Range rustlers, p.1
Range Rustlers, page 1
Range Rustlers
Tom Connell is a deputy hired by the Cattlemen’s Association to combat rustling on the open range and Clifford Crossley-Hunt, a tough former soldier, works for the Diamond R ranch. Both men arrive in a district where suspected rustlers are lynched and stock thefts are alleged to be excessive. However they soon find that all is not as it is claimed to be.
The matter is further complicated by an unknown gunman who starts killing men from a large local ranch.
Much information is being withheld from Tom and Clifford but they finally forge an alliance which ends in a bloody battle to bring justice to a troubled range.
By the same author
Outlaw Vengeance
Warbonnet Creek
Red Rock Crossing
Killer’s Kingdom
Range Rustlers
Greg Mitchell
ROBERT HALE
© Greg Mitchell 2008
First published in Great Britain 2008
ISBN 978-0-7198-2370-1
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
This e-book first published in 2017
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Greg Mitchell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
CHAPTER ONE
The riders from the Double T ranch caught John Murphy in the act. He had a yearling heifer tied down and was branding her with a heated cinch ring held between two sticks. The smell of burning hair and hide hung heavily in the air and the brander was so intent upon his task that he did not notice the five riders who came over the ridge behind him. He had finished his work and was about to set the animal loose when he heard horses galloping toward him. Murphy turned to see Denver Cutler, the Double T foreman, and four cowhands.
The look on Cutler’s hatchet face was bad enough but the big Smith & Wesson .44 in his right hand was even more disconcerting. Murphy had no intention of going for his own gun. If he was to get out of this fix he would have to talk his way out.
‘Stay right where you are, Murphy.’ There was no friendliness in the foreman’s voice although he had known the other for several years. ‘You’re caught rustling dead to rights.’
‘That heifer’s a maverick, Denver. No one can lay claim to her. She was missed in the last roundup.’
‘But she would have been picked up in the fall. You know that, Murphy. Any mavericks then are divided equally among the members of the Cattlemen’s Association.’
‘An association that small ranchers are not allowed to join,’ Murphy reminded him angrily. ‘Who’s to say that this heifer was not from one of my own cows?’
‘I’m saying it. All mavericks belong to the Association. You’re rustling and will be dealt with the same as any other rustler. We’re going to string you up.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Murphy said in disbelief.’ Not over one stray heifer, surely? The Association has thousands of head. One maverick makes no difference to them – you couldn’t be serious.’
Cutler nodded briefly to the men beside him. ‘Rustling is rustling – grab him, boys.’
Murphy reached for his gun but Cutler spurred his horse forward. Its chest hit the man before he could draw his weapon and the impact threw him several feet. Two cowhands came out of their saddles and threw themselves on the fallen man who struggled violently. Murphy’s gun eventually cleared the holster but one of his attackers caught his arm and twisted the weapon from his grasp. By this time the other cowhands had joined the fray and by weight of numbers they forced their prisoner to the ground. Though cursing violently Murphy no longer had the strength to resist so many and soon his hands were tied behind his back.
‘Get his horse and put him on it,’ Cutler ordered, and his lips curled in a grim smile. He was enjoying himself. ‘Then we’ll find ourselves a suitable tree.’
Things were quiet in the sheriff’s office at Lodgepole and Tom Connell had the cylinder out of his Colt .45 as he carefully cleaned the barrel. He had not used the weapon since taking up employment as Sheriff Monty McLeod’s deputy but the simple task gave him some means of relieving the boredom. His youthful, tanned face was a study of concentration as he pushed a cleaning brush through the revolver’s bore. In his mid-twenties and of average height and build, the dark-haired deputy bore little resemblance to the general idea of a western lawman but he had the qualifications for the job. His was a special position financed by the Cattlemen’s Association. He was employed to stop rustling and Connell was soundly experienced in all facets of cattle work. Since his early years he had worked on ranches and several times had travelled up the trail with big herds from Texas. He had also swapped lead with stampeders, bandits and rustlers though he had never considered himself a gunman.
He was just fitting the pin through the revolver frame and cylinder when Jed Roberts, the other deputy came into the office. Roberts was a big man m his mid-thirties and had been in the job for several years. His broad-featured face with its handlebar moustache showed traces of more than one recalcitrant client and he was reckoned a bad man with his fists. ‘You’d better get that gun back together and loaded, Tom. There’s trouble coming down the street and it could be some of yours.’
‘Why’s that?’ Connell asked, as he began loading the empty cylinder.
‘Because there’s a few rustlers coming with a wagon and they look serious.’
‘Rustlers?’
‘They call themselves small ranchers but everyone knows they’re behind all the rustling that’s going on. There’s a whole nest of them in little two-by-four spreads along Alder Creek You’d best get out there and get to know them.’
‘Where’s Sheriff McLeod?’
‘Probably out at Coventry’s or one of the other big spreads. He don’t always tell me where he goes.’
