The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  “One change,” Pickering announced, before he moved on. “Mr. D needs four men on each shift tonight, with the poor visibility and all. Figure on wolves and whatnot being hungry in the cold. Don’t hesitate to drop one if you see it. Just call out to warn the camp after you fire.”

  “Will do,” said Bishop, hoping he could pass another night without having to use his guns.

  Graham Lott rode up about five minutes later, calling out, “O ye of little faith!”

  “How’s that?” asked Bishop.

  Whipping off his hat and waving it toward dark storm clouds, the preacher said, “My weather prayer! Looks like I got an answer after all.”

  “One possibility, I guess,” Bishop replied.

  “I guess that makes you Doubting Toby,” Lott said, grinning with a strained fervor.

  “I tend to think of weather as a thing apart. It comes and goes. Snow starts and stops. Same thing with wind and rain, twisters and drought, whatever.”

  “All part of the plan,” Lott said.

  “Maybe he’ll clue us in on that someday.”

  “It’s in the Good Book, plain for anyone to see.”

  “I don’t recall spring blizzards, but I might have missed that chapter.”

  “Bill told you about the added guards tonight?”

  “He did.” The foreman’s first name sounded funny, coming from Lott’s mouth. Some people, Bishop knew, aspired to bosom friendships that they never quite attained.

  “Which shift are you on?” Lott inquired.

  “I didn’t ask. Reckon they’ll tell us over supper, same as always.”

  Lott nodded. Said, “I’d better get a move on, then. We’ve got another mile or so ahead to where Rudy and Mel are setting up the camp.”

  “I’ll see you there,” said Bishop, hoping that he wouldn’t be assigned to the same watch as Lott. There’d be no time for Lott to bend his ear, of course, but even so, he didn’t need distractions while he was on guard, the memory of last night still fresh in his mind.

  A herd of cattle is composed of many individuals, but there are times when it behaves as if responding to a single mind. Bishop knew they were nearing camp when the longhorns in the vanguard slowed, then stopped entirely, fanning out to let the rest crowd in behind them, covering the prairie for a range of fifty yards or so from east to west, and more or less the same from north to south.

  Some may have seen and smelled the nearby creek, or else the chuck wagon, with woodsmoke rising from its stovepipe. Bishop wondered if their bovine brains rebelled against the smell of roasting meat, or if they took it all in stride, oblivious.

  He finally decided that it didn’t matter, either way.

  * * *

  * * *

  WE SHOULD BE safe here,” Amos Finch advised his men. “Make sure you cut some brush and build a screen for that campfire and keep the noise down. Even on a night like this, it travels.”

  Shelby Gretzler trailed him to the copse of limber pines where they’d tethered their animals. “When are you riding up on them?” he asked.

  “I’ll eat first. Let ’em have a couple hours to relax and post their guards. I want the lookouts bored and sleepy when it’s time.”

  “Unless it snows again tomorrow, they’ll be coming up on the Canadian,” Shelby observed. “I know a guy runs barges over to Missouri there.”

  “A friend of yours?” Finch asked.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Was living with his sister for a little while, until she run off with a snake-oil salesman. He knows well enough he shouldn’t cross me.”

  “How long since you’ve seen him?”

  “Going on a couple years, I’d say.”

  “But he’ll remember you?”

  A nod and smile from Gretzler. “If he don’t, I’ll have to whip his ass again and help remind him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So, what’s the plan, Amos? The rest keep asking me.”

  “I haven’t made my mind up yet,” Finch said, keeping his voice down, glancing at his other riders grouped around a crackling fire. “I’m thinking if it snows again and they sit out a day to rest the herd, we’ll grab their mounts tomorrow night. If they move on and cross the river, that should take most of the day. They won’t get far without another overnight. We’ll get your guy to ferry us across and come up on them unawares.”

  “You want me to, I’ll fill the others in,” said Shelby.

