

Boone was sixteen. He did not mind work. He went in for plain work garb, and his mother’s cooking was enough to suit him. And he liked the ranching life a lot.

Everything revolved around their cattle. Each year the cows had to be rounded up, the calves had to be branded and hundreds of head had to be driven to market.

Cows, cows, cows—that is all Epp’s life was, and he hankered after something more. Like his father, he liked excitement. He liked it more than anything.

Boone was content with ranching. Still, his brother’s constant talk about how wonderful the rest of the world was stirred him. One day he mentioned to Epp that he was thinking of going off and seeing some of what it had to offer.

Epp smiled. He was bigger and heavier than Boone. He had his father’s hooked nose and brown eyes, but his bushy eyebrows were his own. Those eyebrows were always pinched together, as if in disapproval of the world around them. His mouth was thin and nearly always curled down. Epp looked, as one of their punchers once put it, like an overfed wolf hungry for more.

Boone was lean and muscled and had hair the color of corn. His eyes were blue, like his mother’s, and his small ears and oval chin were hers too. His hands came from his father. They were strong, swift hands, so swift that he could draw and fire a revolver three times in the time it took most men to do it once.

Boone spent almost all his spare time practicing. He was partial to a black leather rig decorated with silver conchas. His revolver came direct from the Colt factory, a special order he placed for a nickel-plated beauty with ivory handles and a four-inch barrel. The grips were etched with eagle heads, and the cylinder and barrel engraved.

As one of their hands remarked, ‘‘That there is the prettiest six-shooter I ever did see.’’

Ned Scott was proud of his son’s ability with a pistol, but Lillian said time and time again that no good would come of it.

Then came the day she was proven right.

It started as most days did, with an early breakfast. Boone had a healthy appetite, but Epp picked at his eggs and took only a few bites of toast and was done.

Since the Circle V was a ranch and not a farm, the barn had become a stable, and a corral had been built at the back. Boone and Epp saddled their horses and headed out across the Circle V range just as a golden crown poked above the rim of the world.

‘‘Another roundup,’’ Epp complained. ‘‘Why Pa insists we help I will never know. Dan Morgan can take care of things.’’

A Texan by birth, Morgan was the Circle V foreman, and as cow savvy a man as ever lived. Ned had heard about him from a fellow rancher and induced Morgan to come work for the Circle V by offering him twice as much money as he was making in Texas.

‘‘We are Pa’s sons.’’ Boone’s horse was a buttermilk he had raised from a colt, and he loved it almost as much as he did his ivory-handled Colt.

‘‘So what?’’ Epp said irritably. He always rode whatever horse happened to be handy. Horses meant as little to him as cows.

‘‘So Pa expects us to follow in his footsteps and take over the ranch someday.’’

‘‘That does not explain why we have to attend every damn roundup.’’

‘‘A boss should show he does not mind getting his hands dirty.’’

‘‘Dirtying hands is what we pay the punchers to do,’’ Epp persisted. ‘‘When I am in charge I will be damned if I dirty mine.’’

‘‘When we are in charge,’’ Boone amended.

Epp looked at him. ‘‘I thought you were hankering to go see some of the world.’’

‘‘I am. I just can’t find the gumption to say so to Ma and Pa.’’

‘‘What you need is to get away from the Circle V for a while,’’ Epp proposed. ‘‘Come with me to Ranson after the roundup is over.’’

‘‘I don’t like that place.’’