Panhandle (11 page)
Authors: Brett Cogburn
“The work here is honest,” I said.
He turned away and, as he was riding off, he called back to me, “A man should work in the vocation of his calling.”
I watched him for a minute before turning back to my calling. What I mean is that there were three fellows behind me calling me all sorts of foul names for standing around while they worked.
Andy watched me from his perch atop the neck of the calf just drug to him. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his dusty face, leaving a ragged, muddy streak. “What are you looking so happy about?”
I grabbed up a hind leg and flopped myself down to take a hold on the calf. The calf bucked against the hot iron laid on him while I grinned at Andy and held on. “You smell that?”
“The shit, or the burning hair?” He wrinkled his nose as the branding smoke rolled across his face.
“No.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Has the heat gone to your head?” He got up from the calf and kicked at it as it rose and trotted off bawling for its mother.
“Can't you smell it?” I asked again.
“What?” he almost yelled back at me.
“Money. Lots of money.”
“Where?”
I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder toward High Card's bunch loping off on the horizon. “It looks like we found ourselves a horse race.”
Andy leapt into the air and clicked both spurs together before he hit the ground. He did a little Indian shuffle in a tight circle, and without hesitating he bailed on the next calf drug to us while I slipped the rope off of its heels. We grinned at each other like we had both just escaped the loony bin.
“I want to know one thing.” He sounded very serious, and I patiently waited while he paused for dramatic emphasis.
“Where did you find those suckers?”
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illy took the news just like I'd walked up to him and handed him a draft on the entire funds of the Denver Mint. All of our camp was excited by the prospects of a horse race for bigger stakes. None of us seemed to have the sense to be concerned about our challengers. That Mobeetie crowd was a bunch of holdout men and shysters that made their living skinning the likes of us. Dealing with those boys could be like sticking your hand in a sack of shook-up rattlesnakes.
illy took the news just like I'd walked up to him and handed him a draft on the entire funds of the Denver Mint. All of our camp was excited by the prospects of a horse race for bigger stakes. None of us seemed to have the sense to be concerned about our challengers. That Mobeetie crowd was a bunch of holdout men and shysters that made their living skinning the likes of us. Dealing with those boys could be like sticking your hand in a sack of shook-up rattlesnakes.
Billy had the final say in any proposed race, as it was his racehorse, and he asked me to go with him to visit the Mobeetie gamblers' camp. Andy wanted to come along, but we knew he'd get drunk and wouldn't make it back to work the next day, or maybe for even longer. H.B. seconded our opinion, and ordered Andy to stay in camp.
We headed for our horses and H.B. like to have trampled down the back of our britches' legs following us. It seemed like he was set on going with us. Besides being our boss, he was a stubborn old fart, and it was usually wasted time trying to change his mind once he'd made it up. Billy had to try anyway.
“Won't you miss your beauty rest, H.B.?”
H.B. snorted, “Why hell's bells, you boys need a grown-up along for wise council and a mature outlook.”
Showing some good sense, Billy gave up the argument and climbed aboard his horse. He and H.B. took off in a lope, with me following along behind. The old man's horse was a cold-backed SOB that had to be ridden a bit before he could be trusted, and he tried to pitch. Old H.B. Gruber just jammed his pipe in his teeth and cracked him across the butt with the tail end of his reins. He had him lined out in a few stiff little hops, and was soon tearing along with his long beard whipping down either side of his face. He looked like some mad general charging off across the battlefield.
The ride to the Sweetwater was only a two-mile jaunt, and we had the fresh rode off our horses by the time we hit its banks. We turned up the creek and followed it for a few miles until we saw big fires lighting some trees ahead.
They had picket lines strung up between the trees and we slipped our cinches and tied up there. Somebody helloed us and we made our way over to the fires. There were two or three tents, and a couple of tarp lean-tos set up with a few long tables laid out between them and the fire.
The crowd wasn't the sort you would see in Sunday school. There must have been twenty or thirty men gathered around the fires, a couple of what passed for women, and five or six mean-looking dogs tied to the trees. I don't know who looked mangier and meaner, the dogs or the people.
