was stealing the herd! Swear to God, Em, I
thought Perris told Jack to sell the herd. Please,
Em—I—let me go and I’ll never show my face
again. Please—”
“You’ll never show it anyway where you’re going,” Gosh cracked.
Earl Roach was looking at Butzy with a blank
expression. His head turned to Jack, holding his
chin up to ease his neck away from the chafe of the
rope. “Who’s your friend?”
Jack Ryan’s lips, with the cigarette hanging,
formed a small smile at Roach. “Never saw him before in my life.” His young face was paler than
usual, you could see it through beard and sunburn,
but his voice was slow and even with that little edge
of sarcasm it usually carried.
Roach shook his head to drop the ash from his
cigarette. “Beats me where he come from,” he said.
Ben Templin swore in a slow whisper. He mumbled, “It’s a damn waste of good guts.”
Lloyd and Ned and Dobie were looking at the
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two of them like they couldn’t believe their eyes
and then seemed to all drop their heads about the
same time. Embarrassed. Like they didn’t rate to be
in the same room with Jack and Earl. I felt it too,
but felt a mad coming on along with it.
“Dammit, Em! You’re going to wait for the
deputy!” I knew I was talking, but it didn’t sound
like me. “You’re going to wait for the deputy
whether you like it or not!”
Emmett just stared back and I felt like running
for the door. Emmett stood there alone like a rock
you couldn’t budge and then Ben Templin was beside him with his hand on Em’s arm, but not just
resting it there, holding the forearm hard. His other
hand was on his pistol butt.
“Charlie’s right, Em,” Ben said. “I’m not sure
how you got us this far, or why, but ain’t you or God
Almighty going to hang those boys by yourself.”
They stood there, those two big men, their faces
not a foot apart, not telling a thing by their faces,
but you got the feeling if one of them moved the livery would collapse like a twister hit it.
Finally Emmett blinked his eyes, and moved his
arm to make Ben let go.
“All right, Ben.” It was just above a whisper
and sounded tired. “We’ve all worked together a
long time and have always agreed—if it was a case
of letting you in on the agreeing. We won’t change
it now.”
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129
Gosh came out from behind the horses. Disappointed and mad. He moved right up close to Emmett. “You going to let this woman—”
That was all he got a chance to say. Emmett
swung his fist against that bony tobacco bulge and
Gosh flattened against the board wall before sliding
down into a heap.
Emmett started to walk out the front and then he
turned around. “We’re waiting on the deputy until
tomorrow morning. If he don’t show by then, this
party takes up where it left off.”
He angled out the door toward the Senate House,
still the boss. The hardheaded Irishman’s pride had
to get the last word in whether he meant it or not.
✯ ✯ ✯
The deputy got back late that night. You could see
by his face that he hadn’t gotten what he’d gone
for. Emmett stayed in his room at the Senate House,
but Ben Templin and I were waiting at the jail when
the deputy returned—though I don’t know what we
would have done if he hadn’t—with two bottles of
the yellowest mescal you ever saw to ease his saddle
sores and dusty throat.
We told him how we’d put three of our boys in
his jail—just a scare, you understand—when they’d
got drunk and thought it’d be fun to run off with a
few head of stock. Just a joke on the owner, you
understand. And Emmett Ryan, the ramrod, being
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one of them’s brother, he had to act tougher than
usual, else the boys’d think he was playing favorites. Like him always giving poor Jack the
trail drives.
Em was always a little too serious, anyway. Of
course, he was a good man, but he was a big, redfaced Irishman who thought his pride was a stone
god to burn incense in front of. And hell, he had
enough troubles bossing the TX crew without getting all worked up over his brother getting drunk
and playing a little joke on the owners—you been
drunk like that, haven’t you, Sheriff? Hell, everybody has. A sheriff with guts enough to work in
Bill Bonney’s country had more to do than chase after drunk cowpokes who wouldn’t harm a fly. And
even if they were serious, what’s a few cows to an
outfit that owns a quarter million?
And along about halfway down the second
bottle— So why don’t we turn the joke around on
old Em and let the boys out tonight? We done you a
turn by getting rid of Joe Anthony. Old Em’ll wake
up in the morning and be madder than hell when he
finds out, and that will be some sight to see.
The deputy could hardly wait.
In the morning it was Ben who had to tell Em
what happened. I was there in body only, with my
head pounding like a pulverizer. The deputy didn’t
show up at all.
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131
We waited for Emmett to fly into somebody, but
he just looked at us, from one to the next. Finally
he turned toward the livery.
