Webb lifted his head, his features sharpening. There was a similar reaction around him at the announcement, indicating the knowledge wasn’t widespread.
“You can just bet that sheriff was hired to protect those nesters. None of us have ever needed to hire anyone to protect us,” Hobie declared. “We were able to look after ourselves.”
“What about the stock detectives and the wolvers?” Webb offered. “They were professionals hired by ranchers to track down rustlers and wolves. It seems to me you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth.”
“We sure didn’t wait around for a sheriff to do it for us,” Hobie reminded him. “If we had depended on the law, all the cattle would have been rustled. When the law fails us, we always step in and do what needs to be done. We don’t go around bellyachin’ about it.”
“Ya know, it strikes me that—” Nate took out his tobacco and paper and began building himself a smoke—“that our problem is no different than the Indians’ was. No matter how many times we fight, we just keep gettin’ pushed back farther. There’s more of them than there is of us, and they just keep comin’. We get rid of one, an’ three more take his place.”
The ground swell of agreement that had begun with Hobie’s remark leveled off at Nate’s sobering comparison. Like everyone else, Webb had the feeling that Nate’s observation was a little too close to the mark.
Before the silence began to grow heavy, Young Shorty slapped Nate on the shoulder just as he was about to lick his cigarette together. It slipped from his hand, tobacco scattering to the floor, leaving Nate only with the paper between his fingers.
“You know what they say, Nate,” Shorty declared. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And that’s just what I’m aimin’ to do. I’m going to latch myself on to a purty farmer’s gal and dance till the sun goes down.” His jubilance was contagious, livening up the leaden atmosphere in the bar. Shorty waved a hand at Hobie. “Belly up to the bar, Crazy Horse,” he said, likening the cowboy to the famed war chief of the Ogalala Sioux. “And I’ll buy you a drink.”
The invitation broke the spell Hobie had cast over the room, and the noise level rose once more. When Sonny Drake, the bartender and owner of the establishment, brought the whiskey bottle over to refill their glasses, Shorty slapped his money on the counter.
“Dancin’ is thirsty business. You better give me two bottles to take along,” he stated, then looked at the nearly full mug of beer Webb was nursing. “You’d better drink up, or you’ll still be here when they call out to choose your partners.”
* * *
In the open area behind the lumberyard, a bunch of boards had been nailed together to make a crude dance floor. A flat-racked hay wagon sat at one end, all strung up with banners, to form a stage for the band. A crowd had already begun to gather, an assortment of wagons and buggies rimming the perimeter.
Benteen headed back toward the buggy where he’d left Lorna and Ruth, but there was no sign of them when he reached it. The near horse of the matched bay team nuzzled his shirt sleeve. Benteen stroked its nose as he took a frowning look around, finally spotting them three wagons away talking to Gil Brickman’s wife from the Bar M.
“Ah-oo-gah!”
The sudden and loud sound startled the horses. Benteen grabbed hold of the reins under the chin strap and quieted them, but they continued to move restlessly, rolling an eye toward the noisy contraption rumbling past them. Benteen glanced at the new-fangled automobile with disgust, and its aproned and goggled driver with more.
“Tom Pettit would rise out of his grave if he knew what his boy was spending his money on.” It was Ed Mace who spoke, his approach covered by the noise of the auto’s combustion engine.
“That’s a fact,” Benteen agreed. “I don’t know what he’s going to do with that thing way out here.”
“Drive it up and down the street, I guess.” Ed Mace shook his head at the wasteful use of money. “There aren’t any roads around here for those horseless carriages. And there won’t be for twenty, thirty years or more, I’d wager.”
“It’s just a toy.” Benteen relaxed his hold on the reins now that the horses had settled down. “You’ve heard the Pettit boy is selling off parcels of his ranch to the homesteaders, haven’t you?”
“I heard it, but I didn’t want to believe it.” Ed Mace nodded as anger flashed in his eyes. “There’s a lot more ranchers that are thinking about selling off some of their land to try to stay afloat until the cattle market turns around. Some of the prices those drylanders are paying for worthless land make it mighty tempting.”
“
It looks like easy money, I guess.” Benteen sighed heavily.
“Damned easy when the banks are charging ten percent interest!” the rancher declared. “I swear they’re being run by a bunch of damned shysters.” The line of his jaw hardened as he surveyed the cluster of farm wagons in the area. “Did you ever think you’d feel out of place here, Benteen? And more keep coming every day.”
“It’s just the beginning, I’m afraid.” He hadn’t found any way to stop it.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ed declared. “This country is growing too fast. Little one-building towns keep poppin’ up all over the place . . . with names like Popular and Love joy. It’s like somebody plunks down a shack in the middle of nowhere and calls it a town.”
“They’re worse than a plague of grasshoppers,” Benteen admitted. “They’re covering more ground than any grasshopper cloud.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we ought to dose them with kerosene and set them afire. Burn ’em up like we do ‘hoppers.” He eyed the families of homesteaders as they gathered in bunches around the dance floor. “Listen to them jabbering. Half of them don’t even speak English. And the other half—I wouldn’t trade you an old bull for the other half.”
A short, wide-hipped man dressed in western clothes ambled toward the two ranchers. He didn’t appear in any hurry to reach them, using the time to size the pair up. Benteen caught the flash of a star on the man’s shirt, and his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” the man declared when he stopped in front of the two ranchers. “The name’s Potter. The town hired me on as sheriff to keep the peace.”
“I reckoned that’s who you were.” Ed Mace nodded and openly showed his indifference to the authority the man supposedly represented. “I’m Ed Mace. I own the Snake M Ranch, east of here.”