Louis LAmour - Catlow: A Novel

Contents

F RIENDLY W ARNING

B EN COWAN GOT to his feet. Bijahthis is government business if you cross the line into Mexico. Its up to me to stop you.

Catlow grinned at him. Stop me, then. But Id still like to have you in with me.

Ben put on his hat. Sorry I cant talk you out of this, but I didnt much figure I could. He put out his hand. Well meet again.

You keep your ears pointed back when we do, or Ill notch em for you. This is the big one for me, Ben, and all bets are off.

Ben Cowan stepped out into the night.

To
TRUMAN DEARBORN
Who rode the old trails through
Dakota and Montana

Chapter 1

W HEREVER BUFFALO GRAZED, cattle were rounded up, or mustangs tossed their tails in flight, men talked of Bijah Catlow.

He was a brush-buster from the brazada country down along the Nueces, and he could ride anything that wore hair. He made his brag that he could outfight, outride, outtalk, and outlove any man in the world, and he was prepared to accept challenges, any time or place.

Around chuck-wagon fires or line camps from the Brazos to the Musselshell, men talked of Bijah Catlow. They talked of his riding, his shooting, or the wild brawls in which, no matter how angry others became, Bijah never lost his temperor the fight.

Abijah was his name, shortened in the manner of the frontier to Bijah. He was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, hell-for-leather Irishman who emerged from the War Between the States with three decorations for bravery, three courts-martial, and a reputation for being a man to have on your side in any kind of a shindig, brannigan, or plain old alley fight.

A shock-headed man with a disposition as open as a Panhandle prairie, he was as ready to fight as an Irishman at a Dutchmans picnic; and where the wishes of Bijah Catlow were crossed he recognized the laws of neither God nor man. But the law had occasion to recognize Bijah Catlow; and the law knew him best in the person of Marshal Ben Cowan.

By the time Bijah and Ben were fifteen years old, each had saved the others life no less than three times; and Bijah had whipped Ben four times and had himself been whipped four times. Ben was tough, good-humored, and serious; Bijah was tough, good-humored, and wild as any unbroken mustang.

At nineteen, Ben Cowan was a deputy sheriff, and at twenty-three a Deputy United States Marshal. By the time Bijah had reached the age of twenty-three he was a known cattle rustler, and an outlaw with three killings behind him.

But it was no criminal instinct, inherited or acquired, that turned Bijah from the paths of righteousness to the shadowy trails of crime. It was a simple matter of frontier economics.

Bijah Catlow was a top-hand in any mans outfit, so when he signed on with the Tumbling SSs it was no reflection on his riding. He hired out at the going wage of thirty dollars per month and found, but the sudden demand for beef at the Kansas railheads turned Texas longhorns from unwanted, unsought wild creatures into a means to wealth and affluence.

From occasional drives to Missouri, Louisiana, or even Illinois, or the casual slaughter of cattle for their hides, the demand for beef in the eastern cities lifted the price per head to ten or more times its former value.

Immediately the big ranchers offered a bonus of two dollars per head for every maverick branded, and Bijah Catlow, who worked with all the whole-hearted enthusiasm with which he played, plunged into the business of branding cattle to get rich.

He was a brush-popper and a good one, and he knew where the wild cattle lurked. He was a good hand with a rope and he owned some fast horses that knew cattle as well as he did, and nobody knew them better. The first month after the bonus was initiated, Bijah Catlow roped and slapped an iron on eighty-seven head of wild cattle.

During the months that followed, Bijah was busier than a man with a dollar watch and the seven-year itch (when he isnt winding, hes scratching) and he averaged two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars a month. In those days nobody made that kind of money on the range, or much of anywhere else. And then the bottom dropped out.

The owners of the big brands got together and agreed that the bonus was foolish and unnecessary, for it was the hands job to brand cattle anyhow. So the bonus came to an end.

From comparative affluence, Bijah Catlow once again became a thirty-a-month cowhand, and he led the contingent that quit abruptly.

His argument was a good one. Why brand cattle for the ranchers? Why not for themselves? Why not make up their own herd and drive through to Kansas?

After all, most of the mavericks running loose on the plains of Texas came from Lord knew where, for cattle had been breeding like jack rabbits on those plains ever since the days when the first Spanish came there. Nobody could claim or had claimed ownership of those cattle until suddenly they became valuable. Moreover, throughout the War Between the States most of the riders had been away at war and the cattle that might have been branded had gone maverick, and many of their owners had never returned from the War.

The cattle were there for whoever claimed themso Bijah Catlow banded together a group of riders like himself and they went to work, inspired by Bijahs wholehearted zeal and unflagging energy.

He threw himself into the work with the same enthusiasm with which he did everything else, and it was his zest that fired the ambition of the others. Morning, noon, and night they worked, and at the end of two months they had a herd of nearly three thousand head ready for the trail.

Wild cattle were plentiful in those early years, and the smoke of their branding fires was forever in the air. The riders plunged into the deepest brush and rousted out old mossyhorns and branded them for the Kansas trail, but their work did not go untroubled. Twice they drove off raiding Comanches, and Nigger Jim was gored by an angry bull. They found his ruined body sprawled in the grass near a tiny seep, the earth around torn by the furious battle. A swarthy man, part Indian rather than Negro, he had been a top-hand and a good companion. They buried him on the prairie where they found him.

A few days later Johnny Caxton lost an arm. He was snubbing a rope to a tree, and how it happened he never knew. The plunging steer wheeled suddenly and Caxtons arm was caught in a loop of the rope. The steer lunged back on the rope and it snapped tight around Johnny Caxtons arm.

Two days before he had lost his holster in the brush when it was torn from his belt, and although he had found his pistol, he had been carrying it in his saddlebag since then. His horse was some distance off, and he had been stalking the big steer afoot when he got his chance to make the throw.

It was hours before they found him, the tough old mossyhorn still backed to the end of the rope, full of fight and glaring wild-eyed, and Johnny sagging against the tree, his arm a black and ugly sight.

There was no doctor within a hundred miles, so Bijah Catlow amputated the arm in camp, cauterizing the stump with a hot branding iron.

It was a week later, with four of their number a quarter of a mile away riding herd on the cattle, that Bijah awakened to find their camp surrounded.

The first man he saw was Sheriff Jack Mercer, formerly on the payroll of Parkman of the OP Bar, and now, as sheriff, reputed to be still on his payroll. Then he saw Parkman himself, Barney Staples of the Tumbling SS, and Osgood of the Three Links. With them were twenty-odd tough cowhands who rode for their brands.