Wolf Creek (7 page)

“I’m sure I will, Ben,” Satterlee answered.
“I’m sure I will.”

* * *

Late that night, Ben had finally gotten
Danny, and Brad, who had decided to stay over after the excitement
of the day, in bed and sleeping. None of the stolen horses showed
any ill effects from their mistreatment. Ben was himself exhausted.
He started to undress, pulling off his boots, then sliding off his
denims. He held up the pants and stared at them in disbelief. The
rivet which held the bottom of the crotch together was gone, and
there was a long bullet rip, right where the legs joined together.
Ben looked down at his woolen drawers and shivered. A dark burn
mark across the crotch stood out clearly against the red-dyed
wool.

“That was a lot closer’n I thought.” Ben
took the denims and padded, in his stocking feet, to Cholla’s
stall. Cholla nickered at his approach.

“Take a look at these, pal,” Ben said. He
draped the denims over Cholla’s stall door. “I came darn close to
bein’ a geldin’, just like you. That son of a bitch’s bullet came
way to close for comfort.”

Cholla picked up the denims in his teeth and
flapped them in Ben’s face.

“All right. You don’t have to rub it in,
horse,” Ben said, chuckling. “Gimme those back, and get some sleep.
It’s been a long day.”

BET THE BOOTS

By Jerry Guin

When TJ Wilkerson, age seventeen, strutted
through the bat wings into the Lucky Break Saloon in Wolf Creek,
Jiggs Malone and Hardy Briggs took notice. The two were older
fellow drovers of TJ’s with the Slash B cattle ranch. The three,
paid off that morning, were now sporting about town to celebrate
the end of the long drive from mid-Texas. Jiggs Malone, the smaller
of the two men, nudged Hardy Briggs, a beefy yellow haired man,
with an elbow.

“Lookie here, TJ has gone and bought some
new clothes.” Briggs watched as the grinning TJ made his way toward
the bar. “Surprises never cease, that boy is as tight as the bark
on a cypress knee when it comes to money. He’s been wearing
worn-out home spun the whole trip. Glad to see he’s letting loose
of some cash. Hell, I hardly recognize him.”

TJ walked right up to the men, then turned
around slowly, showing off his new attire. “Right fancy, ain’t
it?”

Jiggs looked the slender sandy-haired youth
up and down. “And look at them boots! Talk about fancy!

Hardy Briggs bent at the waist, while
reaching a hand to TJ’s right pant leg to pull it up and expose the
sides of the elaborated stitched boot. “Lemme see.”

“Hell, those are fifty dollar boots, TJ.
Where’d you get them?”

TJ grinned. “A store called Macgregor’s;
right around the corner next to that Chinese laundry.”

Jiggs pinched the pocket of his new shirt,
“We bought our stuff from Birdie’s general store. They didn’t have
anything in there like that, just the usual stuff. How much they
soak you for the boots?”

TJ grinned. “I paid ten dollars for the
boots, five for the hat and a few dollars more for the shirt and
pants. Best damned deal in town, after I seen what Birdie’s had to
offer!”

Briggs eyed TJ’s clothes discerningly. “Hey,
those clothes ain’t even new, but at least they been washed, and
look at the boots; they got some stirrup scuffs on them!” He
scowled. “Where did this Macgregor get this outfit, off a
corpse?”

TJ shook his head, “I don’t know and I don’t
care. All I’ve ever had was hand-me-downs and home spun. I never
had store bought clothes before, and they suit me fine.”

Jiggs shrugged his shoulders. “Suits me too
TJ, let’s have a beer.”

“How much is it?” TJ asked.

Briggs rolled his eyes in wonderment. “Dime
a glass unless you want some used stuff from the outhouse.”

Hardy Briggs held no particular liking for
TJ Wilkerson. He felt that TJ was too young to herd cattle and
lacked the experience of older men. He’d announced his disdain
sourly to others on the trail, noting that TJ ought to be cook’s
helper or permanent drag rider. It galled him when he was sent to
ride drag while TJ rotated out of the drag dust to ride beside the
herd as flanker. “Hell, that kid ain’t earned the right to ride
anywhere but drag. Us seasoned riders shouldn’t have to eat herd
dust when the likes of TJ’s riding along.” His words fell on
deafened ears; the boss believed in rotation.

