Читать книгу Settling The Score - George McLane Wood - Страница 23

Chapter Seventeen

Early fall, after they’d neutered and branded thirty-seven fall calves with the JN Brand, Jeff and his boys drove fifty head of steers to Fort Davis and sold ’em to the Army. In town Jeff located a disgruntled café cook. He hired him to come to the JN Brand and be their master cook with his own living quarters. Cookie, as he asked to be called, agreed at once; he packed up his knives, his meat saw, and his cleaver, and he left the café with Jeff. Jeff hired three more cowboys, and he paid another carpenter with a wagon load of lumber to come and build their new cook a kitchen shack with attached sleeping quarters down near the bunkhouse. Cookie rode on the wagon seat with the carpenter and kept him company. Jeff promoted Smitty to range boss and Bo to the foreman’s job when they returned to the JN Brand.

JN Brand now had five cowboys, plus Jeff, Smitty and Bo, taking their two meals a day at the long table in Cookie’s cookshack, and it worked out well because the following week, a small band of renegade Apaches attacked the JN Ranch at sunup and right after breakfast. Yelling and firing guns and shooting arrows, they got everybody’s attention in a hell of a hurry. All five men began returning fire. The carpenter and Cookie hid out in his cookshack. Jeff, Smitty, and Bo were more than proficient with their six-guns. Their biggest disappointment was these former cavalry soldiers only had one Colt a piece to fire instead of two.

The three pistoleers dropped three Indians almost at once. The other five cowboys had grabbed their Henrys and their Winchesters and were holding their own against the red devils. Jeff ran across the yard, fanning and firing his pistol with a vengeance, where he began stomping out a hay balefire, the result of a flaming arrow.

An Apache rode up behind Jeff, about to brain him in the back of his head with a tomahawk. The red devil was shot off his pony by both Bo and Smitty. Jeff was never aware it happened. Three more Apaches were flung from their ponies by bunkhouse gunfire before the raid stopped as quickly as it had begun. The red devils, who were still able to fight, fled with their lives, leaving their dead braves where they lay.

The eight cowmen had killed seven Apache and hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch. Their survival record was incredible. The seven dead Apache were loaded on a wagon and hauled out a way from the ranch and stretched out side by side on the cold prairie. Two days later when a JN cowboy rode by where they’d been left, all the dead Apache were gone.

Christmas week arrived, and Jeff let three cowboys go celebrate a cold Christmas week in Fort Davis. He, Smitty, Bo, and Mack, the older cowboy, and another cowpoke spent Christmas Day playing dominos in the warm bunkhouse. Cookie roasted a big fat prairie turkey he’d shot and prepared all the trimmings to go with the bird, including a pecan, a pumpkin, and a mincemeat pie. The six men, including Cookie, sat down and dined like kings at Cookie’s long table. He’d done real good!

Afterward, that afternoon with full stomachs, the five plus Cookie rode into Jasper in a spring wagon, and Jeff treated them to a few drinks at the town’s only saloon open for business. Much later, and under a blanket of bright twinkling stars, the six men rode home in the wagon, still full of Christmas food, and lastly sated on free holiday spirits, each man was reflecting on his good life so far and hoping for a prosperous future at the JN Brand for the coming New Year.

The JN Ranchland had been blanketed with deep snow several times in December, January, and February. March was windy, but April turned warm; they’d had several slow rains in April and the gamma grass exploded to shin-high length almost overnight. The JN cows began dropping calves in May, and the ranch hands, supervised by Bo and Smitty, were kept busy night and day seeing to their safety. The Army needed beef often, and because Jeff’s ranch was the closest to their fort, his deliveries were sooner, and his price of fifteen dollars a head meant Jeff got most all their beef business.

Jeff opened a bank account in town and deposited gold coins and paper money, much to the delight of his banker. He sold a few steers to the town’s cafes occasionally and became acquainted with a few town folks personally. He and Budgher, the mercantile store owner were already good friends. Jeff was also introduced to the Methodist preacher, and he was invited to attend their church.

One day he spied an older fellow who walked with a slight limp and hung around Emilio’s Saloon next to Budgher’s store. The man was living in an old Army tent at the edge of town, and Jeff’s informer said the fellow’s name was Ed White. Jeff figured from the limp and the Army tent that Ed must be an ex-soldier. Ed told him later that he’d indeed been in the army. Jeff never asked him, on purpose, which side. Ed had once asked Jeff for fifty cents to buy some breakfast, and Jeff had given it to him.

Jeff figured Ed might make Jeff a permanent ranch hand. His home could be in Jeff’s bunkhouse instead of an old Army tent. He’d ask the man if he wanted a cow-punching job the next time he was in town.