Connell arose, slipped the gun back in its holster, put on his hat and strolled out onto the boardwalk just as the wagon and three riders stopped in front of the office.
A small man with a grey spiky beard and a battered black hat, wheeled his bay pony to face the lawman. ‘Is McLeod about?’ he demanded.
‘He isn’t. I’m Tom Connell, one of his deputies. Can I help you?’
‘I doubt it, sonny, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m Hank Coates. I own the Lazy HC. If you look under this tarpaulin in the wagon you’ll see that I’m here about a murder.’
‘Do you know who did it?’ Connell asked, as he walked to the side of the wagon.
‘Some of them fat-gutted coyotes from the Cattlemen’s Association, that’s who. I’ve seen their work before.’
Connell lifted the canvas and saw the blackened, distorted face of Murphy. He had died hard at the end of a rope. The deputy had seen such victims before, but had never hoped to see them in his new environment. ‘Do you know him?’ he asked.
The big, fair-haired man driving the wagon growled, ‘It’s John Murphy. He was my next-door neighbour.’ As he spoke the man produced a crumpled piece of paper. He held it out to Connell. ‘This was stuffed into his shirt pocket.’
The word RUSTLER was printed in pencil in large block letters.
Connell called Roberts. The way the ranchers stiffened at the big deputy’s appearance plainly showed that there was no love lost between them. Roberts glanced at the body and then, his curiosity satisfied, he regarded the dead man’s friends. ‘It was only a matter of time,’ he told them. ‘Murphy was a known rustler. Looks like somebody finally caught him at it.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’ Coates demanded.
With obvious satisfaction Roberts pointed to the new deputy. ‘This is Tom Connell. He’s been specially hired to put an end to the rustling around here. Ask him.’
All eyes turned toward Connell.
‘I reckon my first job will be to find out who did this,’ he said.
‘Then what?’ the wagon driver asked.
‘I’ll arrest them for murder.’
This statement was greeted by snorts of disbelief from the ranchers and a look of alarm from Roberts.
One rancher, a younger man in shotgun chaps said bitterly, ‘We’ve heard all this before. Why should you be different to the other lawmen around here? You’re all bought and paid for by the Cattlemen’s Association. You’re just another hired gun and have no intention of biting the hand that feeds you.’
‘My first job is to uphold the law and I rate murder worse than rustling,’ Connell told him quietly. ‘But I will need your help. Take Murphy down to the undertaker’s and then come back here to the office so I can get some statements from you.’
‘We’ll do that,’ Coates said, as he turned his pony. and led the others away.
‘Have you gone crazy?’ Roberts demanded, when the others were gone. ‘Murphy was caught rustling and got hanged legal. It’s always been that way on the cattle ranges. You can’t go around arresting everyone who hangs a rustler. Hell, Tom, you’ll have the people who are paying your wages in jail.’
‘You’re dead right. If I find they killed Murphy I’ll do my damnedest to convict them. Murder is murder.’
Roberts shook his head like a baffled steer. ‘You can’t do that. Your job is to stop rustling. You better get a grip on reality or you won’t last long around here.’
Half an hour later, after making the funeral
Bill Sutton, the youngest of the group, said that he and his wife saw Denver Cutler and some cowhands riding behind their ranch earlier in the day. By his reckoning these riders would have been in the vicinity when the murder occurred.
It took nearly two hours for Connell to collect the statements and clarify a few points. He could sense the ranchers’ impatience and could see by the looks on their faces that they considered the entire process a waste of time. They had departed and the deputy was sorting the statements when Sheriff Monty McLeod lurched in the door.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, about fifty, with thinning red hair. His neat town clothes were those of a man who spent little time in the saddle. The pearl handle of a Colt Lightning showed discreetly under the left side of his coat, but unlike most frontier lawmen he no longer wore a cartridge belt. McLeod liked to think of himself as a cut above the average star-packer. Lately, though, he had been spending most of his time with the big ranchers around the area. From his condition on arrival, he had spent more time sampling their whiskey than discussing the epidemic of rustling.
He leaned against the wall and occasionally blinked like a startled owl as Connell explained what had happened. Roberts stayed in the background and said nothing.
When the deputy had finished talking McLeod said, ‘Leave it with me, Tom. I’ll handle this. You’d better get out on the range as soon as you can. Jack Coventry said today that he’s being robbed blind by rustlers.’
‘There’s one less now,’ Roberts said from the background, as though secretly pleased by Murphy’s lynching.
CHAPTER TWO
Clifford Crossley-Hunt was dressed, shaved and ready to eat when the cook on the Diamond R ranch rang the breakfast bell. He stood on the ranch house veranda and surveyed the scene before him, the horses already in the corrals and the cowhands hurrying from the bunkhouse to the kitchen. Some were making last minute adjustments to their clothing or buckling on guns as they went. Though different, the scene vaguely reminded him of similar mornings in various military camps he had seen across the British Empire.
