The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter Page B

a Taylor’s hand must die.” And they meant it. Entire towns were terrorized in the shoot-outs between the Taylors, their kith and kin… and the Regulators headed by Bill Sutton and his entourage. They were tough and mean; stubborn to defend their “propitty”; they had never been whupped, and they aimed to prove it.
    Simp Dixon, a Taylor kinsman, died at Cotton Gin, Texas, his back to a wall… weighted down with lead… and both .44’s blazing. He took five Regulators with him. The Clements brothers went “helling” through the carpetbag-controlled towns and periodically rode up the trail when the Texas heat got too unhealthy. The untended ranches of four years had loosed thousands of wild longhorns in the brush. The Northeast needed beef, and the Southern riders filled the trails as they “brush-popped” the cattle into herds and angled them north.
    First up the Shawnee to Sedalia, Missouri … then the Chisholm to Abilene, Kansas … the Western Trail to Dodge City, as the rail lines moved west. Each spring and fall they turned the railhead cattle towns into “Little Texas” and brought a brand of wildness that forevermore would stamp the little villages in history.
    It would be a year before a young lad, John Wesley Hardin, would begin his fantastically bloody career… but he would be only one of many. General Sherman said of the time and the place, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.” Well, Sherman knowed where his fit company was at. For Texans… them as couldn’t fork the bronc had best move out, preferably in a pine box.
    And now word flew down the Trail. The Missouri Rebel and unequaled pistol fighter, Josey Wales, was Texas bound. It was enough to make a Texan stomp the ground in glee and spit into the wind. For the politician it brought frantic thoughts and feverish action. Both sides braced for the coming.
    Campfires twinkled as far as the eye could see. Early herds, pushing for the top market dollar after a winter’s beef-hungry span in the North, were stacked almost end to end. Longhorns bawled and scuffled as cowboys rounded them into a settling for the night. Josey, Lone, and Little Moonlight… riding close now… passed near the lead campfires, out of the light. The plink-plank of a five-string banjo sounded tinny against the cattle sounds, and a mournful voice rose in song:

    “They say I cain’t take up my rifle and fight ’em now nor more,
    But I ain’t a’gonna love ’em Now thet is certain shore.
    And I don’t want no pardon Fer whut I was and am,
    And I won’t be reconstructed,
    And I don’t give a damn.”

    They dry-camped in a shallow gully, away from the herds. Unable to picket-graze the horses and with the added appetite of the paint horse, the grain was running low.
    It was chuck time for the cowboys of the Gatling brothers’ trail herd. There were three Gatling brothers and eleven riders pushing three thousand head of longhorns. It had been a rough day. Herds were strung out behind them, and immediately on their heels Mexican vaqueros with a smaller herd had pushed and shouted at them for more speed. Several fights had broken out through the day, and the riders were in an ugly mood. The longhorns were not yet “trail-broke,” still wild as they were driven from the brush; and they had made charges, all day long, away from the main body, which had kept the cowboys busy. Ten of them squatted now, or sat cross-legged around the fire, wolfing beans and beef. Half their number would have to relieve the riders circling the herd and take up first night watch. They were in no hurry to climb back in the saddle. Rough-garbed, most of them wore the chaparral leather guards … the cowboys called them “chaps”… and heavy pistols hung from sagging belts about their waists.
    The voice came clear, “Haaallooo, the camp.” Every man stiffened. Four of them faded a few paces back from the fire into the darkness. They had “papers” on