"We going to set a watch?" Vazquez asked.
"I don't plan to," Rab said. "The hawsses will let us know if someone is nearby."
O'Toole cleared his throat.
"Look here, Rab. It's not too late to go and get Fitz and them vaqueros. That puts the numbers closer to even. It's one band of renegade Comanche. We could take them in a fight. You said yourself they were mostly toting lances, and we've all got the Yellow Boys. There are only twenty of them. It's a fight we could win."
Rab puffed thoughtfully, the orange fire in his pipe glowing when he inhaled.
"It's only twenty that we know about," Rab said. "But remember, Cossatot Jim attacked a woman with children. That suggests that somewhere, maybe not far away, they've got a camp with some size to it. There might be a hundred braves, for all we know."
Now a thought struck Rab.
He knocked the fire out of his pipe and crushed it into the sand with the heel of his boot.
He'd picked the highest ground he could find to make their camp. The wind blew a little harder here than if they'd found a swale or a dry wash. But they had a vantage if anyone tried to get at them in the dark. But Rab also realized that if Cossatot Jim was on the plain he might have lit a fire. Scarce as it was, fuel was not impossible to find.
In the dim light of night, the others watched Rab as he pulled himself up onto the bare back of the buckskin.
"What you looking for, Rabbie?" O'Toole asked.
Rab strained his eyes through the darkness, hoping to see an orange glow somewhere.
"I was hoping maybe Cossatot Jim had made a fire. A man alone on the plain, he might get spooked. Or might just want to have some warmth. If so, we might see him out there."
O'Toole dug into his eye with his finger, trying to get some of the crusty sand out.
"I feel bad for him," O'Toole whispered to Vazquez.
"How's that?" Vazquez said back.
"He's desperate," O'Toole said. "He feels sorry for the kid, feels responsible, and he's desperate to find this Cossatot Jim feller."
Vazquez shrugged, a movement that said nothing in the dark.
"Hell, I ain't sure whether it's right or not to hand over Cossatot Jim to the Comanche," Vazquez said. "But Caleb Morgan rides in our outfit, and I reckon that gives all of us some responsibility for him."
"Yep," O'Toole said. "I ain't arguing that. As to whether or not we hand him over, I'll say this. I ain't in favor of it. He's a white man, and he should get a white man's justice. But if it's that Arkansas feller or Caleb, then I'm in agreement that the boy shouldn't die for something he had no part in. And I don't doubt that the Comanche would do it. Fighting them the way I did, I saw what they're capable of doing. They'll kill anyone — children, women, or men, they don't care. And as far as they're concerned, one white man ain't no different from another. To them, it makes all the sense in the world to punish Caleb for something he didn't do."
"You have a low opinion of the Comanche," Vazquez said.
"You damn straight I do," O'Toole responded. "I sure do. Hell. They earned my opinion of them, too."
"They are good warriors," Vazquez said.
"They're sneaky devils is what they are," O'Toole said. "Dangerous as hell. And there ain't nothing they like better than dressing up their lances with scalps. But if you want to know about the Comanche, all you need to know is that every other tribe of Injun is at war with them. They can't even get along with their own kind."
"Good horsemen," Vazquez said.
"Well, yep. They are that. And powerful warriors. Hell, I couldn't keep doing it."
"Couldn't keep doing what?" Vazquez asked.
"Fighting them."
"How do you mean?" Vazquez asked.
"I mean after so long, I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't keep riding out on patrols too far off outposts knowing that we were going to be dry-gulched by the Comanche."
"So what did you do?" Vazquez asked.
"I deserted is what I did," O'Toole said. "I run off from the army."
"Isn't that illegal?" Vazquez asked.
"I suppose so," O'Toole said. "But I'm still alive."
Vazquez made a noise.
"You got a problem with a deserter?" O'Toole asked.
"Every man has to walk his own path, O'Toole. Your path is different from mine, and I can't tell you where your feet should fall on your path."
"Hell. That's right," O'Toole said.
