The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

Between the two of them, Jaime and Mariano had four pistols and two rifles, plus a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun de la Cruz kept handy for emergencies. That hardware gave them fifty-six shots without having to reload or pull a knife, against five men who wouldn’t be expecting any treachery. Or, even if they were halfway expecting it, they still couldn’t know exactly when and where their double-crossing “friends” would strike.

  That gave Jaime and Mariano all the edge required to pull it off . . . as long as no one beat them to the draw.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SNOW BEGAN an hour after breakfast, their fifth morning on the trail. It started with a chill wind and a few stray flakes, then thickened through midmorning, spreading white drifts on the open prairie and collecting on the drovers’ hat brims.

  Toby Bishop reckoned only children truly love a snowfall, most particularly when it canceled school or their outside chores. He hadn’t met a farmer yet who welcomed it, nor townies forced to shovel sidewalks granting access to their shops. Granted, some people felt obliged to comment on a snowfall’s beauty, till it turned to grimy slush and ice, but he suspected few of those honestly felt that way.

  And April snow, defeating spring’s advance, was worst of all.

  His coat and gloves were warm enough so far, the woolen scarf around his neck helping repulse a measure of the chill, but every now and then he had to doff his flat-brimmed hat and shake it clean. His Appaloosa offered no complaint—as if it could—but Bishop felt the longhorns growing restive as the falling snow occluded vision, building up like dandruff on their necks, withers, and rumps.

  More steers tried straying from the herd than any other time within the past four days, and Bishop couldn’t figure out if they were trying to escape the snow by breaking out of line or if the swirling flakes caused problems with their depth perception, dicey at the best of times.

  The snow slowed progress and it also strained the drovers’ eyes, watching for any predators along their route of march. A pack of coyotes or wolves might pass unnoticed with the morning sun obscured by clouds, snow coming down and camouflaging furtive movement on the ground. It might have been Toby’s imagination, but just scanning the horizon, what there was of it, seemed to demand more energy than simply following the herd, retrieving strays.

  Inevitably, he thought back to last night’s incident, if he could even call it that. Dixon and Pickering seemed unconcerned by what he’d told them, and in truth it might be nothing. Getting spooked by shadows was a common problem on night watch, and he admitted to himself that he’d seen nothing sinister—just a sense or feeling that he’d interrupted something, maybe someone, lurking in the dark.

  So, how had it, or he, eluded Bishop when he’d moved to get a closer look? By stealth, perhaps. Or maybe there’d been nothing in the tallgrass after all.

  Still . . .

  In addition to watching for truant steers, Bishop peered farther off into the falling snow, until their moving backdrop lost all definition at a hundred yards or so. He searched for anything resembling a man on horseback other than his fellow drovers. More than once he caught himself counting the riders who belonged around the herd—the boss and foreman, with nine other cowboys and the wrangler in charge of their remuda—till it made his temples ache and he had to stop himself.

  And what if trouble found them on the snowy trail? Bishop could draw his Colt all right with gloves on, pull the hammer back to cock it, but he wasn’t sure his padded index finger would fit through the pistol’s trigger guard. And if it did, he ran the risk of squeezing off an accidental round. Cut back on the six-gun’s relatively short effective range to thirty feet or so, and he’d still have to hope he didn’t drill one of his fellow riders from the Circle K.

  All things considered, Bishop figured it was better if he didn’t have to fire at all.

  He hoped the snow would keep any potential enemies at bay until the drovers pitched camp. Then, all he had to think about was shadows reaching out to spook him in the long, dark night.

  * * *

  * * *

  CAN YOU BELIEVE this crap?”

  Finch glanced over at Shelby Gretzler, riding to his left on a cremello gelding, swiping vainly at the snowfall with a gloved right hand.

  “Seeing’s believing,” Amos said.

  “I mean, it’s almost Easter,” Shelby groused.

  “That’s still another week. You’ve seen it snow this late before.”

  “And didn’t like it then neither.”

  “It helps us, in a way,” Finch said.

  “Dogging the herd, you mean? I get that, but I’d rather do without it all the same.”

  Finch half turned on his hand-tooled saddle, stolen with the horse that he was riding, six months back in Santa Fe. Their five companions, all looking bedraggled, rode in silence for the most part, huddled in the coats they hadn’t planned on needing for the job at hand. One or another of them cursed the snow and wind from time to time, but conversation wasn’t suiting them this morning.

  Softening his voice a bit, glad that the prairie wind was blowing from behind him now, Finch asked his second in command, “What do you know about the Mexicans?”

  “Our Mexicans?”

  “I don’t mean President Díaz.”

  “About as much as you do. Claim they knew each other in Chihuahua, growing up without a peso to their names in Ciudad Juárez. They’ve both done time in Texas; two, three years apiece for having sticky fingers.”

  “I’m not sure I trust them,” Finch said.

  “Anything particular?”

  “Can’t put my finger on it. Just a feeling like I get sometimes.”

  Gretzler narrowed his eyes at that. “I’ve learned to trust your feelings, Amos. Do you want to weed them out?”

