“Salute,” Houser said, holding his glass out toward them.
“Uh, yes, sir, here’s to you,” Dooley replied as he and Slim lifted their glasses as well.
“Gentlemen, I have a task I would like the two of you to perform for me.”
“Yes, sir, whatever it is you want me ’n Slim to do, why, you can count on us a-doin’ it,” Dooley said.
“Tonight,” Houser added.
“Tonight?”
“At midnight.”
“This job you got for us has to be done at midnight?”
“Or shortly thereafter,” Houser said. He refilled the glasses. “It’s a very special job that needs to be done in the middle of the night, so that no one sees you. It will require men of courage and intelligence. Do I have the right men for the job?”
“Yes, sir,” Dooley said, smiling as his glass was refilled. “You got the right men, all right.”
Houser took out two twenty-dollar bills.
“I forgot to tell you that it’s worth twenty dollars apiece for you to do it, but you must tell no one else what you are doing.”
“What about Turley? I mean, him bein’ the foreman ’n all,” Slim said. “He might figure out that me ’n Dooley left in the middle of the night. Oughten we to tell him?”
“Absolutely not. When I say I don’t want anyone to know, then I mean I don’t want anyone to know, and that includes Turley.”
“All right, we won’t tell ’im nothin’, even if he was to ask,” Dooley said hesitantly, wondering now what this was all about.
“And, if you handle this job well enough, there will be more jobs exactly like it for you to do, and more money for you.”
Dooley and Slim smiled at each other.
“We’ll do whatever it is you’re a-wantin’ us to do,” Dooley said, “’N we won’t tell nobody nothin’ about it.”
“Yes, sir, you can count on us,” Slim added.
“Good, very good.”
Houser began to give his instructions, and as the two men listened, they thought they had never heard anything so bizarre, even though that word wasn’t in their vocabulary.
The two men discussed the task that had been given them as they walked back to the bunkhouse.
“Why is it you reckon he’s a-wantin’ to do somethin’ like that?” Dooley asked. “Why, that don’t make no sense at all.”
“I don’t know, but he give us twenty dollars to do it, so what I think we ought to do is, just do it.”
Except for taking off their boots, neither Slim nor Dooley undressed for bed that night. Then, when they were sure everyone else was asleep, they left the bunkhouse as quietly as they could, went straight to the barn, and saddled their horses.
“Maybe we should lead them away instead of ridin’ them,” Dooley suggested. “That way we’ll have a better chance of not bein’ seen.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Slim agreed.
Five minutes later, with the horses saddled, Dooley and Slim led them away from the barn on the way to performing the task Houser had set for them.
* * *
The next morning Louie Patterson, who was one of the small ranchers recently arrived in the valley, was checking up on his small herd. Louie was a lean, lanky cowboy who seemed overpowered by the ten-gallon hat he wore. As he came to the top of a slight rise, he saw six cows cropping grass on the open range.
“Hello, cows,” he said, speaking aloud. “Where did you critters come from?”
Louie was riding alone because his ranch was so small that he couldn’t afford any hands. At the moment he didn’t really need anyone as he had less than fifty head of cattle and one man could easily tend to a herd that small.
But now he was about to add ten additional cows. These were mavericks, cows that had been born, then wandered away before they were castrated and branded. Because there was no way of knowing who such cattle belonged to, they belonged to anyone who claimed them. Louie was a very active cow hunter, and more than half of his herd consisted of mavericks he had found and branded.
Particularly skilled in being able to approach isolated cattle without alarming them, he rode slowly up to the ten cows who, content with their grazing, paid no attention to the horse and rider who was coming near them.
“Well, now, it looks like you ten are about to get a new home. What do you say we . . .” Louie paused in midsentence. None of the ten cows were actually mavericks; all ten were wearing the Twin Peaks brand.
“Ahh, I see that you aren’t mavericks,” Louie said. “But since you have gone to all the trouble to come over here, I hate to have to send you back home. Besides, Twin Peaks has so many cattle that they won’t be missing ten cows. I think I’ll just take all of you.”
Louie got the cows moving, and soon they were with the rest of his herd. Using a running iron, he turned the Twin Peaks brand into his own. The adjusted brand could pass a cursory glance, but not a close examination. He was taking a chance that there would be no close examination.
* * *
Ben Turley was beginning to get a little aggravated by the fact that two of his men, Dooley Carson and Slim Hastings, had not yet shown up for work. It wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t happened before, but this was the third time within the last week. When he stepped into the bunkhouse, he was angered, but not surprised, to find them both still in bed.
“What the hell are you two doin’ in here, layin’ around on your asses?” Turley demanded. “It’s after eight o’clock in the morning and you two lazy bastards is still asleep.”
Groggily, the two men got up.
“I seen that you didn’t neither one of you get back in till near two o’clock this mornin’. ’N this isn’t the first time. Are you two layin’ out with whores that
