Rancho Bravo 5: The Mustang Men

He had been a horse thief once. Now his past was about to hang him …

His name was Shan Tyree, and sometimes it seemed that he’d known nothing but trouble all his life. Now he wanted to play it straight.

You go straight? Doc had grinned at him. Yeah—until the first time you lay eyes on a horse with perfect conformation and somebody else’s brand. Then your hands’ll start to itchin’, and your mouth to waterin’, and next thing you know, you’ll be on him with a necktie party right behind you. Face up to it, Shan. With some men it’s booze and others it’s women or cards. But with and me—other peoples’ horses will be the death of us!

CONTENTS

Chapter One ~ Chapter Two ~ Chapter Three

Chapter Four ~ Chapter Five ~ Chapter Six

Chapter Seven ~ Chapter Eight ~ Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten ~ Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve ~ Chapter Thirteen

Copyright

About the Author

About Piccadilly Publishing

Titles in the Series

Chapter One

His name was Shannon Tyree, and sometimes it seemed to him that he’d had nothing but trouble all his life—the cause of it always the same. It would seem, he thought, as his tired mount stumbled under him, that a man who had come as close to hanging as he had in California would finally learn. But no—he’d gone and done it again; and this time, with twenty Mexicans armed with antique guns and long, razor-keen lances after him, there was not much doubt that this would be his final lesson. They had fresh horses, plenty of them, and they could chase him in relays. Meanwhile, no matter how expertly he handled his own mount, it was reaching the end of its endurance. He could feel its barrel pumping beneath his thighs like an overworked bellows; it and he both were crusted with its lather, that dried instantly in the furnace wind off the Llano Estacado. There were four cartridges left in his Henry rifle and two in his battered Remington revolver. So, he thought, reining in the exhausted dun, Doc was right.

Tyree swung down, a tall man in his late twenties, face burnt saddle-leather color by the sun, blue eyes fanned with wrinkles that came as much from smiling as from squinting, his long legs lean and hairpin-bowed from a lifetime spent on horseback. Since he could run no longer, he had to make a stand; and here on this kind of shelf, with a clump of waist-high boulders for cover, was as good a place as any. He ground-reined the horse, scuttled to cover behind the rocks, and as he sprawled behind them the voice of Doc Meredith seemed to ring in his ears again.

Go straight? Doc had grinned, punched him on the arm. Yeah, until the first time you lay eyes on a hot-blood with perfect conformation and somebody else’s brand. Then your hands’ll start to itchin’ and your mouth to waterin’, and the next thing you know, you’ll be on him with a necktie party right behind you. Face up to it, friend-boy. With some men it’s booze and others it’s women or cards. But with you and me—other people’s horses will be the death of us!

And so, Shan Tyree thought with more wryness than bitterness, Doc had known him better than he had known himself. Still, by God, not even Doc could blame him for the excitement that Mexican’s big chestnut stud had kindled in him. That was the closest to a perfect piece of horseflesh he had seen in years. And with just a shade more luck he would have made it out of the cibolero camp with the stallion without being caught. The whole trouble was, he thought, managing a ghost of a crooked grin, you couldn’t trust a Mexican. They just wouldn’t let a good, honest horse thief go about his business in peace.

Then he sobered, squinting through a hole between the rocks. They were still coming, the heatwaves shimmering up off the rugged slope that was the rise of the caprock of the Staked Plains making them appear strange, vaporous, insubstantial, like riders in a nightmare. Sun glinted off of rifle barrels, lance points, as, seeing him go to ground, they spread out a little, taking their time now, knowing that they had him. Watching them come on, he felt the grudging admiration of one professional for another.

Their mounts were superb—and the riders were probably some of the best horsemen in the world. In their business, they had to be. The ciboleros were professional buffalo hunters—and they ran down and killed their prey with lances instead of guns. Which, he thought, was the way they probably would take him.

