Bullet for a Bad Man

Layers of Deceit

For the Circle V it was not life as usual.

The foreman and the hands and everyone else tried to shake off the deaths of the owner and his wife, but the wounds were too fresh. Ned Scott had been well liked. He was a working owner, not one of those who sat on his porch and gave orders but never sat a saddle. Lillian was fondly recalled for her many kind words and for her cookies and pies. Their dough puncher didn’t mind. As good as he was—and it was the Circle V’s boast that their cook was the best in the territory—neither his cookies nor his pies were the equal of Lillian’s.

Dan Morgan did what he could to draw the men out of their funk. He had been a working cowboy at fourteen and a foreman by twenty-three, and he was employed in that capacity at three other ranches before he came to work for Ned Scott. Dan knew cows and Dan knew men. It was said that what he did not know was not worth knowing. He had peers, but no one anywhere was better. He was wise but practical. He was tough but fair. And he never missed a thing. He could pull two and two out of thin air and get four.

For all his savvy and ability, Dan was hard pressed to restore the Circle V to where it should be. The freak mishap that claimed Ned Scott was bad enough; to have his wife die so soon afterward was a shock. A few hands muttered about a jinx, but Dan nipped that in the bud by announcing that anyone silly enough to believe such nonsense had no business working at the Circle V.

Dan tried tactics that never failed him in the past. He gave the men extra days off. He practically booted some of them in the general direction of Tucson with the admonition that they better have a good time, or else. He told the cook to whip up extra treats. He did all this, and more, and it had no effect on morale.

Dan was about at his wits’ end the morning he came out of the tack room and discovered his new boss waiting for him. ‘‘This is a surprise. What can I do for you, Mr. Scott?’’

‘‘I have told you before about being formal. Call me Epp or call me Eppley, but for God’s sake do not call me Mr. Scott.’’

‘‘It was good enough for your pa.’’

‘‘I am not him. You will treat me as me. And what is so surprising about me being in my own stable?’’

Dan Morgan shrugged. ‘‘We have not seen much of you of late. I reckon you are busy with the books, and all.’’

‘‘There is that.’’ Clasping his hands behind his back, Epp moved down the aisle between the stalls, and the foreman naturally went with him. ‘‘I needed to talk to you.’’

‘‘My ears are yours any hour of the day or night,’’ Dan said amiably. ‘‘It is what you pay me for.’’

‘‘I know I can always count on you, just like my pa could. If he told me once, he told me fifty times that without you the Circle V would fall apart.’’

‘‘That was kind of him, but it was not true. I can name half a dozen men who can do as good a job as me.’’

‘‘I am content with you. I trust the reverse is true?’’

‘‘I am still here,’’ Dan said, and smiled.

They emerged into the harsh glare of the summer sun. Epp squinted at the horses in the corral and then at Red Butte in the distance. ‘‘How would you say the ranch is doing?’’

‘‘I am not sure how you mean that.’’

‘‘Let me rephrase the question. In your opinion, is the Circle V as prosperous as it can be?’’

‘‘We could run a few more head, I suppose. But where is the need? The Circle V has been in the black since I signed on. Your pa never complained about a lack of profits.’’

‘‘Oh, the ranch is still earning well enough,’’ Epp said. ‘‘I just happen to think it could earn more.’’

They were near the corral. The bronc buster was working, and too busy with a bronco to do more than nod.

‘‘Earn more how?’’ Dan Morgan asked. ‘‘Tell me what you want me to do and I will get it done.’’

Epp turned his back to the rails and leaned against them, his legs crossed in front of him. ‘‘My idea does not involve you and the men. My idea involves our grass.’’

‘‘If I were any more lost I would be booze blind,’’ Dan said. ‘‘You are fixing to cut and sell hay?’’

Epp grinned and shook his head. ‘‘I am fixing to rent out our range.’’

‘‘Rent?’’ Dan Morgan said the word as others might say ‘‘warts’’ or ‘‘toe fungus.’’

‘‘Rent,’’ Epp said again. ‘‘The Circle V is one of the largest ranches in the territory. We have plenty of range. More than we use at any one time.’’

