Cattleman's Lament

by Lubrican

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Chapter Two

Sarah knew she was in some kind of trouble. She didn't know why she was in that trouble. Something had happened that didn't match up with her experience. What should have happened was that, when she found the trespassers on her father's land, they should have tucked their tails between their legs and hastened to get their nasty little grass killers back where they belonged. Wherever that was.

Sarah's attitude towards sheep, and the men who raised them, was the product of her father's attitude towards the same subjects. Jonas had been prepared to dislike sheep from the beginning. Actually, he was prepared to dislike any animal that ate what his cattle ate, including cattle belonging to other ranchers. Wyoming was a fine place to raise cattle, as long as you were the only one doing it. When more and more people began to filter into the land, the resources soon became stressed, and that stressed Jonas.

All it had taken was coming upon a sheep trail just once. He had smelled it first, and then came upon the mass of tracks that went from side to side as far as he could see from his horse. This flock of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed they destroyed. That was what Jonas had against them.

He didn't know that the flock he had seen the results of were badly trailed, allowed to move much too slowly and thus over-feed. He didn't know that, if sheep were moved properly, as nomadic people had done for thousands of years that their passage would be almost invisible in a few weeks time. He didn't know and he didn't care to learn. The solution was simple to him. He was there first. Take the damn sheep back to Oregon, where they came from.

Some of the other ranchers had been talking of proclaiming a "Dead Line" along the Green River. They wanted to post signs that said in no uncertain terms that any sheep that crossed the line was dead as soon as a cattleman saw it. Some of the hotter heads suggested that there wouldn't be much difference in shooting sheep, or the men who herded them.

Jonas was, despite his rough exterior and almost surly countenance, a thoughtful man. He was fully aware that a herd of sheep could easily contain five thousand animals. You could bankrupt yourself buying ammunition if you actually planned on shooting sheep. Even if you did, you were left with having to clean up the carcasses. On the other hand, if there were dead sheep lying around, maybe the wolves would leave the calves alone. He didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. So far, the nearest sheep farmer, a man by the name of Brad Rocklin, hadn't caused him any problems. There were no sheep on his land, to his knowledge, and as long as it stayed that way, things were fine.

The only problem was that, like a lot of cattlemen in the late 1800s, Jonas Collins viewed a lot of land as "his" that many other people, including the United States Government, defined as public land, or open range. And, to those people, Jonas didn't have any right to keep anyone off of that land.

Brad Rocklin was one of those people.

Brad Rocklin was currently treating sheep that had been brought in for one ailment or another by Charley Kemp and Buster, the alpha male sheep dog of Brad's operation. Every so often the whole flock was run back to the ranch house and weak animals were culled out. Sometimes they were treated and re-inserted into the flock. Sometimes they became supper. It all depended on what was wrong with them.

Buster had a sixth sense about which sheep were in less than perfect condition and when Charley worked him to find those sheep Buster went about it with single minded concentration.

First he'd just range through the flock. It looked for all the world like he was just running back and forth as the sheep opened corridors for him. In that situation the sheep seemed to know they weren't being herded, and didn't shy away from the dog like they usually did. That's how dogs herded sheep ... by making them shy away in the direction the dog wanted them to go. The dog took his cues from the shepherd. A well trained dog only had to see the shepherd walk off in some direction, perhaps with a whistle or yell of a command, but not always, and the sheep would appear to follow as the dog went to work.

It was actually a combination of things that moved a flock of sheep. There was a dominant ewe in the herd, the matriarch, and most sheep followed wherever she led. She too was trained to follow the shepherd, based on cues and commands. What the dog did was take care of the beasts that didn't follow the ewe.

But when Buster was "evaluating" the flock, it was almost as if he was counting how many of the animals would need to be culled out of the flock. Once he had done that, then, with little nips and the clacking of teeth, he picked out those animals he wanted and moved them through the flock toward Charley. Once there, the number two bitch, one of Buster's offspring named Lisa, was being trained to keep the chosen sheep bunched up. She did that by running in circles around them, which she loved. She had taken to it naturally, watching her mother work. Her two brothers weren't quite as smart. At least not yet. They were penned up when the flock was home, so that Charley could work on firming up Lisa's training without having to pay attention to their antics.

