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 they herded ’em east and sold ’em to Fort Davis, Hobie.”
“Could be Jeff, I’ll ride over there in the morning and see.” Hobie Gilbert rode back to Jeff’s ranch a couple of days later and said his cows were indeed sold to the army post at Fort Davis. “And the seller had a scar across his chin. It sounds like that Lester Willis hombre, don’t it?” Hobie asked.
“Yeah, it sure does,” remarked Jeff.
Two weeks later, Smitty rode out to their pasture northeast of the Saber River. He wanted to make sure the cattle his boys had herded there last week were still where they were supposed to be. They were feeding closer to the river than they should’ve been. He noticed quite a few horse tracks leading from around his herd and going back toward the river, so he followed. They led into the water. Looks like someone’s scoutin’ our cattle agin,” he murmured to himself. Smitty turned his pony back toward the cattle just as a shot rang out. The slug caught Smitty high in his left lung and knocked him out of his saddle. He landed heavily on his back, looking up at the sky.
“Damn,” he whispered, after catching his breath, “so this is how I’m cashing out. I always figured I’d be killed standing up.” Smitty’s lungs began to fill with fluid. And he began coughing up bright red blood.
“Hello down there,” said the man looking down at Smitty. “Is that ground hard on your back, old son? Sorry you’re still alive, my shooting was way off today, or you’d be a dead man right now.”
“I recognize you, Lester Willis, you saddle scum,” replied Smitty between coughs. “You go to hell.”
“You go first, old friend,” replied Willis, and he drew his pistol and shot Smitty in the forehead, just above his eyes.
“That deed oughta put old Jeff Nelson in a ‘come see us’ mood, wouldn’t you say so, boss?” Willis opined to himself.
Just before noon, one of JN’s cowboys came galloping into the ranch compound.
“Somebody’s shot Smitty down by the Saber. He’s been killed.”
Someone had indeed shot him. His two Colts were still in their holsters, and it looked like he could’ve seen the person who shot him in his forehead. Jeff was numb and devastated. His right hand was gone, the man he’d went through the entire war with, in all the battles they’d fought. Smitty had never gotten so much as a scratch. And now he was dead, shot from behind and then murdered by some coward.
“Lester Willis,” said Jeff, “that outlaw is behind this. I know the bastard is. Yeah, he and Jorn Murphy are to blame. Damn, what was this county coming to?”
Jeff wanted to cry, to scream, to shed some tears for Smitty, but he couldn’t. He was too hurt, too sad, and too damn mad. I’ll find the person who did this Smitty. So help me, I’ll find him, and he’ll pay up. I promise