Rab dropped down from the horse's back and walked over to his bedroll.
"See anything?" O'Toole asked.
"Nothing," Rab said. "I saw nothing in any direction."
"Maybe tomorrow we'll find something worth seeing."
-13-
Bernard Swain rubbed his eyes and blinked against the morning sun.
"We'll be making a late start of it again today," he said. "Sun's already up quite a bit."
Swain dragged himself stiffly from his bedroll. "Wake up, boys! Morning has broken."
Slowly, Rude and Mezcal Pete pushed their way out of the bedrolls. Cossatot Jim was already up, sitting on a rock some distance away from where the men had made their camp.
"Something wrong there, Cossatot?" Swain called to him.
"We're moving slow," Jim said. "We ain't making nearly the time I thought we would."
"It just seems slower than it is on account of the land just going on forever," Bernard Swain said. "It's like a giant carpet that just keeps unrolling more and more the farther you go."
Jim stood up and then stepped up onto the rock. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked far to the east and north.
"You act like you're expecting somebody," Mezcal Pete said. "You expecting somebody?"
"I just don't want to get caught out here by Injuns," Cossatot Jim said. "Or anyone else, I reckon."
"Ain't no drovers going to worry none over one stolen horse," Bernard Swain said. "Beef on the hoof only lasts so long out here on the Staked Plains. They've got to get their cattle to good grazing pastures. If they see you again, they'll hang you for sure. But they ain't out here looking for you."
"All the same, we should get moving."
Cossatot Jim had done some figuring in his head. His numbers were all guesses and could have been off by wide margins. But he figured since stealing the horse and making a run, he'd probably gone thirty or forty miles to the west. Then, after meeting up with Bernard Swain and his three man gang, they had made probably twenty miles back east.
Today was the day, if it was going to happen, that he'd cross paths with that herd of steers and their drovers.
Bernard Swain used his knife to harvest some large clumps of tall grass. Along the way, he'd picked up some dried buffalo chips he was collecting in a bag. Together with the grass, he made a fire with the buffalo chips and used it to heat water for coffee.
There were a lot of things that Bernard Swain was willing to do without for a share of fifteen hundred dollars, especially if his share was quite a bit bigger than anyone else's share. But coffee was one thing he would not do without. He'd found that if he was going to get moving in the mornings, he had to have coffee to help him do it.
Cossatot Jim appreciated a good cup of coffee as much as anyone, but he was anxious to get moving.
He rolled up his bed and tied it to one of the mules. He hurried Rude and Mezcal Pete along, helping them where he could.
"That coffee ready yet?" he called to Swain.
"Soon enough," Swain said. "Don't be so jumpy, Cossatot. I'm telling you them drovers ain't worried about you or that horse. All they want is to get their cows to good pasture."
When the pot was good and hot to the touch, Bernard Swain used a bandanna to grasp hold of the handle.
"Bring me your cups," he said.
Each man held out a cup and took a tentative drink of the coffee. It was very strong and full of ground up bean, but it had a decent enough kick to it and help all of the men wake up. The bottle of mezcal they'd passed around the night before did
not help their mornings.
"Maybe we should ride south a ways farther before going on east," Cossatot Jim suggested. "You don't want them drovers coming along and seeing your herd of stolen horses.
"I don't want to get too much farther off course," Swain said. "We've dropped quite a ways to the south already. Unless those drovers suddenly decide they're going somewhere south of Las Vegas, I can guarantee you that we ain't going to cross paths with them."
Swain watched Cossatot Jim, the way he bit at his fingernails and shifted on the rock where he was sitting, the way Jim paced and looked around all the time.
"You've got a worried mind, Cossatot," Swain said to him. "You sure there ain't something you've neglected to tell us?"
Jim blew into his mug of coffee. "What would I have not told you?" he said. "I told you I stole a horse from them drovers."
Swain nodded. "I reckon you did mention that," he said. "But you seem too nervous for something as small as that. You see us. We stole twenty horses. And we're taking our time with our coffee. We're sitting here unconcerned. Yet you act like a man who's being chased by every deputy marshal in the U.S. territories."
