Riders of Judgment by Ralph Compton & Ralph Cotton

Author:Ralph Compton & Ralph Cotton [Compton, Ralph & Cotton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451202147
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Amid the dust and the cattle in the corral, Saul and Ramon Delmano stood up from the fire and looked toward the hacienda where their father stood talking to Raul Hernandez. Saul pitched the end of a branding iron down into the licking flames and pulled off his leather gloves. “Want to know what they’re talking about, little brother?” He swabbed his brow with a damp bandanna.

“I do not care what they talk about,” said the younger Ramon. “I have too many cattle to brand.” There was a bitter snap to his voice.

“Yeah? Well, they’re talking about me,” said Saul, ignoring the tone of his brother’s voice. “Pa’s telling Raul about the trouble I’m causing him. He wants Raul and his politicians to make it all go away. What do you want to bet?”

Ramon looked toward the hacienda for a second longer, then shrugged and reached down and turned the branding iron in the fire, checking the color of the hot metal. “I would not bet against a sure thing.” Ramon looked at the two men who stood waiting, one of them coiling his lariat and shaking it free of dust. He nodded at the two men, then turned to Saul as the men walked toward the milling cattle, unwinding a coil from their lariats. “If you resent him interfering in your trouble, why do you bring your trouble to him?”

Saul looked at his brother. “I don’t resent his help, Ramon. What I don’t like is his high-and-mighty attitude of late. He acts like he’s better than me. I reckon he’s forgotten how it was when I was just a boy. He made his living then doing the same things I do now. I robbed my first bank riding with that old man. Now that he’s rich and got others doing his robbing for him, he acts like he thinks there’s something wrong with the way I live.”

Ramon spat and ran a hand across his dust-caked lips. “He tells me he wants a better life for me than he has had.”

“Sure,” said Saul, “but how much money does this better life put in your pocket? Enough to pay for all the dirt you swallow in a day’s time?”

Ramon didn’t answer. Instead he gave his brother a sour look as he reached down and picked up the hot branding iron. He hurried over to where the two ropers had taken down a longhorn steer. He expertly placed the tip of the iron over the older brand on the steer’s rump, then stamped the iron down, cross-branding it. When he walked back to the fire and shoved the iron into the bed of glowing coals, he looked back at Saul Delmano and said, “Do you think I handle stolen cattle because I like it? This is all I get, Saul. This is all I’ll ever get, hanging around here, staying under his thumb. I’m not much more than a hired hand.”

“Then what’s stopping you from doing something about it?” Saul asked. “You used to say it was because of your mother.

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