Jiggs Malone did not harbor those
sentiments; he liked TJ and was tolerant of the younger man’s
mistakes. He was often known to comment, “At least the kid is
trying; he’ll learn.”

Jiggs laughed off the outhouse comment,
“Come on, Hardy. The kid found a deal, what’s wrong with that? I’ll
buy us all a glass of beer.”

* * *

Later that night, Harry Turner stuck his
head into the partial opened door to the marshal’s office where
deputy Quint Croy was seated. “They’s a kid lying outside Asa’s.
Looks like somebody knocked him cold.”

Quint Croy stood from his desk chair. “A
kid, you say?”

“Young man, sixteen or so; a drover in town,
I’d say. He was drinking at the bar earlier, wasn’t causing a
bother. I got busy with the girls and didn’t see when he left. I
found him lying there when I went outside. I told one of the girls
to tend to him until you got there.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Quint as he
headed to the door.

TJ Wilkerson was sitting up in the street,
holding a cloth to the side of his head when Quint knelt down
before TJ.

“What happened here?” Quint asked a
thick-in-the-middle, dark-haired woman, who reeked from the excess
use of cheap perfume. She shrugged. “Harry come and got me, this
boy was already down. I didn’t see who did it to him.” Then she
added, “He looks too young to be down here in Dogleg City.”

Quint turned to TJ, who appeared alert.
“Tell me what you can.”

TJ stared at the deputy. “I was going to go
look up my friends. I walked out of the saloon and got this far
when somebody hit me hard from behind. I didn’t see who it was but
there was a big Mexican inside the saloon, who I talked to earlier.
He said his cousin owned a pair of boots just like mine; and he
seemed to admire them. He didn’t ask my name or where I’m from; the
boots was the only thing we talked about. I reckon it must have
been him who took my boots.”

Quint looked at the youth’s ripped shirt
pocket, inside out pants pockets and his socked feet. Surprised by
what TJ just said, Quint asked, “Someone stole your boots? Did they
take anything else—your money, gun, knife?”

TJ put a hand to his right sock and pulled
out some folded bills. “Nope, I still got my bill money. They
didn’t take the time to search me good enough, I guess. My pocket
change is gone, maybe fifty cents is all. I don’t own a gun.”

“You came in with a herd?” Quint asked. PJ
nodded, “The Slash B out of Waco.”

“Where are your pards?”

“I left them up the street in that other
saloon. They figured I went to the hotel room, I expect.”

“You came down here on your own?” Quint
frowned, “Didn’t anyone tell you that this is the rough side of
town and you ought not to be down here alone?”

TJ nodded. “We was down here earlier then
went to some other places.”

“Then how come you came back by yourself?”
Quint asked.

TJ shrugged, “the beer’s cheaper here than
anywhere else in town. It seemed okay to me. I wasn’t scared.
People generally pay me no mind, me being young and not big of
size.”

Quint stuck out a hand to help TJ to his
feet. “Let’s go see if we can locate your pards.”

When they peeked through the batwings of the
Lucky Break, TJ pointed out Jiggs Malone seated at a card table in
the back. Quint talked to Malone and TJ for a while, then left TJ
in the care of the older man.

* * *

Earlier that day, when eighteen-year-old
Luke Short rode into Wolf Creek, no one paid him any mind. His
appearance closely matched the cowboys who came into town with a
herd. Luke stood five-feet-seven and weighted about 135 pounds,
though broad in the chest, which attested to his hard work ethics.
He was a clean cut young man, his clothes almost new.

Luke, however had not come to town with a
herd; he’d ridden over from Abilene when he learned of the poker
tournament to be held in Wolf Creek.

Luke had grown up in the Red River Valley of
Grayson County in northeast Texas along with six brothers and
sisters. That part of Texas was Comanche country. J.W. Short,
Luke’s father, was full of grit and determination to raise his
family there.

At times, the family had running gun
skirmishes with Indians in the area but survived, unlike some of
the redskins. Luke had learned to shoot accurately and inherited
his father’s ambition to see a thing through. He learned to work
hard and answered to a leather strap when out of line. When Luke
turned sixteen, he had become good with a gun, frontier tough and
wild as any Comanche. He had grown tired of the hard physical labor
and monotonous routine of farm life, which left no time for any
fun. He figured it was time to make his own way.