  Finch thought about that. Said, “Not yet. Not here. I want to put this job behind us first.”

  “And split the take like always?” Gretzler asked him.

  “That’s another question. Do you reckon any of the rest would side with them, were we to weed them out?”

  Shelby mulled that one over for a minute, then said, “Nope. I doubt it, anyway. Jaime and Mariano mostly stick together, jabbering between themselves.”

  “Something to think about,” Finch said.

  “I’ll back you if it comes to that,” Gretzler offered. “Can’t say I ever cared much for them, anyway.”

  “As long as no one else jumps in on their side.”

  “I’d bet against it, if I was a betting man.”

  Finch laughed at that. “Bearing in mind that I’ve played poker with you.”

  Gretzler shrugged. “Figure of speech,” he said. Then asked, “We get the horses first, though, right?”

  “Most definitely. Otherwise, we’ve got nothing to split.”

  “Except, if you thought they were gonna make a move on you . . .”

  “I couldn’t prove it. Just a feeling, like I said before.”

  “No need to drag it out if you think they’ve been scheming against you.”

  “Understood. But I’ve been counting on this score. My pockets are next door to empty, and that ain’t a neighborhood I favor.”

  “Same here. Just saying, you can tip me off at any time. A high sign, anything at all. I’m there.”

  “Appreciate it, Shel. You’ll be the first to know.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I TRIED SAYING A weather prayer,” said Pastor Lott. “Asking to stop the snow and clear our way.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it worked,” Bishop replied.

  “I’ve always thought there’s no such thing as wasted prayers. They all get answered sometime, one way or another, even if it’s not the answer you were hoping for.”

  “You mean, like wishing for a pet and waking up to find a rattler in your bedroll?”

 
; Lott forced a laugh at that but clearly didn’t see the humor in it. “More like asking for prosperity and being shown a way to earn your daily bread through honest toil.”

  “Most people find that going door to door or reading advertisements in a newspaper.”

  “But who delivers them to certain doors or sets the ads in front of them?”

  Rather than drag it out, Bishop replied, “You’ve got me there, Parson.”

  “For instance—”

  “Up ahead there,” Bishop interrupted him. “Two strays.”

  They caught up with the longhorns, Bishop hoping that his Appaloosa wouldn’t step into a gopher hole concealed beneath the snow. It only took a moment, heading off the strays and staying well clear of their horns, driving them back to join the larger herd.

  “Where would they go, I wonder, on a day like this?” Lott mused.

  “Most likely off to freeze somewhere,” Bishop replied.

  “Five days,” the preacher said. “We haven’t lost one yet.”

  “Don’t let the others hear you say that. Tempting fate’s supposed to bring bad luck.”

  “I don’t believe in luck, Toby.”

  That figured. Bishop took the preacher for one of those folks who claim that everything is part of some vast plan, mysterious, unsolvable until the afterlife, when everything was suddenly revealed.

  Fat lot of good that did, in Bishop’s way of thinking, when no one who’d solved life’s riddles ever had a chance to bring the answers back.

  Bill Pickering rode up behind them, paused to shake snow off his hat, and told them both, “Good catch. We don’t need any strays, weather like this.”

  “No, sir,” Lott answered. Bishop settled for a nod.

  He hadn’t shared last night’s event with any of the other trail hands. First, he had no proof and didn’t need them snickering at him behind his back, claiming he jumped at shadows like a child. Second, even if his suspicion was correct, what of it? Bishop couldn’t turn the clock back now and take another run at finding out what had disturbed him in the first place.

  There was nothing he could do, in fact, but wait and see what happened next.

  At least he’d passed the word along to Pickering and Mr. Dixon, for whatever that was worth.

  When Pickering had ridden off, Lott asked, “How long you figure till we cross the line into Missouri?”

  “Given normal weather, I’d have said another couple weeks at least,” Bishop replied. “If it keeps up like this, even if nothing else goes wrong, we’ll likely add a week or more to that.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Somewhere you have to be?”

  “I wish,” Lott answered, sounding vaguely wistful. “Nowhere special, now or later. I was hoping, once we’re finished in St. Louis, I might look around, try scaring up a church in need of clergy for the summer, anyway.”

  “No long-term plans, then?”

  “Not at my age. I just wait and take things as they come.”

  “It could be worse,” said Bishop, thinking back to Mason County. “Take my word on that, Pastor.”

  * * *

  * * *

  BILL PICKERING WAS angry at the weather as he rode away from Graham Lott and Toby Bishop. He had witnessed springtime snow before, though rarely, and it seemed to him that Mother Nature had a dark, contrary sense of humor, throwing roadblocks in their way for no good reason.

  And if that weren’t bad enough, they had a river coming up that they would have to cross somehow, before they even reached Missouri’s southern border. That was the Canadian, a tributary of the Arkansas, though how it got that name was anybody’s guess. No part of it was anywhere near Canada, flowing nine-hundred-odd miles from Colorado, through New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Indian country. Crossing it would call for barges near a settlement the Creek tribe called Tallasi—meaning “Old Town”—where they’d spent some time along the so-called Trail of Tears while traveling to reach their designated reservation.

