and followed the wagon up the trail. Garrett nudged his horse closer to Jason C. Hughes, perched precariously on the flour keg, the makeshift noose chafing his throat, his face flushed.
“You can’t leave me here!” the dude said.
How he would love to leave Jason C. Hughes hanging, but, no, he’d just give the boy a scare, ride over the hills, let him sweat for ten minutes, maybe longer. If I don’t forget about him, Garrett told himself. My memory ain’t what it used to be.
“Don’t rock that barrel too much, boy. You’ll wind up like Steve in Mr. Wister’s book you’ve been so jo-fired about. That’s what you wanted to see, ain’t it? Well, you’re about to get a real close look at someone getting strung up.”
Clucking at his horse, Garrett trotted the bay after the wagon and his two prisoners, smiling, enjoying himself.
“Old man! Damn it, you get back here and cut me loose. Cut me down. Damn you, you better do as I say!”
Reining up, Garrett looked over his shoulder at Jason C. Hughes.
“Get back here, and cut me down!” the dude screamed. “Or you’ll rue the day, old man!”
Garrett pushed back the brim of his hat. “When you call me that,” he said, “smile.”
Then he loped away.
Uncle Jeff and the Gunfighter
Elmer Kelton
Out in West Texas the old-timers still speak occasionally of the time my uncle Jeff Barclay scared off the gunfighter Tobe Farrington. It’s a good story, as far as it goes, but the way they tell it doesn’t quite go far enough. And the reason is that my father was the only man who ever knew the whole truth. Papa would have carried the secret to the grave with him if he hadn’t taken a notion to tell me about it a little while before he died. Now that he’s buried beside Mother in the family plot over at Marfa, I reckon it won’t hurt to clear up the whole story, once and for all.
Papa was the oldest of the two brothers. He and Uncle Jeff were what they used to call “four-sectioners” a long time ago.
Lots of people don’t know about Texas homesteads. When Texas joined the union it was a free republic with a whopper of a debt. Texas kept title to its land because the United States didn’t want to take on all that indebtedness. So in later years Texas had a different homestead law than the other states. By the time Papa and Uncle Jeff were grown, the state of Texas was betting four sections of land against a man’s fee, his hope and his sweat that he would starve to death before he proved up his claim. It’s no secret that the state won a lot of those bets.
But it didn’t win against Papa and Uncle Jeff. They proved up their land and got the title.
Trouble was, their claims were on pasture that old Port Hubbard had ranched for a long time, leasing from the state. It didn’t set well with him at all, because he was used to having people ask him things, not tell him. And there was a reckless streak in Uncle Jeff that caused him to glory in telling people how the two of them had thumbed their noses at Port Hubbard and gotten away with it.
It’d be better if I told you a little about Uncle Jeff, so you’ll know how it was with him. I’ve still got an old picture—yellowed now—that he and Papa had taken the day they got title to their four sections apiece. It shows Papa dressed in a plain suit that looks like he had slept in it, and he wears an ordinary sort of wide-brimmed hat set square on his head. But Uncle Jeff has on a pair of those striped California pants they used to wear, and sleeve garters and a candy-striped shirt. He’s wearing one of those huge cowboy hats that went out years ago, the ones you could really call “ten-gallon” without exaggerating much. The hat is cocked over to one side of his head. A six-shooter sits high on his right hip. The clothes made him look like he’s on his way to a dance, but the challenge in his eyes makes him look like he’s waiting for a fight. With Uncle Jeff, it could have been either one or both.
A lot of ranchers like Port Hubbard made good use of the Texas homestead law. They got their cowboys to file on land that lay inside their ranches. The cowboys would prove up the land, then sell it to the man they worked for. Plenty of cowboys in those days weren’t interested in being landowners anyhow, and in a lot of West Texas four sections wasn’t enough for a man to make a living on. It wouldn’t carry enough cattle. And farming that dry country was a chancy business, sure enough.
It bothered Hubbard when Papa and Uncle Jeff took eight sections out of his Rocking H ranch. But he held off, figuring they would starve out and turn it back. Meanwhile, they would be improving it for him. When that didn’t work the way he expected, he tried to buy it from them. They wouldn’t sell.
Hubbard still might have swallowed the loss and gone about his business if Uncle Jeff hadn’t been inclined to brag so much.
“He’s buffaloed people in this part of the country for twenty years,” Uncle Jeff would say, and he didn’t care who heard or repeated it. “But we stopped him. He’s scared to lay a finger on us.”
Papa always felt Port Hubbard wouldn’t have done anything if Uncle Jeff hadn’t kept jabbing the knifepoint at him, so to speak. But Hubbard was a proud man, and proud men don’t sit around and listen to that kind of talk forever, especially old-time cowmen like Port Hubbard. So by and by Tobe Farrington showed up.
Nobody ever did prove that Port Hubbard sent for him, but nobody ever doubted it. Farrington put in for four sections of land that lay right next to Papa’s and Uncle Jeff’s. It was on Rocking H country that had been taken up once by a Hubbard cowboy who later got too much whiskey over in Pecos and took a fatal dose of indigestion on three .45 slugs.
Everybody in West Texas knew of Tobe Farrington those days. He wasn’t famous in the way of John Wesley Hardin or Bill Longley, but in the country from San Saba to the Pecos River he had a hard name. Folks tried to give him plenty of air. It was known that several men had gone to glory with his bullets in them.
A lot of folks expected to see Farrington just ride and shoot Papa and Uncle Jeff down. But he didn’t work that way. He must have figured on letting his reputation do the job without him having to waste any powder. Papa said it seemed like just about every time he Uncle Jeff looked up, they would see Tobe Farrington sitting there on his horse, just watching them. He seldom ever spoke, he just looked at them. Papa didn’t mind admitting that those hard gray eyes always put a chunk of ice in the pit of his stomach. But Uncle Jeff wasn’t bothered. He seemed to thrive on that kind of pressure.
I didn’t tell you that Uncle Jeff had been a deputy once. The Pecos County sheriff had hired him late one spring, mostly to run errands for him. In those days the sheriff was usually a tax assessor, too. The job didn’t last long. That summer the sheriff got beat in the primary election. The next one had needy kinfolks and didn’t keep Uncle Jeff on.
But by that time Uncle Jeff had gotten the feel of the six-shooter on his hip, and he liked it. What’s more, he got to be a good shot. He liked to ride along and pot jackrabbits with his pistol. Two or three times this trick got him thrown off a boogered horse, but Uncle Jeff would still do it when he took the notion. That was his way. Nothing ever scared him much, and nothing ever kept him from doing as he damn well pleased. Nothing but Papa.
If Tobe Farrington figured his being there was going to scare the Barclay brothers out of the country, he was disappointed. So he began to change his tactics. Farrington had a little bunch of Rocking H cattle with a vented brand, which he claimed he had bought from Hubbard but which everybody said Hubbard had just loaned him to make the homestead look legal. He started pushing his cattle over onto the Barclay land. He didn’t do it sneaky. He would open the wire gates, bold as brass, push the cattle through, then ride on in and watch them eat Barclay grass. It wasn’t the rainiest country in the world. There was just enough grass for the Barclay cattle, and sometimes not even that much.
Uncle Jeff was all for a fight. He wanted to shoot Farrington’s cattle. Papa, on the other hand, believed in being firm but not suicidal. He left his gun at home, took his horse and pushed the cattle back through