Lassiter Tough Read online

  In O’Leary’s Saloon, the identity of the stranger had been no secret to Brad Sanlee. He had recognized him instantly, standing tall and brooding at the far end of the bar. It had brought back memories of an exciting afternoon in Tucson some three years before where he had been on business for his father. He had seen Lassiter stand up to Doc Kelmmer. Kelmmer, with eight notches in his gun, had intended to add Lassiter’s before the day was out. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

  And today Lassiter, damn him, had turned down a decent proposition cold, which Sanlee couldn’t understand. After witnessing Lassiter blow two holes in Kelmmer quicker than a man can blink, Sanlee had heard talk from excited onlookers afterward. They had said that Lassiter was a cold-hearted killer who’d spit in the devil’s eye if somebody paid him. Tough enough to stare down a rattlesnake, others had said. Well, today he had refused a fine offer of four thousand dollars—a sum that Sanlee had figured to get back one way or another, once Lassiter was no longer of any use to him. The fact that Lassiter had flung the proposition in his face had been insulting.

  Here he’d had all those frustrating days up north trying to pick up the trail of a wayward female, finally locating her and bringing her screeching and clawing all the way home. And then today having had a brilliant idea, which would have made up for all the frustration, when he’d seen Lassiter in the saloon.

  Lassiter didn’t know it, but he was in for one hell of a big surprise down the east road. Sanlee grinned at the thought of Shorty using his fists. Lassiter would likely be in such bad shape he’d have to be carried out of Texas in a sack.

  Sanlee gave a fierce grin to his three men who had remained in O’Leary’s. “Drink up, you bastards. It’s the last you’ll git till roundup’s over. Three weeks of pure hell in the Texas brush.”

  After another drink, he mused aloud, “Kind of a shame in a way. Lassiter was a legend. An’ after today, it’ll be the end of it… .”

  He broke off. Through the front windows of the saloon, he saw Krinkle and Doane come riding in. Doane was leaning far over, the saddle horn punching his big belly. He was bare-headed and the side of his face was streaked with dried blood.

  Krinkle didn’t appear to be in much better shape. When he dismounted at the hitching post, his movements seemed to give him pain. He tried to help Doane out of the saddle, but the big man’s weight was too much. They both sprawled to the boardwalk. Men came at a run.

  “Go out an’ give ’em a hand,” Sanlee ordered his three riders. Then he poured himself another drink and stared moodily at his reflection in the mirror in back of the bar.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said suddenly. “Damn, if Lassiter ain’t livin’ up to his rep.” Then he began to laugh, pounding the bar with his fist so that plump-and-balding Sid O’Leary looked around in surprise. “One way or another,” Sanlee was saying, still howling with laughter, “I got to have that man in my hip pocket. He’s one I can use, by God!”

  A shame-faced and angry Krinkle finally related what had happened, with embellishments in their favor. Sanlee didn’t believe him. Then Sanlee sent them down to Doc Clayburn’s. Doane was still stretched out on the boardwalk and had to be helped.

  An hour later, Lassiter was still angry at the attempt of the two Sanlee men to box him in. He thought about Sanlee. It was logical that the man Tevis had named with practically his last breath would come from the area where he had been working.

  He could see the Chandler ranch house up ahead, the rain-washed, dun-colored walls shining in the sunlight. It was located on a large rise of ground for defensive purposes and commanded a view of the miles of brush on all sides. Brush had been hacked away near the house but it was a constant battle to keep it from overrunning everything.

  Some of Chandler’s vaqueros were by the bunkhouse. When Lassiter rode up, they grew quiet. The segundo, Luis Herrera, regarded him gravely. He was chunky with a rope of mustache that looked as if it had been fashioned from black silk. He and his wife, Esperanza, lived in a small house in some cottonwoods. When Lassiter dismounted, the vaqueros drifted away.

  “I guess you decide to take the job, no?” Herrera said with a faint grin.

  “You a mind reader, Luis?”

  “You come back. If you make up your mind not to take it, you keep going.”

  “Something bothers me, Luis. You’re already segundo. The next step up is foreman.”

