Chaparral Range War (9781101619049) by Dusty Richards

hard for the three to four months of herding cattle north, had deaths in his crew, pneumonia, snakebites, and horse wrecks. On his last trip two boys were shot in town. Maybe the sight of Dan braced by Whitmore’s men reminded him of the Dugan brothers, Tad and Arnold, lying dead in the street that afternoon in Wichita while some drunk braggarts bought rounds of liquor in a saloon and told the world what big men they were. Must not have been too big though. Each one of those three fit in some hastily nailed together coffins made from cottonwood lumber.
    He milked the cow first that morning, then went up and lit two lamps in the house and started a fire in the stove. He brought in an armload of small split wood for future fires, then put the coffee water on the stove before he started the bread dough. Noble joined him and laughed.
    â€œBy God, I can see you’re a man without a woman. Any man this handy has been doing his own cooking for a spell.”
    â€œYou ever have a wife, Noble?”
    He held up three fingers while Guthrey ground up some roasted coffee beans.
    â€œCan you recall their names?”
    The old man sat down on a chair at the table. His gnarled hands folded on the tabletop, he nodded. “First one was Claudia. She was my camp follower in the war for Texas, a small Mexican girl who treated me like a king. We were both just kids. When she heard I’d been wounded in battle she tried to get to me. She got ran over by a runaway team and heavy wagon. She’s buried in a Catholic churchyard in San Antonio.”
    His biscuits in the oven, Guthrey straightened and looked at the old man for more of his story. “Number two?”
    â€œI was riding from Austin to someplace up the Colorado River bottoms. I came across a six-foot-tall woman whose wagon was stuck in the mud. She had a big team of horses and they were no help. One would pull, the other one fall back, and after that the other one would do the same thing. No way could she get them both to pull at the same time.
    â€œâ€˜Well, don’t sit on that horse and gawk at a woman in trouble,’ she said, sounding disgusted with me. ‘Either get down and help or ride on.’
    â€œâ€˜Hold on to your britches, lady. I’m coming,’ I said. In those days I could take a leather line, whip it out, and cut a small patch of hair off a mule’s belly to show him who was boss. My pa told me when I did that I was to whisper, ‘Whoa, Jack’ and check them with the lines. He also said to do that in a small voice. Second time he’ll hear you if he misses it the first time.
    â€œThe team consisted of a mare and a gelding that were the worst I ever saw at that trick. So I got on the right side of them, took the lines from her, and shook my head at her offer of the buggy whip she’d been using on them. Next I whipped a line over my back and leaned into the strike, holding them back and said, ‘Whoa, Jack.’
    â€œAnd I took a small patch of hair off the gelding’s belly.
    â€œI mean his ears went forward and he stood on his toes. Their owner didn’t like it, but I saw that she kept her mouth shut. When I clucked to them, the mare went forward like I thought, and the horse, he fell back in the harness. I did the line trick again at that moment and he joined her and they rolled that wagon out of the mire.
    â€œShe looked flabbergasted. I took off my hat and shook her hand. ‘How in the blue blazes did you do that?’ she asked.
    â€œâ€˜Experience,’ I told her.
    â€œWell, her man had been kilt in a war, so we set up housekeeping. Wasn’t no sin, we were surviving, and six months later we got married. Eulia and I had us a place west of Austin, and we freighted. Made a good living. Never had no kids, though we sure tried. She took a fever, and after six long days she died. We had five good years. I went back to cowboying. Freighting is boring without company, and I was