“Let’s go take the cows home,” was all he said.
Not an hour later we were looking down at the
flats along the Pecos where the herd was. Neal
Whaley was riding toward us.
Emmett had been riding next to me all the way
out from Anton Chico. When he saw Neal, he
broke into a gallop to meet him, and that was when
I thought he said, “Thanks, Charlie.”
I know his head turned, but there was the beat of
his horse when he started the gallop, and that
mescal pounding at my brains. Maybe he said it
and maybe he didn’t.
Knowing that Irishman, I’m not going to ask him.
5
The Big Hunt
It was a Sharps .50, heavy and cumbrous, but he
was lying at full length downwind of the herd behind the rise with the long barrel resting on the
hump of the crest so that the gun would be less tiring to fire.
He counted close to fifty buffalo scattered over
the grass patches, and his front sight roamed over
the herd as he waited. A bull, its fresh winter hide
glossy in the morning sun, strayed leisurely from
the others, following thick patches of gamma grass.
The Sharps swung slowly after the animal. And
when the bull moved directly toward the rise, the
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133
heavy rifle dipped over the crest so that the sight
was just off the right shoulder. The young man,
who was still not m
uch more than a boy, studied
the animal with mounting excitement.
“Come on, granddaddy . . . a little closer,” Will
Gordon whispered. The rifle stock felt comfortable
against his cheek, and even the strong smell of oiled
metal was good. “Walk up and take it like a man,
you ugly monster, you dumb, shaggy, ugly hulk of
a monster. Look at that fresh gamma right in front
of you. . . .”
The massive head came up sleepily, as if it had
heard the hunter, and the bull moved toward the rise.
It was less than eighty yards away, nosing the grass
tufts, when the Sharps thudded heavily in the crisp
morning air.
The herd lifted from grazing, shaggy heads turning lazily toward the bull sagging to its knees, but
as it slumped to the ground the heads lowered unconcernedly. Only a few of the buffalo paused to
sniff the breeze. A calf bawled, sounding nooooo in
the open-plain stillness.
Will Gordon had reloaded the Sharps, and he
pushed it out in front of him as another buffalo lumbered over to the fallen bull, sniffing at the blood,
nuzzling the bloodstained hide: and, when the head
came up, nose quivering with scent, the boy
squeezed the trigger. The animal stumbled a few
yards before easing its great weight to the ground.
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Don’t let them smell blood, he said to himself.
They smell blood and they’re gone.
He fired six rounds then, reloading the Sharps
each time, though a loaded Remington rollingblock lay next to him. He fired with little hesitation, going to his side, ejecting, taking a cartridge
from the loose pile at his elbow, inserting it in the
open breech. He fired without squinting, calmly,
killing a buffalo with each shot. Two of the animals
lumbered on a short distance after being hit, glassy
eyed, stunned by the shock of the heavy bullet. The
others dropped to the earth where they stood.
Sitting up now, he pulled a square of cloth from
his coat pocket, opened his canteen, and poured
water into the cloth, squeezing it so that it would
become saturated. He worked the wet cloth
through the eye of his cleaning rod, then inserted it
slowly into the barrel of the Sharps, hearing a sizzle
as it passed through the hot metal tube. He was
new to the buffalo fields, but he had learned how
an overheated gun barrel could put a man out of
business. He had made sure of many things before
leaving Leverette with just a two-man outfit.
Pulling the rod from the barrel, he watched an
old cow sniffing at one of the fallen bulls. Get that
one quick . . . or you’ll lose a herd!
He dropped the Sharps, took the Remington,
and fired at the buffalo from a sitting position.
Then he reloaded both rifles, but fired the Reming-The Big Hunt
135
ton a half-dozen more rounds while the Sharps
cooled. Twice he had to hit with another shot to
kill, and he told himself to take more time. Perspiration beaded his face, even in the crisp fall air, and
burned powder was heavy in his nostrils, but he
kept firing at the same methodical pace, because it
could not last much longer, and there was not time
to cool the barrels properly. He had killed close to
twenty when the blood smell became too strong.
The buffalo made rumbling noises in the thickness of their throats, and now three and four at a
time would crowd toward those on the ground,
sniffing, pawing nervously.
A bull bellowed, and the boy fired again. The
herd bunched, bumping each other, bellowing,
shaking their clumsy heads at the blood smell. Then
the leader broke suddenly, and what was left of the
herd was off, from stand to dead run, in one moment of panic, driven mad by the scent of death.
The boy fired into the dust cloud that rose behind them, but they were out of range before he
could reload again.