  Herrera studied the pointed toe of his boot, which he dug into the mud. “I’m happy where I am.”

  “Did the old man ever ask you to take over?”

  Herrera thought about it, then looked Lassiter in the eye. “He worries now about roundup. He hears you’re a good man. He wants you to see him through.”

  Although Lassiter wasn’t satisfied with the answer, he decided to accept it for the present. When he related the encounter with the pair of Sanlee men, whom he described, Herrera was impressed.

  “A wonder Krinkle didn’t shoot out your liver an’ Doane bust your back in three places. Them’s tough hombres.” Then Herrera laughed. “You also a tough hombre, amigo.”

  Lassiter went up to the house to see Chandler. The rancher was sitting in his parlor, his splinted leg resting on a stool. His eyes, faded from years of squinting into the Texas sun, studied Lassiter as he whipped around a chair to straddle.

  “Lassiter, you make up your mind yet?”

  “Like Herrera said, if I decided not to take the job, I wouldn’t have come back.”

  Chandler’s seamed face broke into a smile. “That’s damn good news, Lassiter.” For a middle-aged rancher, incapacitated with a broken leg, he seemed unusually happy.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Chandler …”

  “Call me Rep. The only ones around here call me mister are my vaqueros.”

  “How about Herrera?”

  “Well, he’s a little different.”

  “How come you didn’t make him foreman when Tevis left?”

  Chandler studied a patch of cobweb on the ceiling. “Texas brush country is the toughest place on God’s earth to hold a roundup. I wanted a man with experience.”

  “I’m sure Herrera has experience… .”

  “You tryin’ to talk yourself outta the job?” Chandler chuckled. “Let’s have us a drink. Hurts me to move, so how about you fetchin’ the bottle an’ glasses?” He waved a long-fingered hand at a sideboard. “I tell you right off,” Chandler said as they were drinking. “I’m thinkin’ of askin’ you to stay on full time after roundup.”

  “Well, now, I don’t know… .”

  “I heard somethin’ today that kinda changes my plans.” Chandler seemed elated about whatever it was he had heard.

  “That so?” It was all Lassiter could think to say.

  “Yep. Might be fixin’ to get myself married.”

  “Congratulations.” Lassiter took a swallow of the good whiskey. Across the room was a big stone fireplace and above it a pair of horns from a Chihuahua steer with the widest spread Lassiter had ever seen.

  “I’ll want me an’ the new wife to do some pokin’ around this ol’ world. I done real well since the war an’ I figure to spend some of the money I made pushin’ cows up to Kansas.”

  “The lucky lady a local girl?”

  Chandler, still smiling, looked mysterious. “Best I don’t talk no more about it till I do some dickerin’.”

  Lassiter finished his drink, wondering if Chandler’s reference to dickering meant the dowry of his bride-to-be.

  He switched the subject to his encounter with Brad Sanlee and later with his two men. Then he mentioned the three names on Sanlee’s list that he wanted eliminated.

  When Lassiter finished, Chandler sat staring down at a bead of whiskey that remained in the bottom of his glass. Then he drained it and said, “Brad was just joshin’ with you. Hell, they’re all good neighbors of mine an’ his. All good friends we are, mighty good.”

  Lassiter got to his feet and put the empty glass on a table that bore a daguerreotype of a
round-faced woman in a high-lace collar. “Sanlee offered me three thousand for the job at first. Then he raised it another thousand.”

  “Brad’s mighty close with a dollar. Learned it from his pa who’d beat the bejeezus outta him if he spent more’n he should. Brad was just havin’ fun with you today.”

  But Lassiter knew otherwise and sensed Chandler did also.

  Then Chandler said with forced joviality, “Brad’ll be some put out that you busted up his two men. But it’ll make him understand you’re nobody to fool with.”

  But Sanlee already knew that, Lassiter reflected, having witnessed him gun down a no-good braggart named Doc Kelmmer, a man wanted by half the sheriffs of the West.

  Chandler’s pale eyes narrowed. “You come here lookin’ for somebody named Sam Lee, so you told me. Well, I figured you meant Sanlee, but I couldn’t figure out why you was so interested. Mind tellin’ me about it?”