Tall, with aristocratic features, a straight back and neatly trimmed moustache, he retained the bearing of the soldier he once had been. That was before taking up his present employment as a supervisor for Regency Estates, a London-based cattle company with pastoral investments in several countries. It was his first day on the ranch and he was relieved that the long journey by steamer, train and stagecoach, was finally over.
Oliver Jensen, the ranch manager, had greeted him cordially enough, but the visitor knew that, as a representative of the ranch’s English owners, he would be regarded with some suspicion. He had not expected what the manager had told him when he arrived; that a rustling problem was threatening the company’s profits.
‘Breakfast’s ready, Captain,’ said a quiet voice at his elbow. He turned to see Prudence, the small, middle-aged widow Jensen had employed as a maid, her sharp features set in a worried expression. He had been introduced to her the previous night when he arrived.
‘Don’t worry about the “Captain”, Prudence. I was an army captain not a ship’s captain and lost any rank when I left the army. They were probably as pleased to see me go as I was to leave them.’
‘Breakfast’s ready anyway,’ the maid said uncertainly and walked away.
Crossley-Hunt found Jensen waiting for him and impatiently eyeing the ham and eggs on his plate. The manager was a thin man of middle age with a habitually worried expression. He greeted the newcomer, made a brief enquiry about how well he had slept and, with little apparent interest in replies, attacked his breakfast. His hunger partially satisfied, he then questioned the visitor as to his plans.
‘I want to have a ride around the range and see the situation. The company was unaware that cattle-stealing was such a problem,’ Crossley-Hunt told him. ‘We need to know the extent of it and what steps are needed to counteract it.’
The last thing Jensen wanted was to play nursemaid to some English dude, specially one who might accidentally discover too much. The more time the company man spent on the open range, the less chance he had of uncovering the manager’s secret dealings. ‘I can get our foreman Ed Adams to tell you all that. I’m sure you don’t want to be riding all over the place, but the more time you spend on the open range the better you will appreciate conditions here. I suppose you can ride.’
‘I can ride and I enjoy it. As you know, my work entails first-hand reports to the Regency Estates’ directors. I know that you make monthly reports, but they take a long time to reach London and circumstances are often changed by the time they do. I am sure, too, that we do not fully understand the conditions that apply here. It might save you a lot of writing if I have a better idea of the situation.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Jensen said, but he did not sound pleased. He rang a small bell on the table and Prudence appeared. ‘Go to Ed and tell him to saddle a quiet horse for Mr Crossways-Hunt.’
Connell could scarcely believe his eyes when the rider unexpectedly rode into his camp. The last person he expected to see was a pretty girl with the light-brown hair who looked a picture aboard a smart grey pony. It was obvious from the way that she checked her mount as she emerged from the willows bordering the creek that the girl had not expected to meet anyone either.
The deputy hastily dropped the map he was studying and raised his hat. ‘Howdy,’ he said as he rose to his feet.
The girl smiled and returned his greeting. Pointing to the map he had dropped, she observed, ‘You look like you might be lost.’
‘Not really – I’m just getting to know the country a bit. I expect to be working around here for a while.’
A glint of suspicion showed in those green eyes. ‘Oh – what ranch?’
Connell was not one to beat about the bush. He would have preferred to remain undiscovered for a couple of days but could see no point in telling lies. ‘I guess you could say that I’ll be on all the ranches eventually. I’m Tom Connell, a deputy hired to stop this rustling that has folks so worried.’
The friendly smile disappeared. ‘Only certain folks are worried about rustling. Others say it’s not happening. My folks own the C 2 Bar and we don’t have any trouble – leastways not from rustlers. You won’t find any rustlers around here, but if you wanted to be useful, you could be looking for the men who murdered John Murphy.’
‘Sheriff McLeod’s looking into that.’
A flush of anger appeared on the girl’s face. ‘The only thing he looks into is the mirror behind the bar in Mason’s saloon. He has not caught one of those killers yet.’
Connell was surprised. ‘Do you mean there has been more than one murder?’
‘This was the second such killing. Didn’t McLeod tell you that?’
‘No he didn’t. Who do you think is behind it?’
‘Your employers, the Cattlemen’s Association – who else? Some of them only own a few acres but they are crowding out the free range with big herds that otherwise they could not feed. They want to push us smaller ranchers off so they can increase their herds even more. That English company that owns the Diamond R, is a good example. They are running something like five thousand head. Coventry’s Wineglass brand is running nearly as many. Raymond’s Double T has thousands of head too.’
‘And how many does your ranch own – Miss. . . ?’
‘I’m Mary Coulter. We have around four hundred head on the open range. Some of our neighbours are much the same. It is not our herds that are eating out the free grass – and we don’t steal cattle.’
‘I’m glad to hear that, Miss Coulter, because if that is the case you need not worry about me.’