That had happened the day before, and Buster had culled out thirty four animals. Brad and Charley were now evaluating each one, having sent his two hands and best dog, Queen, who was also Buster's mate, out to graze the rest of the flock. Brad had told them exactly where to take the flock, a piece of open range that had good grass. As usual he told Buford not to leave them in any one place too long, but to keep them moving so they didn't overgraze the land. There was plenty of land for the twenty-five hundred sheep Brad ran in his flock, as long as they kept moving. Soon it would be time to run the flock up into the mountains, where the high meadows, lush with grass watered by melting snows from above, would feed them until late fall. While they were up there, he'd process the wool that had been shorn off the sheep when winter was over. That was still piled high in a barn.

Brad was cleaning an infected hoof when his son, Bobby, wandered up and stood watching. Bobby was a good boy, but he didn't have sheep in his blood. He did whatever his father asked of him, but Brad knew Bobby would never take over the business when his father was too old to do the work. Brad himself had gotten into sheep by accident, back in Oregon, when he needed a job and that was the only one he could find. Well, there had been the owner's daughter too. The first time he'd seen Amanda she had taken his breath away. A short girl, only fifteen at the time, with long strawberry colored hair and a temper to go with it, she had been upbraiding a cowboy who had ridden too close to her and bumped her with his horse. Dressed in jeans and a man's shirt, the girl had reached out and slapped the horse on the butt, making it jump and sidestep. The cowboy had almost fallen off, and two of his friends had laughed at him. He'd wheeled the horse, aiming to go back and teach the upstart girl some manners, but had found Brad suddenly standing between him and the girl. When the cowboy persisted, riding toward Brad as if to walk over him, Brad had taken the bridle of the horse in hand and, in a trick taught to him by an Indian friend, had caused the horse to dip his head and roll onto his side, trapping the cowboy's leg underneath.

Luckily, the sheriff had seen the whole incident from the porch of the jail, and arrived in time to stop anyone from shooting Brad. Amanda had given him a kiss as a reward and invited him to dinner at her house. He got a good dinner, a job, and another kiss in the process.

Amanda's father was the owner of almost thirty thousand sheep in the Oregon territory, and he had a hundred men working for him. He had no use for Brad, particularly when he saw how his daughter looked at the man. But Amanda was stronger than her father and when they got married, Brad was suddenly the owner of five hundred sheep. He had almost screwed that up, except Amanda saved him there too. It was Amanda who found the right dogs, and taught him everything he hadn't yet learned about sheep, and urged him to leave Oregon and establish a ranch in Wyoming, where they would be closer to the markets for both meat and wool. The United States Army had a voracious appetite for both, and being so much closer to Army points of delivery gave them an advantage over their western brothers. For one thing they could just trail the sheep to market, rather than having to pay rail fees. For another, cartage for wool was less expensive since there were no mountains involved.

"Dad" Brad's reminiscences were interrupted by Bobby.

"What?" asked Brad, wrapping up the hoof he'd just put salve on.

"My chores are done." said Bobby.

"Well find something else to do." said Brad, looking at a deep scratch on a lamb's hindquarters, trying to figure out what had caused it.

"Everything's done." said Bobby.

Charley snorted. He was Brad's foreman, and had been with him since he and Amanda had gotten married. Amanda had marched up to him one day and informed him that he now worked for her, instead of her father. Charley had grinned, packed up the few things he owned, and followed Amanda off the farm where she'd just stolen him. He was just a lead hand then. Amanda had made him "Foreman", but he took a cut in pay. He was Amanda's uncle.

The only time Charley listened to her, or more correctly deferred to her after that was when they were in public, and non-family members were around. Their relationship was tumultuous and loving at the same time. Amanda would tell him what she wanted done and he'd tell her what he was going to do. More often than not, those two things differed, sometimes significantly. Amanda stomped her foot and made dire threats, all of which rolled off Charley's back like water off a duck. He just grinned insolently as she railed, and then went off and did what he knew was best. The fact that Amanda, who thought she knew everything about sheep ranching, but was smart enough to know when she'd made a mistake, kept things more or less peaceful. She was smart enough to know when Charley called the shots correctly, even though she had never once admitted she had been wrong. Charley snorted because he knew there was NEVER a time on a ranch when "everything" had been done.

