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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Tadpole
By Bob Burnett
The day had been a complete bust, as far as I was concerned. Pa had sent me off to find a strayed Percheron mare, heavy with foal. Said I needn't bring her home, just see was she all right. I wasn't near the tracker Pa was, him being raised mostly by his mama's people, but he had been teaching me the ways of a trail ever since I could remember. I figured he could track a snake over solid rock in a rain storm, but tracking a mighty heavy horse with hoofs the size of a dinner plate was something I could have done when I was four years old.
I found the mare near a gully with a small seep and good grass, but she was durned near five miles from home and it had taken the better part of the day to make out her trail. I was near about hungry enough to get down and crop grass with her, and I cussed myself again for not bringing a bait of grub with me. I never figured to be gone all day.
I left her where she was and lit a shuck for home, heading up the wide shallow valley of the Ninnescah. The stream was low, waiting for the summer rains. Tall dried grass with new green shoots poking up from below lined the banks and rustled in the afternoon breeze. Springtime is a funny time of year and a body never knows how to dress. Freeze one day and sweat the next. In the morning I had wanted a coat, taken it off at midday, and now had it on again.
About four miles from home my gelding snorted and stopped dead in his tracks. He perked his ears and looked to the south toward a dry wash. I looked, listened, and craned my neck around. Whatever had spooked the horse was nothing I could locate, but trust the horse I did.
I unbuttoned my coat and slipped the thong from the hammer of my Walker Colt. I eased it loose in my holster before I walked the gelding across the stream.
I caught a whiff of smoke. Just a whiff and then gone, but smoke where none should be could be nothing but trouble.
I rode into the bottom of the sandy draw, dropped down, ground hitched the gelding, and eased his cinch. I taken my moccasins out of my saddlebags and swapped out of my boots. Boots are not made for moving careful, and it was careful I intended to be. I wished I'd brought a rifle with me, but a long gun is not something I usually carried unless I was out for meat.
The land out here in the western part of Kansas looks flat, but it ain't. Not really. Mostly it is small hills and low valleys with nowhere a body can get up high and look at everything. Dry country it is, and sandy. The best way to move in this country is along the sides of the low hills. A body can look over to at least the next draw without skylining. Rough country like this can hide a whole passel of folk if they be reasonable quiet and raise no smoke. Dust ain't much of a problem, except when it is real dry late in the year. Sandy ground, dry or not, ain't much on dust.
I injuned south, directly into the breeze. Up the dry wash and over the ridgeline into the next draw. Slow and careful I moved. Time to time I caught another whiff of smoke, more often the farther I moved south, checking each draw before I moved into it.
Half mile farther the smell of smoke was stronger, and mixed with the smell of burning hair. I heard the bawl of a calf in pain. The sound was just over the next ridge.
I taken my hat off and bellied up next to some yucca near the crest.
They were a couple of hundred yards away at the mouth of the next draw, where that draw and the one I was in came together. About a dozen cows with calves bunched off to one side, held by a man on a roan horse. Another cowboy on a bay horse had a calf roped and was dragging it to the buffalo-chip fire where the third man waited. The third man's horse, a big bay, was hitched to a sandhill plumb thicket.
Pa had said for the last couple of years that our calf crop was short. He thought he knew where they were going, but we had seen no proof of it. Now I knew for certain he had been right.
The question now was what could I do about it? By the time I rode home to get Pa and we got back here, chances were somewhere between slim and none that we'd catch the rustlers.
Three of them against one of me made poor odds. On the other hand, they'd be thinking I'm just a kid. Just comin' up to my sixteenth birthday and some small for my age, might could be they would be thinking I'm no threat to them. Mayhap that was true, but sure God they wasn't gonna steal those calves without a fuss.
I scooted back down from the ridge to where I could stand without being seen, picked up my hat and dusted myself off.
"They ain't stealin' none of my cattle," I says to myself.
I shucked out of my coat, set my hat square on my head, set the Walker Colt easy in my holster, and walked down to where the two draws come together.
I walked easy around the corner, casual like, just walking like I had no place to go and nothing to do when I got there. Any rapid motion seems to catch the eye. I was within fifty feet of the fire before anybody even saw me. I recognized all three of the rustlers.
