The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier by Edgar Beecher Bronson

Author:Edgar Beecher Bronson [Bronson, Edgar Beecher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Literary Collections, Westerns, Fiction
ISBN: 9781153769556
Publisher: General Books LLC
Published: 2010-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX. ACROSS THE BORDER

Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was no mistaking the lean but sturdy figure and alert step.

From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he winced and shrank, crying: “Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from Lampadasos with the assurance that my ambulance was generously provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the first day's journey came, I found the food limited totortillas, chorisos , and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin—no more. Stupid of an old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it not?”

“Worse than that, I should say—sheer madness,” I answered. “How did it happen?”

“Well, you see, Don Nemecio is theAlcalde , of his city, and he showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.

“But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.

“In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives callEl Desierto , known on the map asBolson de Mapini , the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry details.

“Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been examining—but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is, are you game for a new ranch deal?”

When I nodded an affirmative, he continued:

“Well, immediately north of the town lies a tract of 250,000 acres in the fork of the Rio Sabinas and the Rio Alamo, which is the greatest ranch bargain I ever saw. Heavily grassed, abundantly watered by its two boundary streams, the valleys thickly timbered with cottonwood, the plains dotted with mesquite and live oak, in a perfect climate, it is an ideal breeding range. And it can be bought, for what, do you think? Fifty thousand Mexican dollars [29,000 gold] for a quarter of a million acres! Go bag it, and together we'll stock it.

“Of course you'll run some rather heavy risks—else the place would not be going so cheap—but no more than you have been taking the last five years in the Sioux country. A little bunch of Lipans are constantly on the warpath, Mescalero raiding parties drop in occasionally, and the bandits seem to need a good manyprestamos ; but all that you have been up against.

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