Peacemaker Tales by Western Fictioneers

Author:Western Fictioneers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: western, award winner, l j martin, peacemaker, wayne dundee, johnny boggs
Publisher: Cane Hollow Press

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THE DEATH OF DELGADO

By ROD MILLER

I came face to face with my future the day Christian Delgado rode onto our ranch. At least I hoped—dreamed—I had.

Delgado was a cowboy.

Oh, there were plenty of cowboys in our part of the country. But Delgado was a different sort. Flashy isn’t the right word, but there was a certain amount of sparkle to the man and his trappings. He was some strange crossbreed of what nowadays we’d call Californio, buckaroo, and vaquero. Heavy-roweled Mexican spurs, high-topped boots with tall, underslung heels, short chaps that covered his lower legs with nothing but leather fringe, wool vest up top.

His saddle was especially eye-catching. Unlike the plain and practical kacks around our place, his slickfork was silver mounted with conchos, buckles, and bands; his other tack and horse jewelry likewise festooned.

As I said, I was enthralled the minute I saw him. He filled the dreamy eyes of this eleven-year-old Idaho ranch kid with a near-perfect vision of what a cowboy ought to look like.

Mind you, he wasn’t anything outside of ordinary from a physical standpoint. He wasn’t tall, maybe seven inches above five feet, hung on an average frame that was neither slender nor stocky. Not particularly handsome, I’d say, but neither was he hard to look at. His face, save for a sharp-trimmed mustache, was so clean-shaven it always looked as if he’d just now toweled off the last flecks of lather. He was, I suppose, in his twenty-third or -fourth year that summer.

Even though Christian Delgado had never seen the south side of the Rio Grande, he was, to folks hereabouts, a Mexican. (Some called him a greaser, but never within his hearing.) But he claimed descent direct from the Spaniards of old, and offered deep green eyes and the pale skin on the inside of his forearms as proof of his genealogy. And, to this fascinated boy, he did carry himself with the elegance of a conquistador, a caballero, a Don. There’s no doubt he was the kind of man folks paid attention to—the focus of attention in most every crowd, with the quiet confidence of one accustomed to that attention.

He showed up in the Curlew Valley because he heard that Dad had horses that needed rode. He’d heard right.

Dad and Uncle Evan had a sizeable ranch and raised a good many horses for sale. Nothing fancy, mind you, just good solid cow horses and some heavier stock for driving. We also put up a considerable amount of winter feed cut from hay meadows, and ran cattle on range that required the beef to graze at a fast walk just to get to enough grass to work up a cud of a size worth chewing.

And so Delgado went to work. Most of the time he spent horseback, either tending the cow herd or breaking horses. His means of training was simple: a good horse is the result of a lot of wet saddle blankets. When he wasn’t sweating the edge off green-broke colts

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