watchin’ ’em musta told somebody who told Nelson.”
“I tell you, Jorn, this Nelson is smarter than them other ranchers we’ve stole cows from. They never come lookin’ like this feller does. I think we should kill him, like soon.”
“You just steal the cows for us, Lester, and leave the thinkin’ to me.”
Two weeks later just after sundown, Lester Willis and three men were caught stealing a small herd of cattle from Hobie Gilbert’s east pasture by Gilbert’s nighthawk, an old cowboy named Hank Pool. He made the mistake of letting Lester Willis get too close. When he did, Lester stabbed Pool in his heart. Pool fell from his saddle, and Lester stole Pool’s horse, his saddle, and the fifty head of cattle Pool was night watching.
Hobie Gilbert rode by the JN Brand two days later, on his way home from Hank Pool’s funeral. They’d buried the poor old cowpoke in the Jasper Town Cemetery. Gilbert was heartbroken that Pool was gone. He’d been with Hobie since the beginning of the Double Bar G Ranch. Jeff offered to help Gilbert find his cattle, hang whoever had them, and return those cows to Gilbert’s ranch.
Hobie said, “No, I can get by without fifty cows, and if whoever stole ’em, wanted ’em bad enough to kill for ’em, well, let ’em keep ’em.”
Jeff didn’t look at it that way, but what the heck, they weren’t his cattle; they belonged to someone else. After the JN Brand’s fall calf branding and neutering, Jeff made a total herd tally. He’d had a substantial gain in herd count since the beginning of January ’72. Jeff was very pleased with his operation and the main man who helped him begin the ranch. As his Christmas bonus, Jeff was planning to give Smitty 30 percent of the future profits of the JN Brand beginning January ’73.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The JN Ranch continued to grow beef. The spring tally showed another remarkable gain over the previous fall count. One hundred calves now needed to be castrated and branded. Jeff hired eight extra cowboys to help with the extra work. That meant Jeff had thirteen cowboys plus Smitty on his payroll. He was all set to begin branding, when the army changed Jeff’s plan! Fort Davis had been posted with a hundred more soldiers. Consequently they needed more beef, and a purchase order was sent by a courier. The Army needed a hundred head of fat cattle delivered to the fort by the end of the week. Jeff told Smitty to take five drovers, round up that many steers, and deliver them. He also told Smitty to wear both his Colts and take the Greener twelve-gauge shotgun to ride across his saddle and to all five drovers, he cautioned them to watch each other’s back, delivering the cattle to the fort and coming back to the JN Brand.
Smitty and his five drovers left with the hundred head and Jeff worried constantly. Mac, the older waddy who’d started out with Jeff, had been promoted to Smitty’s segundo. He was supervising the men doing the branding and neutering. Ed was all thumbs and elbows at the roundup and branding, so Jeff had sent him back to the ranch house to keep Sally company. That made both Sally and Ed happy. They could play cards, tell each other stories, laugh, and drink sassafras tea. Jeff was left to worry alone about the safety of his longtime friend.
Smitty and the five cowboys rode back into the ranch compound three days later. Jeff was relieved that Smitty was safe. Smitty gave Jeff $1,500 in silver the Army had paid him for the cattle. That’d be more than enough money, Jeff figured, to pay all his cowboys for the entire roundup season.
A company of soldiers came by two weeks later, stopped, and watered their mounts. The captain told Jeff that there was a marauding band of Apache that’d jumped their Arizona reservation and they were raiding ranches and killing folks as close as twenty miles north of the JN. At one ranch, they’d killed and burned the man, his wife, and their three young children, the entire family. The troopers had been chasing the renegades from Casper County’s western territory all the way to the Arizona border, but they were always too late. The Apache had already been there raiding and killing folks and were long gone.
Jeff decided to keep all eight part-time cowboys on his payroll for a while until the Apache raiders were caught or killed by the Army. He went to Jasper and bought four more Winchester .44 carbines and a dozen boxes of cartridges in case those red devils came around his ranch. Now there were seven long guns kept in the JN bunkhouse and three in the ranch house if needed.
Sheriff Sizemore came by the JN Ranch collecting taxes again. He said he’d heard the army had jumped a bunch of drunken renegade Apaches over by the Chamisa Mountains and had killed them all.
Jeff remarked, “That’s the only way this new US Army could’ve gotten close enough to shoot any Apache was to stumble onto ’em when they were drunk.”
“Ah, Nelson, you shouldn’t be so critical of our Army boys. I once was one of them fellers in the late war.”
“I was a soldier in the late war too, Sheriff, from start to finish, and we weren’t the same caliber soldiers as these new Army squirts are today that General Custer’s been bragging to the Montana newspapers. The Jasper Weekly wrote about his new fightin’ cavalry and how well he’s trained ’em. The truth is, Sheriff, most of them boys he has can’t even speak or understand passable English. You just wait’ll he gets some real honest-to-goodness mad hostiles after his butt and he’ll find out pronto that his new fightin’ cavalry that he’s been braggin’ about ain’t worth the powder it’d take to blow ’em to hell.”
“Well, whatever! Say, by the way, Nelson. Did you know I got defeated in the past election for sheriff?”
“Nah, you didn’t!”
“Yep, the people of Casper County elected Tom Simpson ’stead of me. I know old Tom, he’s just a talker, he ain’t a lawman. I hear he’s friends with that outlaw, Jorn Murphy too. Jeff, you best heed my warning. You people of Casper County are gonna be sorry, you just wait.”
“When’s he get your badge, Sheriff?”
“The first day of January. I’ll come by to tell you adios, Jeff.”
“You do that, Sheriff.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sunday morning, Jeff and Sally drove their new buggy into Jasper and went to her father’s church; after the service her father rode home with them for a fried chicken dinner. Cookie’s meal was delicious. Afterward, Sally served her favorite dessert, pecan pie. She invited Ed in to have some pie. He accepted and ate two slices. Then Sally set her friend down on the back porch with three big pieces of fried chicken, a plate of gravy, and three biscuits. Jeff sent Ed to Jasper with Sally’s father before Sally could feed Ed the rest of the fried chicken.
Hobie Gilbert of the Double Bar G stopped by the next week and said he was missing about fifty head of cows. He wondered if Jeff was missing any also.
“No, I don’t reckon, or my foreman would’ve already told me. Do you think yours were rustled?”
“Yeah, Jeff, I do. I tracked them to the Saber where they crossed, but there’s so many tracks going both directions, I couldn’t tell which way my cows went.”
“Suppose they’re in that boxed canyon we found ’em in before? Suppose we take a ride over there for a look-see, I’ll ask my foreman to go along with us.” Jeff told Smitty to get his pistols and come along. The three men set out south, crossed the river, and headed west. An hour’s ride later they were at the entrance of the secluded valley. There were no cattle to be seen.
“Maybe