  Fording the river would consume at least a day and maybe longer, stretched out by the storm if it kept snowing. A normal river barge could carry twenty-odd longhorns at once, meaning one hundred round-trip crossings if they found only one barge available. Bad weather would slow things down, and whoever owned the watercraft would likely hike his charges, recompense for weary hours working in the cold and snow.

  Pickering knew that Gavin Dixon carried cash enough to swing it, but if he got gouged on price, it had to be deducted from their payoff at the stockyards in Missouri. With each drover who survived the trip expecting forty bucks per month, that whittled money off the top of Dixon’s profit from the drive and left him starting off next year under a cloud.

  Pickering eyed the gray mass overhead and saw no glimmer of relief. The good news, if it was good: he could only see a half mile up ahead, or less as the snow thickened. Maybe they could catch a break by nightfall, coming sooner on a day like this than normally, when sundown beat the clock and they pitched camp and bedded the longhorns down.

  Thinking ahead to camp, Pickering thought about the story Toby Bishop had relayed to him and Mr. D last night. He hoped the drover was mistaken or had simply glimpsed a coyote fleeing from the sound and smell of his approach. If that was not the case . . .

  Ranchers from the Pacific Coast back to the Midwest and across the South all had their stories about rustlers, bandits, thieves, and brigands. Spreads closer to Mexico endured twice the risk from their proximity to territory rife with banditry and revolution. No one moving stock across long distances could shrug that off and trust to happy thoughts.

  Suspicion was the rule of thumb, and with so few lawmen spaced out along their route of march, a trail boss had to make his own rules. There was no such thing as taking prisoners alive and wasting precious time to drop them at the nearest small-town jail, where justice might be heavy-handed or ignored entirely, on a whim.

  The rule on cattle drives was to shoot first and skip the questions. Anyone who threatened stock or personnel had bought himself a one-way ticket to a Boot Hill, without a marker to commemorate his wasted life.

  Pickering hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did . . . well, it was nothing that he hadn’t done before.

  * * *

  * * *

  I HATE THIS DAMN snow,” Jaime Ybarra said.

  “You never saw it in Chihuahua?” Mariano de la Cruz inquired.

  “One time, high up in the Sierra Madre Occidental,” Jaime answered. “And I hated it back then. Same thing today.”

  “It slows the herd down,” Mariano said. “Maybe it’s easier to get their horses, then.”

  “One of their cowboys almost caught Amos last night.”

  “Maybe you wish they had?”

  Ybarra shook his head. “Not yet. We still need the horses. Without money in hand, it’s all for nothing.”

  “I doubt he’ll try to take them while it’s snowing. Some of these fools would get lost and wander off to freeze or starve.”

  “On top of which, the gringos will be more alert when weather blinds and deafens them.”

  “More waiting, then,” said Mariano.

  “We have time, ese. The herd cannot go far.”

  “But they have us outnumbered more than two to one.”

  “I don’t count the cook or his helper. Did you know the gringos call him Pequeña María?”

  Jaime and Mariano had been riding at the rear of their short column, but Ybarra saw another of their number coming back now, drawing closer through the snowfall.

  “Quiet!” he cautioned de la Cruz. “It’s Gretzler.”

  “Damn spy,” Mariano swore, spitting onto the snowy ground.

  Gretzler was smiling when he reached them, but Ybarra didn’t trust his show of friendship. “Everything all right back here, hombres?” he asked.

&
nbsp; “As fine as—how you say it—frog’s hair?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. You had me worried. Thought maybe the cold was getting to you.”

  “We’re fine,” Jaime replied. “Gracias for your kind concern.”

  Beside him, Mariano had the good sense not to laugh, although he raised a hand to mask his smile, feigning a breath to warm his fingers.

  “You’re welcome,” Gretzler said, without a hint of irony. “Might want to close it up a bit so we don’t lose you, coming up on dusk.”

  “Sí, jefe,” Jaime answered. “After you.”

  As soon as Shelby’s back was turned, Ybarra glanced across at Mariano, raised a hand, and drew its index finger left to right across his throat.

  That brought a smile from de la Cruz as they followed Gretzler on the northbound trail toward a horizon none of them could see. The gray day streaked with white closed in around them, drawing closer, until Jaime felt that he was riding down a tunnel to some unknown destination, his surroundings screened from view on every side.

  It must be an illusion, he supposed, that they had found themselves upon a road descending into hell. A stray line from a book he’d never read, but must have heard somewhere, perhaps in church, echoed unbidden in his mind: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE SNOW STOPPED falling close to sundown, not that Bishop had a chance to see it with gray clouds obscuring the distant west. One minute, flakes were swirling as they had all day, and then they petered out as if someone had closed a window high above and kept the storm from dumping any more on top of them.

  It wasn’t long before Bill Pickering rode back along the column, passing word that Mr. Dixon had selected campgrounds for the night. The tallgrass was exposed to some extent, with snow and slush around its roots, but ample for the herd to graze on overnight. On top of that, the boss had found a stream, name unknown, that wasn’t frozen over, a feeder of the larger waterway they’d have to ford on barges.