Mankiller, Colorado

CHAPTER 3

For a few stunned seconds, all Scratch could do was stand there and stare. Then he regained his wits and hurried up the steps. He saw Bo and Peeler rolling around on the floor just inside the door, wrestling and slugging at each other.

Some of the cowboys gathered around the buck-house in the fading light, smoking and talking while they waited for the supper bell to ring, must have seen the way Bo had charged Big John. They let out indignant yells and ran across the ranch yard toward the house.

“Bo! Damn it, Bo!” Scratch jerked the door open more. It had torn loose from its top hinge and flopped around, getting in his way. He gave it a vicious yank that tore the other hinge free and shoved the door aside. “Bo!”

Bo didn’t pay any attention. He hammered his fists into Peeler’s body. Even though the rancher was bigger and younger, Bo’s actions had taken him by surprise, and Bo clearly had the upper hand in the fight.

Scratch bent down, hooked his hands under his friend’s arms, and hauled Bo off Peeler, lifting him and dragging him back toward the door. At that moment, the group of cowboys pounded into the house.

Joe Archibald was one of them, and when he saw his boss lying on the floor, bloody and battered, and Scratch holding Bo back, he jumped to the correct conclusion. The segundo yanked his gun from its holster and leaped toward Bo, yelling, “You son of a bitch! I’ll beat you within an inch of your life!”

Scratch twisted around, still holding Bo with his left arm. His right hand flashed toward his hip, and the ivory-handled Remington on that side seemed to leap out of its holster as if by magic and appear in Scratch’s hand. Archibald came to a sudden, startled stop as he found himself staring down the long barrel of the .44.

“Nobody’s beatin’ anybody,” Scratch said in a flinty voice. “This has gone on long enough.”

Archibald lowered his gun and used his other hand to point past Bo and Scratch at Peeler, who lay there groggy from the punches Bo had landed. “Your pard jumped the boss! You reckon we’re gonna let him get away with that?”

“Big John…had it coming,” Bo panted. “He knew he told us to put that fence…in the wrong place. He was just…trying to get the best of Ridley.”

“I don’t care what he did. He’s the boss. We do what he says.” Archibald made a curt gesture to his companions. “Some of you help Mr. Peeler up, damn it.”

Three of the men went around Bo and Scratch, all of them warily eyeing the gun in the hand of the silver-haired Texan. They took hold of Big John and lifted his considerable bulk to his feet, then stood there bracing him as he shook his big, square head like an old bull.

“I told you earlier that if you don’t like the job, you can draw your time and ride on,” Archibald continued. “Well, you’re not even gonna do that. You don’t get any wages for attacking the boss. Just gather your gear and get off this spread…now.”

“You can’t do that,” Scratch argued. “Lord knows Peeler wasn’t payin’ us much. Slave wages is more like it. But what we earned, we got comin’.”

“You’re lucky you don’t get a rope and a necktie party! Or I can send somebody into Socorro to fetch the sheriff, and you can spend the next six months locked up in jail for attackin’ one of the county’s leading citizens. Would you like that better, Morton?”

Bo said, “Let go of me, Scratch.”

“You ain’t gonna go loco again if I do?”

“No, I reckon that’s over and done with.”

Scratch released his grip on Bo, who looked around and then bent over to pick up his hat, which had fallen off when he tackled Peeler. He brushed off the hat and straightened a dent in it, then put it on and said, “We’ll go.”

“Wait a minute,” Scratch objected. “Peeler owes us money.”

“I don’t want his money. I just want to be away from here.”

Archibald sneered. “We want you away from here, too, Creel. You’ve got the place stinkin’ of old man.”

Scratch gave the segundo a hard look. “This old man got the drop on you, mister, when you already had your gun out.”

Archibald didn’t like being reminded of that. He glared at Scratch.

“Step aside,” Scratch said.

“Don’t push it,” Archibald warned.

“You wanted us gone, we’re leavin’. Come on, Bo.”

Archibald motioned for the other men to step aside. The Texans moved past them through the ruined doorway, crossed the porch, and went down the steps.

Quietly, Bo said, “Sorry I lost this job for us, partner. I just couldn’t keep the rein tight enough on my temper.”

“Shoot, don’t worry about it, Bo. Peeler’s a jackass, and Archibald ain’t any better. They don’t appreciate us here. We’ll be better off somewheres else.”

“Yeah, but at least here we could eat.”

“Well, that could be a problem, seein’ as we’re broke. But we’ll think of something.”

When they trudged into the barn to get their horses, the skinny old hostler called Jonas met them. “What was all the commotion over to the big house?” he asked. “I heard a lot of yellin’.”

Scratch grinned and jerked a thumb at his old friend. “Bo here got in a tussle with Big John.”

Jonas’s eyes widened. “You tangled with the boss? Good Lord, Bo, even if he wasn’t the boss, I’ve seen Big John bust fellas plumb in half with his bare hands. He could’a killed you!”

“Yeah, well, Bo was gettin’ the best of the fight when I pulled him off,” Scratch said.

“What’d Big John do?”

“Nothin’. He was still too groggy from Bo handin’ him his needin’s. But Archibald threw us off the place. Said we weren’t even gonna get the wages we got comin’.”

Jonas shook his head. “Now ain’t that a damned shame. Don’t tell him I said it, but Joe Archibald is a plumb mean-spirited hombre. He’s all the time sayin’ things about me being old and broke-down and worthless, and he don’t ever seem to notice that I work like a sumbitch takin’ care of all the saddle stock around here.”