  Amos thought about it, shook his head. Replied, “Not yet. The two amigos might try something premature, before we pick up the remuda. Tell ’em I’m still undecided and you couldn’t get it out of me. They ought to swallow that.”

  “Okay. But if the Mexicans get antsy . . .”

  “Then we’ll handle it, and anybody else who sides with them.”

  “Right.” Gretzler considered that, adding, “You know the two of us can’t make off with the horses on our own.”

  “It shouldn’t come to that,” Finch said. “But if it does, we’ll think of something else.”

  “And these boys?”

  “Buzzards have to eat, the same as anybody else.”

  Shelby nodded. “Just one more thing before you head out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Say that we follow them across. That puts us on the wrong side of the river, running from a bunch of drovers madder than an old wet hen.”

  “I thought about that, too,” Finch said. “You ever heard of Willow Grove?”

  “Nothing that comes to mind right off,” Shelby replied.

  “It ain’t much of a town, but it’s across the line there. Something like a couple hundred people and some scattered farms. We make it there with extra mounts, should be no trouble selling them.”

  “No law around?”

  “There wasn’t, last time I passed through. If they’ve hired someone in the meantime, we can reason with him.”

  “Right.” A knowing smile. His sidekick sniffed the air and told him, “Coffee’s on. You want a cup or two before you go?”

  “Sounds like exactly what I need,” Finch said, and trailed him toward the fire.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BISHOP WAS COMING off his watch at midnight when the sky released more snow. It kept up until sunrise and beyond, when Mr. Dixon made a judgment call to keep the herd in place and hope the weather broke next day, their seventh on the trail.

  Around midafternoon Toby saw Graham Lott in earnest conversation with Bill Pickering. The preacher held a Bible in one hand and gestured with it while he blathered on a mile a minute, doubtless filling in the foreman on his weather prayers. Avoiding the two, Bishop stopped off for coffee at the chuck wagon, exchanging pleasantries with haggard-looking Rudy Knapp.

  “Sandwich?” Mel Varney asked, over his Little Mary’s shoulder.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Bishop replied, then thanked Mel for a slice of pork on buttered bread.

  From there, he walked to the remuda, shared a little of the bread with Compañero, and stood talking to the Appaloosa while he finished off his sandwich. Was he imagining that Compañero’s dark eyes gleamed with understanding as he spoke?

  Maybe. But he expected no reply and Compañero offered none, turning his full attention to the powder-dusted tallgrass sprouting up around him.

  Most days on a trail drive are packed with chores, whether it be riding herd, checking equipment, helping watch the remuda, or collecting any scattered trash around the camp to feed their fire. Today, aside from Bishop’s hour with Floyd at the remuda, he found the downtime tedious, wishing that they could resume their northbound trek.

  The snowfall tapered off again about an hour prior to suppertime. When Bishop eyed the clouds, he saw them breaking up and scudding off eastward, perhaps to dump their next load somewhere over Arkansas. He wasn’t counting any unhatched chickens yet, bu
t while the drovers ate their pork and beans, Bill Pickering passed by to fill them in.

  “Hoping we’ve seen the last of that white stuff,” he said. “If it holds off till breakfast, we’ll be moving up to the Canadian. We’ve got a full day on the river, ferrying the steers across, so we’ll be camping in Missouri overnight, then moving on. We’ve lost a day already, and we can’t afford too many more.”

  When he was done and left them, Pastor Lott called out across the fire to Bishop, smiling like he’d won a jackpot at the poker table. “See? What did I tell you? Prayer, son. Prayer!”

  A couple of the others, Gorch and Odom, laughed at Lott’s expense, but most ignored him. Bishop settled for a shrug and went back to his supper. He was scheduled for first watch, with Courtwright, Thorne, and Hightower, and was craving another cup of coffee first, before he put his hours in.

  If he’d been a praying man himself, he might have asked Whoever for a quiet night on guard. No shadows unidentified, no sense that he was being watched and measured up as a potential threat.

