Catlow (1963) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Old Man?"
    Catlow gave him a saturnine grin. "Now, Ben, you know me better than that. I picked up that telegram about an hour ago, so naturally I stopped by camp first. After all, I had money for them.
    "Somehow or other those boys just naturally saw this here telegram and by this time they're far down the trail to somewhere. You can look for em if you want to waste time, but you won't find 'era in a coon's age."
    "Bijah, don't be a damned fool. You leave out of here now and I'll give you an hour's start. If I know you, you won't need any more than that. You know Parkman has the courts in his pocket. He'll see you hang."
    Catlow picked up the chilled wine bottle and filled their glasses. "That waiter's too durned slow." He looked up, his eyes dancing with deviltry. "Sure, you're right as rain. Park-man will sure enough try to string me up, but remember this, Ben, it's a long way from here to Texas!"
    Two weeks later Ben Cowan looked up from his desk where he was making out his final report.
    Roots stopped by the desk. "Your transfer came through, Ben. You go to New Mexico." He turned away, then stopped again. "Oh, by the way, that prisoner you brought in ... Catlow, was it? He escaped."
    "Escaped?"
    "Uh-huh ... four or five riders held up the stage and took him off."
    "Anybody hurt?"
    "Hell, no. From what I hear Catlow had made friends with everybody on the coach, including the driver, and they were glad to see him get away. We did get an identification of one of the men in the bunch that took him, though. The officer escorting Catlow recognized one of the men as Rio Bray."
    Bijah Catlow had been right ... it was a long way to Texas.
    The legend of Bijah Catlow had begun before this, but from this point on, it grew rapidly. The Houston & Texas Central was held up, and Catlow received the credit, whether he was guilty or not. Of one thing men were certain: Bijah Catlow had not forgotten Parkman.
    Parkman sent three herds to Kansas the following year, and lost the first one before it was fairly into the Nation. Somebody stampeded the herd, and it vanished.
    Nobody could offer more than a guess at what happened to it. Herds of three thousand head are not swallowed by the earth, yet vanish they did.
    Meanwhile, it suddenly appeared that Bijah Catlow had registered a brand, the Eight eighty-eight Bar, and around the chuck wagons and in the saloons throughout Texas, men began to chuckle. For three eights and a bar could very neatly swallow Parkman's OP Bar ... and apparently they had done just that.
    Catlow was never at home, but a very tough, very seasoned cowman, Houston Sharkey, was ... he was not only at home, he was at home with a Winchester and a crew of hard-bitten cowhands who kept strays out of the Eight eighty-eight Bar grazing lands, and allowed no casual visitors.
    Several times the law came looking for Catlow, and they were welcomed to look around all they wished.
    Parkman came, too, and he came with a couple of tough hands, threatening to butcher a steer and read the hide from the wrong side, where the alteration of the brand would be plain to anyone.
    Sharkey levered a shell into the chamber of his Winchester. "You go right ahead, Colonel Parkman," he said, "and you better hope that it's an altered brand, because if it isn't I'm going to lay you dead right where the steer lies."
    Parkman looked at Houston Sharkey and the Winchester. He looked at the roped steer. He was sure that it was an altered brand ... but suppose it wasn't?
    If it was not, he had called this man a thief, an insult anywhere, and no court in the country would convict Sharkey of murder. Not with the viewpoint of Texans what it was at the time.
    Parkman looked, hesitated, and backed down. But he went away boiling mad, determined to catch both Catlow and Sharkey.
    Two weeks later, a tall, cold-eyed rider headed into the rough country south of the Nueces--a tall man with a Winchester and a tied-down gun.
    Bijah Catlow spoke Spanish as well as any