They were still too far away for a shot. He waited, checking the action of the rifle, not bothering about the handgun. It would be of no use for defense; he would probably not even draw it until the last, and then only to use one of its two loads on himself. Being hacked to death by spears was not the way he aimed to go.

God, it was hot here; that damned wind sucked the juice clean out of you! He mopped his face with his bandanna, begrudging the moisture it sopped up. Doc, he thought. I should have listened to him when we split up...

That had been in Silver City, Nevada, where the two of them were reasonably safe from the hangman’s noose and Shan Tyree had had time to think. He had, in fact, been thinking hard even before the posse had taken Big-nose Jackson, Fred Gilbert, and Fernando Ruiz and swung all three of them from a live-oak tree with no trial or ceremony, leaving the bodies dangling as a warning to all other horse thieves. Sitting in a bar in the Nevada boomtown, drinking bad whiskey that cost too much, what had been working in him surfaced. Doc, he’d said, it’s over.

Doc Meredith, leaning back in his chair, arched pale brows. He had a round face and fine, silky blond hair that made him look like an overgrown baby, and he was almost always smiling, even in the tightest spots. What’s over?

All of it, Tyree lowered his voice. It’s just God’s mercy that you and me weren’t with Big-nose and the others when they was took. If we hadn’t been scoutin’ that bunch over near Mariposa, they’d have took us, too. Anyhow, we don’t dare go back to California. They know we were part of the gang and if we do, we’ll stretch rope like the rest did. He found a thin, black cigar and lit it. All I know is, I made up my mind when we cut Big-nose and the others down—what was left of ’em. That ain’t the way I intend to end up. So I’m kickin’ the game, I’m out of it. I’m goin’ straight.

Doc set down his glass. Now, wait a minute, friend-boy—

No, I mean it this time. Searching his own soul, Shan was surprised to find it true. Look at us. Both of us damn near thirty, neither one of us what you’d call stupid in general, and when it comes to horseflesh and how to handle it, I bet there ain’t a man in California can come within a mile of us. We’ve worked hard and we’ve risked our necks, and what the hell we got to show for it? Hang-nooses with our names on ’em back in California, my dun and your sorrel, our gear and blankets, and maybe sixty bucks between us....

Fifty-eight after these two shots of rotten booze—

Fifty-eight, then. Hell’s fire, we coulda worked for wages and come out better. Or mustanged on our own. Gone into the Army remount business, married, settled down—

Well, sure, friend-boy. And if a bullfrog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass ever’ time it hopped, neither. Doc’s smile widened as he leaned across the table. But what about the fun, the excitement, the big money we made and spent? And what about the horses—the good horses, the really fine ones that we couldn’ta afforded tryin’ to git ’em straight, not in a month of Sundays, that we’ve rode and handled—and that belonged to us, for a little while, at least. He shook his head. Go straight? He reached across the table, knuckled Tyree’s arm. You can’t help yourself! Oh, I know. You can walk past a thousand hammerheaded, broomtailed cold bloods and stay straight as a string! But then comes that one horse, that special horse ... There ain’t no point in fightin’ it, friend-boy. And when you’re made like we are, there ain’t but one way to go—live fast, ride hard, and let the dice fall the way they roll. Now, we been together five years and we make a damned good team. This ain’t no time to split up. I figured we’d head on east a ways, Colorado, maybe, or Injun Territory and get some boys together and—

No. Shan drained his glass. I’m bound for Texas.

Okay. Texas, then. Only they play a little rougher down there—

Shannon Tyree looked at Doc Meredith. Alone, he said. I figured to make Texas alone. They say it’s a good place to start over.

For the first time, Doc’s smile went away. Then, despite the round face, the silky hair, he did not look so much like a baby. Then it was easier for Shan Tyree to remember that while he himself had never killed a man, Doc could have claimed four notches on his gun butt. Now, friend-boy ... Doc began. But his eyes met Tyree’s and his voice faded. After a moment the smile came back, he shrugged. Well, if that’s the way it is, I can’t stop you. All I can do is wish you luck.