As we walked up to the largest fire a big, burly, greasy buffalo-hunter type shoved a bottle at us. Billy eyed the amber contents swirling around in the bottle, and the filthy hand that offered it. It would have taken a box full of forty-five shells to knock the lice off that fellow.
Billy wasn't about to drink after the likes of him, but before he could offend him H.B. took the bottle and turned it up. He snorted and wheezed and smacked his lips and brayed like a jackass before handing the bottle back.
“You other fellows ain't drinking?” One of the whores, who was sitting on the lap of a man in a bowler hat, snickered. You could have planted a crop of potatoes on her, and braided the hair under her arms to drag a wagon with.
Before any of us could answer a deep voice interrupted. “I believe they are here on other matters.”
We all turned to place the voice. Back at the edge of the firelight a man sat propped on the tailgate of a wagon. One elbow rested on a crate containing a fighting rooster, and the other arm was hooked by a thumb in one armhole of his vest. The firelight shone on the gold of his watch chain and the elk tooth hanging there.
And when he spoke again his voice was silky smooth and decidedly Deep South. “I think these are our racehorse men.”
“We've got one,” Billy answered.
“Good. It so happens that I do tooâseveral of them in fact.”
Quick as a whistle he barked out something in Spanish, and before long a little Mexican boy came leading a horse into the firelight. The crowd made room and the horse stepped nervously up to us, turning on its forequarters and bobbing its head against the lead. The boy held him there for a moment and then paraded him back and forth in front of us a few times before standing him again.
The gelding was huge, and he obviously was a thoroughbred. The long, flat muscles ran smooth and sleek over his large frame. He must have stood sixteen hands and was as long as a freight train. He was fine-boned for his size and his hocks and cannons were high, flowing down into pasterns that were long and springy. His long ears twitched alternately above his slender head, and his big, soft eyes were dark pools. Reflected tendrils of intertwining flame and shadow floated upon their depths.
“Hell of a horse, but he ain't a sprinter,” Gruber whispered beside me.
At some unseen gesture or signal the boy led the horse away. He soon returned leading another animal. The same scene played itself out, but with an altogether different horse.
The second horse was a chestnut filly with a flaxen mane and tail. They had rubbed her until she shone in the firelight like fire itself. Her pale mane and tail almost sparkled. She stood just short of fifteen hands, and where the thoroughbred spoke of distance and fast endurance, she bulged with muscle. Her chest tied down low into her forearm, running down into good short cannons, and sturdy flat bone. She was short coupled and her long underline flowed up into where hip, stifle, and hock articulated the power of her hindquarters.
We watched with more than a little envy as she pranced with quick, dainty steps about the fire. Everything about her spoke of a sprinter's quick power. She was quite the lady.
“You've got some awful good-looking horses there,” Billy said to the man on the wagon as the filly was led away.
“And runners too,” the owner quickly replied.
“Who might you be?”
The man quickly stood to his feet and approached Billy, offering his hand. He was tall and he towered over Billy.
“Colonel Andrews, at your service.” They shook hands, and I could tell by the length of time they held the shake, and the look on Billy's face, that the colonel was putting the clamp on the smaller man.
“If we stand here any longer we're going to have to dance,” Billy said flatly.
The colonel gave Billy a long look as he let go of his hand. The little Mexican boy came back up dragging some chairs. We were all soon flopped down in them while the colonel returned to the courtly position of his elevated perch atop the tailgate.
“I haven't seen your horse, but I have heard that he is a runner,” the colonel said.
“You might have heard that.” Billy spat in the fire.
“Would you be interested in a little match race?”
“Depends on what you've got in mind.”
Colonel Andrews seemed to consider things for a moment before he spoke again. “I'll race you for five hundred dollars, and let our associates take up what betting they will between themselves.”
Billy rocked his chair back on its hind legs and began to build a smoke. Only after he had the cigarette lit and going did he reply.
“That gelding looks to be quick, and you can't hide his breeding.” Billy paused to draw on the weed and then continued. “I'd have to have some odds.”
The colonel chuckled softly. “No odds.”
“Even money?”
“Even money and you race the filly.”
“You don't think we're good enough to run against that Bluegrass Special?”
“No, as a matter of fact I think you know he isn't a sprint horse. I went to New York and purchased him. I shipped him by boat to Galveston and then trailed him overland to here. I did all this at quite some expense and trouble.”
