“When pigs fly,” Maggie added, and her comment was met with good-natured laughter. “Come on in, boys,” she said. “We’re open for business again.”
Titus watched several of the men go back inside, but there were still several milling about on the street outside the whorehouse.
“All right, boys, the show’s over,” Titus said. “Let’s break it up. Go on back about your business, unless going to see one of Maggie’s whores is your business.”
When the crowd broke up, Titus, Travis, and Troy started back down toward the marshal’s office, where Travis and Troy could get a long gun for the rest of the night’s patrol.
“Hey, Troy, did you give Maggie’s offer a thought?” Travis asked.
“Are you kidding? Lucy would kill me. If fact, if she even hears the offer was made, she’ll be on me like a duck on a june bug.”
“Damn,” Travis said, laughing. “What do you think, Titus? Is our brother henpecked or what?”
“He doesn’t have to worry about Lucy,” Titus said. “If I caught him taking Maggie up on her offer, cheatin’ on a good woman like Lucy, I’d bust his head myself.”
The three brothers laughed and joked as they walked down the middle of the street. The sounds of merriment from the two saloons, loud and raucous from the Hog Waller, and a bit more reserved from the Golden Nugget, told them that the town was having another normal night.
Chapter Five
Over the last twenty-five years, Ike Clinton had bought, stolen, and bullied his way onto one hundred thousand acres of good grazing land. He did this by the sweat of his own brow, and with the blood of the Mexicans and Indians who got in his way. With a sense of irony, he named his ranch La Soga Larga, or “The Long Rope,” a tacit admission that he wasn’t always too careful about whose calves he rounded up for branding.
His wife, Martha, had been appalled by her husband’s ruthlessness and greed, but she was a good woman who would never think to leave her husband, or to tell anyone else of his misdeeds. Adhering to the Biblical injunction to honor and obey her husband, she lived her short married life without complaint, no more than a shadow within the shadows. Martha died when the youngest of her three children, Billy, was five years old.
She didn’t live to see any of her sons grow up, and they, especially Ray and Cletus, were the worse for it. Perhaps the ameliorating influence of a good mother would have made Ray and Cletus good men instead of the pompous bullies they became. Billy, everyone agreed, was made of better stuff.
Having invited all the neighboring ranchers over for a meeting, Ike was now standing by the liquor cabinet, leaning back against the wall, looking out over the gathering. His arms were folded across his chest, and his hat was pushed back on his head. He was smoking a thin cheroot as he watched the others arrive.
“Ike, what’s all the secrecy? I mean, why are we meeting here, instead of at the Morning Star at our usual time?” one of the ranchers asked.
“I reckon enough of you came to take care of what we need to take care of,” Ike said. “So, if you’ll all get settled, we’ll get started.”
While waiting for the meeting to start, the visiting ranchers had gathered into conversational groupings to exchange pleasantries and information. With Ike’s call to them, the little groups broke up and everyone started looking for a place to sit. Ike waited until all were settled and quiet before he continued.
“I’m sure that by now nearly all of you have met a fella in town by the name of Wade Garrison,” Ike started.
“Garrison, yeah, I know who he is,” one of the other ranchers said. “He’s a pretty nice fella.”
“Yeah, he’s a real nice fella,” one of the other ranchers put in.
“Got hisself a real pretty daughter, too.”
“Tell you what, George, you keep that up and Louise is likely to use a frying pan to knock out what few teeth you got left,” one of the others said, and all laughed.
Ike, perceiving that the meeting was getting out of control, held up his hands to call for quiet.
“We ain’t here to talk about Garrison’s pretty daughter,” he said.
“Well, what are we here to talk about?”
“The railroad.”
“The railroad? What railroad?”
“The one that Wade Garrison is plannin’ on buildin’ between Higbee and La Junta,” Ike said.
A couple of the ranchers let out a whoop of joy.
“No kiddin’?” one of them said. “We’re gettin’ us a railroad? Why, that’s wonderful news!”
“No, it ain’t good,” Ike said. “It ain’t no good a’tall. We got to stop this from ever happening.”
The other ranchers looked confused.
“Now, why in the Sam Hill would this be a bad thing?” a rancher named Phillips asked. “If we could take our cows into Higbee, instead of La Junta or Benton, think how much easier that would be.”
“And think how much money it’ll cost us,” Ike said. “Don’t you see? If Garrison gets control of the railroad, he can hold us up for any amount he wants.”
“What makes you think he would do that?” a rancher named Warren asked. “The other railroads don’t do such a thing.”