On the frontier, anyone that could do a job
was considered a man, so his age was not a factor when he joined an
outfit to trail a herd from south of Fort Worth to Abilene,
Kansas.

Luke had learned to play cards with his
siblings back at home and loved it, besting them most of the time.
On the cattle trail, at night Luke played poker for small change
with the trail crew and could not seem to get enough gambling. He
marveled at making a day’s worth of wages from one hand of cards.
When he arrived in Abilene, Luke did not rush to the saloons to
drink himself blind and consort with the floozies, as did most of
the crew.

He spent a few bucks to buy some new clothes
and clean up then it was straight to the saloons to get into a
game. It only took two nights of gambling before Luke went bust at
the hands of professional dealers. Flat broke Luke had no choice
but to either go on back to Texas with the others, which he didn’t
figure on doing, or find some work locally. Luke had become
disillusioned with herding cattle; long days in the saddle eating
dust, blistering his hands on ropes and sleeping on the ground had
lost all appeal. Hell, for a dollar a day and food offered as pay,
it wasn’t even a cut above living on the farm. Gambling was an
honored profession and he intended to make his way as a
gambler.

When another cowboy who had also gone broke
from gambling mentioned jobs available at the stockyards loading
cattle into boxcars, Luke jumped right on it. A dollar a day and a
bunkhouse to play penny-ante poker at night fit his needs
perfectly.

On payday, he ventured back into the town’s
gaming saloons, but held his playing to small stakes games, overly
watchful to ensure he came out ahead. He did not want to end up on
an endless cycle of working a day job, losing his wages, then
working again to lose again. Luke just knew that easier obtained
money was at the turn of a card at the tables. He studied others;
watching men foolishly drink too much and play around with saloon
women while gambling. Some made outlandish bets against pat hands
when they should have dropped out, then watched as their
hard-earned money ended up across the table.

Abilene was a wild and wooly town in 1871,
with hoards of trail end cowboys in town intent on raising hell. In
April, known gunman Wild Bill Hickok took the job as Marshal to
quell the violence. Things went well for a time then one night in
October, Hickok got into an argument with rival Phil Coe over a
woman. In the resulting gunplay, Hickok shot and killed Coe but
also mistakenly shot and killed his own deputy.

Abilene’s city officials were appalled and
had enough of the violence the cattlemen brought to town. In
December, they not only fired Hickok but also issued a proclamation
that Abilene would no longer allow herds be brought to Abilene. The
cattlemen lost no time in leaving town and moved operations,
including the Drover’s cottage, which was dismantled and loaded
onto flatcars for the trip to its new home sixty miles west at
Ellsworth.

A time later, with the last of the cattle
loaded and gone, Luke’s job ended. He had it in mind to get an
early start in the morning and travel the sixty miles to Ellsworth,
where cattlemen and the money they spent welcome. That night, Luke
was enjoying a small stakes poker game at The Trails End saloon
when a suited man at the table spoke of a big stakes poker
tournament to be held in the new rail town of Wolf Creek.

That got Luke’s attention right away. “I’ve
never been to Wolf Creek, where is it?” Luke asked.

The man shrugged a shoulder. “I haven’t been
there myself, but I was told it’s about 75 miles southwest of
Wichita. Everybody has been talking about it. Now that Abilene has
gotten out of the cattle business, they say Wolf Creek will be the
new go to place for herds coming up from Texas.”

Luke nodded, then attempted to grill the man
further, but the man could not add anything different, he had just
heard about the tournament that day from another at the hotel
restaurant.

Luke figured he’d ride on over to Wolf Creek
and see for himself. He did not have a lot of money for a stake but
his objective was to find a way to get into the games.

Now that he was here in Wolf Creek, Luke
wondered if any familiar faces might come to town for the
tournament, if maybe Bill Hickok would show. No one had mentioned
where the man, a known boozer and gambler, had drifted off to,
after leaving Abilene.

Ben Tolliver, the livery owner, grinned when
Luke checked his horse and had asked about the poker tournament.
“All the big saloons here are hosting some of the games,” Ben said.
He eyed Luke, as if sizing him up. “I heard it was a high stakes
affair; too rich for my blood.”