‘‘A ranch can never have enough graze.’’

‘‘True, true,’’ Epp said quickly. ‘‘But I was thinking of that section to the southwest. The barrens. We never use it, but there is good grass and water.’’

Who first coined the name, no one could remember. The barrens consisted of five square miles of washes and low bluffs. A spring watered enough grass to keep a small herd fed. But choked thick with thorny brush, the barrens were more hospitable to deer and mountain lions than to cows.

‘‘Who would want to live in the barrens?’’ Dan asked in some amazment.

‘‘I did not say live. I said rent,’’ Epp corrected him. ‘‘Anyone driving cattle north would be glad to have a place to rest for a day or two. We could let word get out. Say that for a fee, a dollar a head, they can use our grass and water and then move on.’’

‘‘I never heard of such a thing.’’

‘‘I have. Down to Texas and elsewhere it is common.’’

‘‘If this is what you want,’’ Dan said uncertainly.

‘‘I would not bring it up if it wasn’t. In fact, I have already talked to a man about it and he will be bringing in a small herd next week. His name is Hanks.’’

‘‘Do you want me to ride over with a few of the hands and see that—Hanks, you say?—keeps his cattle where he should? We don’t want them drifting out of the barrens and mixing with the Circle V cows.’’

‘‘That won’t be necessary. He is aware of the problem that would cause.’’ Epp watched the buster dab his rope on the bronc. ‘‘I want you to have a talk with the men. Explain to them that until I say otherwise, under no circumstances are they to go anywhere near the barrens. I would not like it if someone came poking around our herd and I am sure whoever rents range from us will not want our hands poking around theirs.’’

‘‘I will spread the word.’’

‘‘It is settled, then.’’ Epp turned toward the house but stopped when the foreman cleared his throat. ‘‘You have something on your mind?’’

‘‘This Hanks you mentioned. It wouldn’t be Blin Hanks, would it? I have heard of him. I even saw him once. By all accounts he is unsavory.’’

‘‘No, the man I talked to is Edgar Hanks. I ran into him when I was in Tucson. He is a small rancher trying to grow bigger.’’

‘‘I’ve never heard of him.’’

‘‘I would imagine there are a lot of ranchers we haven’t met or heard of,’’ Epp said.

‘‘How many head will he be bringing through?’’

‘‘I don’t rightly know yet. Somewhere between two and three hundred.’’ Epp smiled. ‘‘Don’t forget to tell the punchers. Never let it be said the men at the Circle V don’t have manners.’’

Dan Morgan stood still for a full minute after Epp had walked off. ‘‘Manners, hell,’’ he finally said. ‘‘He must think I was born yesterday.’’

‘‘Who?’’ the bronc buster asked.

Dan had not seen him standing by the rails. ‘‘No one. I was talking to myself. Old ranahans like me do that a lot.’’

‘‘The hell you say,’’ the buster responded. ‘‘You are no more feeble than me, and I am half your age.’’

‘‘You are a braggart, is what you are.’’ Dan walked off smiling, but the smile faded. He went into the stable and down the aisle to the tack room, and once he was alone he placed both hands flat on the wall and bowed his head and shook as if with the ague. ‘‘Damn him anyway,’’ he said bitterly. He closed his eyes and the lines in his face deepened. ‘‘What do I do about it? That is the question. And I will be a maid in waiting if I know the answer.’’

It was ten minutes before Dan came out of the tack room. He had composed himself and he went on about his duties without anyone suspecting the turmoil he was in. That night, in the shack he had all to himself, he sat with his head in his hands for more than two hours. Finally he stood and said, ‘‘All I have done is give myself a headache.’’

But Dan also remembered: an incident here, a word there, an oddity or two that had pricked him but not enough to create suspicion. Now, though, after stringing the incidents and the words and the oddities together, he saw everything differently.

The horror of it all shook him.

Dan Morgan thought of Ned and Lillian Scott, and young Boone, and he did something he had not done in more years than he would admit to; he wept. He cried softly and silently until he did not have a tear left to shed, and then he shook himself as would a bear coming out of hibernation.