"Go see what your mamma needs done." said Brad, peering at the lamb's injury.

"She sent me down here." said Bobby heavily. "Said I was under foot."

Charley snorted again, but didn't say anything. He knew Bobby's heart wasn't in sheep ranching too. He was the only one, however, who knew that what Bobby really wanted to do was be a mountain man, trapping furs and hunting big game. Bobby had confided in him around a campfire one night, while they were tending the flock. He thought it was a ridiculous idea, but didn't try to talk Bobby out of it, exactly. Charley had a wild streak in him too though, and knew how the boy felt. Instead, he set about teaching the boy what he'd have to know to be a successful mountain man, thinking that, when he found out how hard it was, and how much knowledge would be required, and how dangerous it was, the boy would change his mind.

That hadn't happened yet, to Charley's surprise. Every task he'd set the boy had been attacked with vigor, and completed successfully. Bobby was an ace shot with a Sharps buffalo rifle, or Winchester. He could track with the best of them, and he understood predators as well or better than Charley did. More than once he'd taken on bear or wolf and ended up the victor.

But Charley didn't mention any of this to his niece or nephew-in-law. He knew what Amanda would say if she found out the kinds of things Charley had been teaching her fair-haired boy, and he knew Brad couldn't keep a secret from Amanda to save his soul. He didn't know what he was going to do if the boy didn't tire of his dream soon. In the meantime, he just didn't mention Bobby's dream to either of Bobby's parents, and made sure that Bobby knew not to as well.

"Clean the stalls." said Brad.

"Did that already." said Bobby.

"Fence around your mother's garden needs work." said Brad.

"Did that too." said Bobby.

"How about the tack? Did you oil it?" asked Brad, looking up at his son.

"Yep. Finished that yesterday." said Bobby smugly.

"All of it?" asked Brad.

"All of it." said Bobby firmly.

"Find a tool that's rusty and put some lanolin on it." suggested Brad.

"Dad, I did that last week." said Bobby, a whine beginning to creep into his voice.

"Well find SOMETHING to do, dammit." Brad's voice began to rise.

"Can't I go out with the flock or something?" asked Bobby.

"You know I don't like you hanging around Buford." said his father, slathering a medicine on the lamb's injury. Amanda made the stuff from plants she knew about. Brad had no idea what was in it, but it worked well.

"You know you can't trust him to move the flock like he's supposed to either." said Bobby. "I can ride out and make sure he's not overgrazing. Didn't you say there's been some trouble with the cowmen about that?"

"Yes" said Brad firmly. "I DID say that, and you should know that if there's trouble with some cowboys, that's the last place you need to be."

"OK" said Bobby. "How about I take a wagon up to the high pastures and restock the shack up there?"

Charley snorted again. Now he understood. Bobby was trying to get up into the mountains, where he could have all kinds of excuses to do all kinds of things that had nothing whatsoever to do with pasturing sheep. The high meadows were up above the heat of the plains, with trees and wildlife and plenty of water from snowmelt.

"You know I already stocked that camp." said his father.

"I could check on it then ... to make sure nobody's messed with it." suggested Bobby.

"Who'd mess with it?" asked Brad. "Nobody even knows we go up there. The cowboys won't take their steers up there because they walk off too much weight getting up the mountain."

"Maybe a drifter has set himself up in our camp." said Bobby, reaching for any reason to go.

"And if he has?" asked Brad, looking at his son. "What exactly would you do about that? Run him off? How? All you'd do is get yourself hurt and then your mother would make my life miserable."

"Come on Dad, there has to be something I can do." complained Bobby.

Brad didn't want to argue any more. He was getting hot under the collar and he didn't like being that way either. "OK, ride out to the flock and tell Buford to start moving them up toward the high meadows. It's a week early, so tell him to take his time, and weave them back and forth between here and the foothills. How's that?"

"That will only take me a few hours." complained Bobby.

"Well, you could always oil tools you've already oiled, or clean stalls you've already cleaned. I bet you two ewes and a good dog there are weeds in your mamma's garden."

