Range War Along the Pecos, by John T. Crow

Range War Along the Pecos

CHAPTER ONE

 
The room was hot and sultry, no doubt due to the inordinate amount of rainfall they had been experiencing recently. With his bedclothes soaked in sweat, and his head pounding from a night that to the average cowboy would have seemed as if it must have been fraught with excess, Jesse Logan sat up attempting to gather his wits and face the day. "Just where the heck am I, and what happened last night?" Logan wondered aloud.
Slowly but surely, the answers began floating in to a skull that felt as though it had been battered by Rotgut whiskey (or so he imagined at the moment). Jesse's head seemed banged up almost as badly as it had been the time that old Jacksonville roan had tossed him through the wall of a stable.
The year was 1870 and he was in the town of Olsen's Falls in West Texas, which sat squarely upon the juncture of three counties, Jeff Davis, Pecos and Brewster. It was located about fifty miles southwest of Fort Stockton, and thirty-five miles north and slightly east of the present day town of Alpine.
There were of course, no waterfalls of any real consequence in that part of the country (although there were a few small ones in the nearby Davis Mountains). The name came about more as a joke, than anything else, but the story behind it is somewhat amusing.
It just happened that several years before, an old Texas ranger by the name of Sven Olsen, had been on the trail of an outlaw and had run out of water.
While he was searching for something to quench his thirst, a roving band of Comanches soon relieved him of his horse as well. Fortunately though, they'd allowed him to retain his scalp. Olsen grew weaker with each passing hour. While stumbling around searching for even the merest drop of water, he began hallucinating. Ranger Olsen imagined he could hear a waterfall in the distance and began to make for it. Sure enough, he soon came within actual sight of it. "Why hellfire, it must be nigh on fifty feet high and just a flowing with the clearest, sweetest water one ever tasted!" Olsen imagined.
What the old Ranger was in fact seeing was an old adobe and clapboard building that had once served as a trading post for the Indians, but had become a way station on one of the lower routes from San Antonio to El Paso and was owned by a man named Bill Jacobson.
On the day the ranger arrived at the station, Jacobson was sitting inside trying to alleviate his boredom by reading a book he had already read many times over. Suddenly, he heard a commotion outside. It seemed he was hearing splashing sounds and a man loudly thanking the Lord with a distinctly foreign accent. Jacobson stepped outside only to find ranger Olsen splashing around in the watering trough murmuring something about waterfalls.
After being revived by fresh water and a steaming plate of frijoles, Olsen related his story and thus, explained his delusions. The only thing Jacobson could figure was that somehow, in the back of his deluded and dehydrated mind, Ranger Olsen must have realized that the presence of a building represented the possibility of habitation. This in turn, meant that there had to be water. It didn't however, explain how Ranger Olsen heard the sound before seeing the station. That sound, imaginary or not, had certainly led the ranger to water no matter how one tried to explain it.
The fact is however, that there was a spring up in the rocks in back of the building that rarely went dry thus affording an excellent opportunity for a person to make a living. Jacobson had recognized this and had been quick to take advantage of it. He was surprised that ranger Olsen had never heard of it until the ranger explained that he was a Swedish immigrant who had only recently signed on with the Texas Rangers, and who had lost his bearings anyhow. In fact, there was plenty of water around--if one knew where to look for it. Any seasoned ranger would have known this, but Olsen was new to this part of the country. The little spring near Jacobson's post just happened to be conveniently located along a lower route from San Antonio to El Paso.
The point is however, that Jacobson got a kick out of the ranger's plight, and took a name for his little station from it, thus the name, "Olsen's Falls."
Though later mercilessly tormented by the other Texas Rangers of the time for being greenhorn enough to allow himself to run out of water in the first place, Ranger Olsen had gone on to capture his outlaw. Meanwhile, Bill Jacobson's business thrived and expanded. Eventually, a town began growing up around his station. In 1869, silver was discovered in the hills behind the town, and the town had boomed virtually overnight. That then, was where Jesse was presently experiencing his agony.
Logan was in a woman's room in an small but comfortable adobe shack which he at once recognized as the dwelling of Conchita Mireles, the town's most notorious (and attractive) woman of ill-repute. This surprised him somewhat, since he was not the kind of man who did business with those who practiced the oldest profession known to man. The only reason he recognized the room was that he had once saved Conchita from an overly amorous customer whose appetites demanded more than even she, was willing to satisfy. Jesse often wondered why and how such a beautiful woman would degrade herself and take such chances.
Though many of the cowboys would shoot a man for merely looking at a "Lady" wrong, a whore was another matter. Many naturally assumed that they could abuse a prostitute in any way they chose, leaving her half dead from the experience. Some, had made up their minds that such a woman was getting her "just desserts" anyhow, so they would get their own desserts from her flesh without even the slightest pang of conscience.
Jesse Logan did not consider himself a particularly moral man, but he drew the line at slacking his lusts on a prostitute. After all, though most of his mother's early Baptist teachings had been wasted on him, some of it had stuck.
"So what the heck am I doing in here?" he wondered aloud. Surely, he hadn't gotten so plastered that he'd broken this rule, he thought. He ruled out the possibility of having been served bad whiskey. Bill Wyler, the owner and bartender, wouldn't serve Jesse anything like that. Maybe, he thought, someone slipped something into his drink. There was certainly no denying where he was.
He reached up to massage the spot on his head that felt the most afflicted from either the rotgut or whatever substance someone might have slipped into it. "Hell," he thought to himself, "that goose-egg on the back of my noggin sure as heck didn't come from whiskey. Maybe a whiskey bottle, but certainly not its contents." Anyhow, he was rarely known to get so inebriated that he could not remember what had transpired the previous night. He had always felt that such behavior could get one into "Boothill" in a hurry, especially these days. Nevertheless, the memory loss, the constant pounding in his skull, and his present location seemed to imply that he had done just that. The knot on his head suggested that there had been a fight as well.