Frank Cannon had just turned a calf loose. It was bawling and kicking, headed back to mama with a new brand. Looked like Eli Jacobs' Bar Three to me. Jack Slade was trotting his bay over to put a loop on another calf. The kid they called Whitey was over by the herd and was the first to see me. He yelled and pointed. I kept on walking, wanting to be closer.
Cannon spun around, his hand streaking to his pistol. He had it drawn and pointed when he recognized me and laughed.
"Hell," he shouted to the others, "ain't nobody but that half-breed McRae's red-headed whelp." He slipped his gun back into his holster.
I swallowed hard but kept on walking. He was fast. But at least he had not shot me.
"What the hell you doin' walkin' 'round out here, boy? You could get yerself snake bit, you ain't careful." Frank Cannon laughed again and tipped his hat back.
The sun felt warm on the left side of my face. A light cool breeze worried at my neckerchief and scattered ashes from the small branding fire. My mouth felt filled with cotton and my heart made a rapid thumping in my chest.
I was about twenty feet from him when I stopped. Slade and Whitey had trotted their horses over to the fire.
Whitey had a big silly grin, like they were fixing to have some fun. They called him Whitey on account of his white-blonde hair and folks generally walked wide around that one when they could. Mean as a snake, Whitey was. Fancied himself as a gun hand, Pa said.
Slade's mouth was like a knife cut straight across under his hooked nose. He rested both hands on his pommel and his face could have been carved from stone, it was that dark and still.
I could think of nothing to say. I could ask them nice to please not steal my calves, but somehow I doubted it would change anything. Talking was a waste of time, a way to put off what had to come. I saw no need to wait.
I smiled, brought the Walker out quick as I could, and shot Jack Slade through the second button of his shirt. His horse jumped back into Whitey's. Cannon was caught flat footed, which was why I was able to get one into his chest as he was clawing leather, slow because this was not what he had expected. Whitey's horse crow-hopped, and he couldn't get his gun into play. Before he had his horse turned it was too late for him. I shot him through side to side under his ribs. He went out of the saddle like a sack of grain.
It was all over in a couple of heartbeats.
I walked over and looked at Frank Cannon. He was on his right side, sort of hunched over. He clutched at his chest with both hands whilst his feet made slow walking movements. As I stood over him he turned his head to look at me, frowned and tried to say something. Then he went to meet his Maker.
Must be hard to meet your Maker with a rustler's branding iron in your fist. Devil might do some branding of his own.
I knew Jack Slade was dead before he hit the ground, so I just looked at him as I walked by, going over to Whitey. I'd seen Slade a few times over at Fort Larned and at Dodge City, and once he'd stopped by our place to see Pa about a horse. But I'd never seen him without his hat. His hat had got knocked off when he went out of the saddle. Plumb bald, he was, the top of his head white as an egg down to the line where his hat fit and the sun had colored the rest of his face and neck a dark leather brown.
Pa had said one time that Slade was pure killer, hard and mean and not afraid of nothing. A bad man to tangle with.
Jack Slade didn't look hard and mean now. Just dead. His eyes were about half open and had a dusty look to them. A bit of blood was on the front of his shirt and the sandy ground under him had a spreading stain. The front of his pants was wet where he'd peed himself.
Whitey was gut-shot, but not dead. He was on his back with both elbows pushed hard against his sides, like if he pushed hard enough he could make the hurting stop. He was in bad pain.
When my shadow fell across him, Whitey looked up at me. He tried to talk, but all he could get out between his clinched teeth was a high-pitched whine. He rolled his eyes around like a horse I had one time what had stepped into a prairie dog hole and busted his leg. I done the same for Whitey as I'd done for that broke-leg horse.
I put him out of his misery.
Pa used to talk some about being in Texas and about the war in Mexico, about what he had seen and done when he had gone down south with Rucker and them in '47 before he met Ma. Texas was where he got a pair of Walker Colts. He carried both of them when they fought the Mexicans.
Pa spent a lot of time with me whilst I was growing up, teaching me how to get that Colt out quick and hit what I aimed at, and then he gave one to me last year for my fifteenth birthday, him keeping the other for himself.