Cossatot Jim blew into his coffee again.
"I just don't want to run into any more trouble," Jim said. "That's all it is."
Swain clicked his tongue at Mezcal Pete.
"Now this is what I'm talking about, Pete," he said.
"What's that?" Pete asked.
"What we need is an outlaw town," Bernard Swain said. "We need a place where folks like us can feel safe from the law. Where they don't have to be jumpy, like Cossatot Jim here. We need a place where outlaws look out for outlaws, and ain't nobody else allowed in."
"Why don't you go and start an outlaw town, then?" Pete asked.
Mezcal Pete had heard Bernard Swain's talk of an outlaw town too many times already. The truth was, Pete didn't much like Bernard Swain or Rude. He wanted the money that working with them brought. And Bernard Swain had gotten very good at stealing horses. He always knew how to get them without being caught and how to get paid for them. The trick was riding back and forth across borders. Borders were a friend to the outlaw. Also, it helped to have a willingness to go where most others would not go. Places like the Staked Plains. Other people did not come to places like this.
Swain drank the last of his coffee.
"All right. If we're going to get these horses to Texas, we'd best start moving now."
He kicked dirt over his coals.
Cossatot Jim did not have to be told twice. He was the first in his saddle, and he'd already started walking his horse to the east when the others were mounted and riding.
-14-
Kuwatee pressed his palm against the coals of the abandoned fire.
"Still a little warmth," he said, looking up at Sinclair.
"What do you think?" Rab asked.
"He was here," Kuwatee said. "This fire is from this morning. He is not so far off now."
O'Toole kneeled close to the ground and looked at the tracks.
"I don't see how you can tell one from the other," he said.
"I know these hawsses," Kuwatee said. "I can recognize their tracks by their strides. This is the stride of the hawss Cossatot Jim stole from our remuda."
"What about all these others?" O'Toole asked.
"I do not know these hawsses," Kuwatee said. "Most of them had no riders and bore no packs. The prints do not sink into the sand deep enough if they were burdened."
O'Toole shook his head. "I can see that some of them are deeper than others. But I don't know how you can be certain of what you're seeing."
"I am certain," Kuwatee said. "I have studied tracks many times."
Rab stood beside the blue roan, idly patting its neck.
"I'm pretty sure he's right," Rab said. "See how this track presses deep into the sand? This is a hawss that's carrying an extry hundred and sixty pounds on its back. That's why the track presses so deep into the sand. But these others, they're not deep. Less weight because there's no rider. Also, you see how these others all ride in almost perfect single file? These are tied hawsses being led. You don't lead a hawss like that if it's toting a rider."
O'Toole shrugged. "Now that I can understand."
"It's a big gamble if we're misreading the tracks," Vazquez said.
Having ridden so many times with posses, Vazquez knew that trackers sometimes made mistakes — even trackers who were sure of what they saw. And a mistake — like misreading a track — could prove disastrous for a posse. It could set them on the wrong path and put them hours or days behind a fugitive. And that might be all the time the fugitive needed to get clear.
"It ain't likely that Kuwatee would misread the tracks of a hawss he knows," Rab said.
"So who are these others?" O'Toole said. "What do you reckon?"
"Hawss thieves," Vazquez said. "I'd bet a month's wages on it. Who else would be leading hawsses out across the Staked Plains?"
Vazquez had spent too long as a deputy sheriff to miss the signs of a criminal, and he was often quick to assume the worst about others. That he was usually correct in his assumptions proved out how good he was as a lawman.
"Likely so," Rab agreed.
"He didn't plan to meet hawss thieves out here," Vazquez said. "He came across a gang of outlaws and fell in with them. Turned him back east."
"Warned them about us, and the Comanche," Kuwatee said. "And they cut south to avoid us."
"That's how I'd figure it," Vazquez agreed.
O'Toole stiffened and craned his neck to the east. "I don't see them."