  “I heard the name is all.” This was more or less the truth. “But I got it all wrong.” He decided to say no more, not even about the girl’s part in it. He’d let everything unfold in natural order.

  Chandler insisted on them having another drink, then talked about the cattle business.

  “Reckon I’ll get Herrera to show me where we’ll be holding roundup,” Lassiter said.

  “Seems like every year one or the other of the outfits loses a man or two. If it ain’t a man gettin’ his throat tore out with thorns or a steer horn in the belly, he’s liable to get kicked to death by a wild ladino. But you know all that anyhow… .”

  “I worked roundup for Major Mitchell over east of here.”

  “I recollect you sayin’ so, yes.” Chandler rubbed his splints. “An’ here I am laid low with this damn leg an’ with roundup comin’ on. An’ me likely takin’ a new wife.” He waved toward the daguerreotype on the table. “That there’s Bertha—been gone three years now. You reckon that’s long enough to wait before takin’ another wife?”

  “Sure it is,” Lassiter said. The big house smelled of dust and cobwebs and field mice. Chandler’s new wife would have a cleaning job on her hands.

  “Me takin’ this certain gal as my bride will make things some different in this part of the country,” Chandler mused.

  Lassiter wondered in what way things would be different. But Chandler failed to explain. All Lassiter intended to do was to finally make Sanlee pay for his part in the murder of Vince Tevis and earn some money as Chandler’s ramrod at the same time. Chandler had set his pay at a hundred a month, plus 10 percent of the gross from a cattle sale. No one could fault those terms. Chandler had done well in the cattle business and evidently didn’t mind sharing it.

  But why not share the good fortune with Luis Herrera? Lassiter wondered again. But he decided not to bring it up—at least for the present. He had a ranch to run which was trouble enough without mixing in sidelines, such as the segundo, or who Chandler might be taking as his bride. Some local widow, still personable and with a little money of her own, Lassiter assumed.

  After going to the quarters assigned to him, Lassiter cleaned his .44 revolver and Henry rifle, to be ready for any eventuality. He was thinking of the hard-nosed bearded owner of Diamond Eight, Brad Sanlee.

  5

  *

  Just before the start of roundup, Lassiter met the three men on Brad Sanlee’s death list, all of them tough Texans. Marcus Kilhaven was a tall, raw-boned quiet man of thirty or so with a hand-busting grip. Buck Rooney was heavier, a man with a hearty laugh. He had lost his wife a year before. Jasper Tate, stocky and dark, was the only one of the three with a wife. Kilhaven, for one reason or other, had never married.

  Brad Sanlee’s was the last of the five outfits to show up at the agreed site for roundup. Sanlee gave Lassiter a spare nod. Krinkle muttered something and Shorty Doane glared. But neither man made a threatening move.

  Sanlee seemed to find the whole thing amusing and later got Lassiter aside as his men were setting up camp, which was away from the others. “I sure was peeved at you, Lassiter, for talkin’ up to me like you done that day in town. So I wanted to have a little fun. I sent Krinkle an’ Doane to tame you down a bit. But seems you’re the one done the tamin’.” Sanlee bellowed with laughter and slapped himself on the knee. But the merriment failed to reach his slate-gray eyes.

  “Also your idea of fun to write out those three names?” Lassiter asked quietly.

  Sanlee managed to look blank. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. What three names?”

  “You’re not much of an actor,” Lassiter said with a tight grin. “You wouldn’t make a dime behind the footlights.”

  “Hey, I kinda like you, Lassiter,” Sanlee boomed. He started to throw a heavy arm across Lassiter’s shoulders. But Lassiter stepped aside. He knew that old trick, in case Sanlee was intending to use it—a pretense of friendship, then grabbing a man in a bear hug and holding him while someone like Krinkle or Doane beat him down to his socks.

  “You ain’t very friendly, though,” Sanlee said with a short laugh. He stomped over to where his men were spreading their blanket rolls.