  Nothing but your imagination, Bishop told himself, and not for the first time. He usually trusted anxious feelings that came out of nowhere, but in this case he was willing to admit an error. Happy to admit it, even, if that meant the drive could carry on untroubled once they made it to Missouri’s soil, still better than two hundred and eighty miles below St. Louis.

  Call it four more weeks after a boating day tomorrow, if they suffered no more interruptions on the trail. It was a hope that he could cling to, even if he couldn’t guarantee it coming true.

  So, why did Bishop feel like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop?

  * * *

  * * *

  THE MEN WERE waiting up when Amos Finch returned to camp, Reed Dyer speaking up to ask him: “Well? What now?”

  “Nothing tonight,” Finch answered, face deadpan while Dyer and Earl Mullins rolled their eyes. The Mexicans just stared at him, waiting. “Unless the snow starts up again, they’re bound to start their river crossing first thing in the morning. That should take most of the day.”

  “And what do we do then?” Bert Fitzer asked.

  “We wait a spell and follow ’em across. Shelby’s acquainted with the ferryman. We catch up with ’em after dark and do it then or wait another day if they’re too skittish. Give ’em time to settle down and drop their guard a bit.”

  “Meaning they have to settle down from almost catching you?” Jaime Ybarra asked.

  “Fact is, they didn’t catch me,” Finch replied. “But if you’ve got a need to jump the gun, go on ahead. Take someone with you. Maybe Mariano? We can watch and see how well you make out.”

  “No, thank you, boss. We do it your way, just like always, eh?”

  “That’s music to my ears, muchacho. We’d all hate to lose the pair of you.”

  Dyer snickered at that and Mariano shot a warning glance his way. If looks could kill, Finch reckoned Dyer would be gutted on the spot.

  “All settled, then,” Finch said, to break the tension. “Get some rest, and if you’re drinking, make damn sure you have a clear head in the morning. We’re not cursing anyone who’s soapy-eyed and seeing snakes. If anybody can’t keep up, we’re leaving him behind.”

  Shel Gretzler trailed Finch to the spot where Amos had his bedroll, several yards removed from their companions and the campfire. Once they had moved out of earshot, Gretzler said, “You’re right about Jaime and Mariano. I wouldn’t trust either one of ’em to bring in washing off the line.”

  “They seemed all right at first,” Finch said. “But now . . . We can’t keep watching ’em around the clock.”

  “Tomorrow settles it,” Gretzler agreed. “If they don’t try a move before then. Maybe—”

  “I see where you’re going,” Finch said, interrupting. “But if we take care of ’em tonight, the others might jump sideways. If we wind up fighting five instead of two, I want to pick a better time and place. Without the horses, this whole thing has been a waste of time.”

  “You want me to, I’ll have a quiet word with Bert and Earl? Beef up the odds.”

  “Leave it alone, Shel. Like as not, our two amigos would get wind of it, and who knows what they’d do?”

  “Okay. I’m keeping my LeMat under my blankets just in case.”

  Shel’s big LeMat revolver was a French creation, one of roughly fifteen hundred shipped to the Confederacy for the War Between the States. Its cylinder held nine .42-caliber rounds, while a shorter smoothbore barrel underneath the main one chambered a twenty-gauge shotgun shell. Ten shots in all, the last one spitting buckshot pellets for a bloody coup de grâce.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Finch said as Gretzler turned back toward the fire.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE WEATHER HELD come morning, the clouds mostly dispersed to eastward overnight, and when the sun made its appearance for the first time in two days, it cast the plains in rosy hues. It was the kind of daybreak where a man might wake up feeling optimistic, but the weariness induced by cold and wasting yesterday kept Mr. Dixon’s hands in a subdued mood overall.

  The lone exception to that rule was Pastor Lott, too cheery for his own good, acting sprightly as he stowed his gear in Varney’s chuck wagon, then praying over breakfast with a special thanks to God for moving out the snow.