"OK, OK, I'll go out there and tell Buford and Chaps to start them up toward the mountain." said Bobby, moving off. Maybe he could stretch this trip out to four hours. "I'll take a look around and see if there's any wolf sign." he said over his shoulder.

Brad looked up and frowned. Then he looked at Charley. "What would he know about wolf sign?" he asked.

Charley grinned. "Oh, you know. Turds is turds, but maybe even he can tell the difference between dog turds and wolf turds. He's just lookin' for something to do anyway."

An hour later Bobby arrived at where, to his mind, the flock should be.

But it wasn't there.

It had been there. That much was plain. There were tracks everywhere, and the area had been grazed. There was a wide swath of tracks that led off to the East, but that was wrong. That was toward the Collins spread, and his father kept a five mile buffer zone between his sheep and the Collins cattle. He didn't want trouble, and there was plenty of other land on which to graze the flock.

Bobby followed the tracks, and grew even more unhappy as they led straight toward what Bobby knew was where there could be a thousand head of cattle grazing. He had gone six more miles and it was late afternoon before he spotted the flock.

What he didn't spot was two horses that should have been easily visible standing above the sheep, or the two men who should have been riding those horses.

As he neared the grazing flock, Queen bounded up to meet him, barking and wagging her tail. Bobby got down off his horse which pawed at the ground and whickered, probably a greeting to the dog. After ruffling the fur on Queen's head he asked her where Buford and Chaps were, and then, knowing she couldn't tell him, got back up on his horse and began circling the flock, looking for sign.

The first thing he saw was that the flock had been on this piece of ground too long, and had eaten the grass down to the roots. That was the difference between sheep and cattle or horses. Cattle and horses bit into a tuft of grass and pulled, tearing it, and then chewing. As they lowered their heads for another bite, it was almost impossible to end up at the same place the last grass had been pulled up, so there were tufts of grass left to keep growing and spread.

Sheep's teeth were arranged so that they could bite through the blades, and then reach for more, biting through that too. They didn't raise and lower their heads when they grazed, and would eat a tuft down to the ground and then move their head to keep doing that. Unless they kept moving, sheep would eat the grass to death, so to speak.

Queen barked that special bark that meant "strangers" and Bobby looked around. He saw a horse in the distance and, as it got closer he saw a woman riding it. She was wearing a hat like most westerners did, commonly called a cowboy hat, with a wide brim that protected the eyes from the sun, and the head from rain. Bobby didn't know who she was, but it was unlikely she was just out for a pleasure ride, and the flock was now close to the Collins spread.

She was still some distance off, so Bobby kept looking at the ground as me moved his horse along. He came to a place where the ground was scuffed, and there were a number of horseshoe prints in the dirt. He recognized two of them as belonging to horses that Chaps and Buford would be riding. There was a third set he didn't recognize. He got down again, seeing something that was the wrong color, and found a small patch of cloth stuck in the thorns of a plant. It wasn't so much a patch of cloth, as a large number of threads torn from the edge of a piece of cloth. They were blue. They were also faded, and could have been here for a long time. He was puzzling out something that looked like drag marks in the soil when he heard the other horse approach.

"What are these sheep doing on our land?" came an imperious female voice.

Bobby stood and turned to look up at the woman. He recognized her, having seen her in town.

"You're Miz Collins." he said.

"And you're the Rocklin boy." she said back. "Now, answer my question. What are these sheep doing on our land?"

"Ma'am, in the first place they're not supposed to be here. That's ..."

"I already know that young man." interrupted the woman impatiently. "I want to know why they ARE here."

"Ma'am, if you'll let me finish, I might be able to answer your question." said Bobby. Adults didn't faze him. He had been around a lot of adults who were stupid, or vain, or just plain mean, so just being an adult didn't get you much respect from Bobby Rocklin. He was polite, or tried to be, but if you wanted his respect you had to show you deserved it. He stood and looked at the woman, who was still mounted. For the first time he saw she had a Winchester cradled in her arm, lying across her thighs. It was more or less pointed in his direction. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.

"You're impertinent, young man." sniffed the woman.