It’s better to wave them off carefully with a blanket after killing all you can skin, the boy thought to
himself. But this had worked out all right. Sometimes it didn’t, though. Sometimes they stampeded
right at the hunter.
He rose stiffly, rubbing his shoulder, and moved
back down the rise to his picketed horse. His shoul- 136
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der ached from the buck of the heavy rifles, but he
felt good. Lying back there on the plain was close
to seventy or eighty dollars he’d split with Leo
Cleary . . . soon as they’d been skinned and handed
over to the hide buyers. Hell, this was easy. He
lifted his hat, and the wind was cold on his sweatdampened forehead. He breathed in the air, feeling
an exhilaration, and the ache in his shoulder didn’t
matter one bit.
Wait until he rode into Leverette with a wagon
full of hides, he thought. He’d watch close, pretending he didn’t care, and he’d see if anybody
laughed at him then.
✯ ✯ ✯
He was mounting when he heard the wagon
creaking in the distance, and he smiled when Leo
Cleary’s voice drifted up the gradual rise, swearing
at the team. He waited in the saddle, and swung
down as the four horses and the canvas-topped
wagon came up to him.
“Leo, I didn’t even have to come wake you up.”
Will Gordon smiled up at the old man on the box,
and the smile eased the tight lines of his face. It was
a face that seemed used to frowning, watching life
turn out all wrong, a sensitive boyish face, but the
set of his jaw was a man’s . . . or that of a boy who
thought like a man. There were few people he
showed his smile to other than Leo Cleary.
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137
“That cheap store whiskey you brought run out,”
Leo Cleary said. His face was beard stubbled, and
the skin hung loosely seamed beneath tired eyes.
“I thought you quit,” the boy said. His smile
faded.
“I have now.”
“Leo, we got us a lot of money lying over that
rise.”
“And a lot of work. . . .” He looked back into
the wagon, yawning. “We got near a full load we
could take in . . . and rest up. You shooters think
all the work’s in knocking ’em down.”
“Don’t I help with the skinning?”
Cleary’s weathered face wrinkled into a slow
smile. “That’s just the old man in me coming out,”
he said. “You set the pace, Will. All I hope is roaming hide buyers don’t come along . . . you’ll be
wanting to stay out till April.” He shook his head.
“That’s a mountain of back-breaking hours just to
prove a point.”
“You think it’s worth it or not?” the boy said
angrily.
Cleary just smiled. “Your dad would have liked
to seen this,” he said. “Come on, let’s get those
hides.”
Skinning buffalo was filthy, back-straining work.
Most hunters wouldn’t stoop to it. It was for men
hired as skinners and cooks, men who stayed by the
wagons until the shooting was done.
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ELMORE LEONARD
During their four weeks on the range the boy did
his share of the work, and now he and Leo Cleary
went about it with little conversation. Will Gordon
was not above helping with the butchering, with
hides going for four dollars each in Leverette, three
dollars if a buyer picked them up on the range.
The more hides skinned, the bigger the profit.
That was elementary. Let the professional hunters
keep their pride and their hands clean while they
sat around in the afternoon filling up on scootawaboo. Let them pay heavy for extra help just because skinning was beneath them. That was their
business.
In Leverette, when the professional hunters
laughed at them, it didn’t bother Leo Cleary.
Maybe they’d get hides, maybe they wouldn’t. Either way it didn’t matter much. When he thought
about it, Leo Cleary believed the boy just wanted to
prove a point—that a two-man outfit could make
money—attributing it to his Scotch stubbornness.
The idea had been Will’s dad’s—when he was
sober. The old man had almost proved it himself.
But whenever anyone laughed, the boy would
feel that the laughter was not meant for him but for
his father.
Leo Cleary went to work with a frown on his
grizzled face, wetting his dry lips disgustedly. He
squatted up close to the nearest buffalo and with
his skinning knife slit the belly from neck to tail.
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139
He slashed the skin down the inside of each leg,
then carved a strip from around the massive neck,
his long knife biting at the tough hide close to the
head. Then he rose, rubbing the back of his knife
hand across his forehead.
“Yo! Will . . .” he called out.
The boy came over then, leading his horse and
holding a coiled riata in his free hand. One end was
secured to the saddle horn. He bunched the buffalo’s heavy neck skin, wrapping the free end of
line around it, knotting it.
He led the horse out the whole length of the rope,
then mounted, his heels squeezing flanks as soon as
he was in the saddle.
“Yiiiiiii!” He screamed in the horse’s ear and