  A couple of the other hands lowered their eyes, muttered “Amen” when he was done, but most just dug into their food, getting a head start on the slackers. Bishop was among those chowing down without attending to devotion, and he caught Lott peering at him over beans and sausage with a faintly pained expression on his face.

  No convert here, he thought, and raised his laden fork in a salute that wasn’t meant as mockery but felt that way.

  Tough luck. He had accommodated Lott their first week on the trail, but someone had to take the starch out of the preacher’s holier-than-thou routine before he talked a donkey’s leg off, or irritated certain drovers to the point where they might have it in for him.

  It would be meant in fun to start with, but Bishop had seen how that went. Smirking jokes evolved into insults, someone started playing stupid tricks, and spiteful words turned into fisticuffs or worse. That was the last thing any trail drive needed, when the drovers should be working in collaboration toward their common goal: delivering the herd and getting paid.

  Beyond that, some might cleave to jobs around the Circle K, while others took their leave and never saw the rest again. Bishop hadn’t decided what he’d do yet. With another six weeks still ahead of them, at least, it was too soon to say.

  One thing, though, he could be thankful for. The night had passed without any alarms of predators or prowlers bothering the herd. He hoped their luck would hold in that regard, but Bishop had his doubts. A sense of something wicked coming down the road nagged at his mind and wouldn’t let him go.

  Bishop resolved that he’d be ready to react the minute something happened—if it happened—and do anything within his power to protect the herd, safeguard his various companions on the trail, and look out for himself at the same time.

  A tall order, perhaps, but it felt better than the job he’d recently escaped from, killing for his daily bread to keep a prairie feud alive and going strong.

  According to Bill Pickering, they had another eight miles still to go before they reached the southern bank of the Canadian River. Call it another day of driving longhorns over ground where snow would soon be melting, turning topsoil into muck. They would arrive too late to start the ferrying across, which meant in turn another day already spoken for tomorrow.

  Bishop knew such things were built into the schedule for a cattle drive, the drovers’ primary concern being delivery of the animals alive and well, with no significant weight loss. The irony of that didn’t escape him, but he understood that ranching was a business first an
d foremost, operated for a cattleman’s profit, not out of any love for animals per se.

  So far this year, from what he’d read in newspapers, prime steaks sold in most butcher shops for twenty cents a pound; the price increased dramatically if you were dining in a stylish urban restaurant. A roast came in at fourteen cents a pound, while cheaper cuts of stew meat could be purchased at a nickel per.

  A single longhorn weighing in at two tons, give or take, might yield five hundred pounds of meat, plus liver, tongue, and other bits. Figure two thousand head in Mr. Dixon’s herd, if all of them arrived at the St. Louis stockyards, and the math began to give Bishop a headache, so he let it go.

  A tidy sum, no matter how you sliced it, but each steer abandoned on the trail meant less cash for the boss, after he’d settled with his drovers and accounted for expenses. Mounting his snowflake Appaloosa, Bishop put that bloody business out of mind and focused on the trail ahead.

  * * *

  * * *

  HOW FAR TO go yet?” Shelby Gretzler asked.

  “I’d say another nine, ten miles,” Finch said. “No need to push it. They’ll be tying up the barge all day. Might even drag into tomorrow morning if they’re slow about it, but they won’t like splitting up the herd, what with a river in between them.”

  “And I’m guessing that their horses will be first across.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Amos said. “Might need ’em on the far side, if the stock starts getting antsy from the crossing.”

  “Likely split the drovers up as well.”

  “Makes sense. The more steers cross, the more hands need to cover them on the Missouri side. Some of ’em will be riding back and forth until they’re sick to death of it.”

  “Wearing ’em down,” Shel said. “That’s good for us and bad for them.”

  “The way I like it,” Finch agreed.

  “I’m with you,” Gretzler said. “You know that, right?”

  Finch nodded, making sure his face reflected nothing. Asked his sidekick, “Are you sure about this Chalmers character?”