"No, Ma'am, I am not." Bobby disagreed. "You asked me a question, and I'll be happy to answer it if you'll just let me." He waited to see if she'd respond.

Her horse moved toward his and the woman spoke a command, backing her horse up a little. She was riding a mare. Bobby hoped that mare wasn't in season, because if she was, his mount might cause trouble. He looked at his horse, which was a stallion, but it was standing more or less placidly. its ears were up, and it was looking at the mare, but that was all for now.

"Well ... get on with it then." said the woman in an exasperated tone of voice.

"Thank you." said Bobby. "As I was saying, my pa has told us not to graze the flock too close to your land. This, I believe, is open range, but he's trying to be neighborly." The woman's face screwed up and she opened her mouth, but he went on, not giving her a chance to complain, like he expected she would. Cow people all seemed to think that all land was "theirs" for some reason. "The two men who were supposed to be watching the flock are missing, and the flock has strayed over here. I was trying to figure out where they went when you rode up. There's some strange horse tracks mixed in with theirs, but I haven't figured that out yet."

"What tracks?" the woman said, sounding suddenly interested.

Bobby turned and went to one of the strange prints, which was clear in the dirt. He leaned over an pointed.

"Here's one." he said. "If you get down you can see it better."

"I can see just fine from up here." said the woman. "That track belongs to the horse my daughter was riding. I'm looking for her."

"Well, I haven't seen anybody." said Bobby. "I just got here a few minutes before you did. But something's wrong. Those men should be here. Well, not here, but they should be with the flock." He stood back up and looked at Mrs. Collins. "There was some kind of scuffle here too."

"What?!" she asked. Now she did step down from her horse. She brought the rifle with her. "What are you talking about?"

"See here?" he pointed. "These drag marks? they look like they were made by the heels of a pair of boots." He leaned down and pulled at the blue fibers. He held them up. "I don't know how long these have been here, but they didn't grow on that plant."

Molly peered at the fibers. She couldn't remember what Sarah was wearing that morning. Wait. Yes, she was dressed like a man. Now Molly remembered. She was trying to get Sarah to act like a woman, and it was a long haul. She had been wearing one of Frank's old shirts. And it was blue! She reached out for the fibers and took them, bringing them close to her face.

"I think this is from the shirt Sarah was wearing." she said. She frowned. "What have you done with my daughter?" The rifle came up and now it was pointed directly at his stomach.

"I haven't done anything with your daughter, Ma'am." he said, taking a step backward. He wasn't armed. There was a rifle just like hers in a scabbard on the side of his horse, but that was ten feet away. "I told you, I'm looking for our men."

Molly stared at the boy. He had been nothing but polite, but he was a sheep herder, and she had no use for sheep or their herders. But he had pointed out things that, if he were guilty of something, he would have tried to keep secret.

Queen had been making her rounds, keeping the flock bunched up, and she came around to nuzzle at Bobby's knee, wanting to be noticed. Molly's horse didn't like having the dog so close, and sidestepped away from them. Molly reached for the hanging reins, but missed.

"She won't bother your horse, Ma'am." said Bobby.

"She's already bothered my horse." Molly barked. She was worried now, and being worried made her argumentative.

Bobby ignored her combative response. "Look, Ma'am, I want to know just as much as you do what happened here. Those men aren't much, but they wouldn't have gone off and left the flock without a reason."

Molly wanted to be angry with this sheep herder boy, but his attitude was so different than what she'd expected that she was thrown off guard a little. "Sarah's horse came back without her. It was injured."

"Injured? How?" asked Bobby.

"I don't know for sure." admitted Molly. It had something wrong with its neck. It had been bleeding. It looked like it had been cut or something. There was a little piece of mane missing."

Bobby ranged around the area, looking at tracks. His uncle had taught him better than anyone might have known. Bobby saw where the strange horse had been standing, and then had jumped sideways. There were two hoof prints, walking backwards, and the bush the strands of cloth had been caught in was crushed. He located more prints heading off at a gallop in the direction the woman had ridden in from. He went back to where the horse had been standing and found prints where the two Rocklin horses had been standing. He could see where Buford and Chaps had gotten down off their horses and walked toward the crushed bush. Then he saw one set of boot prints that straddled the drag marks on the ground. One of his men had dragged a body out of the bush. He followed the drag marks. The Rocklin horses had moved and the drag marks ended up where one of them had been standing. There were two sets of boot prints in the soil at that point.