Gingerly feeling of it once more, Jesse noticed that it was more than merely a bump, it was a more like a wound. "A split, or maybe even a bullet crease?" Jesse wondered. And he certainly could not remember sleeping with Conchita, so why was he here? The scab wasn't that large, and there wasn't any blood on the pillow either. Slowly however, other memories were ominously returning. Like the poker game involving some of the more notorious of the MT (usually referred to as "Empty") ranch hands.
These men were actually gunhands rather than cowboys, and were hired for just that reason. It had only been just shy of a year that Morgan Tanner had moved in and had established his ranch adjacent in places to that of Angus Murdoch whose brand was simply M.
This did not however, stand for Murdoch, but for "Moose". Most of his friends called him that because of his size. He was six-four bare-footed, with a shoulders as broad as the average "barn-door". "Ole Moose" had considered the nickname a compliment rather than an insult, and quickly appropriated the moniker for himself. Thus, the brand M.
Everyone knew whose brand that was, and those who had in the past become forgetful about it, had been swiftly reminded. Some, by a sudden invitation to a necktie party in which there was no opportunity to decline. Others, by a fatal dose of lead poisoning, which in many cases (though not the majority), was administered from the barrel of Murdoch's own ancient Walker Colt 44. One man, who had ultimately survived the memory loss, suffered a broken back at the bare hands of the burly Moose Murdoch. The fellow had thought himself a strong man and had challenged Moose to a hand to hand combat rather than a gunfight which he knew he'd have no chance of winning. Moose had been all too happy to oblige the man. After that encounter, the fellow was rendered permanently bedridden.
For quite some time, the Murdoch spread had been the only major ranch around. There now were a few small ones which were there out of Murdoch's generosity, or because of the fact that their owners had come here with Murdoch in the beginning, and he had allotted certain parts of his spread to them due to the fact that they had demonstrated courage and loyalty to him when times had been rough. In fact, the town owed much of its own existence to Murdoch who was often generous to a fault with his money. As the town grew however, many arrived who knew nothing of Murdoch's generosity, and there were a few who had been there for a long time, who seemed to have forgotten. Many of the newcomers since the silver strike, considered him to be nothing more than a rich barbarian who did not deserve all that he possessed. To put it in western lingo, Murdoch to them was, "Simply too big for his britches."
This attitude seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds since the arrival of Morgan Tanner who set up a ranch of his own, along with investing in, or buying out, many of the local businesses and a couple of silver mines.
Now according to some of the old timers, there were "Some mighty strange goin's on" concerning the Empty ranch. For one thing, it was for the most part, just that, empty. The land there could support a herd, but not one the size of what Tanner must have, considering the amounts of beef he was selling, or promising to deliver, to the buyers up north, or the army. To those who might be perceptive enough to observe, it would seem that although the cattle he was running consisted of the same type breed as that of all the other ranches around Olsen's Falls, they reproduced at a rate that was somewhat magical. It was also noted by a few (very few of late) that it wouldn't be any too difficult, to turn old Murdoch's M brand, to an MT. A few townsfolk had openly spoken of this, but some of their number were now "pushin' up the daisies" (or cactus) in the local Boot Hill.
The plain fact was, that Murdoch, was the "bull of the woods" around these parts. Morgan Tanner however, wanted this neck of woods all to himself, not only the ranches, but the mines as well. Murdoch, on the other hand, though undisputed king of the hill, not only tolerated the smaller ranchers, but often helped them out. He even allowed some homesteaders to move in, even if somewhat grudgingly. Tanner however, secretly (or so he thought) wanted all of it along with most of the town as well.
Though already wealthy, from fortunes his family had made up north, Tanner desired his own empire out west, and had chosen the humble town of Olsen's Falls to be the seat of this Empire. He knew that once the railroad arrived, he would stand to become one of the greatest barons in the west. Cattle, would be shipped from right there instead of having to be driven all the way to Kansas or Colorado. When that happened, he did not want any competition from Murdoch, or any of the smaller ranches. He would control them all, and from there, branch out in all directions.
Personally, to Tanner, ranching was just a stepping stone to greater things, but even if the silver mines played out, he would always be wealthy due to the cattle empire he intended to build. To Murdoch, ranching was everything, and he was more than satisfied with his ranch. Why shouldn't he be? After all, it was larger than some states. Murdoch, was a powerful and influential man in these parts. But to Tanner, he was a short-sighted imbecile, not much better than the rest of the "Rebel trash" that his side had defeated in the war between the states. Tanner had little doubt that he would one day soon, own the Murdoch spread, along with all the potential opportunities that Murdoch seemed to be woefully ignorant of, such as politics, prestige and above all, power.
However, Murdoch had faced many odds, and overcome them by hard work, sheer will, and often, brute force. Comanches, outlaws, rustlers, Comancheros, Mexican bandits, and the land itself, all had challenged Murdoch at one time or the other. He had prevailed against each, and even managed not only to survive the ravages of the Civil War, but to profit from it. He'd carved out an empire with his bare hands, iron resolve, guts and guns. In Murdoch's opinion, "He'd earned it, by gosh!"
Tanner, intended to gain possession of it without all of that time, sweat and effort, but to do this, he needed and was prepared to, hire gunhands. Their ability to work cattle, was secondary.

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