Riders of Judgment (Bison Classic Editions)

Riders of Judgment (Bison Classic Editions)

Here is a rich and serious novel of the violent West. Full of the authentic sounds and colors of Wyoming cattle country in the late nineteenth century, it tells the true story of a long-vanished time—the era of the cowhands and the bloody Johnson County range wars. Riders of Judgment centers on the three Hammett brothers and their cousin Rosemary, whom all three love. To the oldest brother, Cain, falls the lot of avenging the murder of his father, grandfather, and brother. Cain—who is in a sense a cowboy Hamlet—is torn by conflicts within himself. He desires peace yet is forced to wear a gun. He is a law-abiding man by instinct yet has to take the law into his own hands. He is loved by a woman but rejects her because he feels unworthy of her love. Then one spring morning the cattle barons invade his territory, and Cain’s hesitancy vanishes. One man’s inner struggle becomes a fight to turn the cattle kingdom into a free country for the small stockman. Riders of Judgment is the final book in Frederick Manfred’s five-volume series, The Buckskin Man Tales.     Frederick Manfred (1912–94) is the author of twenty-four novels, including the five-volume series The Buckskin Man Tales, which includes Conquering Horse , Lord Grizzly (finalist for the 1954 National Book Award), and Scarlet Plume , all available in Bison Books editions, as well as King of Spades . Riders of Judgment By Frederick Manfred UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS Copyright © 1951 Frederick Feikema Manfred All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8032-4881-6 CHAPTER 1 Part One Cain Cain came riding down through a cloud. He was still very high above the timberline in the Big Stonies. He rode a tall black gelding named Lonesome. Behind him sauntered Animal, his gray pack mule, tied to Lonesome's tail. Cain let his horse pick the way down the steep slope. Sometimes Lonesome's iron shoes rang on scoured rock. The cloud gave way to clear air very slowly. From the horse's back Cain could occasionally make out varicolored ground: rock blotched over with moss, then bare rock, then carpets of mushy grass. A single ponderosa pine suddenly appeared out of the mist. It came out of the cloud as if walking toward them. Its orange trunk was just barely visible, while its upper reaches were lost in drifting silver. For late August the air was cold. Cain drew down his hat, making his stub ears splay out some. He tightened his bandanna snug around his neck. He shivered. He rolled his shoulders. His slicker rustled comfortingly. He walloped his arms around his chest, walloped until finger tips tingled inside his gloves. Cain was a knobby-muscled fellow. His movements, though quick, were blunt. His face was rough-cut, as if slapped into form with the side of an ax. He had a black walrus mustache, and it gave his face a weathered walnut hue. He wore a black hat, with the wide brim shaped up on both sides against the crown, making points in front and in back. The two dents up front in the crown, into which his thumb and forefinger fit when he handled it, matched the two deep hollows in his cheeks exactly. Except for a small red heart carved in the leather just below the pull strap, his boots were black too. So too were his .45 Colt and its holster and the cartridge belt, and his pants, shirt, and vest. His Cheyenne-style saddle, bridle, and reins were black. But blackest of all was the kingly horse Lonesome. Lonesome had a coat of somber powder-black and a curling mane and tail that glowed purple in the sun. Setting off all the striking blacks of Cain's rigging was the white sock above Lonesome's left rear hoof and the silver ornaments on the bridle and saddle and the hand-forged inlaid silver spurs. Cain rode very light, for all his blunt body. He rode with much of his weight in the stirrups, knees taking up the spring, making it easy on the horse. To sit in the saddle like a bag of sand all day long was to kill the mount. He rarely used the reins; drove mostly with his knees. It hurt him to see men rein in their horses with vicious jerks. A horse frothing blood at the bit was enough to set him against the rider. Behind him, on Animal the pack mule, under a tarp and balanced exactly, rode his bedroll and camp supplies and the remains of a whitetail bighorn sheep. Late the evening before, Cain had finally got his shot and dropped a young buck. He'd butchered in the dusk, shining up his skinning knife with a few quick strokes down his leather chaps, and disemboweling the sheep with easy strokes, the guts welling out like baby snakes, moist and sliding. He'd trimmed out the better meat, all of it smelling deliciously gamy, and wrapped it up in the dust-brown hide. The noble head, with its curling horns resembling hand-carved bench knobs, he'd also saved for mounting later on. The trail lifted up, to the left, and then crossed over a low neck of rock. The rock was speckled over with various kinds of mosses: brown, green, red, black, orange. The cloud th