“And after all that money and trouble you won't run him?” H.B. threw in.
“Yes, I'll run him. I've run him at Houston, San Antonio, and I plan to run him at Denver,” the colonel said flatly.
“Why not here?” Billy asked before H.B. could butt in again.
“If you wish to race him at eight and a half furlongs or more, I would seriously consider it.”
“What the hell is a furlong?” H.B. squawked.
“It's an eighth of a mile,” I told him.
H.B. did some tabulating on his finger digits and blew a quick gust of air out his cheeks when he came to a conclusion. “Why, that's over a mile.”
“Exactly,” the colonel said.
Billy had remained quiet during the exchange. He waited for a long count of three before he set the front of his chair back down on the ground and flicked his cigarette butt into the fire. “A quarter mile against the mare?”
“Even money?” The colonel was quick.
“You give me two to one.”
“On what grounds, may I ask?”
“Why, you probably imported her here from China in a balloon or something.”
“I can't hide her quality, and wouldn't attempt to, Mister . . . ?”
“Champion.”
The colonel faintly smirked and continued, “Mr. Champion, I am not going to attempt to doctor up some horse to look slow when it isn't, or trick you into believing I don't have an honest-to-goodness racehorse when I do. On the contrary, that filly is out of the Denton Mare.”
We didn't know whether to take him serious or not. The Denton Mare was the outlaw Sam Bass's good horse. Legend had it that it was she who led him to gambling, and thence to shadier things like robbing trains and such. She was supposed to be one of the swiftest horses ever to hit Texas sod.
The last anyone had heard of her Bass had taken her to San Antonio. Then he lit out up north to go rob the U.P., and she disappeared to certain history. Some said he sold her in San Antonio, and others claimed he took her north and she died of colic in Deadwood. Sam wasn't around anymore to tell the straight of it, because the Rangers shot him to death at Round Rock in the Summer of '78.
“Wasn't the Denton Mare by Steeldust?” I asked.
“Steeldust died along about the end of the war. The Denton Mare wasn't old enough to have been out of him,” H.B. corrected me.
Steeldust was the horse that broke half of Collin County Texas in '52 by outrunning the good horse Monmouth, or at least the half that bet against him. That race happened before I was even born, and folks were still talking about it. Most conversations about Texas running horses started and ended with Steeldust and his progenyâthose big-jawed, heavy muscled sprinters that gave the word “bulldog” to the early quarter horses.
The colonel swirled a glass of clear liquid around in a jar before his face, and then took a pull. He waited until his whiskey hit bottom before he answered. “No, she was in fact sired by Cold Deck, who was a son of Steeldust.”
“They say he was a hell of a horse,” I said.
“I would venture to say that he was the best sprinter of our time.”
“They always claimed that nothing ever outran him.” I'd heard about that horse all my life.
“They say that about all of them.” Billy didn't appear overly impressed.
“It is his propensity to pass on that speed to his offspring which interests me,” said the colonel.
“Who's your filly's sire?” Billy asked.
“She is by Old Billy, who was a son of Shiloh. Old Billy's dam was a daughter of Steeldust called Ram Cat.”
“Two times back to Steeldust,” I whispered.
“Her second dam was a daughter of Printer that raced with some success.”
H.B. whistled through his teeth and slapped his leg. “With blood like that she ought to eat her feed off of a silver platter.”
“I went to some trouble to find that filly and buy her.”
“What's her race record?” Billy asked.
“I always let the handicappers do their own work.”
“That matters a lot.”
“My filly is open to world, given terms of the race can be agreed upon. If I suspected you lacked a competitive animal I would have showed you some of my other horses.”
“You've got more?” H.B. exclaimed, and he was looking around in the trees incredulously as if he expected them to come charging out and trample us.
The colonel tamped the ash off the end of a cigar and smiled as he spoke. “I have others with me, but not so fast as Baby.”
I thought that a fitting name. “Is that what you call her?”
“Yes.”
Nobody spoke for a while, and I could almost hear the wheels turning in our heads. That Colonel Andrews thought he had himself a horse and made no bones about it. And it could have been that our little Cheyenne pony was stepping out in some pretty fancy company. But, damned, that paint could run.
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