Bobby stood up. The woman had watched him, saying nothing.

"Here's what I think happened." he said. He pointed to the things he'd seen. "I think your daughter fell off her horse when it reared. She must have been hurt, because they dragged her to another horse and put her up on it. She wasn't fighting, because the marks her boots made as they dragged her don't show any movement.

"My daughter," said Molly grimly, "wouldn't just fall off her horse." She looked at the marks on the ground.

"I'm just telling you what I think happened." said Bobby. "Why don't we see where the horse tracks lead. Maybe they were taking her to get help for her."

Bobby had a sinking feeling in his gut, though. Buford was the kind of man who, if he found you lying on the ground, was more likely to pick over your body than help you. And Bobby had seen this woman's daughter in town too. She was a looker, the kind of girl that made a boy's pants get tight. If Buford picked her up off the ground, it wasn't to help her. He didn't want to voice his doubts to the girl's mother though. She still had that rifle, even if it wasn't pointed at him any more.

Instead of waiting for her to agree, Bobby just started following the tracks. He soon found that one of the horses was, indeed, carrying double, or at least carrying a heavy load. Those tracks were deeper than the other horse's prints. The trail made it obvious that both Rocklin horses were in a canter too. The problem was that they led in the wrong direction. They led toward the mountains, and not toward any ranch where someone might seek help for an injured person.

They had only followed the tracks for a quarter mile when the woman spoke.

"Obviously, your men were not going back to your ranch."

"No, Ma'am, it appears you're right about that." admitted Bobby.

"So they took my daughter." she said. Her voice sounded ... ugly.

"I don't understand it, Ma'am, but it appears that's correct." said Bobby.

"I should just shoot you where you stand." said the woman harshly.

"Ma'am, I didn't take your daughter. But I can help you find her. Well, I can help you find her if you don't shoot me. It would be pretty hard for me to track them if I'm lying dead."

He looked over at the woman. She still held the rifle, but, despite her comment, it wasn't pointed at him. Unknown to him, his coolness under her threat impressed her. She recognized that emotion had made her run her mouth ... like a man ... and she didn't like that.

"Why don't we work together on this?" said Bobby. "They can't have gone far."

Technically, Bobby knew that wasn't true. The men had a good five or six hour start, maybe more, based on how long the sheep had been at this one place. Bobby whistled at Queen and yelled at her to follow, giving her the arm movement too, just to make sure. He stepped up onto his horse and started following the tracks of the two Rocklin horses.

"What are you doing?" asked Molly, as Queen darted into the herd and barked at the lead ewe, moving her toward Bobby.

"I can't leave the flock here." said Bobby. "They'll ruin the grass. They need to move."

"You can't herd sheep now!" said Molly, getting angry. "We need to find Sarah!"

"We'll find your daughter, Ma'am. I just told Queen to follow us, that's all. She'll keep them moving along our track, even if she can't see us."

"Why didn't your men do that?" asked Molly, confused.

"I'd say because they're hoping we won't be able to track them." said Bobby, unsure whether or not the truth was a good idea right now. "It would be easy to follow the whole flock. If they're heading for the mountains, there will be rocky areas, and they may hope to lose themselves that way."

"Are you saying they plan to KEEP my daughter?!" gasped Molly. Molly was a frontier wife, and the code of the west was firmly ingrained into her. The code of the west said that women were to be respected ... cherished ... held inviolate. If a man abused a woman he often ended up dead as a result. It was unthinkable to her that the missing men might hold her daughter against her will ... kidnap her, for all intents and purposes.

"I don't know what's going on." said Bobby. "But I aim to find out." He looked over at the woman riding beside him. "Are you with me?"

Molly looked at this self possessed young man and her eyebrow arched. "You, young man, are with ME! And if anything has happened to my daughter, you will answer to ME!"

"Let's just see what happened. Then we can decide what's going to need doing." replied Bobby. He had a bad feeling about this. There was just no good reason why Buford and Chaps would take the girl toward the mountains.

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