‘‘I will be damned if I will fall for it,’’ he told the four walls.

Day followed hot day and night followed warm night, and Dan kept a horse saddled behind his shack after the sun went down, and did not tell anyone. He sat by his window with the lamp off and watched the ranch house until his eyelids were too heavy for him to keep his eyes open.

His patience was rewarded when a rider approached the ranch house along about ten, and rode around to the rear.

Dan was ready. He grabbed his Winchester and hurried out. The cribber he had chosen was gnawing on his shack, but it stopped when he shoved his Winchester into the saddle scabbard. Stepping into the stirrups, he reined to the south. He swung wide of the outhouses and was waiting off in the dark when Epp Scott and another man came out. They shook hands and for a few moments were bathed in light spilling from the open doorway.

‘‘I knew it,’’ Dan Morgan said to himself, with all the bitterness of a man who had been lied to by someone he would have died for if called to.

The night rider climbed on his roan and departed.

Dan let him get a good lead but not so good that he would lose him. A crescent moon made the following easier. Thankfully the rider did not stop but made a beeline for the barrens.

Hours went by. Dan would not be able to make it back to the ranch by dawn, but that was all right. He had told a puncher by the name of Frank Lloyd, a ranny Dan trusted, that if he was not there in the morning to rouse the men and set them to work; then Lloyd was to do it. And if Epp Scott happened by and wanted to know where Dan was, Lloyd was to tell him he had gone into Tucson to pick up supplies.

Dan was surprised he was not nervous. If he was right—and by the looks of the man who had paid Epp Scott a visit, he was—then he was riding into a viper’s nest. But he needed to prove his suspicions were justified and he refused to endanger anyone else in the proving.

By the middle of the night they were well west and south of Red Butte. They passed bunches of cattle that had bedded down.

The barrens were the horror Dan remembered, the thornbrush impenetrable unless a man knew exactly where to find the few trails that led in and out.

Dan had been in the barrens often enough after strays that he was more acquainted with the maze than most. He knew where Epp’s visitor was headed, and rather than keep following and risk being spotted, he reined wide and rode in a loop that brought him up on the basin, as it was called, from the west. Ten acres of grass in an oval hollow. Plenty for a small herd, and a campfire could be hid from prying eyes.

Dan drew rein fifty yards out. He remembered to take his spurs off and shove them in his saddlebags so the jingling did not give him away. He smiled as he stalked forward. He had not done anything like this since he was a youth. The young were always headstrong and thought they were invincible.

The last sixty feet, Dan crawled on his belly, the Winchester in front of him. He expected sentries and he was not disappointed. One at each end of the basin, the man near him constantly yawning and shaking his arms to stay awake. Another man was by the fire and three or four were under blankets.

It was the cows that interested Dan, the cows he had come so far to inspect. Two hundred head, more or less. Many were longhorns, but a lot were not. A few open-faced cattle were mixed in, and that told Dan, as surely as anything, that his hunch had been right.

Still, Dan waited, and when the nearest sentry drifted in the other direction, he slipped into the basin.

The cows had been driven so long and so hard that they were too exhausted to do more than look at him with dull regard. Dan crouched and quietly moved among them, patting necks and rumps and speaking softly. A torch would help to read the brands, but he did not need his eyes when he had his fingers and could trace the brands by touch. It helped that most of the brands were on the left hip. Those that were elsewhere were added evidence that the cows came from more than one ranch.

None of the brands had been changed. It occurred to Dan that maybe they were going to do the altering right there on the Circle V, and that made him so mad, he almost stood up and started blazing away. Caution prevailed, and when he was satisfied he made his way to the top of the basin and got out of there. He was not spotted.

Anger and sadness waged war inside him as Dan made for the outskirts of the barrens. He had added two and two correctly. Vile deeds had been done, deeds so terrible, Dan could scarcely embrace their enormity.

He was working for a monster.

The question now, the big question, the only question, was one Dan voiced out loud. ‘‘What in God’s name do I do?’’