Bo put a hand on the hostler’s shoulder. “You do a good job, Jonas. I’ve noticed how you care for our horses, and I appreciate it.”

“So do I,” Scratch added. “Guess you better bring ’em out now, come to think of it. Bo and me got our marchin’ orders.”

It didn’t take long to get Bo’s rangy lineback dun and Scratch’s big bay saddled and ready to ride. “Where will you go?” asked Jonas.

“Socorro’s not far,” Bo said. “I guess we’ll ride in there and start looking for work again.”

He didn’t mention how they had had trouble finding work in Socorro before. That was how they’d wound up on the Circle JP. But maybe the situation had improved since then and something better would turn up.

“You got any money at all?”

Scratch shrugged. “Not to speak of. Big John hadn’t gotten around to payin’ us.”

Jonas hesitated. “Listen here. I don’t like to see any man tryin’ to make his way in the world when he’s flat-broke busted.” He delved in a pocket of his overalls and brought out a coin. “Here, take this. It’s only five dollars, but it’ll buy you some grub and a place to sleep, maybe.”

Bo shook his head. “We can’t take that, Jonas. Five dollars is a lot of money.”

“Yeah, but I got plenty. I don’t do nothin’ with my wages but save ’em, anyway. I’m too old for women, and I never developed a taste for whiskey.”

Scratch reached out and took the coin from the hostler’s fingers. “We’re much obliged, Jonas. This is mighty kind of you.”

“Consider it a loan,” Bo said. “When we get on our feet again, we’ll send it back to you.”

“You do that,” Jonas said with a nod. “I’ll be here, I reckon. Ain’t nowheres else for me to go.”

Bo and Scratch shook hands with the old-timer, then swung up into their saddles. As they rode out of the barn, they saw Archibald and some of the other Circle JP hands arrayed in front of the house, watching them with hostile glares. Other cowboys were in front of the bunkhouse, looking equally unfriendly.

“Looks like a gauntlet,” Bo said under his breath.

“Yeah,” Scratch agreed. “I hope we don’t have to shoot our way outta here.”

None of the men reached for a gun as the Texans rode between them. Bo and Scratch kept their pace deliberate. They might be leaving, but they weren’t going to run. That wasn’t in their nature. They didn’t nudge their horses into a trot until they cleared the ranch yard.

“You know,” Scratch mused as they rode off into the gathering dusk, “maybe we ought to mosey over to the Snake Track. We could tell Ridley that Big John knows good and well he’s claimin’ land that don’t belong to him.”

Bo shook his head. “I don’t like Ridley any more than I do Peeler. He can look out for his own interests. I don’t want to be in the middle of those two anymore.”

“Yeah, I understand that. Tell you the truth, Bo, I’d just as soon head for some other part of the country as soon as we can put a stake together. Got that damn ugly Jornada del Muerto off to the east and nothin’ but mountains and hardscrabble range to the west. We can find some place better to spend our time.”

Bo nodded and said, “Yeah. All it’ll take is money.”

“We got five dollars,” Scratch pointed out. “That’ll buy your way into a poker game.”

Bo rubbed his jaw. “Yeah. With that and a little luck…”

Biting back a groan of despair, Bo stumbled toward the outhouse behind the livery stable in Socorro early the next morning. His muscles were stiff because he and Scratch had slept in the stable’s hayloft. The owner had agreed to that in return for them mucking out the stalls. Even though they had left the Circle JP, they’d wound up having to shovel horse shit after all.

The five-dollar stake had lasted less than half an hour in the game at Socorro’s Desert Queen Saloon before Bo was cleaned out. When a man’s luck turned, it turned hard, he supposed. The bartender had taken pity on them and let them scrounge some hard-boiled eggs from the jar on the bar, and that was all they’d had to eat. Then they had made the deal with the liveryman so they wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground.

“I’ll buy both those horses from you,” the man had offered. “They look like fine animals.”

“Our horses ain’t for sale,” Scratch had responded indignantly.

“Well, I just thought that from the looks of you, you’ll be selling your saddles any day now, anyway, so you might as well sell the horses, too.”

Scratch would have gotten mad at that comment—no self-respecting Texan would ever sell his saddle—but Bo had intervened. His bout of melancholia and resentment had gone away—unfortunately not in time to save their jobs on the Circle JP—and he was once again the voice of reason in the duo.

Now, stiff muscles protesting, Bo headed for the outhouse on this frosty morning. Around here, the nights were chilly, even during the summer. He had left Scratch curled up in the hay, snoring, and headed out into the dawn to tend to his personal needs.

He tried not to think about what the rest of the day might bring. He and Scratch were just about at the ends of their ropes.

The privy wasn’t occupied. Bo tried to tell himself that that was a bit of good luck. Maybe their fortunes were turning. He pulled the door with its half-moon cutout closed behind him. The outhouse was just a one-holer. He lowered his trousers and long underwear, then sat down and sighed, trying not to shiver from the cold.

Before leaving the stable to come out here, he had grabbed a few sheets of newspaper from a stack of them, folded them, and tucked them under his arm to warm them a little. He took them out now and unfolded them, idly scanning the stories in the dim light that came in through the half-moon.

Suddenly, Bo felt his heart start to pound faster. He checked the date on the piece of newspaper he was holding. It had been published in Albuquerque three weeks earlier, so the news in it was fairly recent. His eyes fastened on one particular headline, and even though he wasn’t a superstitious man by nature, he had to wonder at that moment if there really was such a thing as an omen.

The headline read BIG GOLD STRIKE! TOWN BOOMS! BONANZA FOUND NEAR MANKILLER, COLORADO!