  For the first time, Lassiter noticed a small tent set a little apart from the bedrolls that were strung out across the cleared stretch of ground chosen for the Diamond Eight campsite. But he didn’t think much about it till later, for the next hectic day he was busy chasing steers from their sanctuaries in the brutal brush. And rousting cows who could be even deadlier than the males. Calves were torn from their mothers and dragged kicking and bawling to the branding fires. There one of the branders would apply the proper red-hot iron to tender hide and ownership established.

  There were also mavericks to brand, full-grown cattle that somehow had escaped the branding iron in previous roundups. Over the days, the joint herd at the holding grounds gradually increased. At completion of roundup, cowhands would cut out cattle according to brand for the individual owners.

  Sanlee had the most in his Diamond Eight; Chandler was next with his Box C. Then came Kilhaven, Tate and Rooney, much smaller so far as numbers of cattle went, but big enough when it came to acreage. The three of them controlled a great stretch of the brasada to the east of Chandler’s Box C.

  What surprised Lassiter was to learn one day that there was a female in camp. Rafael Alvarez, a Chandler vaquero new to the area, mentioned that he had glimpsed her. He winked and exaggeratedly rolled his eyes. They were taking a breather after chasing some big longhorns into the herd. They were standing in the sparse shade of a mesquite, passing a canteen, when Alvarez started to say more about the mysterious female. But Luis Herrera told him in crisp, border Spanish to la boca cerrada, “keep the mouth closed.”

  Lassiter wondered at the warning. But he couldn’t get Herrera to explain.

  Then it was back to the almost impenetrable brush.

  Everywhere was chaos, great clouds of dust from the drying ground, men shouting, steers roaring. And the occasional terrible cry of pain from one of the horses that could freeze a man’s guts. And at times a similar cry from a human. If the wound was not too serious, it was quickly bound. And the wounded man was back in the fray. If injuries were of a permanent nature, the man was paid off and sent on his way. A cruel custom, Lassiter thought, and learned that it had been started by Sanlee’s late father. The other ranchers seemed to go along with whatever custom the elder Sanlee had set.

  Lassiter got his first look at the captive woman when he was herding some unruly steers, wanting to get them to the holding grounds as soon as possible because he had no help. So he took a shortcut across the edge of the Diamond Eight camp. That was when he saw her sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the small tent. She was brushing her long black hair. Upon seeing him so close, her spine stiffened and she dropped the brush and clamped both hands to her kneecaps. She was wearing a faded blue dress.

  In what was left of the late-afternoon sun he saw her dark eyes fixed on him with startling intensity—eyes that reminded him of olives fresh
ly fetched from a tub and still moist. They stared hard as if to impart a message, so it seemed to him. A plea for help? That was when he first got the impression she was being held captive.

  But the steers demanded his attention and he was forced to move on.

  This first week of roundup he heard low-voiced speculation about her, always from newcomers hired on for roundup. But none of the regulars would discuss her at all. However, there was speculation among the new men that she was Brad Sanlee’s woman and he was keeping an eye on her during roundup.

  The following day it rained. As Lassiter started his rope-spinning overhead to make a cast, his horse slipped in the mud. Lassiter was thrown heavily. But he was instantly on his feet, dancing away nimbly. However, his pinto, struggling to get up from the muddy ground, took a steer horn in the belly. Its awesome scream knifed through the roundup camps. Entrails of the animal lay steaming where it had fallen.

  Lassiter spun from the advancing steer, but it suddenly veered and went ambling into the brush.

  With a dry mouth, Lassiter shot the suffering horse through the head. After stripping off saddle and bridle and carrying his rifle, he walked back to camp for a fresh mount. He gave thanks that it wasn’t his black horse in a crumpled heap back in the brush.

  It was late in the day when Lassiter, mounted on a chestnut horse, saw some ropers nearby let a wild ladino get away. It went crashing through the brush and across the Diamond Eight camp, scattering pots and bedrolls, bumping against the chuck wagon. Lassiter, who was the nearest, went pounding after it. A perfect cast of his rope pinned the forelegs and dumped the great beast on its nose.

  In his rampage, the bull had crushed the woman’s tent. She stood now beside the crumpled canvas, her face white, hands clenched at her sides.