"They are there," Kuwatee said.
While the others looked east, Sinclair's eyes were fixed to the north. On a far distant ridge, Rab Sinclair could see the silhouette of two riders. Though he could make out no details, he instinctively knew that these were Comanche warriors, sent by Pounding Fists to observe.
"They ain't getting closer by us standing here," Rab said. "Let's ride."
Now that they had a trail to follow, the small company made better time.
They did not bother trying to track every step of the horses. With the empty plain stretching out forever in front of them, close was good enough.
They also changed up the formation in which they rode.
Now Rab Sinclair and Kuwatee took the center line, still stretched out about a mile from each other. Vazquez rode a mile out on Rab's right hand, and O'Toole was about a mile away from Kuwatee to his left.
In this way, they could sweep a wide swath of territory, keeping their eyes open for that distant movement that would be the stolen horses and the new band of men that Cossatot Jim had taken up with. With Rab and Kuwatee riding in the middle, one of the two of them could periodically find signs that they were still moving in the right direction.
After two hours, they came to a place where buffalo had been. It must have been a massive herd of buffalo, moving from the south to the north, for the grass and weeds were trampled down in a path that was almost half a mile wide.
The four riders converged when they arrived at the buffalo trace.
"They stopped here to gather buffalo chips," Kuwatee said.
"Someone likes his coffee," Rab Sinclair said, standing in his stirrups and stretching tall in the saddle to look out across the horizon. "How long ago do you reckon they were through here?"
Kuwatee dismounted and followed some of the tracks through the buffalo trace.
"Impossible to say," he determined. "Two hours. An hour." He looked up and checked the sun's position in the sky. "If we do not catch sight of them before sundown, we will catch them before noon."
"Hell. That's what I wanted to hear," O'Toole said. "Think they'll put up a fight when we try to take Cossatot Jim?"
Rab Sinclair clenched his jaws. "I'm tired of this place. I'm tired of riding through nothing but grass and sand and rocks, looking for a thing that should be right in front of me. If they put up a fight, it will be short-lived."
&
nbsp; "I'm with Rabbie," O'Toole said. "Let's get this thing finished, get Caleb, and get home."
Vazquez shifted in his saddle.
"What about the hawss thieves? Assuming that's what they are."
"What about them?" Rab asked.
"If they don't put up a fight, but we know the hawsses are stolen, what do we do about it?"
Rab shrugged. "I ain't out here to be a vigilante. Unless them hawsses have a brand I recognize, or if they came off my ranch, that ain't my concern. My concern is this feller Cossatot Jim. My concern is getting Caleb Morgan back safe. Anything I have to do with hawss thieves depends entirely upon them and the posture they take with me."
Vazquez chewed his lip.
"Old habits are hard to set aside," he said. "As a lawman, I'm accustomed to dealing with hawss thieves when I find 'em."
"That ain't what I'm out here to do," Rab said.
"I reckon not," Vazquez said. "And you're paying my wages on this trip, so I reckon I'm out here to do what you're out here to do. It just doesn't set well."
"Our only concern now needs to be getting Caleb back in one piece," Rab said. "And ourselves."
O'Toole grinned and spit on the ground.
"Let's hope we recognize the brands on them hawsses, then," he said. "All this ridin' has me itchin' for a fight all of a sudden."
"What about the Comanche trailing us?" Kuwatee asked.
Rab looked back over his shoulder, but on the far horizon he saw no sign of the Comanche riders he'd seen earlier.
"Ain't a concern right now," Rab said. "Let's hope they don't become one."
***
Not long before dusk, O'Toole out to the left of Kuwatee began to wave his hat high over his head.
Rab Sinclair waved his own hat so that Vazquez would see, then Rab turned the blue roan toward O'Toole, trailing the Appaloosa behind him. Vazquez followed. The half-breed was already on his way over to O'Toole.
"They's something out there," O'Toole said.
The other three men stood in the stirrups to see.
"I don't see anything," Vazquez said.
A Vast and Desolate Land Page 9