Looking down at Whitey I remembered something else Pa talked about whilst I practiced. He said to never draw unless I intended to use it, and never use it unless I intended to kill. Pa said I was quicker than most, mayhap the best with a handgun he had ever seen. He said I needed to be special careful how I used a gun, for killing was a serious matter.
He said that when you kill a man, when you take the life of another human being no matter if you have good reason or not, that something changes inside of you.
Like when a tadpole starts to grow legs to become a frog. It can't never be a tadpole again, but it don't know what it means to be a frog. Or like when you put a cucumber in vinegar and make a pickle out of it. You can't never make it back into a cucumber again no matter what you do.
Pa said when that change from taking a human life comes to a man he ain't never the same again. He said the man he was when he came back from the war in Mexico was sure God not the same man that rode down there.
I expect the change Pa had told me about came on me hard right then as I stood over Whitey with my Colt hanging heavy in my hand. My legs commenced to shake and I puked my guts out like I had me a touch of the ague.
After a bit, I got Frank's canteen from where he had laid it near the fire and rinsed the bile out of my mouth. I kicked the fire apart, stomped the embers, and poured the rest of the water on it. A prairie fire is a bad thing to get started.
Whitey's roan and Slade's bay had not moved far, and stood ground-hitched by their trailing reins. I stripped the gear off of them and turned them loose. I figured they would find their way home, or be caught up by some passing Indian. Or make a life among the wild horses that ranged free. I set them free to do as they needed to do. As for me, I had no need of rustler's horses.
Cannon's horse was still tied firm to the plumb thicket, and had quieted some by that time, but he was a mite skittish when I walked over to him. I talked soft and settled him while I tightened his cinch.
I untied the bay, stepped to the saddle, then had to get down and shorten the stirrups. Frank Cannon was some longer in the leg than me.
I rode Cannon's bay back to get my gelding, stopping along the way to get my coat. My coat felt right good when I snugged into it, for the weather was turning. I stripped the gear off Cannon's horse and turned him loose with a swat on his rump pointing him up the draw toward the other two horses.
I lit a shuck for home with dark thoughts weighing heavy on my mind, trying to decide how to tell Pa what I had done.
The breeze fretted and stopped and started, then shifted to the north and began to blow colder. The wind picked up, blowing cold from the north and I could see a gray cloud bank building on the horizon. Gonna snow sure as anything. I'd be lucky not to get caught on the open prairie in a blizzard.
Mayhap we would get snowed in for a time. Time enough to decide how to tell Pa. Time enough to decide what must be done with the rustler's bodies whilst the storm blew itself out.
There would be time enough to figure out what to do with the rustler's bodies, but would there time enough - ever - to deal with what I had become? I was having a hard time thinking very highly of myself right about then.
I had known when I walked up to the branding fire, when Cannon had holstered his pistol instead of shooting me, that the three of them had no more chance against me than a June bug has against a chicken.
I was some sudden with that Walker Colt. I could draw, fan the hammer to fire, and hit five playing card targets stuck on a fence rail quicker than Pa could clear leather. Pa said I was the quickest he had ever seen and I almost never missed what I shot at.
So I had walked up to the rustlers, set them easy in their minds because I was just a kid, and I killed them. I killed them because I wanted to kill them and I knew I could do it. And, I faced it square, I did not kill them over cattle. Never mind that they were thieves, never mind that they were branding stock belonging to someone else.
They didn't die for what they had done - they died because of who they had done it to. They died because of my pride. My calves. Mine. You ain't stealin' from me.
I was beginning to understand what Pa had been trying to teach me. I had shot the three of them down with no more thought than if they had been targets set up for practice.
Had Pa seen something in me, some cold selfishness that had caused him to warn me time after time about the serious nature of taking a human life? Would this shame him? Would Pa be ashamed that his only son killed so easy? Pa set great store by honor and righteous conduct. I knew in my heart I had failed to be what he wanted me to become. Like the tadpole not understanding the way of frogs, I was no longer a boy but knew little of what it took to be a man.
I rode on for home, unable to free myself from my own dark thoughts.
Surely it was the cold wind that made my eyes water so.
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