Doc...

Hell, skip it. You want one thing, I want another. Just because we’re the best friends each other ever had don’t mean we’re married to each other. Now— Let’s have another drink, and then we’ll divvy up the money.

The Mexicans down there on the slope were closer now, would soon be within good rifle range. Still mounted—they did everything on horseback—they came warily, using the lay of the land, every bit of cover there was. Shan Tyree’s hands sweated on the rifle. Soon he was going to have to kill his first man. But it was a case of have-to. He just couldn’t lie here with bullets in his gun and let the ciboleros spear him to death, no matter how much he might have it coming—

He had bumped into their camp two days ago, east of here on the buffalo range: a dozen big-wheeled, primitive wagons corralled to make a fort, rack upon rack of fresh-killed meat drying in the sun, barrel upon barrel of buffalo tongues being laid down in salt. At first he had been wary; almost, he had ridden around them. But they were the first other humans he had seen in ten days of travel across this endless land, and the smoke of their campfires, the laughter of their women, and the whinnying of their superb caballada drew him irresistibly.

Next to Indians, they were the wildest, fiercest bunch of people he’d ever met. Whole families of them, up from Chihuahua, the men went out every day on buffalo surrounds, mounted on fast, brave, well-trained horses—and because guns and ammunition were too expensive for all the killing they had to do, they ran down the fat young cows, riding hard alongside, risking their own destruction in the stampeding herd, and rammed home razor-keen lances with eight-foot, even twelve-foot, shafts. Later the jerked meat and salted tongues would bring premium prices in northern Mexico, where it was a staple of the diet.

All this he learned after they accepted him. At first they had not been happy to see a gringo, but when it turned out that he was fluent in their language, albeit with a different accent, and as adept at their kind of horsemanship as they, and maybe even more so, their wariness yielded to the instinctive hospitality and graciousness so much a part of the makeup of the ordinary Mexican. Only with the one called Gregorio Velasco had there been any trouble.

Velasco was not their leader, but he wanted to be; a tall man with a drooping black mustache and a long scar down one side of his face. Clad like the others in leather, he was one of the few who affected any ornamentation: braid on his sombrero, silver conchas on his pants-legs, big Chihuahua spurs, though his fine chestnut stallion never required their touch. Full of pride and arrogance, he swaggered through the camp like a cockerel, making no secret of his contempt for norteamericanos in general and Californios in particular. So. That’s a horse? he’d sneered, running his eyes over Tyree’s dun. Where I come from, we’d call it a burro. Velasco had spat. Gringo-trained, and ruined, completely ruined.

Shan Tyree was not a man who lost his temper easily, and he’d only grinned and nodded. In a way, he agreed with Velasco—the dun was a good, sturdy animal with speed and bottom, but it had been broken by an American bronc stomper long before Tyree had stolen it—a few sacking-outs, a couple of bridlings and saddlings, and then all the fight ridden out of it in two or three fierce sessions, after which it was considered a trained horse. By contrast, if Tyree himself had had the breaking of it, he’d have handled the animal precisely as Velasco himself would have, using a hackamore to preserve the fineness of its mouth, taking weeks, not days to make a working horse out of it. And when he’d finished, it would have been instantly responsive to the faintest signal of rein or knee or heel, able to stop on a dime from a dead run, then pivot, back up or crabwalk, whatever was demanded of it. After such training, horse and rider became part of one another, a single unit—but it was a process that took time, and time was something American ranchers, unlike Mexican ciboleros, counted as money.

"Now I’ll show you a real horse," Velasco said and whistled softly. That was when Tyree saw the chestnut stallion for the first time. And promptly fell in love with it and knew he had to have it.

The animal came from behind a wagon, crested neck arched, sleek hide gleaming in the sun, and somehow it seemed to float across the ground